An American Teacher in Guiyang

It's not always that you get to travel to a foreign country on your employer's dime. Last week, I went to a teaching institute in Bangkok. My supervisor asked me to go because of my interest in and experience with educational assessment. We're trying to better align our assessment tools with our curriculum, and since I wrote my master's thesis on that very subject he thought that I would be a good candidate to go to this particular conference. How could I say no? I flew out of Guiyang airport Thursday night on a Hebei airlines 737-800. The seats had at least a couple of inches more legroom than I'm used to on a 747 or A320, though I'm not sure if that's due to the plane itself or the airline's configuration. The Hebei staff were uniformly professional and courteous, and I wouldn't hesitate to use them on other flights. One of my seat mates was a Chinese primary school student who was happy to practice his English with me and tell me all about T...

When you live in a foreign country, you're regularly confronted with the unfamiliar and the unexpected. People do ordinary things in what seem like extraordinary ways. It can be simultaneously fascinating and frustrating, but it's the real reason I love to go to countries outside the United States. I'm always interested in seeing how different people do everyday things, trying to understand why they do them that way, and adapting to fit in so that you don't stand out so much. Keep in mind as you read this that I'm not trying to make any value judgements here. I'm just observing what I see from the perspective of a white guy from California. I've lived in China less than six months and I'm only just starting to understand how little I know about how things are done here. I'm writing this to educate and maybe entertain a little, too. One of the first things I noticed was how little regarded your personal space is. In the US, we tend to have a fairl...