Jim Gary and Shirley Kramer are team teaching at Xuzhou Senior Middle School in Xuzhou City, Jiangsu province. They have been in China since August 21st, 2006 and have been doing a great job ever since. The Footprints staff is currently actively participating in a Pen Pal exchange with one of their classes. Their teaching team consists of Jim, Shirley and 3 Chinese teachers Meng Qin, He Bing and Li Dong Mei.
Since I’ve been in China I’ve taught ages 4–16 and the kids are consistently wonderful. We are minor celebrities here so I hear, “Hello!” about a million times a day from people I’ve never seen before and, considering there are about 1.5 billion people here, will probably never see again. I always answer back in Chinese (Nee How– You Good?) which is always good for a laugh. If I had to pick out one thing I’ve enjoyed besides Chinese people, it would have to be Chinese food. It is soooo good but nothing like what passes for Chinese food in the states!!
I have yet to see a fortune cookie here. Even the fast food on the street is always hot, fresh, tasty and inexpensive. You don’t have to be culinary (I don’t think that word exists, actually) adventurous to enjoy the food here but it helps. If you’re not, just pass on the incubated chicken eggs, cicadas and the dog but you should try the seaweed, jelly fish and lotus seeds. I tried and enjoyed them all! You can eat at McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut here but for the price of lunch at the “Fat Pushers”, you can have an excellent Chinese meal at an upscale restaurant. For the price of dinner for one at Pizza Hut, you can enjoy several courses of fantastic Chinese food and beer for four. We recently completed a project where our students wrote a post card. When we teach we try to “keep it real” so we decided to actually mail them to addresses in the US and Canada. We contacted friends and family and found people who would agree to reply to a postcard. This gave our students a chance to use the skills they have acquired in class in a meaningful way. When the postcards from North America arrive, the kids will be so excited!
Although we teach as a team, we have the flexibility to approach the subject matter to fit our personal style. We took two different approaches in the post card project. I bought actual post cards from the post office. Since we’re not in a tourist area, the only choice was the Chinese knot. The advantage was that it was an actual postcard. Disadvantages were that it was fairly expensive (about 100 RMB or US$12) by Chinese standards and were not descriptive of the area. Shirley found some post card–sized pictures and gave her students the option of using those or designing their own. Some of the student designs were awesome! This approach gave the students a chance to express their creativity and was more economical as several cards could be mailed in the same envelope. The important thing was that we wanted each student to receive a card or letter from somewhere outside of China. I can’t wait until the cards start coming in!!
Post card writing, who wouldn't want kids to write a bunch of post cards home to a bunch of kids. Nothing spectacular. Well from the city of Xuzhou, not Suzhou, it was weeks of effort for I was very green to China. Finding post cards. Does anyone know where to find them? We are not in tourist town but there are neat things to see and that would make note worthy cards. People look at you strange here anyway but see what happens when you ask for post cards - What do you mean? Who would want to buy a post card? Oh post cards, you buy them at the Post Office. Where's the P.O.? Oh yes, they did have a few left from last New Year. On a Saturday I went to THE place here. The tomb that was newly excavated where there are half size terra-cotta warrior. Would you believe....post cards!!! and pictures of Xuzhou that maybe I could use. Well we have the raw materials!
Ideas come into our heads…if we can ever find oak tag type paper, a thin, very thin, cardboard or if we could find something even as thick as construction paper. The kids had their choice to use one of these fancy chancy cards or make their own using markers or colored pencils for the picture side.
Now postcards are really small, right? I mean you, you can't get much on them. You start out Dear Friend or the like…a date might be nice. There was much practice on scrap paper and the final draft was written. The assignment was to have the name of our city in the first sentence. Then they had to include 3 things about our city. Something a bit more complicated than - it is beautiful, or I love it or we always play basketball here!! After 3 or 4 tries we finally got there. Many signed their cards in the address area, but that didn't matter because I was sending them bulk mail to various places.This of course got our juices going and now it has blown up into a bigger thing, Not just "pen pals" We are creating a box of stuff to send to our home school that will include a class roster, pictures with names, pictures around school and town, small coins or bills, maps, comic books, letters of introduction, writings about their schedule, a descriptions of different classes, what they enjoy doing when there is no school (which isn't often, kids are here by 7:30 and many don't leave until 9 at night), a bag of candy, canceled stamps and things like that. The kids are excited. They are bringing stuff in everyday and my photographers are out and about! Hope to have it all ready by the end of November. Wish us luck!!
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“A calm breeze lightly tosses my hair about, as I stroll the waterfront not far from my apartment. The waves crashing the shore have an intoxicating scent that propels all sorts of pleasant daydreaming. Am I in paradise? No I am most certainly not. But I am in a country I was dying to visit, and got more than I anticipated. Footprints Recruiting set me up with an ideal job that fits my teaching desires and has thus provided a backdrop to an amazing experience. I left for Korea in October of 2003, and I am currently teaching in Haeundae Beach Busan. Footprints takes care of you in a way that dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s are just the tip of the iceberg. I recommend this to the adventure seeking minds.”
