Xiping, Are You Sleeping?

Shhh, Xiping is Sleeping

At Westside High School where I teach, one of the mantras is that students will have an international experience. Thus, our school hosted 42 Chinese students and teachers for a total of 6 weeks in April and May. I was interested in hosting a teacher from China since I got a taste of China during our around the world trip, and I still had a lot of questions. So I wanted to a learn a little bit more about the country.

So one April evening, two large school busses rolled up into the Westside High School parking lot from the airport, and out came 42 Chinese students and teachers. As soon as they entered the building, each student was swept away by their host family. My Chinese teacher was Xiping, the only male English teacher, and we jumped in our car and went to the house where he would spend the next two and a half weeks.

Hosting Xiping was an interesting experience in that I tried to figure out his outlook and point of view on various topics. He initially was very quiet and reserved and his answer to every question was, "Maybe." Would you like to have to eat breakfast? "Maybe." Do you need anything to help you sleep? "Maybe." Eventually he opened up as his English continued to improve, and shed some light on life in China. During his time, he even gave a television interview.

Myself, Nadine, our winking Thai souvenir Sophie, and Xiping

Not being the biggest cooks and aficionados of Chinese food, we weren't sure exactly what he would want to eat, since it wasn't going to be Chinese food. It turned out that at the beginning he ate a lot of peanut butter and bread. When I offered him the very American breakfast of cereal with milk and orange juice, he decided it might be best if he ate his staple diet of peanut butter and bread along with a warm glass of water. Eventually, we were able to get him to eat a more varied diet. When it came time to eat out, he really enjoyed a local Chinese restaurant whose owners were from his hometown of Tianjin.

Not only did Xiping stay with us, but he also went to our school everyday to observe the American school system. I was under the impression that he would sit in my classes and experience an American class, but during the two and a half weeks, he never actually attended any of my classes. Instead, from the time that he arrived at school with me, he would meet up with the other teacher, Color, to check on the students in the school, explore the school, and play on the computers provided to them from the school.

The biggest problem for Xiping was that he couldn't sleep. We did offer him a comfortable bed, rather than having to sleep on the floor. Actually, he might have preferred that since beds in China tend to be as hard as a rock. Like good hosts, we even provided him with clean sheets and a blanket. We could have given him warm water and then rubbed his back when he went to bed, but that might be a bit odd. The problems originated from the fact that the city of Tianjin was exactly 12 hours behind the U.S. So when it was 8 in the morning in Omaha, it was 8 at night in Tianjin, and his body was winding down when all of the bodies at the school were just winding up. Eventually his body caught up and he was able to sleep.

The time came for Xiping to leave, I asked if he was ever interested in visiting anywhere else in the U.S. like Texas, he promptly responded, "absolutely." I then asked just for the sheer fact of interest if he would be interested in visiting the state of New Mexico, and his response says it all, "Where? Probably not so much."

Finally, part of hosting Xiping during his visit to Omaha, is that I will go on a trip to Tianjin and Beijing at the beginning of October for 10 days with 30 or so students and 4 other teachers. That's a great result of hosting Xiping, but a trip with that many students to China should prove to be an interesting trip.

Peace,
John