poops, giggles and huh?

Helen, the Chinese teacher who is supposedly in charge of the other foreign teacher and me in the middle school, strolled into the office and tapped Barry on the shoulder.

"Barry," she said. "I just wanted to let you know that I will need your written midterm tests by next Tuesday so that I can have them for the testing periods on next Thursday and Friday." In other words, Barry needed to finish writing his tests so that they could be checked over and then copied for all of his classes.

I waited expectantly for her to approach my desk and tell me when my midterm grades would be due. I even smiled and waved at Helen. She smiled back at me and headed out the door to her office. I was supposed to give her my grades or midterm test too wasn’t I? I mean, it’s not like my grades don’t count, is it? I felt a sinking feeling. The grades for my class would be on the students’ report cards, right? I deperately needed some assurance that my subject, Oral English, counted for something. I wanted to know that the good students would be elated to have high scores in my class while the bad students would be motivated to study harder by seeing their low scores.

I clung desperately to the hope that she had just forgotten to talk to me as I hurried upstairs to her office. I walked over to her desk. She looked up and smiled at me as I approached her.

"Hi, Helen," I began. "I just wanted to find out when I need to give you my grades for my classes."
Helen looked blankly at me for just a couple of seconds as she kept smiling. The smile was a little forced though. I could see her running through possible meanings for my question in her mind.

What’s he talking about? she thought. Does he teach a subject other than Oral English that I forgot about? A subject that might be important to the students?

Finally, it dawned on her.

"Oh, yes I’ll probably need the grades for your classes after I’ve recieved the grades for their other subjects." She thought for a moment. "How about if you give me your grades on the Tuesday after their midterms? Now, I’ll need a grade for each student, you know."

Gee, really? I thought. You don’t want me to just average out the scores of all the classes and give that number to you?

"Ok, Helen," I said. "I’ll get them to you." My shoulders slumped as I walked out of the office. Yet another affirmation that my class meant nothing to the powers that be at this school. This was why my students didn’t pay attention in class. They knew that my class meant nothing on their report cards…if the class even made an appearance on their list of classes. Probably, their schedule describes Oral English as a free period.

In the stairwell, I stopped and just stood there. Anger mounted within me until it burst out of my mouth.

"Curse you, Louise!(the HR girl who told me I’d be teaching Writing in the high school before I signed my contract) Curse you!" I shook my fist toward the ceiling and repeated this until a 7th grader came up the stairs looking curiously at me.

"What are you doing, Mr. Josh?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing," I replied sheepishly and headed back down the stairs to my office.

So all the foreigners around here are all hyped about the little restaurants in the village near our school.

"You all want to hit up the village and grab something to eat?" one of them will say to another.

"Yeah, I love that place. It’s so authentically Chinese," another will reply.

They rave about the food and how good it is. The funny thing is, most of the Chinese teachers won’t eat in the village. They tell me it’s too dirty and they don’t think it’s healthy to eat dirty food. What a concept huh? This just in: Dirty food may not be healthy! Still, I had to check it out for myself and see who I was going to side with on the matter. One of the guys and I went to this little hole in the wall which he is ecstatic about. I must say that I couldn’t argue with the prices. I paid 4 yuan (about 50 cents) for a bowl of decent tasting noodles.

I did notice that the man making the noodles had a cold and kept wiping his nose as he was cooking. But hey, if it’s boiled, it’s clean right? I’m not TOO squeamish so I let it go and enjoyed the steaming bowl of noodles.

"Isn’t this so good?" my dining companion kept asking me. "I really like the ambiance of it," he said as he gestured towards the rest of the room and the kitchen. "It just feels like…China."
I nodded and began another topic of conversation.

"You know, John taught the restaurant down the street how to make steak fries," he said. "Now all the people from our school go there and eat steak fries and smoke pot (yes quite a few of the foreign teachers here are pot smokers). That’s why I don’t like going there much anymore."

"Because they smoke pot?" I asked.

"No, because there are always other foreigners there. I like it to feel more like China. So I found this place and started coming here. It’s more authentic like that."

Authentic. I started wondering if the word was joining the ranks of "nice" and "cool." I could hear myself testing it out during a regular day.

"How was your weekend, Josh?" someone might ask me.

"I had a good weekend. It was very authentic."

"That’s authentic," they’d reply and nod their heads. "Hey, my friend took me out to eat at this authentic little French restaurant," one would say.

"French food! Very authentic," I’d say.

Our meal ended after we chatted about things which I don’t remember or particularly care about. After we paid for the noodles and were on our way out the door, I stopped and tugged on my friend’s sleeve.

"Hey check that out," I said and pointed toward the woman washing our dishes. She placed the bowls in a dirty bucket of water and wiped the remaining food out of them. Then she dipped the bowls into a cleaner looking bucket of water and wiped them off. After that, she stacked the bowls on a shelf. They were ready to be used again.

"Oh well," he shrugged. "As long as we don’t get sick."

I’m betting that these foreigners might not be so forgiving if they saw this kind of attention to cleanliness at their favorite restaurant back in the USA.

But, oh well. It’s authentic.

So all the foreigners around here are all hyped about the little restaurants in the village near our school.

"You all want to hit up the village and grab something to eat?" one of them will say to another.

"Yeah, I love that place. It’s so authentically Chinese," another will reply.

They rave about the food and how good it is. The funny thing is, most of the Chinese teachers won’t eat in the village. They tell me it’s too dirty and they don’t think it’s healthy to eat dirty food. What a concept huh? This just in: Dirty food may not be healthy! Still, I had to check it out for myself and see who I was going to side with on the matter. One of the guys and I went to this little hole in the wall which he is ecstatic about. I must say that I couldn’t argue with the prices. I paid 4 yuan (about 50 cents) for a bowl of decent tasting noodles.

I did notice that the man making the noodles had a cold and kept wiping his nose as he was cooking. But hey, if it’s boiled, it’s clean right? I’m not TOO squeamish so I let it go and enjoyed the steaming bowl of noodles.

"Isn’t this so good?" my dining companion kept asking me. "I really like the ambiance of it," he said as he gestured towards the rest of the room and the kitchen. "It just feels like…China."
I nodded and began another topic of conversation.

"You know, John taught the restaurant down the street how to make steak fries," he said. "Now all the people from our school go there and eat steak fries and smoke pot (yes quite a few of the foreign teachers here are pot smokers). That’s why I don’t like going there much anymore."

"Because they smoke pot?" I asked.

"No, because there are always other foreigners there. I like it to feel more like China. So I found this place and started coming here. It’s more authentic like that."

Authentic. I started wondering if the word was joining the ranks of "nice" and "cool." I could hear myself testing it out during a regular day.

"How was your weekend, Josh?" someone might ask me.

"I had a good weekend. It was very authentic."

"That’s authentic," they’d reply and nod their heads. "Hey, my friend took me out to eat at this authentic little French restaurant," one would say.

"French food! Very authentic," I’d say.

Our meal ended after we chatted about things which I don’t remember or particularly care about. After we paid for the noodles and were on our way out the door, I stopped and tugged on my friend’s sleeve.

"Hey check that out," I said and pointed toward the woman washing our dishes. She placed the bowls in a dirty bucket of water and wiped the remaining food out of them. Then she dipped the bowls into a cleaner looking bucket of water and wiped them off. After that, she stacked the bowls on a shelf. They were ready to be used again.

"Oh well," he shrugged. "As long as we don’t get sick."

I’m betting that these foreigners might not be so forgiving if they saw this kind of attention to cleanliness at their favorite restaurant back in the USA.

But, oh well. It’s authentic.

“Beans beans the magical fruit, the more you eat the more you toot.” What a great childhood rhyme.

Yesterday I was exposed to chemical warfare. In the middle of my 7th grade lesson at 2:00 in the afternoon I heard a small whining sound. It sounded like a very small mouse was being squeezed to death. After glancing around the room and seeing no small mice in the hands of any of my students, I continued teaching.

After a couple of minutes I was suddenly hit with a wave of stench unlike anything my nose had encountered before. I quickly switched my regular nose breathing to emergency mouth breathing techniques. I could tell that the students had not been exposed to this type of chemical attack. Starting from the right of the room I saw the kids who sat in the same row as the attacker begin to slump over in their seats. Some of them covered their faces a minute too late.

The students in the row next to them looked curiously at their classmates, wondering what had come over them. Then, it hit them too. I could see their faces contort and a girl near the back began to have involuntary spasms. When it hit the next row, a few students had already begun dry heaving and I could hear some children whimpering.

“Quick, Luke! Open the door!” I commanded. Luke, the nearest student to the door sprang into action. He leaped out of his seat as the stench hit his row. One girl screamed and hit the floor. I ran to open the windows just as the door opened. In a few moments air flowed through the room and the kids began to revive.

I looked angrily around the room to try to dicover the attacker. No one appeared to take the blame. But as I began the lesson again, a fat little boy in the far right corner wore a satisfied grin on his face…

“Fart boy, I have not yet finished with you!” I yelled as he leapt through the window to his waiting fartmobile.

Anyway, this really happened and we’re all lucky to be alive.

*Some of the details in this account may have been fabricated. The suffering children were real.

When i was little, my brothers and I shared a bedroom. When it was time to get ready for bed, we’d slip into our pajamas, brush our teeth and climb into our beds. Then it was story time.

As we laid there in our beds, Dad would come in and transport us to a different time and place. He introduced us to everyone from cowboys to detectives. From our pillows we could see the girl being carried away by the bad cowboys. We worried about her but were sure that the good cowboy would come to rescue her soon. From beneath our blankets, we witnessed our first gun battle when a detective traded shots with gangsters. We saw women who were not only beautiful but virtuous as well. They always came out of their adventures safe and in the arms of their tough but kind heroes.

We made Dad continue his stories until he started to yawn and steal glances toward my parents’ room.

People refer to the 40’s and 50’s as the "golden age of radio." To me, the 80’s were the golden age of stories. Because that’s when Dad told me stories and introduced me to the a world formed from words. He showed me the joy of a good story from the foot of my bed.

I’ve always bought into the mindset of instant gratification. This isn’t a good thing.

If I need shoes, I don’t look around. I’ll just get these over priced ones right now. If I want to have  a burger, I probably won’t wait till after work. I’ll probably hop into a cab and head over to Mickey Dee’s on my lunch break.

Harmless examples? For the most part. However, this mindset seems to apply itself to my bigger decisions rather than to my less significant ones. Additionaly, I try my best to convince myself that my choices are the best ones for me. When I make a big, rushed decision, I’ll defend it with a passion.

"Of course I should live in China forever! It’s the only place that I’m really happy," I’ll say.

"It’s best for me to teach at that school. It’s not inside Beijing but I want to teach at a regular K-12 school."

"I need to buy this car. It’s the only decent one in my price range right now even though it’s a manual transmission and I want to live in San Francisco. (there are LOTS of hills in San Francisco)"

What usually happens is that I’ll stick by my decision and then second guess myself later on. I suppose this is what I’m doing now with my decision to live in China forever. I’m also second guessing my thoughts on being will to return to the United States.

It’s too bad that when I make a hasty decision, I usually really do believe that I’m doing the right thing. That makes it pretty hard to make the best rational decision.

The air’s cooler but hasn’t quite turned cold. No one is around. It’s the last day of vacation and the K-12 and it’s neighboring university are all but deserted. I’m sitting on the steps by the university soccer field. Down at the far end of the field, a couple of students practice dribbling by each other. It’s late in the afternoon and the sun has started to set.

It’s been a strange time here. I’m in a situation that’s new to me. Yet, the thing that worries me on this afternoon is an old problem. It’s one that I thought I’d left behind a long time ago. It’s the return of the temper.

A long time ago, in a land called Redding, I was the angriest little kid you could find. When I was happy, I was very happy. When I was mad, stay away. I was known to fly out of control at the smallest thing. I would scream in rage and pout for days. I’d grind my teeth at night. Slowly, as I got older, this thing left me. I found myself better able to control it.

It’s back! This time, I know what the trigger is but I still can’t stop it. It’s the 8th graders. It scares me sometimes when I lose control in class.  Their beligerance and lack of respect completely set me off. Some of the students have called me stupid in class. One went so far as to say, "Fuck you" to my face. When this happens, I blow up. I can feel it coming.  Justifiable to be angry about kids like that? Maybe, but it’s scary when you can’t control yourself. It starts from down low inside. Then it bursts out. I scream at the kid. I slam my fist on his/her desk as hard as I can (I broke a desk) because I can’t touch the kid. It almost always shocks the students that someone who seems pretty calm and nice can explode like that. Yet, when it happens, I often surprise myself by what I say. I actually yelled at some kids to "shut the f*** up," today.

A few weeks ago, I told a student that he was retarded.

Did I actually use that word? I thought to myself as soon as I said it. I have to stop. It’s scaring me that I’m not only losing control, but that I don’t know what I might say. This could be bad.

So, as the cool breeze flows around me and the leaves fly past me, I sit and think of ways to curb my temper.