English we have heard on high
Every time I figure out the status quo here, it changes. I suspect that maybe change is the status quo. Anyway, the latest alteration to life here centers on the English corners. Now, we've got three corners here on campus--two that happen concurrently on Wednesday evenings and Yau Neih's "music corner" on Friday. There's also a English corner--Marty's corner, we call it--out in one of the neighborhoods on Saturday night. We've helped out at all four, so it makes for a nice, active schedule.Anyway, last week one of the national English teachers, Paul, approached me and invited me to a new English corner, also held off campus on Saturday night. The way he pitched it, it was going to run longer than the other corners and was supposed to help some of the poorer folks in the community. Now, I have a difficult time saying no and ended up agreeing to come to that initial gathering. One thought that ran through my mind was that the current Saturday night corner already has a good supply of foreigners, so perhaps it was time to share the wealth. Of course, Yau Neih later pointed out that I had failed to consider the relationship I had already built with the regular attendees of Marty's corner. Blowing them off would be rather rude. But my RSVP had been made and I was stuck.
Saturday night was rather dreadful. The rain was heavy and the campus driveway is unpaved. Our neighbor Michael was also solicited for the corner, so Paul escorted us both to the corner. There were about 20 students there, only a couple of whom I recognized. It turned out, however, that they were pretty much all from the college. The program itself was quite simple: talk to the foreigners. They did, and we had a nice conversation for a couple of hours. Afterwards, Michael asked Paul about what happened to the poor folks who were supposed to be attending. Paul said that he was going to try and ask the folks living in the nearby shanties for next week. I got the distinct impression that, giving Paul the benefit of the doubt, this English corner was very much a work in progress.
Come Monday, the plot thickened. One of Michael's students approached him between classes and invited him to attend a new--you guessed it--English corner. This one is also planned for Saturday night and is being put together by the Student Union. (I'm not quite sure what the Student Union is. I think it may be the young party members or something.) This left us lao wei quite puzzled. Are people that hungry for English around here? Or are they just getting sick of these foreign run English corners? Either way, none of us foreign speakers really want to add to our English corner load. (Actually, I take that back. I'd love to go, but I do have to leave some time for teaching my own kids and for doing those pesky household chores.) We'll have to see what happens.
posted by John @ 5:57 AM
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