Scenes: A Day

 Snapshots from Morning Class:

Heads were spinning after I drew, explained, and quizzed my students on all the relationships in my family tree. I was truly thankful that I was behind the podium and not at a desk in a Chinese class on family language, because I would have been in tears. The myriad of Chinese words which describe each specific family relationship (with different words for those on your mother/father's side) is a mammoth task which I have not yet attempted to master.  But here I was, announcing that my students were going to draw out their own family trees and explain them in English. As I walked around the room, I saw papers slowly, sometimes painfully, filling up with Chinese names and English labels. One in particular caught my attention. Here was a visible illustration of how family size has drastically decreased in the last generation. I felt like I had stumbled upon a sociological microcosm, snapshot, or log, and so I asked if I could take a picture. Admittedly, the family tree was not finished because there were still cousins to be recorded. But I was fascinated.

And here are two more family trees on a single sheet of paper:

                                                         Seen At lunchtime:

Any time the sun comes out, the laundry will too. And in the most unlikely places. As I was leaving the cafeteria, I spotted a worker's scaffold doing double-duty as a clothesline, probably for one of the families who works in the cafeteria.

Last week I noticed that the flowering trees outside of the classroom building were also serving as a clothesline, or, the most beautiful coat-rack I'd ever seen.

Beholdings from Afternoon class: 

My friends Larry and Jim, who have served me faithfully since my first year in China, and  have participated in every lesson on "Small Talk" conversations. Today, they did not fail to charm this term's new students despite their limp necks and rattly eyes. (The uncomplimentary descriptions referring of course, to the puppets.)

Spied On the Street:

While walking back to my apartment, I saw this ominous message in plain sight, right on a main campus thoroughfare! No one else seemed disturbed, but I would have felt better if Christian Bale was in Nanchang. (Since Heath Ledger obviously was.)

                                                         

 Views from the Evening

My living room:

My student's face, wet with the tears that come with expressing the worries of approaching graduation and facing the horrors of society's high-pressured rat-race.

English Corner:

Familiar faces. New faces. Freshmen and sophomores surrounding me in a tight circle, talking. 

The dorms:

Beloved students. Laughing. A girl biting into a fresh cherry tomato and spewing the juice in my direction. 

The campus:

Students practicing rollerblading on the huge, smooth, sunken concrete circle in front of the Students' Center Building. Couples on their evening walks. Outdoor exercise equipment clinking together as some students complete their work-outs in the dusk. The neon blue of the lakeside lights reflected on the water through the willows. The long, empty stretch of campus road curving around the lake and up to the foreign teacher's apartment building, which I call home.