Rain. The kind that hits your skin so fiercely it leaves marks. The kind that gets under your skin so even your insides are saturated. The kind that causes trees to fall and branches to collapse. An umbrella is seemingly useless in this particular rain, for the drops that land in the pot holes you speed-walk past jump up and grab a hold of your chest with each large drop, regardless. In this rain, all people and beasts are equal, and hiding under the same cover as a large group of Chinese, it seems my skin color is finally undetected. Or at least unimportant.
It was 80 degrees in the early afternoon, but now I sit beside a space heater, shivering under towels and blankets and trying to rediscover what it means to be dry. With a cup of coffee in tow, I write about my reentry to China and the teacher training program I devised with two other volunteers.
Immediately upon arriving in Longdongbao airport and riding along through my town of Longdongbao on unpaved roads, I was struck with the overwhelming sense of home. While I initially was reluctant to return and wanted so much to stay with my family, I think the awful delays, layovers and ambiguity on how I was to get back to Guizhou was actually a blessing, as it made my homecoming that much sweeter and welcomed.
I had a total of 7 hours in my apartment to get some sleep, repack, and adjust before having to head to the bus station in order to make it to Duyun (another city in Guizhou province), where I was to join Mary and Jonny (fellow volunteers) for our summer project of teacher training. Blame it on the time crunch, on the jetlag, on my consistent lack of poor judgment, but I decided, consciously, that it was a good idea to leave my passport in my apartment rather than bring it to Duyun because, at the time, I thought it would be smart in order to avoid theft and complications.
In China, as a foreigner you must always have your passport on you. I know this, everyone here knows this. When you travel to a different city, you must use your passport to register with the police (if you stay in a hotel, they'll register you with the police to make it easier on you) so that the Chinese government always know where you are. This is something that has been drilled into our brains. I have no excuse for not bringing mine, other than, perhaps, sheer stupidity.
When I arrived in Duyun, I was escorted by Ms. Liu, a woman for the Duyun Department of Education, to my hotel, which was paid for by the city. The hotel I have few words for, but, in the words of Zui Kui, my Chinese Peace Corps Program Manager who came to visit us later in the week "this is the worst hotel I've ever seen. Ever." And she's seen a lot. The walls were covered in mold and water stains, the bed sheets looked as though they had just been slept in/on, the toilet had cigarette ashes and hair in it, and I guarantee this place had not been cleaned since at least early February (and I'm saying early February because it is Chinese tradition to give a thorough cleaning to every place after Chinese New Year; it's possible it wasn't even done then). As I tried to hide my disgust for the sake of Ms. Liu, suddenly my room was entered by a young female police officer who wanted to find out what I was doing here (Mary and Jonny had arrived two days prior and were in class at the moment). Ms. Liu explained my cause, and the woman then asked to see my passport, which, as you know, I did not have. I did, however, have my China issued Foreign Expert Card, which included my purpose for being in China and passport number, so I hoped that would cover me. It didn't. The officer channeled to the rest of the station (as it turns out, my hotel was connected to the Duyun police station) and within seconds I had the whole squad (disclaimer: exaggeration) in my room. A police raid.
Well, at this moment, the jetlag was dictating my actions and I was not a foreigner to be reckoned with. When they drilled me on what was I doing here, did I know I was breaking the law, did I know they have the right to throw me in jail, worry was the last thing on my mind. Instead, my sleep-deprivation spoke for me and I found myself being quite rude and demanding right back. How dare these people interrogate me after I've traveled for four days to get here in order to help their teachers for free? Did they not know this was summer vacation? While FeiFei would normally bend over backwards in apology and humiliation, Cranky, tired, cried-in-the-airport-two-days-ago-from-sleep-deprivation ValFlynn was not putting up with this. And it worked. For a while.
I was able to convince everyone that a copy of my passport should suffice, and so after making a few calls to Guiyang, I was able to get one of the members of my FAO (foreign affairs office) to fax my passport copy to Duyun, and everyone seemed happy.
Two days into teacher training, however, the passport dilemma was brought up again. It seems the copy would no longer work, and I had to return to Longdongbao to get mine, and then come back to Duyun later that day. I, once again, had to leave Jonny and Mary alone (the guilt was immense) and travel all the way back to Longdongbao, about a 3+ hour journey, only to then grab the passport, turn around and travel another 3+ hours back to Duyun. I. Was. Sick. Of. Travel.
Teacher training was wonderful. Collaborating with Mary and Jonny was a blessing because we each were agreeable and flexible, yet had diverse things to put to the table. Our students (primary and secondary English teachers) were very diverse in their abilities, some not able to say or understand anything beyond "Hello!" "What is your name?" (they could not understand "where are you from?"), and yet others who were almost equivalent in ability to my university students (i.e. have grammar problems, but can express fairly complex ideas nevertheless). Having no resources or expectations to work with, the three of us had to design the curriculum from the bottom up. We organized the training into three sections each day, the first section was divided by English ability (I had the highest group) just to focus on improving the teacher's speaking and listening ability. After that, the groups were divided by what they teach (I had primary school teachers who teach in the countryside, so mostly they were low-ability) and we trained them in such methodologies as classroom management techniques (Chinese primary and secondary classrooms have, on average, 70 students for one teacher…tell that to American teachers who complain about class size), how to lesson plan, how to unit plan, how to utilize and familiarize themselves with their textbooks, how to differentiate instruction, and gave them techniques to use for all of the above. Lastly, we spent the afternoon as one large class and Jonny, Mary and I team-taught a cross-culture course. I think, as far as a two week training session to teachers who have never been taught how to teach goes, it was well done. My proudest moment was when I collected the lesson plans my class came up with on their own, after drilling the strategies they should employ, and was blown away by how well they had taken the advice (every lesson employed differentiated instruction, creative activities, and followed all other techniques I taught!!), especially since they started the training session thinking the only way to teach was to lecture (to children!). Our hope is that Peace Corps can get approval to eventually open up a second teacher training sector in China so that volunteers can focus on this for the entire two years. I really enjoy teacher training.
The rest of training in Duyun was great. Duyun is a beautiful city! Our friend Monica, who just finished her Peace Corps service, came to visit us for a weekend, and bestowed upon me her sacred roller-skates (Monica's parents both died while she was in Peace Corps, and these were childhood skates that she brought back after having to pack up and distribute her family's belongings, so as you can imagine they are very special), since she's moving to Thailand soon, which shall make my time in Longdongbao even more entertaining. With Monica as the guests' guest, the Duyun Department of Education took us on two hiking trips over the weekend, which was fun.
On Wednesday of our final week, the most exciting thing happened. To everyone's surprise, The Minister of Education in Beijing (Beijing is where the head government resides, and all other governments in China report to Beijing, so this was the top official of education) came to Duyun to check on the progress of one of Guizhou's cities. He had not been to Guizhou province in over twelve years, and I am so glad (please detect no sarcasm in my tone) that he came while we were there. Based on Duyun Education Department's surprise and obvious nerves, I believe they were unaware that he would be coming, so I cannot believe our luck in timing. He wished to speak with Mary, Jonny and I, as foreigners working to build Guizhou's education department, to hear about what we were doing to help and to take our advice on how China can better assist Guizhou to reach the rest of China's success.
Prior to meeting with the Minister, I will admit I've felt a lot of animosity towards other officials I have met in Guizhou, but it is with great vigor that I write this man destroyed my stereotype! He was wonderful! He was profoundly well-educated, his English was great, he was humble, patient, respectful of everyone, and, just to add to the excitement, he had BEEN TO DUBUQUE!! I'm not joking. As I spoke with him, and he heard I was from Iowa, he lit up and I thought, initially, it must be a mistake, since it seems no one knows anything about Iowa, or has even heard about it. When I said I was from Dubuque, specifically, all formality was lost between us in our recollection of familiar places. This It turns out he used to work in Chicago and did a guest program at the University of Dubuque. I adore him. It was so nice to see that, while guanxi is definitely the basis for becoming officials at the local levels, in order to move up to the top perhaps it takes a bit more, and I esteem him with the best of stereotype destroyers. The minister, after discussing our familiar love of the Midwest, held a meeting in which he appeared generally interested in Mary, Jonny and my advice (and we definitely had some) on how to improve conditions in Guizhou. We followed the meeting with a great banquet, the greatest I've ever been to, and, what's more, he proved his humility by not adhering to the traditional seat process, so no matter where I sat it was okay, unlike almost every other banquet where I always end up sitting in the official's ambiguous chair. :)
After initially being so exhausted of travel, I decided at the last minute to join all other Guizhou volunteers for a twelve hour train ride to take a weekend trip to Kunming, Yunnan (my third time there…) for 2 days. It was great to see everyone and hear about their own summer projects in other cities, tell about my trip home, and just relax. Kunming is always a good city for the soul.
Now I am back in Longdongbao, busying myself with researching graduate programs, other Peace Corps programs (I really think I want to resign on for another program, maybe in Togo or Rwanda, Africa? Maybe doing teacher training? Or heck, even work in the health sector… haha ) and other potential future jobs. The Mianyang, Sichuan refugee camp that I was foolishly thrilled about working in during August was canceled, as China has decided foreigners are no longer allowed there (lesson learned: don't get excited about programs in China until I am finished with them). Yet another reason to curse my passport. So it looks like I'll have all of August to research and obsess about my future. And write blogs. ;)
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