Being the White Monkey

Today is student orientation for a new session. It is long, incredibly boring and held mostly in Chinese. The facilitators take turns going, and call it "being the white monkey."

Let me explain:

When you go to the zoo, you see the monkey, the monkey sees you. You both stare at each other in some sort of amused curiosity. It's similar with us and orientation.

The students see a foreigner (a curiosity in its own right) and go "oooh this place can afford to hire foreigners, it must be good!" They then stare, take pictures, smile bashfully, etc and we're wondering if maybe we should do a trick or something.

Two and a half hours later, we're both bored silly.

But at least they have something to look at.