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Last week was a welcome break. Not that I needed the week holiday, sandwiched between the end of school semester and summer camp, for any kind of recharge of the teaching batteries, far from it. The last couple months have been cruisy. More a chance to get out of the city and escape the everyday’s-a-Friday-when-you’re-a-flaky-laowai-teacher hedonism bubble. Nearly didn’t do it - the prospect of another easy week in Chengdu - to complement the previous 12 - nearly swung it. But myself and Eva, ex-co-employee of the Evil Empire, made our way to the train station late Sunday night. Train stations, considering the immense city populations, are always thriving, constant rushes for departures, swathes of people settled outside on mats, or squatting down, passing the time with newspapers and dojitsu, hours and hours at a time, cabs rushing in and out, and the inevitable calls of the hawker.

The guy next to me in this net cafe keeps drawing all of his phlegm up through his nasal passages and just unloading it on the floor. Doesn’t bother me on the street, but when its in this proximity, I can hear every fricative scrape along the canal, and its spattering an inch from my be-sandaled feet. The worst though is the noodle eating - first of all the tumorous, invasive suck then the wet slap of the lips as it is ingested - real personal bugbear. You’re allowed the occasional I-hate-China moment for sanity’s sake.
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Lessons 7 & 8 : Pat and the role of the round-eyed laoshi (teacher)

The first 2 periods were not quite as smooth this morning, a consequence of the DVD remote playing up. Though still possible to play DVDs, you need it to activate the Chinese subtitles, and although this is an English lesson, there’s no way they can follow the audio. Cue lots of fiddling with batteries, points of contact and swapping batteries from student’s MP3s. Awkward.

Maybe I could have sent this as a single e-mail but I was very conscious of the overall running time. Sweet Jesus let it end.
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Lesson 1 : The Set Up
Chamone. This is the first of 12 vignettes to update people on what’s happening out here. This is not some stylistic invention to prod people into reading past the 5th word, just a result of my passive resistance against the various and manifold evils of my company. This is my week off, but its not, thanks to Crazy Pat (more of whom later) who has landed me with an extra 12 lessons instead. Its a typically broken promise on the part of North America ESL (MUCH MUCH MORE OF THAT LATER), and while I would be happy to help out a reasonable, rewarding employer, this just feels like anathema. So following in the bare footsteps of Ghandi, I have decided to display my emotions in a non-threatening, stoic manner. Namely, a 3 minute spiel Hi I’m J-. Can you guess where I’m from? No, not America, though yes I do seem a little tall and may have eaten too many McDonalds. Can you guess my age? No I am not f*cking 30. So here are some new words. [writes on board] Zombie, monster, blood, infection, bite, epidemic. Well done. Who can connect this DVD player? Cle - ver! Now here is a British film called Shaun of the Dead. [presses play, draws breath]
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