A Busy Holiday Season

At a Christmas dinner party with NBG, a basketball group organized by Chavi, a friend from Spain

Ah, I’m almost to the fun part updating my blog, when I took a 2 month holiday to, among other things, drive a rickshaw around India. But we’re not there yet. First I need to fill you in on the end of my semester and trip preparations.

Fyi, Ohio State is in Columbus; I wonder
how many of our grade 12 kids could
actually point out Ohio on the map!

Typically my job is light on the work (or maybe I’m just so efficient that it seems easy…haha nope, that’s not it!). December was an anomaly though. Many of our senior students still had yet to make up their minds regarding their top school choices, so they wanted to spread the net far and wide and apply to many schools. I can’t blame them for being unsure about which college to choose—what 17 year old is—but they often knew little about the schools to which they applied, which makes it difficult to answer why you want to spend the next four years of your life there. I mean, come on, some students who applied to my Alma Matter, Ohio State, don’t even know what city it’s in!

I could rant all day about how Chinese students select schools. Maybe that would be fun to read, but I’ll save it for another post; let’s stay on track. The point is that I had a lot of students’ essays coming in, some of which were first drafts. Revision takes time, but with my upcoming trip that was in short supply. The last few weeks of December I tried to help with as many revisions as I could, but I also had other tasks to handle.

The last two weeks of December Joanna went to England—don’t worry; she didn’t leave for good, just over the holidays. And being the nice guy that I am (some say pushover) I had to take all of her classes for the week of the 19^th. I also took her classes on the 26^th and 27^th, and then on Wednesday the 28^th I left for India. If my memory serves me correctly, for the full week that meant I covered 14 classes, and 4 more on the following Monday and Tuesday. Thankfully the classes required little preparation on my part—students had time to write a research essay and complete a literature project—but they still took up a solid chunk of the week (a chunk that I could normally spare, but not the week before I was due to leave).

Robbie and Tina, at the Christmas market in Hangzhou,
where our friend set up a booth to sell baked goods

Robbie got involved handing out free samples

We also had Secret Santa at school, and I got Joanna's present for
her student because she was home over the holidays

Chavi, left, and Benni, speaking
at our Christmas party

 In addition to school duties I coached basketball part time. A friend who owns a pizza shop in Hangzhou put me in touch with Chavi, a Spanish guy with his own coaching company. Chavi co-owns the brand with Shou, a local, and this fall he also brought on Benni, a friend and former teammate from the Spanish league. Well it’s more teaching than coaching; the majority of his students are young kids, but regardless I craved an opportunity to get back on the court. Back in high school and college I played pick-up ball at least once a week, but over the past few years I’ve laced up only a handful of times. Coaching was a great way to get involved with the game again and make extra cash.

For about a month, starting in late November, I assisted Benni for two 1.5 hour classes on Saturday, and on Monday afternoons taught another 1.5 hour class myself at a local elementary school. The money was decent, and the work fairly easy. Also my weekends are usually free, so it required little rearranging of my schedule. Hopefully I can continue with it this spring, and at the very least play pick-up games again with new friends.

In my last post I touched on graduate schools, which I began applying to earlier in the fall. I finished my applications for Columbia and Johns Hopkins by their early notification deadline in November, and by December I’d also finished UC San Diego and the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. I was pulling a page out of my students’ handbook and applying to a bunch of schools—eight to be exact—so I still had more applications to complete before I left for India.

View of my old apartment the
night I moved out

I managed to turn all of the application materials in for the final four schools, but that last week in December was crunch time. At that point I was nearly finished, but it still felt rushed with revising students’ essays, Joanna’s extra classes, and preparing for the trip. I applied for visas to India and Myanmar, packed, booked plane tickets, and, last but not least, moved!

Following the trip I’d be living with Joanna, so I had to clear out the school apartment too. I have few bulky possessions, and my wardrobe is small, so it only took a few trips on my bike to transport everything. I moved out on Tuesday, December 27^th and handed in the keys the following morning, which was the day I left China. On Tuesday night I carried the last load of stuff over to Joanna’s (well now my place too) at 10:30 pm! It was stressful at the last minute, but also exciting to know I would be in Kochi, India in 24 hours.