Day 107 - Kid's Q&A

Tuesday, May 24th, 2016

Smog Level: 3/3 Mountains

Staring at the Ceiling

I guess napping disrupted my sleep schedule yesterday, or maybe it was not doing any writing for the past several days, but I was up until 4am. Just laying there, thinking. 

Busting out pics I never used...

At least today, the sweats are dying down. It’s hard to tell what’s weather, and what’s fever. It’s gotten warmer, and it can be quite hot in the apartment. I’m able to catch up on some editing, some writing, and actually sit at my desk for some of the day.

Kid's Answers

I realized, though, that I never spoke about some of the kid’s answers for the beginning of the classes. Refresher: we start every class with two questions in english just to practice. Here some of them are:

"What does your dad do?": it seems 70% of the kids in my classes have fathers who are managers. Very few were anything else, but the rare ones were doctors, or something with similar prestige.

"What does your mom do?": These were a bit more varied. A good chunk were housewives, some were teachers, some were designers, or scientists. From what I’ve been told about the culture, it appears as though Chinese women have the “luxury” of taking lower paying jobs. The burden seems to be placed on the husband/men to make more money, so the women are able to accept and stay at lower paying jobs. Women also often live with their parents until marriage. I’ve heard that the school I’m at has only female teachers because the men who applied felt it was too low paying, but that might just be a rumor. In either case, the women had much more variety.

...Since I haven't left the house.

Remember, though: this is a somewhat elite school in Beijing. The school is damn expensive.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?": Most just echoed that they wanted to be a manager. I did my best not to cringe a little, as I don’t think they fully understand what that even means. Of course, they don’t. I had no real idea what my parents did, though I knew their titles. Some of the more encouraging ones were doctor, scientist, designer.

Favorite animals: Less interesting to me, since they answered the same sort of things that most kids in North America would answer. Dog, cat, fish. Some of the more ambitious kids would say more than one, and some would list really exotic ones. Only one girl said she loved all animals. Haha, oh, Betsy.

While they don’t like the pressure of having to answer these questions in front of the class, they do seem to like the freedom of expression it affords them.

Words of the Day

English - Mandarin [pronunciation]

Manager
jīnglǐ
[jing-lee / ji-ung-lee]
Dog
gǒu
[go]

Editing Music
Teenager Pie
Ball Park Music