Travels with Dad: Part One

Begin 17 Jan. 2007 with an afternoon flight out of Weihai airport. Flew to Beijing where we took the shuttle bus downtown to meet up with my cousin, Josh. After a short rest, we took a black cab over to eat Indian food. It was my first Indian food since, well, my last visit to Beijing in October. Moseyed back to Josh's place where we watched the film Mean Girls. I found myself rather relieved for not having to experience such things in high school because I was either a.) oblivious to such things or b.) they didn't exist at Hillsboro.

We did some light touring on the 18th--the Drum and Bell Tower where we tackled some stairs:

and saw some (duh) drums and bells:

We ate some scrumptious Mediterranean pizza for lunch in one of Beijing's many hutongs. That pretty much made my day and I don't remember the rest of the afternoon, except for the fact that we saw some people ice-skating, if you want to call it that--perhaps push-chair skating would be more accurate?--on a partially thawing cannal AND that we witnessed the acrobatic show. The only thing better than the acrobatic show at full price (120-150 rmb) is the acrobatic show at a serious discount, which we managed to snag through a friend of Josh's. She-yeah!

The Ups and Downs of Exams

With exams come and gone, I feel like I should reflect upon the experience which was a mixture of delight and terror. The delight first.. we thought up a purely genius exam. We carefully constructed an exam which would not only allow our students to display their increased abilities and knowledge, but also would keep us entertained through the gruelling hours of grading. Such exercises included reading the following essay and describing how it was developed, point out keywords, etc.:

Before I went to bed last night, I set my alarm clock for 6 a.m. When my alarm went off this morning, I jumped out of bed and quickly got dressed. Prior to setting out for the day, I ate a small breakfast of porridge and an egg. Smiling, I left the house because I couldn't help but think about where I was headed and what I would be doing--buying a donkey. The first part in my trip required that I take the No. 12 bus downtown. After arriving downtown, I walked to the bus station and bought the first train ticket available out to the countryside. Then, I sat on the bench and wiatied for the train to arrive. A short hour later, I was snuggled into my cozy train seat and dreaming of what I would name my new donkey. Some time later, I arrived at the farm, inhaled deeply, and smiled once more. The brays of donkeys could be heard for miles and the instant I saw Jack, I knew that he would make the perfect pet donkey. Just before leaving the farm, I paid Farmer MacDonald 40,000 RMB for him. At last, I mounted my new donkey's back and began the long journey back home.

Another section of FORM A of the exam included an essay where the students were to compare and/or contrast the three writing teachers in the room. There were two females and one male and most of the answers involved various errors, all of them more than amusing. Here are a few:

"Rachel is married and has two children, whereas Chamberlain's marriagement is a mystery."

"Neal and Chamberlain are different. Neal is a male and has a bear whereas Chamberlain is a female and doesn't have a bear, but that is mostly a difference due to the difference in gender."

All in all, the administering and grading of the exam was interesting. We had auditorium halls for all of the writing exams where all of the students sat and took the exams together. Little time commitement on our part, which was good. The oral exams were done is smaller groups and overall successful, though not really that exciting. I spent all weekend grading the exams and tallying up grades, etc.

We were told that we had 3 days to grade the exams once the first one was given, and I took that to heart and graded accordingly. However, the computers didn't even open up to enter grades until mid-week and even then the office was telling us that we would have to re-do our grades to fit the system. We had final grades and partial grades--the computer would only take 3 partial grades and a final grade. We pretty much refused to sit there and re-work all of our grades (especially since they had given us no guidance at all on how the system worked despite repeated attempts to find out this information... we were just told to relax because everything would work out.) Some boss man finally agreed to let us enter the final grades and that went rather quickly once we got started. Then, there was a fiasco with a mis-entered grade and a student calling me in tears and my boss telling me not to worry, that she would explain the situation to the student, and the wrong grade (10 points lower than it should have been) would remain in place. I flat out refused to say this was okay and asked if we could negotiate something since it would be a pity for the student to suffer for a mistake that was not her own. And, finally, the computer program which "absolutely could not be re-opened or modified" was re-opened and the grade changed....

After the whole grade issue, what frustrated me most was the fact that no one cared enough about what was right, what was in the student's best interest to do his job. And, once again, the student has to pay for this lack of motivation and interest on the part of the institution. It makes me sick. grrr....

And now, we are all free. Until 1 March, that is. We are to return to Weihai and get our new books which are bound to have yet to arrive from the where-ever-land from which them come. Then will come the rush to throw together yet another set of syllabi on the fly and lesson plans and all that jazz...