Note: This story is from earlier this fall before Thanksgiving. These entries were taken directly from my journal. Journey with me on a crazy week of my fall semester where I was being constantly reminded of my own weakness and of His great strength.
If you receive my postal mail newsletters, parts of this story will be familiar to you. If you do not currently receive those newsletters and you would like to, please message me your contact information. Much love, Lora
Tuesday
Tuesday morning:
My team leader, Lauren, received call the dean of the English department,
requesting that I judge a speech competition on Saturday.
I knew, that whatever plans I’d had for a
relaxing weekend and a weekend of preparing for classes and visiting former
students would soon be changed. Typically students request us to judge
competitions, not the dean. It was my first clue that this was a big deal.
Throughout the day of Tuesday there was much discussion
between the leaders in our city, and the school about who would be available to
judge the competition on Saturday. The competition was a provincial level
speech competition. The need was for an international female to serve as a
Question Master. The teacher who had served as Question Master last year was
busy with an all day long meeting on Saturday (as were all the other more
experienced and higher ranking teachers).
Tuesday night: It
was decided that I would in fact be the Question Master, but I would need to
meet our dean and our dean’s boss Wednesday morning to discuss details. They
were concerned (as was I) that I would be missing the day-long training on
Friday since I teach two classes on Fridays.
Wednesday
Wednesday morning: I
met the dean and her boss. Both eyed me with what looked like doubts of if I
could in fact be a good representative for their school.
Throughout all of this, I’m feeling a lot of pressure because I keep
hearing how this competition is such a big deal. I’m being told that I will
help my school gain face and I will help the relationship between ELIC and our
school. … All I can keep thinking is about the time I was supposed to be
helping build guanxi (relationship) with some businessmen for a friend and I
accidentally gave all the businessmen bad luck because I failed at tearing the
paper on the pot of fish head soup. (I don’t really think that gave them bad
luck, but their faces said I had and I don’t forget that!) I know the teacher
who was Question Master last year, she’s very intelligent, she’s experienced
(over 5 years in China) and she’s well respected … those are big shoes to fill.
Moreover,
I’d only met the dean once before at a different speech competition where I
judged. I currently do not teach classes in her English department so neither
of us really knew each other.
During
the meeting, I’m informed that the school will not reschedule my classes so I
can attend the training. Instead, my dean’s boss will wait to leave with me
immediately following my evening class. My class dismisses at 6:00. I would
leave directly from the classroom to drive with him to the train station where
we would rush to catch the train to DaQing. DaQing is about 2 hours away by train. We would arrive around
9:30 pm and we would hope to arrive at the hotel by 10:00 pm. After we arrived
at the hotel, I would be given the regulations for the event and I would be
expected to self-study and be prepared by morning. All of this was followed
with my favorite phrase, “Okay?” … As if
saying no was an option.
Wednesday – Thursday
– Classes wise, I have a lot to plan for in the next few weeks. This week
is my final class with my Sophomores, their final is next week. I am also
preparing to begin having about seven 30 minute long consultations each week
with my post-graduate students so they can do their homework assignments. So,
my workspace became covered in post-it notes filled with to-do lists and
reminders. I needed to get as much finished before Friday morning as possible,
because I wasn’t sure when we would return to Harbin on Sunday.
Friday
9:00 am – Make up
midterm exam with a student
10:00 am– 12:00 pm–
Class
12:15 pm– 2:15 pm–
(Interesting) Lunch with a teacher …
This is another story for another day.
2:15 pm– 3:00 pm–
Finish organizing and preparing things for the evening / weekend.
3:00 pm– 3:30 pm–
Try to lay down to rest. This was interrupted with a call from another boss
requesting that I pull a favor that I think is unethical for one of my
students. … So much for rest.
4:00 pm– 6:00 pm–
Class
6:08 pm – Receive
call from dean’s boss asking where I was because we needed to leave. (I was on
the last flight of stairs.)
6:10 pm – 7:20 pm
– Rush to train station. Stop at KFC for him to buy me almost everything on the
menu for my supper including coffee #1 of the weekend. In the train station,
there are rarely open seats so we stood along the wall while he handed me
different parts of my meal (he’d ate before he picked me up). I felt like a
circus display because many people in the train station watched me scarfing
down my meal because the dean’s boss seemed to be very anxious that we were
going to miss the train. He was taking care of all the paperwork so he had my
ticket and never told me what train we were on or the departure or arrival
times. (Basically, here I’m only informed of details they find necessary, which
are often different than the details I’m used to having.)
7:20 pm – We
begin to board the train. It is standing room only. (Remember I don’t have my
ticket, so I have no idea what seat I’m assigned to.) I try my best to stay
directly behind my dean’s boss, but if you’ve ever waded through a sea of
people, you’ll know this is difficult for even the most skilled. We do get
separated, but only after we’re on the train. He points to the seat I’ll be in
and I weave my way down the aisle to the seat.
9:30 pm – My
dean’s boss gets up and tells me it is time for us to go. (They don’t announce
the stops on the train, you just have to know when to stand up and stand next
to the door.) I gather my things and we stand next to the exit.
9:35 pm – We’re
greeted by two nice ladies who guide us to a van. They talk happily to him in
Chinese. I sit quietly, resting my eyes in the darkness of the ride to the
hotel, sensing that there is a long night ahead. I’m already feeling tired at
this point because it’s been a full day of being present with people. Yet, the
coffee in my system (I don’t drink coffee on a regular basis.) has my body
feeling awake.
Around 10:00 pm - We arrive at the hotel. A camera man greets
us and takes our mug shots. The ladies check us into our hotel rooms. During
this time, I learn they work at the university in DaQing where the competition
will be held. They escort us to our rooms. Informing us that breakfast will be
at 6:30 am and the competition will begin at 8:00 am at the school. I keep
wondering when they will give me information about my job. I’d heard that the
questions would need to be related to the students’ speeches so I would need to
read the speeches in advance. As they leave me at my room, they inform me they
will check to see if I can receive the speeches tonight and they may return
later.
Within
minutes, there is a knock at my door. One of the ladies and now an older
gentleman with his little hotel slippers on and a notebook and bag in his hand
are standing at my door. I invite them in. They play with my thermostat
(because the room was sitting at about 60 degrees even though the thermostat
said about 78 degrees), the lady offers me hot water (which I decline), but she
fills my hot water kettle in the bathroom anyways and sets it to boil. She then
leaves.
There
were no chairs in the hotel room, so I offer the gentleman a seat on one of the
beds. He hands me the bag containing two textbooks (gifts from the company that
is hosting the competition). He fidgets nervously with the notebook as he
apologizes for the way I’m receiving the information about the competition. He
tells me the other Question Master (they have one international male and one
international female serve as a team) is unavailable to meet since I’ve arrived
so late. He comments about how the other Question Master is much older (and has a look on his face that he doubts
I’m old enough to be a teacher).
He explains that I should read each
speech and write a different question for each contestant. He opens up the
notebook. It’s filled with 56 speeches, each about 1 page long (3 minutes
spoken). After a few more instructions, and many apologies he decides it is
okay for him to leave.
During this whole process I am trying my best to be optimistic. To have
a mei shi （没事儿）(doesn’t
matter) attitude about how this is a lot of work to expect me to do this late
at night. All the while he’s apologizing, what I really wanted to say is,
“Okay, I get the point. Now can you leave so I can begin to work because my
eyes already feel so tired. They’re burning from exhausting and second hand
smoke. You’ve just given me 56 pages of text to read, decipher and ask a
meaningful, clear, concise question that can be answered by a student in their
second language in only one minute.
10:22 pm – The
gentleman leaves.
10:23 pm – I call
one of my teammates almost in tears because I’m completely overwhelmed and know
there’s absolutely no way I can accomplish the feat I’ve been given in my own
strength.
All
week the team had tried their best to support me in what lied ahead. We’d hoped
I would receive the speeches electronically before the weekend so we could
divide and conquer the question drafting.
We talked for a few minutes. She encouraged me that He does
provide strength and that He is present and He knew I’d be in this place at
this time. We talked with Papa together asking for Him to give me clarity of
thought, to be able to skim the speeches quickly to know the main idea and to
think of a good question quickly. After talking with her, another teammate also
asked how I was doing and we talked with Papa together as well. She stayed on
the phone with me for a while so I could have her input on some of the first
questions I was writing. I had not judged the school level of this competition,
so I wasn’t sure what level questions should be written at.
10:30 pm – Saturday,
1:30 am – I work for hours skimming the speeches. About speech #11 I’m
already to notice phrases, ideas and sometimes entire paragraphs that are
hauntingly similar to each other. I’m annoyed by the phrase: “… will sparks
collide out…”What does that even mean?!? I drink cup after cup of hot water to try to
warm up and to stay awake. My eyes by the end feel so worn out I don’t feel
like I can read another speech. I end the night on speech #28. Setting my alarm
for 5:00 am, I prepare for bed.
Saturday
1:30 am – 2:00 am – I
can’t sleep because I know that at the foot of my bed sits a stack of unread
speeches that must be read between 5:00 am – 6:30 am (also leaving time to
shower and get dressed). In order to process through some thoughts, I decide to
journal some. I considered sharing part of that journal entry, but I’ve decided
not to, because the attitude it displays is not reflective of Grace. I send a
text message to my team asking for them to be interceding for me because I know
I’m in over my head. As I again turn out the light, I ask Papa for rest. For
Him to help me feel warm under the extra blanket I’ve now placed on the bed and
for Him to help my brain to just rest in Him.
Throughout this whole night, I found myself slipping back into the high
school debater of yesteryear. The feeling I had before big tournaments when
we’ve have to leave the house at 4 am.
2:00 am –
5:00 am – SLEEP!
5:20 am – After
pressing snooze once (or twice) I do get up and decide to shower first to wake
up for the day.
6:00 am – A
teammate calls to make sure I’m up and to check in. She encourages me that He
is present.
6:30 am – 6:45 am –
I eat breakfast at the table with my dean’s boss. I feel sick to my stomach
because I don’t typically get up that early … and I generally prefer to get
more than three hours of sleep. He tells me we will in fact be checking out of
the hotel at 7:19 am (I don’t know why the time was so specific.)
Good to know, because the previous information I’d had was that we
would stay Saturday night in DaQing and we would take a train home to Harbin
Sunday morning.
6:45 am – 7:15 am – I
write several more questions for speeches and gather my bags. I had to bring my
things from teaching class so I had more things than the Chinese teachers … yes
I felt some perceived judgment.
7:15 am – I’m
rushed out to the bus and we leave the hotel within in minutes in route to the
school.
7:30 am – We
arrive at the school. The first thing I hear said about me is, “Huh!?! Ta shi
liuxiusheng or waijiao?” “她是留学生，外教？” The deans from the other
school try to intersect me following my dean’s boss as he’s entering the
judge’s lounge.
I
know I should be used to it by now, but it does still get to me when I can tell
someone is doubting my ability to do a job because they think I’m too young. I
knew the meaning of their question was them asking my dean’s boss if he’d
brought an international student instead of a foreign teacher. … Sometimes I
wish they’d just include my age when they sign me up for jobs so they could get
the shock factor out when I don’t have to see it.
My dean’s boss says I am in fact a teacher so they allow me
to enter the judge’s lounge. Here it’s clear to me that they all know each
other, but I don’t know any of them. I can tell some are ranked higher than
others, but I don’t know who is higher, who is lower, why or what I should be
doing. I do as I’m told and I take a seat on the couch and begin observing.
7:45 am – The
gentleman from the night before comes in and tells me to bring all my things
because I will meet the other question master who is much older than me (thanks for the reminder). I’m brought
into the large auditorium partially filled with students and perhaps some
teachers. On the stage are two podiums (one in the center and one left of
center). Just inside the door is a table with two microphones. I’m introduced
to Tracy. He is a teacher in DaQing, originally from North Carolina (I later
learn he is 55 years old, has lived in China for 4 years, he has been a
question master previously.) We agree that he will ask the first question for
the odd numbered contestants, and I will be first for the even numbered
contestants.
8:00 am – The competition begins with opening speeches. Both Tracy
and I listen to some, clap when appropriate (when others clap) and meanwhile
are glancing through the speech in front of us brainstorming a question. I
learn that Tracy had seen the notebook on Friday, but they’d forgotten to give
it to him until Saturday morning. So, in fact, I was actually ahead of him in
having questions prepared for the day.
8:00 am – 5:30 pm - The
competition lasts all day. After the first five contestants, the judges leave
to discuss how they were grading. No one said anything to Tracy and I about our
questions so I took that to mean proceed as normal. As the competition
progresses, I start to really enjoy it. (Around question #19 I start to get a
little nervous that my questions will start to not make sense because the
status of my brain when I was writing them. As the day wore on we had a break
around 10:30 am where one of the deans basically forces me to drink a cup of
coffee (Cup #2 of the weekend).
After lunch, tired really started to set in. That feeling of
tired, when you know you’re just staring off into space, but you aren’t really
seeing anything. Some students had to ask me to repeat myself. I never know if
it’s because my speech was unclear, wording was too difficult, or if they just
can’t believe I’m asking them that type of question. During breaks some
students would tell me my questions were very difficult and everyone was afraid
of my questions. They wanted to know where my ideas come from and what I expect
in their answers. I assured them that my speeches come directly from their
speeches (often I would quote their own words) and basically ask them to
explain what they’d previously asserted. Or, I would find an inconsistency in
their speech and ask them a question where they needed to choose one opinion to
support since their ideas were mutually exclusive. It was fun because it
reminded me of doing cross-examination in debate.
Some of the deans congratulated me throughout the day on the caliber of
my questions because they want the students to be forced to think critically.
This encouraged me a lot!
This encouraged me a lot!
5:30 pm – 5:50 pm –
Picture time – Awards are given and pictures are taken. I was touched by
how committed these students are to learning. I was inspired by how the deans
who judged were willing to give their Saturday to intently listen to a foreign
language for an entire day. I was exhausted, I can only imagine how they felt.
(As Question Master, I only had to ask the questions, I wasn’t grading the
students’ answers.)
6:00 pm – 7:00 pm – The
judges and leaders of the school in DaQing invite Tracy and I to join them for
a big dinner. This is the first time I’ve attended a banquet’esque type meal
for a school without my team. I waited to be told where I should sit. The dean
from another school in Harbin who by this time has become my favorite dean from
among the judges instructed me that I should sit one seat away from the
smokers. (Why I liked this dean: He was sarcastic … not a popular
characteristic in Chinese people … and he had made a point throughout the day
to occasionally translate some of the judges’ conversations that were happening
in Chinese so I could feel like I was part of their community. He was also the
one who praised my work as a Question Master the most.) This placed me in
probably the most honored seat at our table. The president of the university in
DaQing sat in the most honored seat at the other table.
As I looked around the table, I was proud.
I was looking at the faces of educators who cared deeply
about the futures of their students and their country. I was looking at people
who knew the importance of being able to think. Their eyes were tired. Some
almost fell asleep before the food came. They had endured a day in their second
language because they had a passion for education (or because it was their job
or their role to do so).
Throughout the dinner, my favorite dean provided our
entertainment. Some of their conversations took place in Chinese, with the
deans near me occasionally providing a little translation so I could follow. My
favorite dean joked that he was thinking of a song that was called Lora…. Quite glad he never thought of one … He
also would say questions I’d asked students that he remembered were very good
even when the students’ overlooked the meaning of the question.
For example:
·
“Can people have a greater impact while they are
alive or after they are dead?” – Asked in response to a student asserting in
her speech that both Confucius and Socrates had a greater impact after they’d
died. – The student’s answer was, “Of course, while they are alive. … After
they are dead, they can do no more.” – During the competition this caused my
favorite dean to literally throw his hands up in the air in surprise, causing
those who understood why to laugh.
·
“What would the world be like if there was no
more technology?” – He liked this because it provided many options for the
student to choose.
·
“If Confucius was a student in a class Socrates
taught today, how would Confucius act?”
·
“If Confucius and Socrates were co-teachers and
planned a lesson together, what is an example of an activity they would do?”
Toasts were made in celebration.
By the end of the dinner, in some ways I felt I’d earned my place in this
community of educators.
I was no longer the liuxuesheng （留学生）posing as a teacher （外教）.
I hope that the work I did over the weekend does bring face
to our university and that it will positively impact the relationship ELIC has
with our school. As I’ve mentioned, my age, or lack thereof, is a source of
insecurity for me. Perhaps because in this culture, it’s acceptable for people
to comment on one’s age. I am reminded of Paul’s reminder to Timothy that he
should not allow others to look down upon him in his youth. In many ways, I
feel I can relate better with students than with teachers and especially deans,
because I am closer to my student’s ages. This year, I actually teach some
students who are older than me.
Above all, I’m grateful.
I’m grateful that we serve a Papa who is present, even when we aren’t.
I’m grateful that He is our source of strength, when alone we’re just a ball of wax with a string.
I’m grateful that He is good, that He is a Father who sees and a Father who cares.
I’m grateful for the five cups of coffee they gave me over the course of 24 hours, even though I feel I need to detox for several days.
I’m grateful that we have been given the ability to think and to reason.
I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to ask questions that will possibly spur some to think more deeply. I know some of the questions have already encouraged me to ask more questions.
I’m grateful that I did debate in high school so that the job came easier this weekend.
I’m grateful that we don’t do life alone.
I’m grateful that we are part of a Body that desires to support, to encourage and to lift us up when we fall down.
I’m grateful that I can be here, even when it’s difficult.
I’m grateful for the perspective Papa brings when we ask Him.
I’m grateful that while I listened to 56 speeches, many that questioned if we can ever know truth or experience our dreams, that I can rest in confidence that Truth does exist and desires to be known!
I’m grateful for people like you, who understand that as part of the Body we can learn from one another and we can encourage and spur one another as we seek to know Truth.
