Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Attack of the exams

It's strange to enter exam season here, because students seem to get sucked into some kind of black hole. Students who were always free to hang out before are now glued to the chair in their study room of choice. Imagine the best crammer you ever knew in college in America, and the worst Chinese student could blow them out of the water. A student who hasn't been to class since the first day four months ago can spend 16 hours studying one textbook everyday for two or three days and learn everything there is to know in order to pass an exam. These exams are usually 70-100% of the grade for the class. No wonder I have trouble enforcing attendance in my classes! But now that students are getting exams out of the way, more and more of them are disappearing and heading home. The usual hustle and bustle of campus has receded to a whisper and a breeze. So in about 1 week, most of the students I know will be gone, and just about every foreigner in town that I know. About 5 days after that, I will hopefully also be on my way south to beautiful Yunnan province. South of the clouds, that's what the name means. Kunming, the Spring City, where the weather is wonderfully mild all year long. Dali, a place where (I've been told) you can sit back and take a vacation from traveling for a while. Lijiang, supposedly one of the most beautiful scenic areas in all of China. Xishuangbana, an area near the Vietnam border containing some of China's rare and unspoiled minority cultures. I'm excited! But before that, I get to plan oral English exams for about 80 more students. THEN I'll finally be done. Well, once I match up their English and Chinese names so I can turn in the grades to the administration. So far, there's only one name that I have no match for. Oops! I'll work it out. :)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Who is going with you? I'm the mom and I need to know:)

Mama

ps the blog wouldn't let me log on with my username so I'm anonymous today