A Typical Tuesday
A Typical Tuesday – Ken Saathoff, Fellow '10
6:30am – I wake up. Though my first Tuesday class isn’t until 10:10, on other days I have class as early as 7:20, and I’ve gotten into an early rhythm. I go outside to the outdoor tap, brush my teeth, and wash my face. I grab my big metal thermos-jug and go down to the students’ canteen, where I pick up my boiling water for the day.
7am – I make myself a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of coffee. Yunnan coffee is delicious, and I picked up a tiny one-person French press in Lijiang that makes brewing it a snap. Usually I start listening to some Chinese podcasts to wake up my mind to handling the day in Mandarin. When I’m done eating, I’ll usually send some emails or skype some friends back home. China is twelve hours ahead of US Eastern Standard Time, so mornings and evenings are convenient to connect with people stateside.
8am – I’ll review my lesson plan for the day, making sure I know all the Chinese vocabulary I need to teach my students the content, that I have contingency plans for students who pick up the material especially quickly or slowly, and that things are generally in order.
8:30am – I lesson plan for my Wednesday – Friday classes.
10:10am – class starts! Hilarity ensues!
11am – I head down to the market with my Chinese fellow slash next door neighbor, 李超, to buy some fresh fruit. I buy grapes and plums, he buys watermelon and mangos. We share.
12pm – lunch! I desperately hope it’s not lotus root in the teacher’s canteen. I find that it is once again lotus root in the teacher’s canteen.
12:30pm – I go up to the physics classroom (almost always empty) to hold office hours. 12-1 is the students’ free hour, so students who want to can come review anything they’re confused about, read Calvin & Hobbes in English or Chinese, or, their favorite, ask me to teach them how to say “I love you” in as many different languages as I can come up with. Their current favorite: Norwegian.
1pm – students’ afternoon studyhall, or 午自习. At my school, this is un-chaperoned, but I use the time to pull out any students who need extra help, or have jumped ahead and want to learn more advanced material.
2pm – I have a Chinese lesson with my teacher from Beijing over skype.
3pm – Read and relax until music class.
4pm – Music class! My students and I sing lots of not-too-difficult American pop songs. Last week they watched High School Musical. Zac Efron, in case you were wondering, kids in rural southwestern China find you just as appealing as kids everywhere else in the world seem to.
5pm – dinner! Hopefully not more lotus root. But probably more lotus root.
6pm – Evening class, deceptively called 晚自习， or evening self-study. This is not actually self-study, but rather a three-hour block of class. Surprisingly, way less stressful than it sounds.
9pm – Relax! Skype with friends, or maybe watch a movie. Then off to bed before starting a typical Wednesday.
