In Y Town

Here in China there's a lot of interesting things about this community.  I've been itching to write about some of them for a while now, partially out of frustration, partially out of how unusual it is. I'll just write a couple things for this post.

In Y we can have students over for meals during the week.  I live in a university dorm, like most of the other teachers and my room is really small (but all my own).  Every Friday night the 11th grade boys come over and play computer games and hangout.  The fact that students can come over, eat meals with the teachers and generally hangout is really cool.  The community at the school is more casual. I've shown some of the 11th grade girls how to bake scones, counseled the soccer club's leaders when they needed advice, and done "pomodoro" (a time management technique) with another student to get things done. My 5th and 6th graders nag me for my phone number and ask to come over at least every week (I haven't had them over yet). Other teachers have students to their house every week as well for studies, homework help and talk/game time. It's pretty cool.

In Y the parenting system is often broken. This is a huge frustration for us as teachers. Too many families have one parent who's in Korea while the other is here in China. Parents keep themselves so busy that they don't have time for their children. They send them to school in the morning before the school is even open, and hope that the school will raise their kids. Students at home frequently have no supervision and so play video games and watch R-rated movies at will. They sleep crazy hours (a student told me today that he feels he does best with just 2hrs of sleep a day). Some students have no will to study or grow, feel bad only when caught doing wrong, and know nothing about the Bible (their parents are "workers" here). I believe these problems are largely from poor/lack of parenting. Some of the parents go through significant gymnastics to get their students into our school (from Korea).. it's really almost insane.

Anyway, that's just two facets of life here in Y. Hope (as always) to write a bit more regularly.
Peace and joy.