You are cool! Do you think we are cool?

My internship is in full swing now. Even though at first I didn’t want to teach English, now I am glad I did. I have only taught three classes, but each one has been amazing and it appears that the teachers are actually learning from me. Somewhere deep inside I have good teaching skills – who knew! (One teacher liked that I had the student make sample sentence of the vocabulary words instead of memorizing the definitions).

Anyway, along with teaching English comes a little devil they like to call English corner. English corner can be awful most of the time because you immediately become a caged guinea pig. First, you go into the auditorium or classroom where English corner is taking place. Second you are surrounded by over 50 Chinese students. Third, these 50 student all start to ask you questions about EVERYTHING, and I mean everything from you personal life, to politics, to why the sky is blue. Below are some examples of questions I have gotten:

Q: What is your opinion on U.S. gun control?
A: I’m not a politician and it can vary from state to state, but they are still talking about it. (At this point another student cuts me off and says, “Carols (it’s too hard to say Carlos in China so Carols is much easier) is our friend and I think we should talk about happy subjects.”) Moving on…

Q: Do you like music? What kinds? Do you know Michael Jackson?
A: Yes, and Yes, and Yes I like Michael Jackson. (After my reply their start to name off some other their favorite music such as: Linkin Park, Avril, Backstreet Boys, and other weird music we listened to in the 90’s.)

Q: Are you single? Do you like the Chinese girls? Do you think we are cool?
A: This question started off with a huge laugh from me, then I decided to answer while keeping a straight face. Yes, I am single (follow-up questions: Why don’t you have a girlfriend, do many college students have girlfriends?). Dang gurl, could you be more obvious that you are in love with me!

There were also other types of comments and questions that I thought were a little inappropriate, but I tried my best to answer then all. They students also love to comment on every article of clothing you are wearing, what you look like, and also like to make comparisons. For example, my students said that I look like Amaury Nolasco (Google it – bahahah!) from the show Prison Break because “he is Mexican.” One, I couldn’t believe they watched Prison Break and two he is from Puerto Rico.

Probably the best thing about English corner was that the second English corner of the school semester was TWILIGHT THEMED! Yes, they split us up into CLANS and we got to discuss different questions asked by a member of the Volturi who was sitting at the front reading under candlelight. We discussed questions like: Do you believe in vampires? Do vampires have humanity? Would you accept a vampire in your family? If you could choose to die tomorrow or become a blood-sucking vampire which would you choose? AH! They were all great questions, but most of the discussions were about how awesome the Twilight series is and what their favorite Twilight characters were. There doesn’t seem to be a separation between the Edwards-lovers and the Jacob-lovers here in China thought, they just all seem to love Bella (I don’t know why, but they think she is beautiful!). Of course I confessed my love for vampires the whole time and all of my answers were biased toward Eddie, but oh well!