Our foreign math department here is supposed to be made up of 3 math teachers. For whatever reason, they have had a hell of a time trying to recruit the 3rd one - and they look no closer to getting that person now then when the school year started 2 weeks ago. So we've been operating with a skeleton crew of 2 - and the only way to do that feasibly is to cut down on the number of courses we're offering/teaching. So we're not offering the Chinese students the amount of foreign instruction that we're supposed to, but there's little we can do until a 3rd teacher is hired. Then the other half of my department suddenly declared that there was an unequal division of labor in our department and he was going to quit immediately if it was not rectified. As we were both teaching the same relative number of classes and had the same number of preps, I was a bit flabbergasted. It put the principal in a tight spot - either appease him, or lose another math teacher and be down to one. So I got another class added to my load and he got one subtracted. Not really what I would call equal but at least he's still here and happier (so he says) and I'm not fending for myself... You can have leverage here that wouldn't work at all back in the USA. They'd have told him to pack up his stuff and git - then use subs until a permanent replacement was found. Well, no subs here and a replacement is probably at least 2 months (if that) out. So the first 2 weeks of school have contained a bit more excitement than I'd like.
This year marks the 20th Anniversary of Gaoxin High School in Xi'an. To celebrate, the students put on performances last Saturday that they'd been practicing all week. All sorts of dignitaries present and it was a huge deal. It made the first week of school difficult because the students were being excused all the time to practice. It's weird how the priorities of the school suddenly changed (the bosses feel obligated to put on a big show). I will insert a video production put together by a company that had drones flying all over the place. It's about 5 minutes long - hope it works:
So the second week of school has been normal (Mon - Fri) for us. The October National holiday is coming up on Oct.1 - 7 and we are all looking forward to being able to do some relaxing during that time. Not really thinking of doing much traveling during that time as I learned last year you're competing with a billion other Chinese people for the tourist activities.
If you are able to watch the video, you may notice the blue skies! That is something that has been different this year - much cleaner air! I have been able to see the surrounding mountains many days and the pollution index has not been in the heavily polluted range. I don't know what's causing the difference this year, but let's hope it is better in the winter as well (winter tends to be more polluted). I noticed that during the World Games in Beijing they managed to bring the pollution levels down significantly - Beijing is usually one of the worst cities. It has been going up since the games have ended, however.
The internet filters in China seem to be more troublesome right now. We have had many times when it has been difficult to get a good connection. Or you finally get a good connection and then get dropped after a few minutes - very frustrating!! But I have managed to sneak around a little bit and get on Netflix once in a while. I became addicted to Longmire and have now watched all 4 seasons. Haven't decided what will be next... I'm reading a book called the 6th Extinction (or something like that - you never know what you're reading on a Kindle) that is very interesting but paints a very bleak picture of the future here on Earth. It looks like the rats may still be around though so not all is lost!
Well, I'm cutting loose on this one right now. The video is still uploading so I don't know if it will make the cut or not. I'd just put the link to it on our school website but I don't know that you'd be able to view it in the US...
No comments:
Post a Comment