Minds Almost Meeting–September 12, 2009

Was it only a week ago that I climbed to the Lin An’s Ming Dynasty pagoda, tribute to King Qian Wu Yue? No savory moments at Babe Training School, just stress, disorganization and surprises. I’m wrestling with feeling more like the relic the pagoda was declared in 1962.
 
Saturday, I brought first graders (one reportedly age 9) downstairs chanting, “Red, yellow, blue” and dragging tiredly to Mamas after two hours of English guessing games. They’ll adjust to recognizing “Put your name in the cup” (to win the day’s big prize, a pencil), sit here, make a circle, say ___, color ___, write___” and get the dazed look off faces that smile delightedly when I help them through their turn. We’re all tired. The new texts were clearly too advanced, so we just matched colors to do the first page. We played games, using themselves to add and subtract. They loved musical chairs for “Take away one…”

The one new (demo) kid seemed ready to sign up. Zoe announced, “Virginia has a high sign-up percentage” (really?) and turned to me, “You look tired. You sleep OK?”
“No, I e-mailed you. I’m frustrated.”
“What’s wrong?”
“This (in front of at least 20 kids and parents) isn’t a good place. I’ll talk later.”
“Oh, OK.”
Later, eyes feeling feverish, I told her two hours was too long for that age to “study English,” even with the break we took between hours. “But we must! The parents have no other time and want their children to study with you.” Mark, sitting quietly at his computer, supportedly suggested we turn off the lights and take a 20-minute rest break; Zoe was silent. I plunged on: the new text seems must be at least second grade, but I got it only in time to look at a few pages.
“We drove to Hangzhou because the texts didn’t arrive and got them!”
“The red book was appropriate for T-Th Grade 1, not this one.”
“We need to change texts!” She gathered up her notes.
I plunged on— “Zoe, an hour T-Th is too long for the 3s-4s. Parents agreed that 40 minutes was best. Is that OK?”
Silence again. Later, “I must ask Michael (co-owner).”
Heat rising, I flared, “I cannot continue with learning things at the last minute or having them changed from what I
understood. No texts ready although the assistant assured me they were, teaching today when Mark and I both missed it on the new schedule, demo classes that no one told me were not regular students, supplies disappearing when I need them for teaching.”
She said, “Frankly speaking, I’m a mess right now.” She told me her mother-in-law is in the hospital, so she’s the daily care-giver while they await suspected womb cancer reports, Bear’s “not good with Asido” (<2 years) so she must care for him, the baby-sitter’s gone now, she took the foreign English test last weekend, and they got half the expected enrollment “because of one teacher saying….” Sympathy and shades of my own child-raising days and caring for a dying relative tugged at my heart. My backbone got a steely feeling. “No need to say whose fault.”
From Zoe, “I know those sound like excuses. I need to be at Babe School full time. I tell the girls, but they don’t do what I say. I have to do it myself.”

I expressed sympathy about her mother-in-law, then told her she was the boss and part of that job was to see that things were done. She kept repeating, “I told them to…” (I could’ve cite many things she told me one day, forgot about the next, but I didn’t.)

“Mama, I learn much from you.” (I hear this almost daily.)
Bear came in; they switched to rapid-fire Chinese. I was suddenly told, “40 minutes is OK” (one battle won) and “We take Mama to eat!” (last thing I felt like doing) They insisted: “Beef!” Mark and I ate hot pot at a new, expensive place, their solution to my problems.
On the bike-way home in the dark, the best Saturday event happened: a glasses shop re-affixed the earpiece to my broken glasses for free. I fell into bed, hoping I wasn’t going down the slope to a case of the flu.
At least, I’ve two days to recoup my energy and experience to bring to Tuesday’s classes. I awakened with kindly feelings and renewed resolve to help Zoe, if possible, to “administrate” better (learn to delegate effectively?). She must be in a panic; if the school is to survive, she feels it and her whole world depend on her.
I turn my energies to family members and friends carrying Zoe-like burdens and uncertainty across the ocean. I see you each in loving light doing your best, letting go of what you can’t control, enjoying what you can. I’m doing the same on this side of the world…

 
September 14: Time sooths: an evening of hot lemon tea under willows by the campus lake, a non-teaching day to organize my three classrooms, coffee and breakfast after a bike ride that introduced Mark to a Magnum bar, and an e-mail from Zoe thanking me for talking with her and inviting me to tomorrow’s meeting, plus her and Zoe asking Mark and me to go to Yellow Mountain over upcoming National Day, October 1-8. I’d love to see a fresh sunrise from the top!