Take on me....

I begin this post with the headphones in my ears blasting Ah-Ha and a new found perspective on what I am doing here in this far away country. I am a damn good teacher. I am starting to grow into my own style here and I gotta say it feels good.
I feel comfortable walking down the street, sure I'm getting painted by the eyes of everyone that passes me but I've realized its out of curiosity, nothing else. I used to feel judged and unwanted by the people here but it turns out that I was just mis-reading their facial expressions. This is a small city, they aren't used to seeing a 6 foot tall, bearded, long haired, white fella who just so happens to be devastatingly handsome :).
For the first time in my life I am the minority and being in this position helps me realize the enormous balls it takes for someone from another country to come to the states and try to establish themselves. People in America are assholes, especially in the way we treat outsiders. The people here are very patient with the fact that I don't speak their language, they will either speak slower or even take time to teach me a few words! What would we do in the states if someone came into a store and couldn't communicate with us? Probably get frustrated and mutter to ourselves "why the hell you come here if you cant even speak the language?". Even with our growing Hispanic population in the states that can speak a little bit of English, enough to get by anyway, we still treat them like crap because we think they don't know enough English to live there. When you find yourself acting like that, do everyone a favor and think to yourself......."How many languages do I speak?". Most likely 1 right? Well they can speak 2 and that's more than you, so shut the hell up! And if you can speak more than 1 you should understand how hard it is to learn a new language and show them some respect. Whew! That feels better. Thanks for being patient with my rant. Anywho...
Teaching has become easier and easier as time goes by. My classes are getting used to me and loosening up. My EF students wait for me outside the staff office because they can't wait to hang out with me and my high school kids find me in the hallway to welcome me. Everyone is so kind and respectful for the most part. I love teaching English because I am guaranteed at least 7 or 8 good laughs every class. People (especially Asians) trying to speak English as a second language can come up with some hysterical stuff. For example: In my oldest group of EF students we were having casual conversation and one of the students started talking about Spam and how he read that it was referred to as "mind meat" for soldiers in WWII. This student couldn't pronounce the word "mind" very well so when he first said "mind meat" it came out as "man meat". I was taken aback and looked at him with a tilted head like Cooper if he saw a dog on the TV. So I spend the next 10 minutes explaining to this kid what man meat actually was in the most PC way I could think of and how in the states if you were to ask someone for some "man meat" it would probably result in a fight. Finally he figured out what I was referring to and corrected me. We had a good laugh.
This was an exciting week in my high school classes because I had the opportunity to sing in front of one class and say obscenities in 2 others. Ill start with the singing story: On Wednesday I began 3 new classes and usually for the first class I like to introduce myself to the kids with a slide show then play some games so I can see how much English they know and they can have a little fun. In one class during my slide show I asked them "who can guess which state I am from?" . I hear California and New York, never expecting them to know about West Virginia because lets face it, some Americans don't even know about it. "Oh I got family in Richmond!" Freaking morons. So I give them a hint and start singing "Country Roads". One young lady stands up, points and me and yells "WEST VIRGINIA!!!". I'm floored. Turns out that "Country Roads" is one of the most popular songs in Jinzhou! I'm serious! Everyone knows it!! The teacher even asked me to sing the song for her class and they sang along with me! It was great!
I told them that they have no idea how happy and warm it makes me feel that I can travel across the globe and songs about my humble state are known. It was a beautiful moment for me.
Ok now to the obscenities: The lesson plan I had made for that day was to show some pictures of my friends on the over head projector and they had to use their imagination to think of : their name, how old they were, where they lived, what their job was, and a secret about them. I thought it would be good for these kids to spark some abstract thought while thinking about side the box of the English they have learned. So I split them into teams and they had to write their answers on the blackboard. There were 3 teams and I talked about their answers 1 by 1 and one of the teams guessed that the person in the picture was fifty, they didn't write the number 50 they wrote the word. When I came read it, the person had forgotten to put the upper hook part of the f's in the word fifty, so the f's looked like the letter t. I asked " are those supposed to be f's?", "because that says titty!" (think if me saying that like Dave Chappelle would say it). Once again the room is silent as I am bent over laughing. They have no idea what I've just said, they just let me know that yes, those are supposed to be f's.
My last class of the day had the same lesson and one of the teams wrote in the "secret" section that the person "liked to break wind - bullshit". I read it out loud and some of them giggled but the others really had no idea that it wasn't a school appropriate word. I spent the next few minutes trying to explain that it was a bad word and that although it was funny they should probably stop using that word in school. I actually took a picture of the chalkboard on that last one, that couldn't go undocumented, it was too funny.