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In case you missed it

In case you missed it, here is the text of the essay I did for the Ogden newspaper

What am I doing here? There is an existential sense in which I could intend this question, one that involves speculation into what could possibly motivate a middle-aged professor to take a two year leave of absence in order to join the Peace Corps. But as they say, we won’t go there. Instead I will talk about the practical details of life in Chengdu, China as part of the twelfth group of volunteers (known as China 12s) to serve as English teachers at Chinese universities in Western China.
To begin, I should say that I did not choose this assignment. As many of you may know, you don’t get to pick where you go in the Peace Corps. Generally speaking, you request a region of the world and a type of volunteer activity that is based on your particular skill set. But the final say on where you wind up belongs to the Peace Corps. If you don’t like the posting you are offered, that is the end of the story–they don’t offer you another one. In my case, I actually requested an assignment that had nothing to do with teaching–I felt I needed a break from the activity–but wound up teaching at a Chinese university. Your fate has a way of following you around.
Of course, you don’t jump right into your new life. Instead, you enter a ten-week training program to prepare for the job you will do and the culture you will be doing it in. For me, most of that time was spent living with a Chinese family in Chengdu while studying language in the morning and attending lectures and doing teacher training in the afternoons. It was an exhausting and enlightening two and a half months.
Enlightening because Chinese is a fascinating and infinitely complex language in which, despite a not insignificant amount of time and effort, I can count myself only a novice. Perhaps the most notorious feature of the language, one that makes it especially difficult for a Westerner, is the fact that the meaning of a word can change depending on how it is pronounced. So, for example, the syllable "da" can mean "to hang over something," "to answer," "to hit," or "big" depending on whether it is pronounced with one of four tones. The teacher training was also eye-opening because, though I have taught for over fifteen years, the process of TEFL, or Teaching English as a Foreign Language, has a pedagogy distinct from the one most college professors are used to. Lecturing has little place in the TEFL classroom and instead emphasis is placed on students doing most of the talking.
It was not only humbling, learning a new language and a new set of job skills, but tiring as well. The training took place five days a week from eight to five, with some Saturday sessions, and was done in what I was told was the hottest summer on record in Chengdu and in a humidity such as I have never experienced in my life. But on September 7th, I was sworn in along with fifty-six other trainees as the twelfth group of Peace Corps China volunteers in one of the proudest moments of my life at a ceremony presided over by the United States Ambassador to China. I was assigned to Sichuan Normal University, the main teacher training institute in Sichuan province. Currently, I am teaching both oral English and American culture classes.
Some people may have trouble seeing Peace Corps China as a regular Peace Corps assignment because we are not living in a hut in Africa. But this is to misunderstand the Peace Corps’ mission. The major goals of the Peace Corps have always been to help interested countries develop a trained workforce and to promote an understanding of Americans in other countries (and of other countries among Americans). Although there are other foreigners teaching English at many universities in Western China, there are certainly not enough to fill the demand, and at many institutions Peace Corps volunteers are in fact the only foreign teachers. More important is the second Peace Corps goal. Our language and cultural training allows us to integrate into a community in a way that few other foreign teachers do, giving people here a different image of an American than they might gather from television or learn from their friends and family. Hence it is no surprise that a recent Brookings Institution report concluded that the Peace Corps mission of promoting an understanding of Americans was even more urgent than it was when the Peace Corps was founded forty-five years ago. As has become all too obvious by now, our relations with a country are determined more by how successful we are at winning the hearts and minds of the people than by any other factor. Given the dominant role China will play on the world stage in the coming years, even a small program that can generate good will and foster understanding can be significant.
So that’s what I will be doing for the next two years, if not exactly why I will be doing it. But I probably would not be doing it at all had not Weber State University provided me with an extended leave of absence. I would like to close by publicly thanking them for their support on this perhaps foolhardy but certainly well-intended mission.

More pictures

Here are a couple of other images from campus. Again, note the blue sky. This is not a usual appearance in Chengdu. Note also the fact that the track is almost empty. This is not a usual appearance either. In the pre-sunlight hours there are people circling the track, and students start filling the soccer field by eight a.m., and it usually stays full all day, which is why I usually try to do my running very early. Since the tai chi starts at 7:15, this means I must start running by 6:30, but as I've mentioned, the track is far froom deserted at this time. By now I calculate I have done close to a thousand laps around this thing by now. If my ipod ever quits functioning (and like every other electronic device I own, it has been touchy) I think I would truly go crazy. At the far end of the picture, in te left hand corner, is where our little group gathers for tai chi. The wall against the grandstand to the right is where the soccer players kick balls. They line up and kick balls against the thing and have the balls bounce back across the track. It makes for some interesting running. This is why I run before the soccer starts. The statue is that of Confucius. I am not sure if this is an actual image or if anyone really knows what Confucius look like anymore than we know how Plato or Socrates or Buddha looked, but it doesn't prevent there from being statues and images. .

The Panda Cage

It was sunny the other day, so I went around campus taking some pictures because, well, there aren't a lot of days like this. So these are just some random shots. This is a picture of the building where I live. I am on the fourth floor. The building is in a gated compound known as the foreign teachers compound. There is a guard at the front gate. The gate gets locked at eleven on weeknights and midnnight on weekends. You need a key to get in after that and I am still waiting for a copy. Within the compound there is a restaurant as well, though I generally don't eat there because it is a bit pricey and there is much cheaper food to be had nearby. But it is convenient so sometimes I wind up there. I had heard the locals refer to our compound (in good humor) as the "panda cage." The idea is that pandas are separated off and need special care, and I guess that is that is supposed to apply to us. It is no suprise, then, that there is a doormat of a panda at the front door.