As I walked home from class today, I was struck anew at the reality of our life in a developing nation. Yes, China has some pretty advanced locations, but those modern technologies are right beside last century developments.
Our classes are required classes for all non-English major graduate students in the university. Even though oral English is required for all students, the importance of the classes is still rather low on the priority level. Our classes are huge (usually around 60 students, sometimes, more), which makes it a challenge to give students enough opportunities to speak. Students are placed in classes according to written test scores, not based on oral evaluations, thus some classes can have some very fluent speakers as well as some people whose spoken abilities lag far behind their reading and test-taking abilities.
Our classrooms are usually in the oldest buildings on campus. Our university celebrated its 100th birthday in 2002 and our classrooms are in original structures. The rooms have high ceilings, cement floors and wooden casement windows that can easily be blown off their hinges in a good windstorm. We still use blackboards (actually, they are green) and we usually go through quite a bit of very dusty chalk during each lesson.
Walking home, I noticed anew how dusty our city is. I don’t know why it hit me today since dust is one of my main struggles in this area. We live in a very dry area, south of a major desert, so there is just no escaping the dust. However, the grayness seemed extra sharp to me.
I’ve been giving exams all week. This is both an exhilarating process and an extremely painful process. Due to the January 1 holiday on Friday, I have all seven classes crammed into four days, as well as four hours of office hours. I’m tired and irritable . . . counting down to Friday morning when I can sleep late! While we are remembering the Twelve Days of Christmas (a special remembrance for each day), today, I simply found myself lacking joy in the journey and was feeling quite fatigued instead.
I walked into the grocery store hoping to be inspired by something to cook for dinner. Nope, nothing there. Instead, I headed over to the produce market (we’d call it a Farmers Market in the States) and stocked up on veggies. I came home, ignored the mess in the living room (it looked it could be declared a disaster area) and went to the kitchen to slice, dice, chop and wok. (My cleaver/butcher knife is my best friend in the kitchen.) I got the potatoes put into the oven for roasting and sliced some green onions. I put water on to boil for some broccoli that I would use in the stir fry I was going to prepare. I was getting ready to put the rice in the rice cooker when the entire apartment went dark. Yes, the electricity went out again.
Sigh. Turns out that Rachel had turned on the electric heater in her bedroom and set it on high. That really puts a strain on the wiring in our apartment and with all the kitchen stuff I had going, the system was overloaded and blew out.
We cannot reset the fuse ourselves as it’s located in a locked utility room on the first floor.. We called the maintenance department and they said they would send someone over. An hour later, power still had not been restored, so we called again. Turns out that the key to the utility room is kept in a central key closet . . . that was locked . . . that only one person had a key to . . . who had already gone home! The earliest we will receive power will be 8:30 tomorrow morning . . . and we’ll probably have to call to remind them.
I’m normally pretty relaxed about things like this, but tonight, I must admit to being irritated. This is such a low-tech problem that doesn’t need a high-tech solution. A key to the key closet isn’t on campus! It doesn’t seem too complicated to make sure that someone one campus has access to this closet 24/7 . . . but I must remember that I’m not here to change the system.
We are so blessed! Art had brought home some food from one of our favorite restaurants, so we had a good dinner. We have an extra apartment across the hall that wasn’t affected by the power outage so the kids had a place to do homework. Art moved the oven over there so the potatoes could be finished and they made for a good bedtime treat. Art’s in the other apartment doing some work. I’m sitting here, typing on a fairly new computer, accessing the downstairs neighbor’s wireless internet. While the candlelight makes things romantic and conjures up images of the “good old days,” we have to remember that it’s not quite “Little House on the Prairie” with all this technology around us.
But it is a good representation of China. Modern and post-modern; industrial and pre-industrial . . . all stitched together on the same garment. The style of the garment has yet to be determined as the pattern is constantly changing. However, it most certainly will be unique and one-of-a-kind. This, too, is China!
