First Day

August 12, 2006



As we neared the school I thought to myself that this would be one of my life’s defining moments. I was nervous, certainly. I had actually come all this way to teach, and there I was, riding in the back seat of the jeep on my way to the part where I would teach, or where I would suck at teaching. I imagined my whole life culminating in this one moment of colossal failure. Dead silence while I fumbled through my meager notes and ESL books looking for the next exercise. All those years and dollars spent on university a complete waste. I looked around for some solace, a distraction, anything to take my mind off this impending doom. The sea on the left side of the vehicle was completely shrouded in fog, but in the mountains to the right, a large Buddha emerged.



I was rushed into the classroom where about 20 young students awaited. It was as I had feared, awkward, silent, disorienting. I started yelling good morning at them. Everyone looked around uncomfortably. I directed everybody to arrange their desks into a circle to buy myself some time. Then I dove in with a few drills. I was treading water at this point and asked if they had a CD player where I could play a song. I had brought Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World and had a lesson planned around it. This set off a massive search for equipment that eventually led the 20 or so of us into the next room. I inserted the disk and observed the pained looks on their round young faces. I started to write the words to the song on the board, incorrectly. I wrote “I see trees of green, clouds of white,” and then it clicked for me.



I had to make a few minor adjustments but my head was in the right place and I wasn’t going to end up in the flaming wreckage as I had feared. It still went on forever and I finally had to ask the head mistress when it would end. She answered that it was time and that I had taught for an hour and a half, which, unfortunately, she now expects me to teach for the remainder of my classes there. She also expects me, if I understood correctly, to teach for the next 14 days straight, which I’m not so thrilled about, but I’m in China and not so sure either where I stand yet.