This might become a very interesting time for me. I've just started working for a man named Mr. Ma, teaching his 12 year old daughter Corrina English at their home. I'm teaching her 4 days a week, and staying at the home for those four days. Howard set up the job and has thoroughly warned me about Corrina's character problems. The root of all her problems is that her daddy is rich. Her whole life she has gotten everything she's ever wanted and has probably never heard anyone tell her no. My job isn't so much teaching her English but rather teaching her how to be a human being. I'm not sure how I will do that. I think the first step is to lay down the ground rules that if she is rude to me, I'm not going to be nice to her, I will put my foot down and I will demand that she study English. As far as making her a better human being...well I suppose we'll see about that.
My Chinese has come in handy at this point. Corrina lives in a two story apartment on the 11th floor of The JuinJin Garden apartment complex with two other girls and her Ayi. Her Ayi doesn't' speak any English and the two of us are getting along awkwardly with the Chinese I know.
At this point, I know enough Chinese to be thoroughly confused. I can speak enough and make enough sense that people feel secure with rambling off in full complex conversations that I have to sit and try to decipher with my mixed understanding, weak grammar and spotty vocabulary. With common things, I will often understand the sentence and meaning of what they're saying, cataloging the new words they used into my memory for later use. At other times, they throw whole new concepts at me and phrases I've never heard at break neck speed. At those times, I probably look a little dumbfounded as I'll be scanning the sentence in my mind and breaking it apart as fast as I can, mouthing the words that I know and don't know. "Okay," I think "he said something about truth, a leader or a boss and a good mood, but what was the rest of it?"
It's harder still when many times, the words I think I recognize aren't really the words I think they are. For each sound, something we'd call a word, like "shou", there are four different tones and four completely different meanings: receive, hand, ripe, leader and thin (shou even has two different characters for the same tone, so it has five meanings and not four like usual) so I have to hope I know all four and that with context I'll know which one they're using, and beyond that, I have to hope that I heard them right and that they didn't really say "shuo".
Just as in any other language, there is more than one way to say something, so even though I'm familiar with the phrase "the faster the better"yue quai yue hao", they could use any number of other phrases for the same meaning that I don't already know, at which point, not matter how eager I am to understand and use "yue quai yue hao",I'm at a loss.
When I first met Mr. Ma, the only English he used was "hello", and let Howard translate everything, but it turns out he has a basic handle on the language, so between my broken Chinese and his broken English, we can communicate pretty well. Luckily his friend Cathy was there with us yesterday to translate and was very helpful. Unfortunately when they are speaking Chinese they usually use Cantonese which I can't understand at all. Mr. Ma said he'd use only Mandarin but seems to have forgotten that.
When I first met Cathy she came off as a very businesslike woman who took no shit and was measuring me from the other side of the large round dimsum table with a hard skeptical eye. I felt that at any moment she'd inspect me like a mule, measuring my inch by inch, to see if I could stand up to the task. I've had some experience dealing with the psychology of business meetings and people in general lately, so I simply took over the conversation and explained to her what my plans were for Corrina. I was detailed, to the point and never stopped for approval. I wasn't asking for permission or seeing if I would please anyone, but simply laid out my plan with a "take it of leave it" attitude. She took to me well after that and decided to sit next to me at the table to continue talking with me for the rest of the evening. She was very helpful and my only regret is that she won't be around much throughout this. She warned me about Corrina as well, explaining that often Corrina would refuse to have her English lesson with her last teacher and went so far as to drop out of school entirely for 6 months so she could spend more time practicing tennis and resting. This girl is a piece of work, and I'll be coming in long after her habits have been well established and difficult to change or remove.
I was originally interested in this job as a way to integrate my study of linguistics and to use it to spearhead my study in language acquisition and retention. There's a chance I'll have some opportunity to do this, but right now it seems that I will be more of a nanny than anything else. My family and friends know how I feel about children. I like few of them and only at small intervals of time and definitely not in large groups. It will only be the three of them and most of the time I'll be teaching Corina alone, but she will be a handful. My guess is that she will display many of the characteristics I find so difficult with women and children, so we'll have our bumps, and I'll have to be patient. I think Mr. Ma would be most pleased if I didn't take this the direction of becoming her best friend, despite the fact that he asked me to treat her like a little sister. Being nice to her won't gain me anything. In time, if she learns to respect me, this can happen all on it's own, but I'm not in the market for a spoiled brat for a friend. If she can turn around with some help, then I wouldn't mind it at all and it would be good experience for me. I don't tend to get myself involved in situations like this, so I'm sure the newness of this will lend something to me in ways of child psychology. I'm sure it will be helpful somewhere.
Corrina's main focus is Tennis. She's training to be a professional tennis player, and soon will be traveling for tennis competitions around the world. As I have been told, I will be going with her for these trips, though I'm sure I wouldn't be alone. I understand her commitment to tennis, but she'll be nothing if she's not educated. If nothing else, her and her family won't be respected and they'll lose face on the foreign market. Tennis will only last so long. Even if she reaches the professional level and becomes famous in any way, eventually that will run out and she'll need something to fall back on. Many women here believe that's not a problem, that at that point she could just marry and be done with it. Corrina probably thinks the same thing, but pretty soon even China will know just how far that won't get someone. That's a fact I'd like to get through to her.
