The spirit of The Nanjing School of Information and Technology I believe can only be summed up by the atmosphere and strong emotions experienced by those of us leaving the University.
Feelings of deep sadness for leaving our wonderfully close friends and colleagues balanced with the feeling of relief as the students (and I) were about to return home. I'm not sure I have ever witnessed such a mixture of emotions and such a dense atmosphere.
Saying goodbye to my Student Juicy (Left hand side) and her friend Pansy (Right)
Life is fragile - when I arrived at the University I knew it was at least 45 minutes from the town. But due to a falling out with my two best friends in the world; I had to start from scratch. Let me tell you, shock is something that seems to hit gradually harder as we get older. It was the last thing I was expecting.
Change is essential to every living thing, adapting and moving on. It is these changes that help us learn about the world and ourselves. Changes that seem to break us, but also give us new perspectives in life. A life that forces us to choose compromises, but also choose things that remain the same - that we can identify with.
Below I will do my best to introduce to you as many of the wonderful people I met at NUIST as I am able.
English corner was one of the many many activities that I enjoyed at NUIST.
Other activites included keep fit, open air swimming, ping pong, weightlifting and rollerblading.
Serena was one of the wonderful people I met while at English corner. Happiest when busy, Serena's willpower to overcome any obstacles impressed me so much. A typical Chinese girl (on the outside) Serena is made of metal - and that metal is gold.
My co-teacher Robert became one of my good friends and confidants, with whom I enjoyed many a game of golf, DVD and even shared rent on an outside room - which we rented to get round many of the intrusive rules enforced by the University.
Pictured left is my neat little hiding hole. The themed colour of my place was most definitely orange. I would like to thank Robert for his contribution to the place, and Zhu Dandan (Kathleen) for helping me buy the fridge, TV and mattress, and Yan Lin for taking me to the perfect place to buy the sofa and cupboard!
Yolanda and Robert enjoying Yolanda's birthday
Robert and Yolanda met at English corner. At Yolanda's birthday party, Robert so lovingly bought her flowers and a wonderful cake. We had a small party at mine - one of many parties I was priveledged to invite my friends to.
Kathleen, Juicy, Robert, Pan Zhou (Pansy) Serena Yolanda, Vilho and Janet; thank you for making my parties so enjoyable and so much fun.
2009 Christmas decorations at my apartment at NUIST
Christmas Songs -Wham - Last Chrismas
The Christmas party was accompanied by some decorations I bought locally, all my music and my Nintendo Wii - which we played bowling on during the party. Yolanda just kept beating all of us!
Thanks for your interesting Post Mr. Stuart. You seemed to have a good time at the University. You mentioned some sporting activities that you participated in, for example you mentioned weight-lifting, rollerblading and such.
At our school many, if not all of the teachers here, participate in a kind of yoga. Well, perhaps it isn't you kind of la-di-da yoga, but it can be construed as being a kind of yoga. The last day of every month when all of the teachers have been begging for their money, they are informed to wait outside the accounting office. But as the accounting office has no set opening time, we sit on the floor pondering when it will open. Sometimes we ponder this question for hours. Some of us ponder it for an entire day, on occasion. We call this "Endofmonth Yoga". It certainly makes you more patient, but not so kind.
The other sporting activity we involve ourselves with is sprinting, which I am told you also enjoy. But I think your idea of sprinting is ratyher medievil compared to our TIMESHIFTING sprinting. Let me enlighten you: the last class finishes at 5.30 in the evening and the school bus leaves promptly at 5.15, so when the 5.30 bell goes we spint at warp-speed, and in such a manner that time turns backwards and the 5.15 bus is caught. It's either this or a twenty-five yuan taxi ride home. Few enjoy doing ths sprint as it does exhaust one, and we have no open-air pool in this part of the world in which we can cool off.
Finally there is the good old sport of "dayswiching" where the school changes the programm of Monday, say, to that of Thursday without bothering to inform you, and on top of this running around, they also remove for some unknown reason the classroom numbers. It certainly makes you climb those stairs and run around, it certainly gets the heart pounding,I think it should become an Olympic event.
Unlike your school, Mr. Stuart, every teacher at my school hates English corner, for if we go, the school bus is missed. So our experiences and opinions differ on this matter. We also differ on opionion as to whether Chinese women are made of gold. I don't think they are made of gold, but rather I think they are made of flesh and blood like ourselves.
I, like you, also feel great emotions at the end of my school contract, but my emotions are of relief and disgust, and usually the car taking us to our airport has an atmosphere more befitting a morgue.
We do not celebtae Christmas here as we consider it totally bogus, but secrectly I think its because we cannot find any good sticky tape to hold up the decorations.
Thanks for the Blog Mr. Stuart, and keep on writing!
Posted by: Sally | 09/30/2010 at 01:31 AM
I know that old caper. I wouldn't give them the joy of seeing me sit outside the office waiting for my peanuts. What is wrong with them anyway - never heard of bank transfers?
The class switching and class time shifting is something I have come across - not often thankfully. Actually quite a few American teachers do quite a bit of time switching of their own. If a part of the timetable doesn't agree with them, they just work out their own timetable.
A friend of mine Bill, works sometimes in Nanjing and Shanghai decided that the class times was not to his agreement and cut them. He fore fitted his air-fare home and they are letting him stay in the accommodation as payment for the few classes he is now doing.
When I was at the University, they allowed one guy to pass the year, who turned up to only 3 or 4 classes of mine. When there was a national holiday however, they took down all the register of students so none of them could go home. Even though I allowed them all to join the first class, I was ordered back to take half the same class with no material in the afternoon. A demand that met with the usual digital response.
It was partly that which stopped me getting my second year contract. I think most of it was I didn't cow-tow to them grinning like an arse-hole rubbing my little hands together, pretending I'm an idiot.Ah sorry sorry sorry sorry - wide grin, just give me the money (I hold out my begging bowl). Ah pride, its such an overrated concept...
Posted by: Administrator | 09/30/2010 at 08:42 AM