I thought nothing of the fifth or sixth day of round-the-clock rain, so excited I was to start my own lessons. To be a student again--more than an occasional student! Xiao Kairong had kindly arranged my teaching schedule this term so that all of my classes will be in the afternoon or evening, leaving my mornings free to enroll in a five-day-a-week, four-period-a-day comprehensive Chinese course for foreign students.
Monday morning found me a tad bit disappointed that we were just ushered into a large hall, where I sat shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of foreign students from all parts of the planet. Interesting, though, was which parts of the planet were most heavily represented. There were lots of Koreans and Indians, as I would have found at a similar gathering at home, but also hundreds of Thais, a good many Russians, people from various --stans, and many Africans. The president of the student union, a big, striking man from the Congo dressed immaculately in an all white suit, addressed us in several languages.
I elected to start at the beginning again, partly to build confidence and partly because, at the rate these courses torpedo along, I might be hopelessly behind in just a few weeks if I had enrolled in an intermediate class. Moreover, my tones are bad and my listening is worse. So, there I was, happy to be a conspicuous white haired lady in a beginners' class, along with people from Surinam, Malawi, Vietnam, Korea, Russia, India, and the Congo.
With the rain hitting the glass window and thoughts of other world troubles tentatively far away, I just enjoyed feeling like I'd stepped into a time machine. We stayed put in our brightly-lit classroom, while three different teachers rotated through, each coming to us--one to teach speaking, one to teach listening, and one to teach reading and writing. Such a fragmented philosophy of language teaching might have struck me as crazy until I was saddled with the job of having to distinguish by one little stroke this character from dozens of look alike characters--or having to distinguish only by tone or context a word from others that sound similar. It takes Zen-like concentration for me, at least, and I need the temporary focus on just this or just that.
Today I was sent to the blackboard along with a chubby guy from Vietnam with orders to write everything we heard the teacher say, her earrings flashing in the light of the overhead projector. As the chalk dust flew, my nervous classmate slid his eyes over to see what I was writing. He was the one, after all, who had had a devil of a time distinguishing "h" and "k"and had been whacked with a pen every time he made a mistake. It was a friendly enough whack, delivered with giggles, but enough of a whack to send the Russian ladies' eyebrows up. If others found this friendly corporal punishment surprising, they didn't let on. I'm not sure what the Indian thought, the one who delivers every syllable in a monotone. He, too, had received his share of friendly swats. The man from the Congo with a booming voice, conscientious about his role as our class monitor, was chided at one point, "Don't shake your belly!" which he had rubbed for only a second.
The whacker was the littlest and giggliest of the three teachers. Beautiful, immaculately groomed, and otherwise friendly. She gave us her cell phone number and invited us to call her 24-7 with questions about our Chinese. The others, too, eagerly coaxed us along with an fascinating mixture of charm and Chinese teaching methods.
I sit near the window in front and all three teachers tend to start with me--"Pan Jing, . . ." and I have to set the example. It's a good thing I'm doing things that are ridiculously easy for me at the moment, because I'm capable of being a deer in headlights when asked the simplest of questions.
Eventually, though, the rain did turn my thoughts to faraway places, including Boulder, my probable future destination. I have no idea if my family there and my friend (and possible future roommate) who lives in Boulder Canyon are okay. Here's hoping they are.
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