Substituting Again
13 Nov 2011 Comments Off on Substituting Again
in School
Me inside a cathedral next to the observatory on Sheshan mountain.
Fourth graders I substitute taught.
Our friend at China's first telescope. Now a museum, it has been replaced by a bigger telescope on the same hill.
This last week was kind of busy. I substituted in fourth grade for Monday and Tuesday, which then was stretched through Thursday because the teacher I was in for was still sick. I think I am bad luck, because the last time I substituted for the kindergarten class, the Chinese co-teacher was ill, but just toughed it out and came to help me. This time, the Chinese teacher was also ill. She came the first day to help me, but then had to stay home, and I was on my own for the next two days. Wah, wah. Nobody at Classical School where I taught before has a coteacher, so what’s the big deal, right?
It is interesting working in a bilingual school. The students are so smart to know two languages. I am impressed by them. At the same time, I don’t see the rich literature in the curriculum that I would like. Maybe the students are doing well just to learn the English language and they leave literature for later years. I might find out tomorrow. I am supposed to substitute for a sixth grade teacher. She teaches two English classes and one maths class. That’s no typo. They call it “maths” here. I think it is the British influence. I also haven’t seen any history. It would be hard to make a history curriculum in an international school. Whose history would you teach? Still, I’m interested to see what history they teach.
It is possible that I won’t be teaching, though. I woke up with a bad cold on Saturday. We had a full day planned, so I just went on the planned outings, but then I was much worse this morning and canceled out of teaching Primary and having guests for dinner. I don’t know yet if I’ll be teaching tomorrow. I could probably just tough it out. I just don’t want to sneeze on the students!
Yesterday, Saturday, Jeff and I went shopping for food for the guests we ended up not having. I was going to make microwave lasagna. Then we went out to a western suburb of Shanghai to meet with two nice professors who are married to each other. She is a professor of nuclear science, and he is a professor of electrical science. They are pretty impressive. We went out to see them once before and they took us to a lovely restaurant near their apartment. Jeff called them Friday to tell them we were planning to be in their area, and would they like to get together. He told them it would be nice to have lunch together, and reminded them that it was our turn to pay. They made arrangements to go to the same restaurant we liked the last time. It was a lovely dinner. We spoke mostly Chinese, with a little English thrown in. Good practice. I suspected that they would try to pay the bill because they had made the arrangements for the dinner. At the end of dinner I said that I wanted to get a card for the restaurant so we could come back. While at the counter, I said I wanted to pay. While I was trying to pay, Madame host came over and pushed me away. I protested that it was our turn to pay, but it made no effect on her. She pushed me back to the table, but I held her hand so she couldn’t pay either. It must have looked rather comical to see two grown women in a shoving match for who gets to pay the bill. I lost. It stands to reason that she would be trickier than I am. She has a Ph.D. and I only have a master’s :).
After lunch they drove us out about 45 minutes away from their house to a hill on which there is the oldest astronomical observatory in China. It is no longer functioning, because they built a new one on the same hill. Next to the observatory is a Catholic cathedral which is in such good repair that I thought it was newly built. While we were there we saw some Koreans in a prayer service outside, and Chinese in a prayer service inside. The hill was lovely, with a nice view. The area has an amusement park with at least two decent looking roller coasters. The area also boats a golf course, a botanical garden, and a sculpture garden. Also, from the hill we could see a subdivision of mansions. The head of Jeff’s company lives in a mansion in that neighborhood. Supposedly, the most expensive villa in Shanghai is on the hill, although we didn’t see it. It was a lovely November day, and I realized that our temperatures in the 60’s were like temperatures our friends in Wisconsin had in September. I like that our warm fall weather.
After the hill, they dropped us off at the nearby subway line. There is a metro stop very close. That is good news because we can go back and see the other attractions without riding in Jiang Xiaomin’s car. Strangely, the metro is often faster than a car. We were able to get to our evening appointment in plenty of time. We had planned to have dinner with a friend who is Jeff’s Chinese teacher. We get together periodically with Frank and his wife, Ruby. Frank spent time living in the U.S., so he has perfect English, but he speaks in clear slow Mandarin so we can practice our Chinese. Our first choice of a restaurant, Coconut Paradise (Thai) was full, so we went to a vegetarian place instead. The food was pretty good, but not my favorite. I prefer vegetarian cuisine when it can include cheese, which Chinese restaurants don’t have. Dad was ecstatic about it. He has been looking for a vegetarian restaurant for some time, but every time we try to go to one, it is gone. Vegetarian restaurants don’t have a big clientele here where the Chinese really enjoy MEAT! We had a lovely visit, but my cold was getting progressively worse and I was going through lots of tissues. I didn’t touch any of the serving spoons and asked Jeff to put food on my plate in an effort not to contaminate someone.
The pollution here is visibly worse this week. Today I saw white when I looked out the window. The beautiful Oriental Pearl tower and the World Financial Center tower I love to see out my dining room window were obscured by a white haze, as if we had ascended into a cloud. I remember my Mom and Dad talking about the pollution that was in Nepal from people burning things to keep warm, or to cook. Stephen experienced the same thing in Buenos Aires. I wonder if that is the source of the worsening air quality now that it is getting cooler at night. Hmmm.
Life is good for us here, though. We don’t notice any lung problems from the pollution, and our health has been very good in general. My cold is the first health problem we have had. We can’t complain.