oriental orientation (couldn’t resist)

There have been two meetings for teachers at Yucai Third Middle this weekend. The first, yesterday’s, was for new teachers and I was included along with six others (most of them graduates from Shenzhen University). It was nice to be included, but I didn’t really understand anything that was being said, so I kind of just sat there for two hours.

This repeated itself at today’s morning meeting with all of the teachers. As soon as we were released, I had a schedule thrust into my hand by the head of the English department, with hasty introductions following. I looked it over cursorily and found a problem; they’d given me classes to teach on Wednesday and Friday afternoons, when the CTLC teachers are all supposed to go to Futian District for Chinese classes. I mentioned it to Ms. Wan, the secretary who’d been taking care of me all this time, as well as to Li Laoshi, apparently my new contact teacher (chosen recently by virtue of his English, which sounds very nice and makes me wonder why they didn’t give my job to him). Ms. Wan shuttled me off to make copies of my contract, to lunch, and then took me on a tour of the classrooms so I’d know where to go. As the secretary she was bombarded by questions and people through the whole way, and I thanked her for the time. In better English than she had previously let on that she knew, she told me “Because my daughter is soon going abroad for school, I want her treated well too.” Looks like I lucked out.

Meals in the shitang (cafeteria) are pretty good, and would be very cheap – 1 kuai for breakfast, two for lunch, and six for dinner. But apparently there is some deliberation over whether I should pay at all. Ms. Wan haggled at the serving staff, telling them to remember my face and allow it to jauntily walk on past the card swipe. I was a bit uneasy with this. “Wan Laoshi, ni gancai shuo wo keneng bu yao yong ka – zhe bu hao yisi,” I said (Ms. Wan, you said earlier I wouldn’t have to use the card – this is not right/good/proper). She told me that the principal would be consulted on the matter. Hm.

As for the principal, I have to find him alone sometime to deliver the reverse-housewarming gift that all us CTLC teachers brought from home – one for our headmasters and one for our contact teachers. My headmaster is easy enough, even though I haven’t yet found him alone yet – there’s just one of him. But unlike the other CTLC teachers who have by now developed lasting and singular relationships with a contact teacher, only yesterday was I assigned to Li Laoshi, who is apparently not a teacher but some kind of support staff overseer (I’m not yet sure). I’m even sharing an office with him in the staffing building, apart from all the other teachers’ offices. But I do not know him very well, and beyond that, Ms. Wan is still helping me a lot – if the two of them will spy me from across a room, like they did this morning, it is Ms. Wan who will come fussing over. I’ve already given Ms. Wan and her daughter Stephanie some spare gifts I had on hand, but I think I should wait until I get to know Li Laoshi better before I give him his. Besides, I’m not sure for how much longer I will really be in his charge, as a drop-by with the English department revealed that Hu Laoshi, the English head, wanted me to sit in their bullpen-style office with the rest of the department. I think it would suit me better to be with them. After introducing me to the office ladies and teachers, Hu Laoshi took me to fix the schedule problem – walking straight back into the cafeteria and finding the lady responsible as she was eating her lunch.

All in all, the sense I am getting is that I will not have a single person taking care of me in the way that Kami’s contact teacher Sky does, or Hunter’s contact teachers do. That one-to-one relationship is not really working out for me. But something that nobody else seems to have encountered so far is happening: I feel very much like a part of a network now (or at least I am a shared obligation to multiple people) – the English department, Ms. Wan, my pseudo-contact Li Laoshi, the guards (who were quite happy when I delivered a melon to them the other day), and the ground staff (the director of general affairs helped me carry my groceries up the stairs the other night). So now I have to figure out how I’m going to parcel out the five spare gifts I have amongst a whole lot of people.