Kunshan: Be Flexible

Tomorrow I begin one of the most interesting teaching challenges of my career thus far (which I will admit has not been that long); I will walk into a classroom of 12 students, ages 10-13, who may or may not know any English, and attempt to teach them how to speak this ridiculous language.

I signed up for the trip in January, at the urging of my teachers' college friends, because it was an amazing deal and a unique opportunity to get a professional qualification in English as a Second Language. We all wanted to be together, and we thought of it as a sort of graduation trip. We signed up for the Kunshan campus, hoping that  we would have a better chance of being together there.

We learned that the appealing price tag was too good to be true. There was a pre-departure workshop while my family was away in Europe in June, and they notified us that the Kunshan group would be split in two groups, and some people would have to go to a campus in Taicang, China. My roommate, Cassie, and I were separated from the rest of our friend group. This was the first time we would hear that we needed to "be flexible".

 

As the date of departure approached, there was no new information, and often the coordinators warned us that any information they could give us would be subject to change at the last minute. We had no idea what age groups we would be teaching, where we would be staying, what materials we would need to bring with us, or what we were expected to do on a daily basis. We held onto the promise of seeing our friends on the weekends in Shanghai, or on the group tours.

 

With less than a week before we left, we were told that our friends going to Taicang were being moved to Weifang - a city 9 hours from Kunshan - and that two of them would be rejoining the Kunshan group, meaning that they would be a group of five. Once again, we were told we needed to "be flexible".

Online we prepared as much as we could for the themes that we were told we would be teaching, but for each thee, we had to prepare to teach from four different workbooks of varying levels (from beginner to extremely advanced). It was a challenge in and of itself, and we had no idea how it would play out in the classroom. We made flashcards, produced resources, planned sample lessons, downloaded songs from YouTube, and did our best to be prepared to "be flexible" upon arrival.

The day we left, our flight was delayed and it felt like a sign of what was to come, but the fourteen hour flight was a blast. I was seated between my roommate, Cassie, and a good friend, Gianluca. We were laughing for basically all of the hours that we were collectively awake. It was so obvious that a gentleman across the aisle that we dubbed Mr. Fix It (he was constantly volunteering his services to anyone that seemed to be in the slightest need of them) pined to join us... he glanced over every time we found something particularly funny. We took breaks from each other to watch movies - I watched 12 Years a Slave and almost bawled - and then we were right back at it, looking out the back window to see Baffin Island or the Arctic Ice, asking for extra water or tea or whatever.

The only time there was anything to complain about, it was that our tour company hadn't told the airline that we had four vegetarians in our group. All of the food that was prepared had meat in it, and there was nothing but over-dressed sad-looking salad and some plastic bread for them to stock up on. They were unhappy with good reason.

I opted not to sleep at all - the time change is 12 hours exactly, and when everyone else started to go to sleep, it was technically daytime in China - I played Child of Light on my laptop for four and a half hours (It was awesome, even though I can feel my mom rolling her eyes as I write this).

Arrival at the airport was smooth sailing, and before we knew it we were through security and had collected our luggage. We blinked again and the Weifang group - our best friends for the past 14 hours - were leaving us. I was actually pretty upset about it. I don't know if everyone else had come to terms with it, but it just felt so unofficial as a goodbye, and honestly, we don't know the next time we will see each other. One member of our team made a comment that it's not like we wouldn't be seeing each other (talk about being insensitive...) and then changed her mind when she realized three of the people leaving us were the guys. She wasn't making friends in a hurry.

We were still annoyed as we rolled our suitcases onto a moving sidewalk to get to the bus... only to crash into everyone in front of us because no one was capable of handling all their own luggage. Instead of turning the moving sidewalk off, the Chinese security man started shouting at us as if we were continuing to crash into the pile-up on purpose. It would have been hilarious to watch our faces as we slowly moved toward our inevitable crash, but we were unimpressed and worried that all of our electronics were broken, and our supplies were crushed. We worried for no reason, but the next obstacle to peace of mind was getting onto the bus that didn't have enough room for our luggage in the undercarriage. We could just hear the coordinators of the trip emailing us to tell us that when it comes to luggage, you have to "be flexible".

Cassie was a warrior and hauled all the overflow bags into the back seats, and we jammed ourselves in before we filled the aisles with the remaining bags. We were relieved that we were finally on our way to the hotel....

....which turned out to be way beyond our expectations. It was air conditioned, beautiful, and the food was not as foreign as I had been mentally preparing myself for. It was similar to what Andrea and I had eaten in Chinatown in London, England when we met up with my friends from Lyon before our cruise in June - the dishes were served on a massive Lazy Susan, and there was way more than any of us could finish eating. We had dumplings that were amazing and got a tonne of recommendations from a family who had been living here for a year (they were leaving the next day because their son's eczema couldn't handle whatever is in the air and he had a perpetual rash). On the elevator ride up to our room, a man came in smoking which was a bit of a culture shock, and the beds were pretty hard, but after at least 24 hours of sleep deprivation, I fell to sleep in an instant.