-^-for posterity-^-

chinese class.

i was talking to a very esteemed teacher the other day about chinese. while he works at the university, he also works on the board of the local chinese school and he asked me if i would like to learn chinese.

sure. who doesn’t want to learn chinese.

chinese and vietnamese are similar in a number of ways. there is a cross over language called ‘han viet’ which relies on both chinese and vietnamese and, through learning chinese, i would also be able to have a much more thorough understanding of vietnamese. and the class is taught in vietnamese which is obviously helpful.

the school was packed and students milled about. i walked into the administrative building and talked with my esteemed teacher that i referred to earlier. he was very excited about me learning chinese and had bought me a book and made sure that i wouldn’t have to pay a dime for the course. i sat in the room with all of the other teachers as they spoke in chinese. they were all drinking green tea in small cups and laughing. i was introduced to my new teacher and given the chinese name of ‘yue han’.

for the past year and a half i have been pretending to be a teacher and now the tables were going to be reversed. in the course of teaching i have walked back and sat on the small wooden benches to watch a presentation or two but i have never actually sat through a whole class on the benches. i am comfortable studying in a western environment but this would be the first time i ever had the opportunity to study in this environment.

the class was on the third floor and was already full. it was not a huge class, about 25 of us. i walked to the back and tried my best to squeeze into the tiny bench made of well worn wood. my knees did not fit under the desk in front of me and i was forced to sit in strange ways which made my legs fall asleep.

the class was made up of mostly high school and university students, some of whom i had taught previously. the class also had a boy who was about 8 sitting in the front row. i was introduced to everyone in a very respectful way and the class began.

the teacher had grey hair that was combed back in a very slick way. he was missing a number of teeth on the top row, wore large glasses and smiled infectiously. he started the class only speaking a sort of mumbled chinese. i only understood two words the whole time.

i felt vulnerable and small again. after all my time here and all my teaching and working in administration, i had worked a bubble up around me, it was a bubble that everyone could see and no one could pop. the bubble now blew up in my face and i was sitting in a class with an 8 year old as this teacher rambled on and on. i didn’t know what lesson we were studying, i didn’t know how long the class had been going (this wasn’t the first class). i didn’t know how much of this mumbling the other students understood.

then there were the other small things that make education so difficult. there were the people playing basketball and yelling at the tops of their lungs. there were the motorcycles honking their way too and fro. there was the heat that was compounded by the fact that 25 people were sitting in cramped spaces. there were the bugs, the mosquitoes and the other flying things that annoy one when they’re trying to learn how to write the chinese character for ‘you.’ also, in the style of education here, students are allowed to pass notes in class and chat without repercussions. for me as a teacher, whenever the talking got out of hand or i saw notes moving, i knew i had to alter the lesson. however, most teachers just let it happen and i was passed three notes and the two girls behind me kept talking, partly about chinese, and partly about some boy.

the class moved on and people helped me understand where we were in the book. we learned about simple things today and they had obviously had a couple of classes before i got there because they had memorized a number of characters already. i sat there and watched as young girls walked up to the board and answered questions the teacher asked in chinese. he didn’t dare as me lest i wouldn’t know and he would embarrass me and i would loose face.

i am now determined to learn a bit of chinese in order to 1) understand what it is like to actually be a student here 2) understand more vietnamese and 3) not make the university look stupid if i go into a class where there’s an 8 year old and can’t hold my own even though it is being taught in a foreign language about an even more foreign language. i haven’t even mastered english yet.