Saturday, May 26, 2007

Back to Blogger, Censor-free from China

Okay maybe not "censor-free" but still, I can access Blogger now and not Xanga. What is up?

The first nightmare of teaching happened 2 days ago. Something I never thought would happen to me, but something that happened quite frequently to every nerdy, foolishly creepy (or just plain strange) teacher I've had over the years. My seventh grade history teacher for example. The one that made us do "clusters." He would have ran into this kind of embarrassment often but I never thought I would.

After 2 hours of group presentations in one of my oral english classes, I came up to the front of the class to talk about the final exam and to simply give the students the exact date and time and so on and so forth. After I dismissed the class, two girls came up to me---almost unable to even look me in the eyes but displaying the biggest grin their pudgy Chinese cheeks could muster---and one of them gestered for me to come closer to her. I leaned forward and put my ear to her mouth as she whispered, "Mr. K...um....your trousers...are uh....(point to my crotch)...yeah."

I looked down and sure enough, my olive-colored Express khakis were open. The most serious case of XYZ I had ever seen and I quickly zipped up and said "Thank you so much, but why didn't you tell me sooner?" The girl shook her head in embarrassment and for the first real time as a teacher here in China, I was blushing with near shame.

"I'm one of those teachers" I thought. "Obvlivous to anything around him, single, talks too much, and forgets to zip up whenever he goes to the bathroom. Sad."

Maybe this comes with approaching one's quarter-century birthday?

2 comments:

Chalupa said...

Dude, at least you don't go commando to work.

Good to see you back on blogger.

nateshorb said...

Nev, I can sympathize.

I thought I would escape my first two years of teaching unscathed, but in the final few weeks it happened.

But the student who noticed handled it so graciously! It was a student I didn't have the best relationship with, so I was very surprised. But he noticed it at the beginning of class, pulled me aside, and whispered to me. He didn't say anything to anyone! It was our little secret!

I was so impressed and grateful, and a little embarrassed, but nearly as embarrassed as I could have been.