Saturday is Monday

The pattern has been that every semester, the department hands us the class schedule two, at most three, days before the start of classes.  The foreign teachers get together for a marathon meeting of divvying up the class load, and then set up times for planning groups (those teaching the same class) to meet together in the day or two before classes begin.  It’s a chaotic way to start the semester, but we chalk it up as life in China and have come to expect the mayhem.

Imagine our shock, therefore, when the entire schedule for this semester was handed to us before we left to travel.  We had the entire schedule in our hands at the beginning of January.  Before we packed our bags full of sunscreen, flip flops, and t-shirts we each knew what subjects and what specific classes of students we would teach.  Granted, we held the schedule loosely knowing things could change, but we had a good idea of where we would be March 1st.

The schedule, shockingly, has not changed (yet).  However, tentatively the start date of the semester has.  Sort of.  Yesterday my teammate Mark was chatting to some of the people in the Foreign Affairs Office about taking a trip to Beijing to have his arm checked out (which he broke riding a motorbike in Thailand…another story for another day).  He was talking about how he didn’t want to leave until he finished his classes on Tuesday to which they replied, “Oh, classes don’t start until Wednesday.”  Mark came to report the news to us, to which my response was, “Seriously!  Am I ever going to get to start work again?”  I’m sorry folks, I love my job and I’m just plumb tired of vacation.  I want to be in a classroom…NOW!  Anyways, Wu made the call to confirm the change with the department.

Technically, we still are starting on “March 1st”.  Only now, March 6th has become March 1st.  Welcome to the twisted Chinese logic of making-up holidays.  Sunday is Lantern Festival in China, a holiday that brings Spring Festival to a close and restores normalcy to the stores, restaurants, and the rest of the nation that’s been taking a rest.  Consequently, my logic works out that they didn’t want to have students returning to school on the festival.  Which would be great if the students actually knew classes didn’t start until Wednesday; the ones I’ve talked to are unaware of the new start date.  However, it appears March 1st has been moved to March 6th, and March 2nd has been moved to March 13th.  Technically we still begin on the first, it’s just that Saturday has become Monday.  Tentatively.  Yes, that’s the phraseology of the department.  This latest updated schedule is tentative.  Sometime in the next week (let’s hope), I should be back to work.

On another note, I highly recommend reading article and this article about the plight of many recent university grads in China.  While searching for employment in the big cities, many of these grads have formed communities called “Ant hills” on the outskirts of town.  It is likely that some of my former students are a part of these communities now, and that some current students are headed that way.