Singing for my dinner
Getting paid today felt terrible. None of the Chinese teachers were paid today and what’s worse, Mr. Ye paid us in front of all of them. Then, one of the teachers told me she makes a fourth of what I make. And, she has to pay for her own transportation. This is why she lives with her parents. After transportation costs and cell-phone charges, she has 600 kuai to live on each month. The atmosphere in the office after we were paid wasn’t a pleasant one. In fact, I have come to suspect that Julia resents us foreign teachers. We’re the ones that the students chant for and say hello to each day. Of course, we cannot communicate with the children so ours is a strange kind of interaction. When a child feels ill or is confused or wants to talk about a weekend trip, that child goes to the Chinese co-teachers, not us. To us, they repeat the interminable barrage of one-liners: “Hello!” “Good morning!” “Good afternoon!” “Goodbye!” “How are you today?” “Hello!” I had an uncomfortable interaction with Julia and a student today in front of the student’s mother who happens to be the head teacher of Grade 2’s Class A. After Nancy X had gone over missed lessons with Julia, she turned to me and said, “I give you chocolate. How do you like?” Not knowing what she was talking about, I said, “Oh, you want to give me chocolate? Well, that is a sweet wish, thank you.” She looked at me puzzled, there was an awkward silence and then she and her mother said goodbye. Next thing I know, Julia is digging through her bag and pulling out a small box with a chocolate pictured on the front. She handed it to me and said, “This is, um, from Nancy X. For you.” It was incredibly awkward. I opened it to offer Julia some and inside sat a white chocolate Snow White wearing a pink gown. I showed it to Julia who said it smelled good and then left the room.
When I got to my Kindergarten class, the co-teacher told me I would be teaching the song on page two of the children’s book. I had never heard the song before and next thing I know, the co-teacher has popped a DVD into the player and is asking me to sing a song to the children. I sang along after watching it twice and got it all wrong at least seven times and mildly scared the children in the process. People who don’t understand songs and sing them wrong seem to frighten kindergarteners – that’s my tip for the day. Anyway, I figured out the song finally and sang it over and over to the children. Mr. Ye didn’t say ANYTHING about singing and at first, I thought, “but I’m a TERRIBLE singer!” The good news? Nursery rhymes seem to be easier to sing with a bad voice than “real” music. Mom, I was transported to that bizarre night in Georgia where we were forced to sing the 12 days of Christmas with Murmur’s star friends. Eesh, it was scary! Apparently that’s what I’ll be doing for the rest of the time in Kindergarten, though. Singing. Singing to children who don’t know the words and so it is just me up there. Occasionally my co-teacher tried to join in but she was just as lost as me and decided I was the one who was supposed to make a fool of myself. On the upside, maybe my singing will improve?
Twenty minutes into “Sometimes I am tall, sometimes I am small, sometimes I’m very tall, sometimes I’m very small, now tall, now small, now I’m a tiny ball”, my co-teacher wrote, “are you eaten?” on a piece of paper and handed it to me. I tell ya, if I had ever taken drugs, I might think I was having some flashbacks, but no, all this stuff is really happening. I looked in her direction, confused, and she motioned eating with her hands and cocked her head at a slight angle as if to say, “Have you eaten?” I nodded my head yes and during a pause in the DVD she whispered, “Lillis, have you dinner eat it now?” I responded “yes” and she said one last time, as I was leaving, “You sang well. Here you dinner eat it now.” She handed me a bag full of six small buns, each filled with sweet, candied pork strings. Luckily, I HAD already eaten dinner that evening. The buns make good gifts for the co-teachers around the office.
