Knock, Knock, Knockin' - Not on Heaven's Door

12:15 AM. Knock, knock, knock…..Waiting….Knock, knock, knock, knock…..Still waiting…..Knock, knock, KNOCK KNOCK…… “Jamie????.....Jamie, can you please try to be quieter or possibly move into another room. “Meanwhile, she just continues on with her conversation - completely ignoring me. “Jamie, ignoring me is not the answer. If this is the way you want to handle this shit, then you and I are going to have some serious problems, and I’m going to have to contact the company.” No response, still continuing her conversation via phone or skype. “Ok Jamie, you want to play that game? That’s fine.”

This was my night. I went to sleep at 11:30 PM. After listening to her talk loudly for more than 30 minutes, I had enough. I couldn’t take it anymore. This girl has zero consideration for anybody but herself.  Man, was I irate. What a joke. And what pissed me off even more is the fact that she completely ignored me standing outside her door and just kept right on talking to whoever it was she was talking to. Who calls somebody at 11:30 PM anyways? PEOPLE NEED TO SLEEP. I would have rather had her yell ‘shutup’ or swear at me or something. Anything. Ignoring me? Ohhhh, you’ve got problems now little missy. So mad. She finally shut up and I managed to fall asleep around 12:30 AM or so. Oh, after knocking on her door, I immediately emailed my assistant at the company. I’m done dealing with this garbage. Time to handle the situation, aka get rid of her.

As for school, it’s interesting. My favorite part about it is probably the fact that I can say just about anything I want at any given time and no one is the wiser. The kids probably have a better chance of understanding me than the assistants. You get some freaky kids though, seriously. I have this one kid that just walks up to me in the middle of a lesson and like points/touches me while making a weird face with his mouth half open. He just wanders up multiple times and I just say, “Ok, go sit down.” In another class, this kid does not change his face. He just sits there, back against the wall, with his big eyes (I know, strange for Chinese) and stares with a freaked out look on his face. Let me tell you something kid, you’re freaking me out. It’s at times like these where I might say, “Yeah, you’re a little weird kid, aren’t you?” I’m smiling and speaking in a pleasant tone, though. Some kids will run up to you after class and depending on the kid, I’ll say, “No touchy, no touching. Maybe after you wash your hands.” Or maybe a kid will sneeze and I’ll say, “That is disgusting, what are you doing?” Don’t worry, I’m saying this kind of indirectly and under my breath most of the time. They can’t understand any of it anyways. Sometimes I’ll tell a kid he’s freaking me out. Ya’ know, stuff like that. It amuses me and allows me to get past some of the weirdness of a few of the kids. Besides, the lack of washing hands really is disgusting. I’m scared at times. Best part about that? The teachers don’t even wash their hands! I don’t know about the morning school because again, I have yet to see a bathroom. In the afternoon school, I’ve seen several teachers walk out of the bathroom without a care in the world. Washing their hands is the last thing on their mind. Gosh, this thinking needs to be corrected. How are kids supposed to learn? It’s nasty, infectious, and unsanitary. Let’s just say I will not be going out with any of those teachers at any time. So if you girls are looking, so sorry. You can look, but you can’t touch. No touchy! Haha. But seriously.

I had my first meeting with some of the Chinese English teachers at the morning school. It’s supposed to take place every Friday, doesn’t happen all the time. It only lasts about 30 minutes or so, and I have no idea what the purpose is. I think it’s more intended for those teachers to learn some English or something like that. For the first 15 minutes, we went over tongue twisters. I taught them ‘how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?’ They also had their own that went, ‘good, better, best – never let it rest – until good is better – and better is best.’ What? Why? They learned the seashell one too. The head teacher also questioned the meaning of the woodchuck one. Meaning? There’s no meaning. It’s a dumb tongue twister…. The next 25 minutes were spent having teachers, myself included, draw different things that utilized the circle shape. These consisted of a pig, a panda, flowers, balls, pizza, etc. WHAT KIND OF MEETING IS THIS? Meeting? More like arts and crafts for elementary school. They did give me and the other English teacher a nice organizer book (or whatever they’re called) as well as toothpaste, a toothbrush, and a package with 3 bars of soap. This can all come in handy at some point, so that was cool.

There have been blue skies all week ever since the artificially created snow during the weekend. There’s plenty of shade to go with that due to all the buildings in Beijing, but still nice. Crystal clear, blue skies. Lovely. It’s also a bit warmer today. It’s slowly warming up. Before you know it, I’m going to be sweating my ‘you know whats’ off. Haha, sorry. It’s approaching, though. I definitely plan on seeing some things during the spring, maybe getting outside the city as well. Summer Palace should be pretty awesome to see in the spring. Plus side to the blue skies besides the obvious? Less spit. Seriously. I spit less and so does everyone else because you can breathe easier.

I’m officially done with two full weeks of teaching. Awesome.

-Sir Jefficus