Yesterday I noticed a group of “soldiers” skulking around the trees and pond by the guesthouse. They had on blue camoflouge clothes and helmets, and they carried replicas of machine guns, which they fired at one another. They had matching duffel bags, and I wondered if they were the Chinese version of the ROTC? My students at the other campus told me there was no such thing and that the students were just playing (Capture the Flag). At least one of the soldiers was female. Kinda weird.
I’ve run out of books on my Kindle and have been unable to download more, so I went to the foreign language bookstore to stock up. Amazing assortment of novels in English, including Carolyn Jessop’s new book on survival after polygamy! There were posters of a Green Bookmark Campaign 2011 with the slogan, “Reject Piracy. Respect Honesty.” I bought a complete set of Vivien Leigh movies–GONE WITH THE WIND, ANNA KARENINA, STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, etc.–so today I’ll buy a DVD player. I have a lot of time on my hands, since I’ve taught this course before and have done all the tourist things in Shanghai, some more than once.
Observations on bathrooms. The students’ dorms don’t have any. People are seen walking through campus with a plastic carryall holding soap and shampoo, on their way to the showers. Friday night seemed to be an especially big bath night. Many students were returning to their dorms already dressed in their pajamas.
McDonalds has real toilets, but KFC, which is an even larger presence in China, has squatters. So do all the college building restrooms. It’s still BYOP (paper). There are no hooks on stall doors, so any purses or books have to be set on the floor next to the receptacle…an incentive not to splash. Is this more information than any of you wanted?
The latest on the teaching front is that the administration wanted me to delay the sophomores’ final exam for two weeks and let them take it at the same time as the juniors. I said that would be disadvantageous to the sophomores to wait two weeks after reviewing the material. So I now have to create a third exam. I already have a final and a retest, but they admit that students freely “share” information, so the second class will need an entirely different exam. This even though the two classes are on different campuses. Last time I was here they had other teachers helping to monitor the exam, so they know the problem exists, but it hasn’t seemed to change the students’ behavior. They should adopt the bookstore’s campaign…
1 thought on “Thursday morning”