English Spoken Here

I just loved my class today. We discussed a Hemingway story and a Russell Banks story, and I really felt like it was the first time when I was truly myself with my students. I've been trying to be so careful about using idiom-free English with them, to use simple words, and to enunciate clearly, that I think my personality just got totally lost in all of that over thinking. Today, I decided to see what would happen if I spoke at my usual clip, tossed in a few slang terms, and started to do what I generally do when I teach: tell stories about my life or my observations to clarify some point I'm making. Now, they could have been faking it, but they seemed to follow right along. When they were stumped, they let me know. For instance, they were totally perplexed by the expression "it was a close call." That involved a lot of stories by way of explanation.

I have felt like I'm adding to their English vocabulary by teaching them cliches of one kind or another. We had a conversation after class the other day about the meaning of "go with the flow" and "it's like a game of musical chairs.". What kind of English teacher teaches her students cliches? At home, I spend time asking them to avoid cliches. Go figure. I keep waiting for them to ask me to teach them swear words. Am I the only person in the world who wanted to learn dirty words in foreign languages?

On the bus home tonight, I watched a small contingent of young people near me push a young woman closer and closer to me until we were standing side by side. She stared at me intently in that way I now recognize as the I-speak-English-and-am-dying-to-speak-to-you expression. I gave her a big smile and said, "hi." We talked for the next forty minutes. She asked me who my favorite writers were, where I came from in the US, whether or not I was homesick, if I had had any preconceptions of Chinese people shattered yet, and where I'd travel to when I left Xi'an. I told her that two friends would join me in Beijing, and that we'd also go to Guilin and Shanghai. She told me, "you MUST go to Hangzhou. That is where I am from and I will show you around.". I told her that my friends and I had discussed the idea of going there on the bullet train from Shanghai, and she insisted that we had to go. She tells me that the Chinese consider this town to be Paradise on earth. Well, the bus came to the old campus where I live, and we both got off there. We chatted some more, and she told me that her English name is Rachel, and that she would be returning to Hangzhou in the morning to stay for ten months. She asked me for my card and wondered if it would be okay for her to email me so that I would know how to get in touch with her if I came to her hometown. She told me that my "lovely smile" had put her at ease and that she hoped she would meet me again in Hangzhou. Oh my. She was truly the sweetest thing. I think my conversation with her has helped me see that I need to talk to more people who give me that look. They want to practice their English, and I want to learn more about life here in China. I'm going to have to hang out my shingle: English Spoken Here.

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