Participating in Class

Ayub and I set the date and made our plans: we were going to sit in on a random class on a Friday morning.

The procedure:

1. Look for class with no Western students
2. Casually walk into said class speaking quietly in English
3. Take seats in front row
4. Wait for class to start and get ready to answer possible questions from teacher
a. Pretend not to understand anything
b. Do not speak Chinese or if needed, speak as badly and as slowly as possible
5. Do not giggle, laugh or make people more suspicious

With that, we found a class and walked in, just muttering gibberish to each other. The students looked at us for a second and went back to their conversation in Korean/Japanese. We took our seats and waited for class to start.

The teacher walked in a few minutes later and everyone became quiet. She looked at Ayub and me for a few seconds, kind of gave a nod and said "上课!" (Which is along the lines of "Class has started")

Hmm, this was weird. No questions? Nothing?

We had walked into a newspaper reading class and that there was a student presenting his translation and views on an article. A thin and frail looking Japanese kid ambled up to the front of the class and started distributing copies of his assignment. (Aside: usually its a copy of the article you choose in the newspaper, with words you don't know listed and translated into your language, your summary of the article, followed by your opinion and then two questions to ask classmates in order to facilitate discussion).

The student handed out sheets to everyone except Ayub and me, and he started to present.

The teacher cut him off immediately, and as he turned to look at her, she made a motion with her chin, pointing at us. The kid blushed and gave us copies. So his report went; it was a pretty good one too, something about computer viruses and the internet.

He asked his second question and seeing no one raising their hand to respond, I decided to take the initiative to do so. The student looked surprised and pointed at me. I answered the question and discussed it for a minute or so, at which point he followed up with another question. I cracked a half joke at which point he thanked everyone for their time and sat down. We all clapped.

As he sat down, I motioned to Ayub and we got up from our seats without saying a word and walked out of the room. As we passed the kid I grinned at him and gave him a thumbs up. We closed the door behind us and waited for a few seconds just out of view. Silence.

Then we heard some loud laughter followed by, "Yeah I also have no idea who they were!"