One of the main dif­fer­ences con­cern­ing SoS this year in com­par­i­son to years pre­vi­ous is that we are teach­ing in a dif­fer­ent build­ing. Our four-story, con­crete vault of knowl­edge that served us in the past is under­go­ing ren­o­va­tions, so this year we are in 三教 (“Teach­ing Build­ing #3). While this may seem incon­se­quen­tial, it has already done much to color the teach­ing experience.

For instance, last year our class­rooms over­looked a busy Jishou street where farm­ers hawked veg­eta­bles and meat. One day we were treated with the dis­tinct expe­ri­ence of hear­ing a pig get slaugh­tered in the streets.  This trou­bled many for­eign teachers—the cries of a dying pig sound dis­turbingly human. The stu­dents seemed used to it, though; they just laughed at the shocked look on the for­eign teach­ers’ faces. A mem­o­rable cross-cultural exchange, to be sure.

This year, the class­rooms are in a build­ing wedged into a dark hill­side, with lit­tle light reach­ing the lower rooms. This has been a prob­lem recently, as we have had over three days of rain (and more still to come), and some of the class­rooms have lost power. As a result, the stu­dents’ eyes have been heavy-lidded and the teach­ers’ lessons a bit more lowkey. I even felt com­pelled to teach my stu­dents the word “dreary”.

How­ever, the rain has made me appre­ci­ate the part of the build­ing that does get nat­ural light: the con­nect­ing bal­cony that stretches along the row of class­rooms. Stand­ing there, one can see the Jishou river, wind­ing away from the city and off among forested moun­tains and cliffs. Even in the grey weather, the silky clouds that graze past the moun­tain­top tem­ples look appeal­ing enough to make one want to ven­ture out into the rain.

But then I remem­ber the rather ques­tion­able qual­ity of my 20 kuai umbrella, and I con­tent myself with a walk to get milk tea.

- Cameron