Back in Xinyu

I wrote this one two days ago. I'm posting it now because I just got my internet back late this afternoon. Here it is:

Today was my first day back in Xinyu after having returned to the US for winter break. I took a train yesterday from Shanghai that arrived in Xinyu last night. Things appear to be about the same as they were when I left. I’ve seen several of my former students who are now English teachers in the area near my apartment. There are at least two public schools and several private schools called “training centers” so lots of teachers come here for work.

I went out this afternoon to buy groceries and as I was walking back I was approached by a Chinese man named Chen Zhang Xin who opened a training center last year just down the road from where I live. After I took my groceries back to my apartment I went back out to meet with him and Cortland, an American English teacher who is thinking about teaching in Mr. Chen’s school this spring.

We met in the small waiting room just inside the front door of the training center, which is a rented space with a bank on one side and a small shop selling I’m not sure what on the other. As the three of us introduced ourselves, Mr. Chen’s girlfriend, Angelina, and three middle school students sat on the other side of the room, watching and listening. Cortland told us about some of his past, including a time when he was what he called a “park bum” camping out in the Yosemite National Park for two and a half years. We explained to Mr. Chen that Yosemite was a famous park in the western part of America, to which he replied “I only know Linkin Park”.

We talked for a while before Cortland had to leave for an appointment that he had. After he left, I asked Mr. Chen to show me around the rest of the school. A narrow hallway leads back from the waiting room to three classrooms with a blackboard and ten or fifteen desks in each one. The first one looked as though it had been used earlier that day for a math class. The second was much like the first although a little messier. But the third looked like nobody had been in it for a while, save for the construction crew. There were tools and empty boxes and trash lying all over the room. The desks were scattered about and there was a thin layer of sheetrock dust covering everything. Mr. Chen apologized for the mess and then stepped over to one of the front desks where a nearly empty bottle of orange soda was lying on its side. Mr. Chen took the bottle and placed it right side up next to an opened paint bucket. We took another look around the room, exchanged phone numbers, and I left.

The school actually was quite nice. I enjoyed talking to Mr. Chen and Angelina as well as Boss, one of the middle school students in the waiting room whom I spoke with briefly just before leaving. I did not commit to teaching at the school but I will be considering it as I begin my first week of lessons tomorrow at the college.