Archive for April, 2011
Jenna and I before leaving College. No matter where we are in the world our friendship still looks like this. Couldn't imagine this adventurous part of my life without her.
Congratulations Jenna on your new job as a classroom teacher in China! I am so excited and proud of you.
So I started teaching a student from another school who will be attending Avon Old Farm Private School in Connecticut starting this fall. It is an all-boys high school in the East. A very international group of students attend and he wants to make sure he is up to the level that everyone else is when it comes time for academic performance. I am being really hard on him; giving him tons of homework, correcting every little pronunciation slip, and building his vocabulary so that he can fluently discuss current issues.
Funny thing is that I have a) been out of high school and don’t feel “down” with the kids and b) been living in China and don’t feel “down” with America. So I have to remember all my experiences from back in my other life as an American high school student and it has lead to some interesting memories and conversations.
I get to have a first-hand view of the way a 14 year old Chinese boy views the world and the issues facing different areas and countries. And i will be sharing some of these interesting conversations in the coming weeks.
Video Game Differences – chinese video games are made with importance placed on what the character or personal avatar looks like. For example in games such as World of Warcraft clothing or personal accessories have a much lower value than food, weapons, or materials. In opposition, Chinese games require a higher price for those things because, as my student tells me, in China the material possessions you have are very important. If you don’t have the best things then you don’t have any “face” which means that you are not taken seriously. And in order to gain “face” others must see that you have these important materials.
It’s the strangest thing because so much here is knock-off product of brands (of which I am fairly sure the originals are made in some factory in nearby towns). And it’s strange because, as I have said before, everyone here dresses like they are an eighth grade American junior high student. Every piece of women’s clothing has some sort of sequin or rhinestone. Shoes, jeans, dresses, shirts, hats, bags, anything. And men throw together pieces of clothing that are meant to look grown up but don’t quite fit together right.
Our ideas of what is important and what those things turn out to be in real life are so different that they are noticeable even through the design of our value system in created worlds.V
