A Pingmin Day

I think it’s safe to say that I am completely adjusted to life here – I pretty much have a routine every day. I wake up at 7, get ready, leave my room at around 7:45, and help one of the teachers clean the foreign teacher’s office (my office shared with a few other teachers). Three days a week, I get up a bit earlier and administer the morning reading classes for 4th, 5th, and 6th grade (the kids wake up even earlier at 6:30, get ready real quick and do morning laps and exercises). At 8:15, the whole school eats breakfast (rice porridge, stewed radish strips, hard-boiled egg, and steamed bun). After breakfast, while the students have recess, we have our morning teacher’s meeting and discuss the quote of the day. After that, I prepare class, teach class, sit in on 3rd grade math or Chinese class (to practice my listening) and eat lunch at 11:40. After I take a break for about an hour, I teach another class, preview for the next day’s class, mosey around the school to try to find something to help out with, go over homework with students, help out in the fields for manual labor class, play with the kids, and eat dinner. I then take a shower, tutor Huang MeiHong and Chengping (two 6th grade students with learning disabilities), go back to my room and go on-line or study Chinese, and then sleep at 11. The kids have homework/self-study class for 2 hours after dinner and then go to sleep around 9.

Being around these kids is so refreshing. Not only are they innocent little kids, but since they are from remote villages where there is little contact with big cities like Shanghai and Beijing, modern lifestyles and attitudes haven’t influenced them yet. I also like how the school teaches them how to be responsible to oneself and each other. They all know how to tidy their room and wash themselves and their clothes. The younger students are taught how to line up orderly, say good morning and thank you to the school cooks and teachers, and wash their own dishes. I also love watching them interact with each other during recess. The 1st/2nd/3rd graders like to play hopscotch, jump rope, and hula hoop, just like American kids. They also play a variation of rock, paper, scissors but instead they use their feet to play. They jump in place two times, and then depending on what position they’re feet are in when they land the third time determines who wins and who loses. The winner gets to take a step back and the loser has to take their front foot and stretch it out to touch the winner’s front foot. If one person has been winning too much and the distance becomes too great to touch feet, another person comes in and acts as a placeholder. Some of the 3rd/4th grade boys like to play a variation of Pogs and even make their own pieces out of paper while the girls play on the swings, slides, or teeter-tot. The 5th/6th grade boys like to play basketball, ping pong or other sports while the girls play Chinese jump rope, read, or practice playing a Chinese reed instrument (葫芦丝). Generally all of them like to run and play on the field and it’s both fun and exhausting being with them.

It started getting cold after the Mid Autumn Festival but now it’s unbearably cold, especially in the mornings and at night. I don’t dare take a shower unless it’s after Manual Labor class or after playing basketball when my body temperature is up. In the morning, I wear 5 layers of clothes, my thermal pants and 2 layers of socks. At night, I still wear 5 layers because it’s freakin cold in my room sincethere's no insulation. Worse thing is, it’s only 5-10 C and it will only get colder. Even the teachers told me that right now it’s not even that cold! 怎么办?