Before I Forget: The Compendium of Highlights From Student Teaching

Quotable quotes from my year of student teaching in Maryland:

"That time I spent teaching was more rewarding than 40 years working at the office."

- My Aunt wistfully reflecting on her brief teaching stint during Thanksgiving

"WHYYYY must you leave us, Mr. G? WHY!??? Don't get raped by the kids at Flowers! Bye forever"

- This is literally what one of my students from my first high school wrote on a farewell card.

"Mr. G, one of my friends saw you walkin' down the hall today and was like, 'Girrrl, that boy is cute!'"

"Wait, what??"

"It's ok, it's a good thing."

(Notices my mentor teacher in the background)

"..You cute too, Mr. Fairfield."

"Mr. G, you bein' sarcastic again?"

Me: "Frida, when have I ever been sarcastic with you?"

"Right now?"

Me: "Sort of, but it's not really sarcasm."

"Yeah, sometimes it's like almost a lie AND being sarcastic."

"That's gon' be me on top of that mountain one day."

- One of my students upon seeing a video for one of the China travel tours.

"Why's it always so hot in here?"

Me: "You really wanna know why? I had them turn the heat up in here cuz I was cold."

"...You weird."

"Yo, dawg my teacher just told me how to say 'I want to go back to Hooters' in Chinese!"

- The day I reached one of the top 3 least motivated Chinese students

Me: Wow, her shoulders must be hurting from carrying your team.

Girl in a different group: Wooww, none of you were listening, he just fried yo' ass!

"Hey, why'd you throw that paper at me?"
Me: "I didn't throw it at you, I was dropping it softly."

"I'll drop you softly."

"Hey, Mr. G how do you say your last name again?"
Me: "Glotz-ho-ber."

Other student: "See, I told you it was like 'Luxembourg'!"

Me: "Luxembourg is a country."

"Hey, Mr. Ge Laoshi, did you say you were from China?"

Me: "Nope, I'm from Detroit."

"Oh, I thought you was from China." (Pauses)

"...Is it cold in Detroit?"

"Girl, that's Ge Laoshi! He's the little intern I was tellin' you about for weeks!

Ge Laoshi, you a good teacher."

- 3/14/2011. Boom.

"I wouldn't mind having two whole periods of Chinese."

- 3/21/2011

Student recording in the language lab: "Wait, so how would you end the conversation?"

Me: "Well, I guess I could just walk away."

Student: "No! On the computer!"

Me: "High five"

Student: (Thinks about it) No, you sarcastic. You're gonna move your hand."

"Ooohh! I felt a spark!"

- 3/31/2011

Student: I think I found an article, does this count?

Me: This is an article about Honduras.

Student: That in China?

Me: No, it's in Central America.

Student: Yeah, they don't look Chinese.

Student: "Wait, you ain't comin' back next year??"

Me: "Uhh, not unless the principal tells me they need another Chinese teacher."

Student: "Aw, I would take your class. I'm becoming attached to you."

"...not in a romantic way, though."

(The day after I missed class for a job interview)

Student: "Yo I need to talk to you!"

Me: (Thinking they're about to complain about the class) About what?

Student: YO, YOU CAN NOT JUST LEAVE US LIKE THAT! OH MA GAWD, HOW COME YOU DIDN'T TELL NO ONE WHERE YOU WAS GOIN'??

Me: (To another student) Well, I just got yelled at by a student.

Student 2: Yep, welcome to Flowers.

"Word on the street is: you used to have dreads."

"Nah, his hair too soft."

"Ge Laoshi, are you comin' back next year?"

"I don't know, you wanna ask Mrs. Jones (the principal) if I can come back?"

"YEAH! You have to, you're like the best!"

Other student who is almost as sarcastic as me: "Nooo, don't get him promoted!"

While working on an in-class project:

"Can you go get me a pencil?"

"Whatchu want, a regular pencil or a color pencil?"

"Reg'lar pencil."

"Well they ain't got no regular pencils, guess you gon' sit there looking crazy then."

(Looks around at the art supplies in his hand)

"Scissor fight!"

Student using my laptop: "Ooooh, you play Texas Hold 'Em?"

Me: "Yeah"

Student: "I like that game it's fun."

"...Do you like Yahtzee, too?"

(While playing Hangman, my mentor teacher draws an executioner on the board)

Student: Ooh! Draw a club with spikes!

Me (off to the side): Why would he need a club? His job is to pull a lever.

Student 2: Wait! Give him an axe!

Me: HE DOESN'T NEED AN AXE! HE HAS A GALLOWS RIGHT NEXT TO HIM!!

"The Father of My Baby is Gonna be Pacific-Islander": The Kentucky Derby 2010

Over the past three days I have completed a grueling trial of endurance and testicular-fortitude which only a fraction of America's populace have been fortunate enough to experience. America's most historic and prestigious gambling/drinking event, otherwise known as the Kentucky Derby is a compelling hybrid of gambling on animals and barely regulated debauchery, or in other words, a microcosm of what makes this country great. What goes on behind the scenes at the Kentucky Derby can best be compared to an atom bomb explosion: something that is strangely beautiful, but because of its sheer shit-tasticness should not be stared directly into. Because the entire course of events took place over 50 hours, most of which were spent drinking copiously, I lack the long-term memory to provide a full account; the following are highlights from each day:

Thursday, April 29

5:45 PM: Drove for 7 hours in rush hour traffic for almost 400 miles from the Detroit area to Louisille, Kentucky. Upon attempting to park on a one-way city street with an inappropriately high speed limit, I am almost rear-ended by two pickup trucks, and hear one driver shout "YEW KAIN'T DOO THAT!!!" in a voice straight out of the movie "Deliverance". I hide my face so they do not see that the Yankee driver who stopped right in front of them is Asian. This would only confirm every stereotype they were ever told by their Dad/brother/cousin (which could all be the same person...only kidding).

6:00 PM: Arrive at my brah's house in downtown Louisville. Everyone at the house has been piss-drunk for hours. Several of them tell me how relieved they are to see me because they have been shouting "JIMBO" at every car that has passed by since five o'clock. Thanks to the great game of beer pong, I don't even have to worry about dinner as food has instead been supplemented with Miller Lite. Periodically, the host runs outside to check on the pig that is being roasted on a spit. Somewhere off in the distance, a dog barks.

11:00 PM: Shit is about to get real. Someone suggested playing an overtime game of beer pong with 21 cups per side. In the closing minutes of the game, someone puts on the theme song from "Chariots of Fire" for dramatic effect. My partner and I win because I am afraid to lose with this song playing. An hour or so later, someone drunk-drives us to get Mexican food and I pass out shortly thereafter as other drunk people make fratty, homoerotic comments while I try to sleep.

Friday, April 30:

7-11:30 PM: Around this time, the rest of the crew arrives, most of whom I haven't seen in at least three years. To get an idea of what we did, picture everything I wrote about yesterday and extend it about three hours. A lot of what was overheard/said probably shouldn't be repeated in the interest of good taste, but just know that there was more ribaldry and, at one point, dudity than you could shake a stick at. The smart collection of people would realize that since we had to start our day early tomorrow, the correct life choice would be to stop drinking and turn in relatively early. I will give you one guess as to what actually happened.

Saturday, May 1: D-DAY

The exact opposite happens. We are all awoken at about 8:30 after falling asleep around 5 to "The Circle of Life" from the Lion King movie and the ten of us drive in a van with no seats to a country club just to take a shower. Every blueblood in the club knows exactly what we are doing last night and I resist the strong urge to shout, "BITCH YOU DON'T KNOW MY LIFE" at a couple of them. After dressing in our Saturday best we load said van with a beer pong table and enough liquor to float a boat and head off to Churchill Downs to begin tailgating around 11.

The van ride makes my butt and legs fall asleep and my stomach feel so atrocious that the first thing I choose ginger ale over beer as my first drink.

Several of the guys get rip-roaring drunk before we even enter the race track by playing their patented game of "drunkball", which involves throwing ping-pong balls at beer cans, running to pick the ping-pong ball up and chugging that exact same beer. This attracts a minor crowd of sketchy people closing in on their mid-30s of when they were two years removed from college as opposed to ten.

Around 1:30 the area next to our parking spot looks like Hurricane Katrina, prompting us to finally pack up and lurch the mile or so to the race track. Bear in mind, we are not actually going to the Derby to sit in the stands to watch the races. The track is so big that there is actually a massive, fenced-off infield where the vast majority of the crowd goes. On this day, it has rained so heavily that the infield is one giant mud pit and the wind is so strong that huge tents are blowing all over the place. By the time we arrive, impromptu mud wrestling matches and slip-and-slides have popped up everywhere and the National Guard is already trying to arrest the people who are running on top of the Porta-Potties.

We stake out our own spot as close to the track as possible and at this point I am stuck baby-sitting the worst drunk girl in the world. I pass the time trying to convince her I'm Jewish and at some point she utters the quote that appears as the title of this post. After some time, she punches my friend in the head and stumbles away at which point I realize several of the other guys in the group are trying to start a fight with a group of people from Georgia about infringing on our spot with their tent. After everyone finishes arguing about nothing, people head over to place bets/eat funnel cake/drink mint juleps and while waiting in line I am accosted by an Indian guy who drunkenly explains to me how one out of every five people is Asian. I tell him I don't believe him because we are the only two non-white individuals here.

The bad weather has not let up and I am worried about catching pneumonia, so we decide to leave around 6. Predictably, as we make it back to the parking lot the sun comes out and one member of the group is sitting on the ground in the spot where the van used to be. It turns out that half of the group had already left, and I can only imagine what the drunk car ride back home was like for them. Arriving back at the house, we discover that the host's younger brother has been arrested for public intoxication, which may or may not have been because he was carrying a hollowed-out binocular flask and decided to look through it.

Thus ends the account of the 2010 Kentucky Derby, where I did not end up seeing even one actual race. If there's anything that can be learned from this weekend, it is that you shouldn't miss out on catching up with old friends and that we need to bite the bullet and rent the party bus with the fireplace and stripper pole for next year.

An Event-Filled Week

For the first time in a while, I went out this week more than I stayed in, a fun but not generally advisable way to live your life post-college. So here's a cursory breakdown of the different days that I went out from Sunday to now:

Sunday:
My roomie's birthday is tomorrow so we scope out the local bar where we want to celebrate, i.e. we think of a flimsy excuse to get drunk on a Sunday. We start pre-gaming and end up at the bar sort of late; it is Sunday so no one is there except us. We play pool and drink, I personally am waiting for the gay Korean vacuum salesman to show up and hit on one of the other teachers (note: I honestly feel that being a "gay Korean vacuum salesman" should give you pseudo-celebrity status no matter what country you're in). We shoot pool by ourselves and yell at the bar girls for no reason. Then we go to McDonalds and get too much food. I microwaved my Big Mac when I got home and burned my mouth. Life is good.


Monday:
It is now my roomie's birthday party and we've arranged a surprise party that has somehow been kept on the DL for at least a week. Between classes I make a very quick trip downtown and buy us matching t-shirts, despite him clearly mentioning that he doesn't want gifts. After class everyone makes their way over to the party while the roomie is distracted by going out for a quick birthday drink. The party is a success, despite people failing to yell "surprise!" and come out on cue. We play beer pong with our students, everyone gets schmammered and then we go downtown. There is a breakdown in communication and people end up at the wrong bar, including me. I order a Mai Thai that has no fruit juice in it, so whatever the opposite of a virgin drink is, it was basically that. This makes me mad so I end up meeting some acquaintances for food at 2 AM. I remember that the Mai Thai cost me 50 yuan, which makes me mad, so I go home. Yeah...that's about it.

Wednesday:
After a day of rest, we go to an invite-only party with free food and beer or as agnostics call it, heaven. After drinking too much, I catch my second wind and drink more. People are lame so I have to pass up an offer to sing karaoke, which makes me somewhat annoyed seeing as how the party was winding down by 10 PM. Things start getting weird around 1 AM and I start getting pissed that I'm still in the same place; my phone runs out of batteries, which I use as my reason to leave. After that I meet a girl who I like after she gets of work at around 2 AM (TWO FUCKING A.M.) and we go with her friends to a restaurant I don't recognize where they dote on me like I'm an idiot ten year-old. At dinner number two they proceed to do random things like give me milk from a bag, get soup with chicken's feet and tell me to not be polite with them and thus not say impolite words such as "thank you" and "I'm sorry". I don't need to tell you how difficult it is to avoid saying "thank you" and "I'm sorry" to a group of girls when you're in another country. We leave at about 3:30 which is good because I am tired, still buzzed and my contacts are digging into the back of my corneas.

Thursday:
The supposed culmination of the week. There's a party bus to Suzhou (a neighboring big city) and I'm on it! I make the rookie mistake of forgetting to bring booze with me on the bus, which turns out to be a blessing in disguise as the bus gets lost and by the end of the trip several people have to get out and pee in the nearby lake. When we get there, my first impression is how recockulously lame the party is. Aside from the people from the party bus, there couldn't have been ten other people there, all of whom were sketchy foreigners and skanky Chinese girls. The mixed drinks taste like Kool-Aid from camp with a touch of vodka and the beer isn't cold; this couldn't possibly bode well, says I. At some point I get drunk, and two people partially spill their drinks on me, luckily they are girls so I resist the urge to keel-haul them, whatever that means. People start leaving at around 1:30 and my efforts to steal a footrest from the club are thwarted when other people foolishly follow my lead, thereby tipping off the staff. Apparently, Suzhou has a curfew because none of the other clubs are open, but on the way there a girl shows me her booby and I was not opposed. The party scene blows so we get back on the bus, where a hot chick passes out on me. She is heinously drunk and I am petrified that she will throw up on me. Thankfully she doesn't due in large part to my ability to sing "Hush Little Baby" in T-Pain's synthesized voice. We make it back home by 3:30 or so and the girl feels like a big bag of sand. Now I know what some people may be thinking, and the answer is that no I did not make out with her. In fact, after I carried her down from the bus and went back to look for her shoes, she had already peed on her feet. I caught a cab back home with a Turkish guy who was wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates hat and had a nice long sleep, interrupted only by the loudspeakers playing creepy music from the neighboring kindergarten.

Minutes from a Fun Night (4/1/09)

6:45 PM: There is an event scheduled tonight where teachers meet for coffee with students and shoot the shit. People are cautiously optimistic. We arrive at the coffee house and there are three people there.

6:50: People sit down and start talking. Much to our relief, more students arrive. I am talking with one guy who I know is really cool, another student I haven't seen before and another student who is cute and my age. Things are good.

7:30: I drank too much tea. Time to make wee-wee.

7:45: It's clear that two of the students are much more advanced than the other one and he's a little uncomfortable. At one point he gets up and runs away, either to answer a sales call or because he doesn't want us to see him cry. Realistically, it could have been both.

8:45: The event is over, people have to get home. I plan on going to a local bar and watching people play poker. Two of the female students suggest that me and two other teachers go to a karaoke bar instead. I have a crush on one of the girls so I agree.

9:30: We arrive at KTV (the karaoke bar) and get settled in. I sing "Jessie's Girl", "Harder, Better, Faster" and "Africa". During "Jessie's Girl", one of the ladies we're with leans over to me and asks, "who is James' girl?" I realize that she's implying I like her friend, which I do. Clever. A little later, I learn that she likes me too. Life is good.

9:31: I hear the girl has a boyfriend in Shanghai. Time to cut the brakes on his bicycle. A girl calls me "flower-hearted" in Chinese. I nearly punch her. I am then told it means, "flirt" or "player" in English. I nearly punch her.

10:00: Some more girls arrive. They are awkward and harshing the vibe. I don't understand the lyrics to the songs anymore because they're either songs by Chinese singers or Nelly. Eventually we leave to go eat, which is neat because I forgot to eat dinner.

10:30 We meet more of their friends at an area in Wuxi famous for street vendor food. I am glad I'm not allergic to MSG, because I'm about to eat a lot of it.

11:00: Everyone is cool, even the awkward girls. I realize this is the first time I've been out with a group of Chinese people my age. I am told one of the guys in the group is a great drinker. It turns out he is not. I am disappointed.

11:30: All the friends leave and the original two girls tell us that we should go to another restaurant to eat "the rice in water". I assumed this was an old Chinese sexual metaphor until I learned they were talking about porridge. Both girls are cute and I have been drinking so naturally I agree.

12:00 There is in fact porridge at this restaurant, along with chicken feet. Memories.

12:30: Me and one girl persuade the other girl and the other remaining teacher to go to a club. The girls have been paying for everything so far and this annoys the other teacher. Me being a feminist, I have no objections to this, even if it makes me obligated later.

12:45: We are at the club and we get my least favorite drink in the whole world, whiskey and green tea. Chinese people always mix too much tea, making a buzz hard to obtain. Here I learn that the girl I like is neither into drinking or dancing. Shit.

1:00: Resorting to my playbook from back home, I start dancing and flirting with the other girl in order to make the girl I like jealous. This goes over like the Vienna Boys Choir singing "Single Ladies" in that it is momentarily amusing but has an overall negative effect.

3:00: We close the club down, and I realize that I may have just sacrificed long-term progress for short-term gain. Oops. The girl I like is now getting a little emo and we leave shortly thereafter.

3:45: Fun-time over. A cab drops me and the other teacher off at home and I throw 10 yuan at one of the girls who still doesn't want us to pay. The next day is slightly awkward. Go team.

China Randoms Pt. Deux

- While the Chinese may have math and badminton on lock, they're not too hot on guessing nationality, and this applies to literally all of the foreign teachers working at my school, not just me. Since coming here I have been called American, British, Canadian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Singaporean. I was listening to a class of little kids talk about me in Chinese a month ago and the conversation went something like this:

Kid 1: "What country is the teacher from?"

Kid 2: "Isn't he Chinese?"

Kid 3: "The teacher's American."

Kid 2: "No, that's impossible!"

Kid 4: "Yes, all Americans have gold (i.e. blond) hair and their skin is very, very white."

Apparently, this misinformation continues for a while. I was talking to a girl at a bar who told me that "my appearance was Chinese" but finally convinced her that there are in fact millions of blacks, Hispanic and Asian people who live in America and are also American.

- Earlier this week I went on a date with a girl who I hadn't seen in quite some time, mainly because she only gets four days off a month and because I'm a negligent dick. We went to a nice restaurant that she knew but I then made the mistake of letting her order whatever she wanted, which included three awesome dishes as well as chicken's feet and some sort of fish/donut combination. About halfway through dinner, she started to make gagging noises and I briefly considered getting another to-go box for the hairball which seemed imminent. Apparently she had choked on a fish bone and died shortly thereafter. Only kidding, she did in fact live through the fish bone ordeal but I have since devoted my spare time to figuring out a fool-proof way to eat fish that has all the bones left in it.

- I have been here more than six months and they are still playing reruns of the Beijing Olympics. This wouldn't be so bad if they played interesting matches, but so far it has been limited to weightlifting and some gymnastics. If they're really starved for stuff to put on sports TV, they could at least play American football, as the whole world should. As an aside, they do play classic boxing matches (we're talking Jack Johnson from the early 20th century), which is neat.

- While I was out a few weeks ago, I became thoroughly convinced by the end of the night that my hands had shrunk. I'm normally not a fun drunk, but I was particularly aloof this time, seeing as I was staring down at my hands at a club. The point here is that people need to stop putting roofies in my Singapore slings.

China Randoms

"I'm going to kick you in the balls until you die, but first let me have a look."

(A Chinese girl said this to me and I'm interpreting it as the pick-up line I think it was meant to be.)

Funny shit can happen in the most random places, case in point was the saga of me trying to buy a decent pair of pants and then getting them tailored. About three weeks ago I turned downtown Wuxi inside-out trying to find a pair of khakis that didn't make me look gay (this is not a homophobic insult, even gay men would have mistaken me as homosexual if I had worn pants like that out in public). Finally I found a Dockers store and paid through the nose for a pair of khakis after mistakenly believing they were on sale (dignity prevents me from disclosing their price). At one point during the trying-on stage, I told the saleslady that I knew what she meant in terms of the pants size (I could see they were 31/32) but could she please find a smaller pair. Then, like something out of a movie she replied (verbatim) "I know you know I know your meaning, but we don't have any shorter pants." Her wording initially confused me but then I understood, and laughed involuntarily. That didn't make her too pleased. Because someone apparently believes that everyone has 32+ inch legs over here meaning I had to get them tailored and was sent to the middle-aged lady sewing department staffed by six clucking hens operating sewing machines. They seemed to get a kick out of me and at one point a lady told me to go take my pants off which suprised me before I realized they did in fact have changing rooms.

On a totally unrelated note, I got third place (out of five) in a singing competition at the local mall for a rendition of "Drive" by Incubus...some people thought I should have beat the sketchy-looking Canadian who got second place by singing a tone-deaf version of a Chinese love song, but this fails to take into account the judges couldn't understand a single word in the song. Except of course, the word "Drive".

Spring Holiday Abort & The Real Reason Slumdog Millionaire is a Great Movie

The original intent of this post was to give a probably overdue update of my activities in China, specifically what went down on my Spring Festival/Chinese New Year vacay; however, that idea immediately exploded when everyone in my Spring Festival group got sick within the first day of the trip and we cut our holiday short by a couple days. Unless you find cases of food poisoning funny or amusing (and they can be), please believe when I say that I went out west in China, the city was big and dirty and I had KFC for breakfast once.

Before I went on vacation, I watched Slumdog Millionaire and in typical me fashion came away from the movie with a general opinion that differed from everyone else who I saw the movie with. First let me say right off the bat, I liked Slumdog Millionaire, I found it to be an earnest resourceful film that was entertaining even when it was predictable (you knew the musketeer question was going to rear its head at the end). If I was an asshole teacher I'd give it my least favorite grade of all time, an A-/A; i.e. bordering on great, but with a few hiccups. I'm confident that my personal opinion of the film can be accurately summarized by detailing both my favorite and least favorite scenes from the film, because both of them happen at the end anyway.

First, my least favorite scene: the ending (where Jamal and Freida Pinto, a.k.a. Hotty McHotthott, meet in the train station). It was sappy, predictable and something I might've been able to make in a movie (ergo, not very good). For a film that was driven by the "realness" of Jamal's life circumstances, seeing him alone in a train station with a hot chick that he stalker-ishly pursued for his entire life was a little much for my tastes, but I'm sure it made girls cry, so there's that. In much the same way as the death scene with Jamal's brother made me think "what compelled them to put this in the movie?" I came away from Slumdog with the sense that they probably had such little time/money to work with that scenes that should've ended up on the cutting room floor didn't.

This in no way means that I didn't appreciate the periodic breaks from reality that the film made (see: Jamal pushing his brother out a window), in fact, my favorite scene is the strangest one by far: the bhangra dance number at the end. Before anyone scoffs at this notion, first of all, get f-ed for scoffing because I am deadly serious about this being the best part for me. I for one, am a huge fan of irreverant breaks from character in movies and the dance number with every main character and extra in it made me lose my shit. The music was awesome, the dancing was Indian and Freida Pinto was in it, need I say more? My American and British friends poo-pooed the scene; some said it almost ruined the movie for them. To those people, I say you are uncultured phillistines who should be beaten mercilessly until you have flashbacks of life lessons from your parents. As someone who looks at things objectively for their entertainment value, that was easily the best part of the movie, and from what I'm told is something of a tradition in Bollywood, so if you want to be ignorant your whole lives keep telling yourself it wasn't a good scene, you're probably the type of person that doesn't wait around for the outtakes of movies at the ending credits and therefore useless.