On Monday it was her twentieth birthday. When I heard her voice crackling and time-delayed over the phone line, I don't think I've ever wanted to set eyes on someone, hold someone, so much in my life. I was conscious of the fact that I shouldn't get upset, in case I spoiled her day, but it was tough. When I put down the phone there was this long dark stretch of emptiness ahead of me.
Got some of the frustration out of me at gong fu on Monday, but by the time Wednesday came around, I felt too tired to go. Teaching is wearing me out. I'm still new to it and know I'm making lots of mistakes, which contribute to my students' unstinting demonstrations of ennui. To add to that, I'm not clicking with PET3 at all. In fact, they hate me. I walk out of the class every afternoon in a foul mood and then worry about it until the next day. Karen observed one of my lessons with them and it was a nightmare. One boy set fire to the curtains. Another boy and girl started kissing in class, tongues and all. Half the students refused to answer my questions or speak any English at all for the duration. I'm sure it was deliberate. Karen was remarkably sanguine and helpful about it in our feedback session afterwards. I just have to connect with them, apparently.
And the dreams. I've been having the most vivid nightmares that waken me up at 4 am every morning. Different every time, though they seem thematically linked. I then lie awake and watch the morning light creep under the curtains until my clock alarm rings my 7 am wake-up. In my dreams she always looks different from how I remember her. Hair shorter, straighter and more business-like, out are the funky halter-necks, big jeans and short-sleeved T-shirts, in are dark-coloured skirts and jackets. She's not mine anymore.
I dream I'm following her about a strange, dark house. She tries to avoid me, pretends she doesn't notice me, and act as if she doesn't know me when I catch up with her. It seems as if she's waiting for someone, someone not me, and my presence is entirely inconvenient. I dream I'm fleeing from, or fighting with, people who I haven't seen since my schooldays. It's as if they don't recognise me, even though I try to tell them who I am. I dream I'm in a strange place, being screamed at by a mob of strangers. It seems completely unmerited, although I'm not sure if that's really the case.
It's now Friday, and she hasn't contacted me since her birthday. She hasn't replied to my emails, and every time I phone there's no answer. A long-distance relationship needs structure, needs deadlines met and promises kept. If that falls apart, then everything does. We fall apart. I fall apart.
I was ready for a bit of a blowout at the weekend, and certainly got it. Some of the other teachers are going through a hard time too. Ken and Anita have been here for over two months now, and the novelty has started to wear off. Danuka is finding the constrictions of living in China hard to adjust to. Tam, I think, is in love with Anita, but it doesn't seem to be reciprocated. We were all ready for it. I ran back from the Internet café through a torrential rainstorm, lightning forking apart the navy-blue sky, pot-holed streets filling with brown water, to find the college in darkness. Power cut. We were each given two candles and, instead of retiring to our rooms, it being Friday night, we took all the candles to the 5th floor lounge, Ken brought through his class tape-recorder, which had emergency batteries, and we all chipped in for a crate of Hapi. Which didn't last as long as we'd thought it would. We sang at the top our voices to the Beatles, danced drunkenly to the Prodigy, played nonsensical drinking games, then found we had no beer left. Ken and Anita volunteered to go on a beer run. Twenty minutes later they turn up, soaking wet, with another crate of beer, a huge set of keys and a stun gun.
'Where did you...'
'Oh, there’s a twenty-four hour shop a few streets away. We took a taxi.'
'No, I mean the...'
'Oh, these,' Ken grins, jangling the keys. 'Well, when we went downstairs, the door was locked. Luckily enough, the guard was fast asleep at the desk, so we let ourselves out. And back in again. Then we found this...'
He brandishes the stun gun like a bank robber.
The next day we were summoned to an emergency meeting with Karen and Charles and informed that the principal was not happy. Not only had the guard been unable to open the front door in the morning to let the students in, the principal's room happened to be right above the 5th floor lounge and she'd been kept awake all night by our party. No mention was made of the stun gun, however. We were ordered to make a suitably contrite apology to the principal, en masse, that evening. Luckily, when we arrived at her door at the appointed time like naughty schoolchildren, she wasn't in, although it felt like only a stay of execution.
Story of my life just now.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
The Sociability of Noise
We were sitting at a restaurant last week and I suddenly noticed how noisy it was. You tend to block out the noise in this country, but when I found myself literally bawling at the person next to me at the table, it hit home.
We call this restaurant 'Big Portions'. All the restaurants we go to have been re-christened in English by the teachers, as it's just too damn difficult to remember their Chinese names and it saves any mix-ups. 'Meet me at Big Portions', rather than, 'Meet me at the restaurant on such-and-such a street with the red sign and the round tables', or, 'Meet me at wa ga bu ge bu'. There's also Whistling Fish, Tartan Tables, Donkey Meat, Long and Thin, Chez Roddy's and The Shepherd's Pie Place. We like Big Portions the best, for obvious reasons. The restaurants are always busy and always noisy.
Here are some other noisy places I know:
The Internet Café
Crowded with teenage boys playing computer games. Smoky, smelly and dark. When you finish sending your emails, you walk out with jangling eardrums, a headache and your hair reeking of cigarette smoke. If you are really unlucky, you’ll have an absolute psychopath at the computer next to you playing Counter Strike or Tomb Raider. He'll crowd your personal space as he plays, elbow banging against you repeatedly as he shoots aliens or drops bombs from helicopters, dodges bullets or screeches his rally car round a corner.
He'll be involved in numerous shouted conversations with his friends, who are playing the same game on other computers around the room, demanding to know how they are doing and giving them regular updates on himself. If he's doing well, he'll scream with pleasure at the top of his lungs, attracting a scrum of spectators around his computer screen, hemming him, and you, in. If he's doing badly he'll shout and swear imprecations and threats at the monitor. One minute, he's howling with pain, the next celebrating wildly.
Bus Stops
Busses themselves are relatively quiet compared to the bus stops, the people having tired themselves out by the hard-fought victory it is just to actually get on one. If you get a seat, you sigh with relief and fall into a catatonic state for the rest of the journey. If you don't get a seat, you expend your remaining energy hanging on for dear life. Either way, you don’t feel much like talking.
Bus stops, on the other hand, are beehives of activity, anthills of action. People crowd and jostle to get into position, drivers and conductresses spit and scream out of the bus windows, taxis pull up and the driver implores you to get in, people gossip, rant and shout at each other. Cars, trucks and motorbikes flash past at dangerous speeds on the icy roads, horns blaring. Then, when the right bus pulls up, people sprint and crowd around the door like rugby players fighting for the ball. All that just to get on a bus.
Department Stores
Are just a complete assault on your senses. The underground market and the huge multi-level stores such as Hi Buys or Manhattan are a seething mass of humanity, cheap clothes, dodgy electrical goods and household appliances, fake-leather shoes, paper flowers, picture frames, toys, watches, jewellery, you name it, it's there. Entering one of these places in your thick winter clothes is like moving from an icebox to an oven. Your frosted face quickly starts to sweat. You step on someone's toes, try to turn round to apologise, elbow someone else, then get pushed in the back and thrust towards the cheap colourful Aladdin's Cave of treasure, all to a soundtrack of haggling, arguing, exhorting and extorting.
English Corner
I've never seen anything like English Corner at HIT University, or 'International Dateline', as some of the teachers call it. HIT is a technological university, one of the top ten in China, and therefore massive. Chinese people, mostly students, but also housewives, businessmen and workers, go to English Corner to practice their oral English. Most of the foreign guys go there to meet girls.
Not wanting to sound bigheaded, but now I know how a film star feels when mobbed by adoring fans. There must have been at least one hundred Chinese people per foreigner. You're surrounded by a throng of people then subjected to the most boring interrogation, which soon becomes a subtle form of slow torture, like drops of water steadily, remorselessly, dripping in a dark cell.
'What's you name?'
'Where are you come from?'
'Do you like China?'
'Do you like dumplings?'
'Do you have girlfriend?'
Again and again and again. Some students have an agenda and hang onto it like a dog with a bone. An architecture student will ask you if your country has any Gothic spires or Byzantine archways. A tourism student will want a detailed description of your country's scenery. A football fan will ask you if you've ever met David Beckham. The people crowd round so close that, at one point, I actually butted a girl standing right behind me with the back of my head. When you leave English Corner it's very easy to get knocked down by a bus: your brain is on information overload and subconsciously you're repeating, zombie-like, 'Nice to meet you. My name is Ross. I am from Scotland. Yes, I like dumplings'.
So, back to Big Portions: it was getting late, but the restaurant was still full of noise. Anita shouted over to me:
'YOU WOULDN'T THINK THERE WERE ONLY TWO TABLES LEFT EATING HERE, WOULD YOU?'
I looked around and saw she was right. The restaurant was almost empty. However, the Chinese gentlemen playing a drinking game at the next table were making enough noise to fill a concert hall.
In Britain, this would be deemed anti-social behaviour, and the manager would be coming out to politely ask them either to make less noise or leave. When you hear noise like that in a restaurant or bar in Britain, you brace yourself for violence: the only noise like that back home is drunk guys about to fight each other. In China, they're just being sociable. The young guys screaming across the room to each other in the internet bar are only making conversation; the lady screaming at you from a bus window is just trying to drum up business; the shoppers screaming at each other in the store are simply enjoying their haggling banter; the students screaming at you at English Corner are merely practising their English.
Often in China you can only get what you want by shouting. In Britain, if the waitress has forgotten your beer, you sit and twiddle your thumbs, trying to catch her eye, not wanting to cause a fuss. In China you shout:
'FU WU YUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! PI-JIIIIIUUUU!'
At the top of your voice. And you don't even have to say thank you.
We call this restaurant 'Big Portions'. All the restaurants we go to have been re-christened in English by the teachers, as it's just too damn difficult to remember their Chinese names and it saves any mix-ups. 'Meet me at Big Portions', rather than, 'Meet me at the restaurant on such-and-such a street with the red sign and the round tables', or, 'Meet me at wa ga bu ge bu'. There's also Whistling Fish, Tartan Tables, Donkey Meat, Long and Thin, Chez Roddy's and The Shepherd's Pie Place. We like Big Portions the best, for obvious reasons. The restaurants are always busy and always noisy.
Here are some other noisy places I know:
The Internet Café
Crowded with teenage boys playing computer games. Smoky, smelly and dark. When you finish sending your emails, you walk out with jangling eardrums, a headache and your hair reeking of cigarette smoke. If you are really unlucky, you’ll have an absolute psychopath at the computer next to you playing Counter Strike or Tomb Raider. He'll crowd your personal space as he plays, elbow banging against you repeatedly as he shoots aliens or drops bombs from helicopters, dodges bullets or screeches his rally car round a corner.
He'll be involved in numerous shouted conversations with his friends, who are playing the same game on other computers around the room, demanding to know how they are doing and giving them regular updates on himself. If he's doing well, he'll scream with pleasure at the top of his lungs, attracting a scrum of spectators around his computer screen, hemming him, and you, in. If he's doing badly he'll shout and swear imprecations and threats at the monitor. One minute, he's howling with pain, the next celebrating wildly.
Bus Stops
Busses themselves are relatively quiet compared to the bus stops, the people having tired themselves out by the hard-fought victory it is just to actually get on one. If you get a seat, you sigh with relief and fall into a catatonic state for the rest of the journey. If you don't get a seat, you expend your remaining energy hanging on for dear life. Either way, you don’t feel much like talking.
Bus stops, on the other hand, are beehives of activity, anthills of action. People crowd and jostle to get into position, drivers and conductresses spit and scream out of the bus windows, taxis pull up and the driver implores you to get in, people gossip, rant and shout at each other. Cars, trucks and motorbikes flash past at dangerous speeds on the icy roads, horns blaring. Then, when the right bus pulls up, people sprint and crowd around the door like rugby players fighting for the ball. All that just to get on a bus.
Department Stores
Are just a complete assault on your senses. The underground market and the huge multi-level stores such as Hi Buys or Manhattan are a seething mass of humanity, cheap clothes, dodgy electrical goods and household appliances, fake-leather shoes, paper flowers, picture frames, toys, watches, jewellery, you name it, it's there. Entering one of these places in your thick winter clothes is like moving from an icebox to an oven. Your frosted face quickly starts to sweat. You step on someone's toes, try to turn round to apologise, elbow someone else, then get pushed in the back and thrust towards the cheap colourful Aladdin's Cave of treasure, all to a soundtrack of haggling, arguing, exhorting and extorting.
English Corner
I've never seen anything like English Corner at HIT University, or 'International Dateline', as some of the teachers call it. HIT is a technological university, one of the top ten in China, and therefore massive. Chinese people, mostly students, but also housewives, businessmen and workers, go to English Corner to practice their oral English. Most of the foreign guys go there to meet girls.
Not wanting to sound bigheaded, but now I know how a film star feels when mobbed by adoring fans. There must have been at least one hundred Chinese people per foreigner. You're surrounded by a throng of people then subjected to the most boring interrogation, which soon becomes a subtle form of slow torture, like drops of water steadily, remorselessly, dripping in a dark cell.
'What's you name?'
'Where are you come from?'
'Do you like China?'
'Do you like dumplings?'
'Do you have girlfriend?'
Again and again and again. Some students have an agenda and hang onto it like a dog with a bone. An architecture student will ask you if your country has any Gothic spires or Byzantine archways. A tourism student will want a detailed description of your country's scenery. A football fan will ask you if you've ever met David Beckham. The people crowd round so close that, at one point, I actually butted a girl standing right behind me with the back of my head. When you leave English Corner it's very easy to get knocked down by a bus: your brain is on information overload and subconsciously you're repeating, zombie-like, 'Nice to meet you. My name is Ross. I am from Scotland. Yes, I like dumplings'.
So, back to Big Portions: it was getting late, but the restaurant was still full of noise. Anita shouted over to me:
'YOU WOULDN'T THINK THERE WERE ONLY TWO TABLES LEFT EATING HERE, WOULD YOU?'
I looked around and saw she was right. The restaurant was almost empty. However, the Chinese gentlemen playing a drinking game at the next table were making enough noise to fill a concert hall.
In Britain, this would be deemed anti-social behaviour, and the manager would be coming out to politely ask them either to make less noise or leave. When you hear noise like that in a restaurant or bar in Britain, you brace yourself for violence: the only noise like that back home is drunk guys about to fight each other. In China, they're just being sociable. The young guys screaming across the room to each other in the internet bar are only making conversation; the lady screaming at you from a bus window is just trying to drum up business; the shoppers screaming at each other in the store are simply enjoying their haggling banter; the students screaming at you at English Corner are merely practising their English.
Often in China you can only get what you want by shouting. In Britain, if the waitress has forgotten your beer, you sit and twiddle your thumbs, trying to catch her eye, not wanting to cause a fuss. In China you shout:
'FU WU YUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! PI-JIIIIIUUUU!'
At the top of your voice. And you don't even have to say thank you.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
China Joins the WTO
It's the weekend, my second weekend in cold, grimy, dirty Harbin. I'm missing my girlfriend and not in the mood for drunken loudmouth ashtray-throwing local geezers or eastern European prostitutes. In fact, after crawling out of another class where half the students behaved as if it were their first ever Engrish lesson, and the other half slept, I'm not much in the mood for anything.
I don't have a choice, however, as Betty and Athena invite (order?) me to go shopping. The two girls are best buddies and sit giggling at a two-berth desk most days in my PET1 class. I don't want to go but I can't say no. I mean, it would be good to get at least two students on my side. I accept and, quite unexpedtedly, enjoy myself.
We got a lift to Nan Gang in Betty's father's black VW Passat. I sat in the passenger's seat and pulled on the seat belt to find that there was no attachment for the belt to clip into. Betty's father laughed uproariously, his daughter translating that no one wore seat belts in Harbin. I let the belt ping back to find a dusty diagonal stripe across my new jacket.
The two girls wouldn't let me pay for a thing. The bus rides, the lunch (in a huge hall where, after buying different coloured tickets, you could walk around and pick anything you wanted from a multitudinous range of foods), the photo-booth, the ice cream, the arcade games, even the taxi ride home. Felt a mixture of discomfort and warmth at this. I objected politely every time they paid for something, more for my own dignity than anything else, but really all the girls wanted was for me to enjoy myself, and I did.
Betty is one of the class brain-boxes, plump bespectacled and shy. Athena is sharp and confident, frizzy hair with a reddish tint and the plucked, pink tattooed eyebrows that are the fashion here. Her mother owns a clothes store in the city, and she dresses accordingly. Betty has a lively sense of humour when you winkle it out of her. Athena is talkative and streetwise. They complement each other nicely. Athena knew the bus routes, the coolest shops, the best places to eat, Betty stayed by my side, taking my arm by the elbow in motherly fashion every time we crossed the road. Athena went home late afternoon, leaving Betty and I to make our own way back to the college. Betty had a minor panic, getting us lost while trying to find the correct bus stop. I insisted we take a taxi back then she insisted on paying for it.
In the evening, Leon, our volunteer translator at gong fu, held an English Corner at his father's restaurant, to celebrate China joining the WTO. Tam and I talked to two pretty girls, English names July and Caesar. (Seriously. When I suggested that Caesar was generally a man's name she refused to listen.) The girls were interested in the more tacky side of Scottish culture: bagpipes, kilts, haggis and all the other stuff I never wear, eat or play . I described to them tartan and mountains and rainy days. July told me about Chinese New Year, setting off firecrackers to drive away evil spirits, and the Harbin Ice Festival, with igloos, frozen palaces and ice lanterns. J dragged us to DJ Fridays afterwards, a faux-western bar in Nan Gang. Of course the girls couldn't come, having to get back to their university to beat the curfew. We commiserated, and thanked our lucky stars that there wasn't a 10 pm curfew when we were students.
At 11.40 pm last night it became official: China is now in the WTO. The whole world's putting freedom of trade above freedom of speech, and I don't know what to make of it. In fact, at the time, J, Tam and I were downing tequilas and dancing to bad Chinese techno.
Today I visited the Ji Le Si temples for a second time. The great golden Buddha now has a giant yellow crane in his eye-line, bigger than he is.
I don't have a choice, however, as Betty and Athena invite (order?) me to go shopping. The two girls are best buddies and sit giggling at a two-berth desk most days in my PET1 class. I don't want to go but I can't say no. I mean, it would be good to get at least two students on my side. I accept and, quite unexpedtedly, enjoy myself.
We got a lift to Nan Gang in Betty's father's black VW Passat. I sat in the passenger's seat and pulled on the seat belt to find that there was no attachment for the belt to clip into. Betty's father laughed uproariously, his daughter translating that no one wore seat belts in Harbin. I let the belt ping back to find a dusty diagonal stripe across my new jacket.
The two girls wouldn't let me pay for a thing. The bus rides, the lunch (in a huge hall where, after buying different coloured tickets, you could walk around and pick anything you wanted from a multitudinous range of foods), the photo-booth, the ice cream, the arcade games, even the taxi ride home. Felt a mixture of discomfort and warmth at this. I objected politely every time they paid for something, more for my own dignity than anything else, but really all the girls wanted was for me to enjoy myself, and I did.
Betty is one of the class brain-boxes, plump bespectacled and shy. Athena is sharp and confident, frizzy hair with a reddish tint and the plucked, pink tattooed eyebrows that are the fashion here. Her mother owns a clothes store in the city, and she dresses accordingly. Betty has a lively sense of humour when you winkle it out of her. Athena is talkative and streetwise. They complement each other nicely. Athena knew the bus routes, the coolest shops, the best places to eat, Betty stayed by my side, taking my arm by the elbow in motherly fashion every time we crossed the road. Athena went home late afternoon, leaving Betty and I to make our own way back to the college. Betty had a minor panic, getting us lost while trying to find the correct bus stop. I insisted we take a taxi back then she insisted on paying for it.
In the evening, Leon, our volunteer translator at gong fu, held an English Corner at his father's restaurant, to celebrate China joining the WTO. Tam and I talked to two pretty girls, English names July and Caesar. (Seriously. When I suggested that Caesar was generally a man's name she refused to listen.) The girls were interested in the more tacky side of Scottish culture: bagpipes, kilts, haggis and all the other stuff I never wear, eat or play . I described to them tartan and mountains and rainy days. July told me about Chinese New Year, setting off firecrackers to drive away evil spirits, and the Harbin Ice Festival, with igloos, frozen palaces and ice lanterns. J dragged us to DJ Fridays afterwards, a faux-western bar in Nan Gang. Of course the girls couldn't come, having to get back to their university to beat the curfew. We commiserated, and thanked our lucky stars that there wasn't a 10 pm curfew when we were students.
At 11.40 pm last night it became official: China is now in the WTO. The whole world's putting freedom of trade above freedom of speech, and I don't know what to make of it. In fact, at the time, J, Tam and I were downing tequilas and dancing to bad Chinese techno.
Today I visited the Ji Le Si temples for a second time. The great golden Buddha now has a giant yellow crane in his eye-line, bigger than he is.
Meet the Students
My first week of teaching went by in a flash.
I have PET1 and PET3 (PET standing for Preliminary English Test), the former class a bunch of smart, cheeky, unmotivated 17-20 year olds, all girls, save for one boy; the latter a bunch of lazy, cheeky, unmotivated 17-20 year olds, fifty per cent girls, fifty per cent boys. The boys are to a man taller than me, and I can't imagine them sleeping in drawers. I'm told that the ethnic north-easterners are descendents of the Manchu and have inherited their towering physique, pale skin and sharp cheekbones.
Although the students here seem much less mature than their western counterparts, perhaps because they live a life of sleep, study, curfew, sleep, study, curfew, hardly getting a chance for vandalism, drugs or teenage sex, the classes do come with their own particular challenges.
I'm told the college is a kind of halfway house for the offspring of the rich, who've failed their university entrance examinations and are just waiting in limbo until daddy finds them a good job or a place at a university abroad. You certainly see some expensive clothes, watches and mobile phones here, and in fact the students often make the teachers look like paupers. I surmise that the more motivated students are from the families who actually had to save to put their children into this college. A pity that they are the ones who have the least chance of success, as it seems money in this country, like any other country, can buy you anything. Brains and hard work, on their own, can't.
Thus, a sense of inertia seems to prevail amongst many of the pupils, and a sense of cynicism definitely prevails amongst all the teachers. One told me of a time when he tried to get a reaction from an especially lazy student by burning a note in front of him (the teacher found out later this was illegal in China, burning the image of Chairman Mao not a good idea) and telling him this was what he was doing by not working, just wasting his money. The student looked up and, in the only English he had spoken for weeks, said:
'Is not my money. Is my father's,' and, glancing at the burning banknote, added, 'and my father got much more than that.'
The classrooms feature the same bare, peeling white walls as the dorm rooms and three rows of two-berth wooden and steel chair-desk combos nailed to the floor. If a student isn't interested in the class (or just can't be bothered), they lay their head on their desk and fall fast asleep. I tried throwing a bit of chalk at a girl doing this. The chalk bounced off her skull, she looked up with a confused expression, then fell straight back to sleep. Worse still is when a student shows their displeasure by opening their mouth as wide as a train tunnel and yawning so loud that the other students can't hear what I'm saying. I've begun to realise my job is to stand at the front and try to keep them awake. I hope it gets better.
I have PET1 and PET3 (PET standing for Preliminary English Test), the former class a bunch of smart, cheeky, unmotivated 17-20 year olds, all girls, save for one boy; the latter a bunch of lazy, cheeky, unmotivated 17-20 year olds, fifty per cent girls, fifty per cent boys. The boys are to a man taller than me, and I can't imagine them sleeping in drawers. I'm told that the ethnic north-easterners are descendents of the Manchu and have inherited their towering physique, pale skin and sharp cheekbones.
Although the students here seem much less mature than their western counterparts, perhaps because they live a life of sleep, study, curfew, sleep, study, curfew, hardly getting a chance for vandalism, drugs or teenage sex, the classes do come with their own particular challenges.
I'm told the college is a kind of halfway house for the offspring of the rich, who've failed their university entrance examinations and are just waiting in limbo until daddy finds them a good job or a place at a university abroad. You certainly see some expensive clothes, watches and mobile phones here, and in fact the students often make the teachers look like paupers. I surmise that the more motivated students are from the families who actually had to save to put their children into this college. A pity that they are the ones who have the least chance of success, as it seems money in this country, like any other country, can buy you anything. Brains and hard work, on their own, can't.
Thus, a sense of inertia seems to prevail amongst many of the pupils, and a sense of cynicism definitely prevails amongst all the teachers. One told me of a time when he tried to get a reaction from an especially lazy student by burning a note in front of him (the teacher found out later this was illegal in China, burning the image of Chairman Mao not a good idea) and telling him this was what he was doing by not working, just wasting his money. The student looked up and, in the only English he had spoken for weeks, said:
'Is not my money. Is my father's,' and, glancing at the burning banknote, added, 'and my father got much more than that.'
The classrooms feature the same bare, peeling white walls as the dorm rooms and three rows of two-berth wooden and steel chair-desk combos nailed to the floor. If a student isn't interested in the class (or just can't be bothered), they lay their head on their desk and fall fast asleep. I tried throwing a bit of chalk at a girl doing this. The chalk bounced off her skull, she looked up with a confused expression, then fell straight back to sleep. Worse still is when a student shows their displeasure by opening their mouth as wide as a train tunnel and yawning so loud that the other students can't hear what I'm saying. I've begun to realise my job is to stand at the front and try to keep them awake. I hope it gets better.
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