Fuzhou - Last Day Of Teaching

9th July 2010

I've gone from a bimonthly report (two per month) to a bimonthly report (every two months) - confusing language, English! But I need to reacquaint myself with it because my next assignment finally takes me back to teaching English: this time in Dalian in the north-east of China.
Apart from spending most of my time with school work, there have been some miserable times and a spate of bad luck in the last couple weeks:

• The rain has been incessant ever since returning to Fuzhou: hardly a day has passed when it hasn't rained. More recently the heat has been turned up, often in the mid/high 30s degrees - the humidity is unbearable. Remember I commute 50km to/from school every day in horrific traffic conditions.
• Two weeks ago the electric bike gave up on me, on the way home; I walked it for about 10km before finding someone willing to repair it.
• A week ago my bike ran into a pothole at 40kph, I came off the seat and did a handstand while hanging onto the handlebars; unfortunately, the throttle bar came off in my hand and the accelerator could not be turned off! Fortunately, I managed to hang on with the left hand and apply enough brake to slow down.
• Two days later the new throttle bar came off again while I was walking the bike down a steep ramp at school - the bike fell over (with throttle open) and went into a spin on the ground, with me comically trying to catch it to switch it off.
• Up until two 3 days ago, the teaching opportunities offered by my employer were not very attractive and I was preparing to sit out the next semester.
• I had to cancel my return flight to Australia (Jul 5) as I was still teaching, only to be told that the next available flight (via my return ticket) was Aug 4!
• I had no buyer for my e-bike.

However, for every (negative) action there is often a (positive) reaction: in this case:

• My bike has been fixed and I have now found a buyer for it.
• A suitable English-teaching position emerged this week in Dalian - a city I've been trying to get to in the last year or so.
• A flight booking to Australia came up for Jul 21, arriving on the evening of Jul 22.
• To top things off, earlier this week I entered a competition on a World Cup sports show on CCTV News (a Chinese TV channel, in English, which broadcasts across China and to a number of countries). My name and winning entry must have been seen by millions of people, not that anyone cared, but I was very excited!

Below is the url for the "Photo of the Day" competition that I won earlier this week.

For those of you who are not soccer (football) fans, I need to explain the logic behind my photo caption:

Diego Maradona was the superstar player for Argentina when they won their last World Cup in 1986 against West Germany. In a quarter-final game against England he scored a goal after illegally touching the ball with his left hand. He later admitted to it and it came to be known as "The hand of God". In the competition photo it shows Maradona (the current manager of the Argentina team) waiving goodbye (with his left hand) after being thrashed by Germany 4-0 in the 2010 World Cup.

Hence, my caption:

"On this hand God giveth; on the other hand, Germany taketh away".

Move to 21.30 minutes into the video for the presenter's announcement of my winning entry.
http://english.cntv.cn/program/sportsscene/20100707/100550.shtml

One last bit of good news is that today was my last official day of teaching, albeit I still have a weekend of assignments marking ahead of me. It's not easy ploughing through 40 marketing assignments of some 30-pages each, but there have been some funny moments such as: instead of seeing a heading of "Physical Handling" a student wrote "Physical Hanging" - naturally it passed an MS-Word spell check; another assignment was about a perfume that the students invented, called True Love: their prototype perfume bottle was of a bamboo design with a couple of butterflies perched on the bamboo. (Refer "Perfume Story" attachment for the Chinglish, but beautiful, love story that was on the perfume box).

Finally, some photos of the many student teams presentations I had to mark:

• the students were asked to dress-up for the presentations
• I'm the short one in the middle
• I'm the short one again!
• Ah, finally someone my size

Well, after almost one year in Fuzhou I head home in a couple of weeks for my son's wedding, soon after which I will be heading for the beautiful (so I'm told) coastal city of Dalian. For you Melburnians, I'll see you soon; for those in China, I hope this summer's weather is kind to you.

Until the next report... Renzo