Toasters, Regulations and Cooking a Gorilla

Ooof, it's been awhile, but alas I am back....and not really ladden with any comical stories of the present. Unless......you find it funny to be 'taught' how to do things by 12-15 year olds as I chose to do for English class last week. It was their midterm prep week and I wanted it to be light-hearted, so the gist of the lesson was that the students had to break into groups and teach the class how to do something. We practiced with "how to make rice." They told me step by step how to make the rice....elementary level classes told me to 'fire the rice' instead of heat it in the cooker, while the advanced classes told me how to first plant and harvest the rice. The presentations of teaching were priceless...among the mundane How to make a cake and how to plant a tree (in their english book) were splendid presentations on How to capture and cook a gorilla, How to ride an eleophant in the city, How to cheat on an exam, How to copy homework, How to rob a bank (complete with ladies stockings to be worn over your face to shield your identity), and my favourite....how to kidnap an airplane. Now, before you get all worried about terrorism, it was all in good fun. There were four funny guys in that group and they claimed that in order to properly procure said plane, you would need a thin man, a fat man, a short man and a tall man (coincidence....these 4 boys fit the bill just right). The fat man would drive the plane, the tall man would scare the people, the short man would play with the children so they wouldn't be afraid and start crying and my favourite....the thin man would count the money and drink the coffee. I encourage the use of imagination in my class....otherwise i'd die listening to 16 classes all teaching me how to plant trees. They got the biggest yuck out of me sitting at one of their desks while others presented. I pretended to be an annoying american student waving my hand really high and back and forth and yelling 'teacher teacher teacher, i have a QUESTION!' I'd make the 'teacher' call on me, then he'd make me stand up and I'd ask some stupid question pertinent to what they were teaching, just to make sure the actually understood what they were saying and weren't just reading someone else's words. It's coming back to haunt me though....my students now wave their hands furiously and exclaim.."TEACHER TEACHEr, I have a question!" So long as their not shouting though, I welcome an inquisitive nature, even if they're really just secretively making fun of me.

This week I've started teaching a class on Celebrity TV interviews.....we all watched students pretend to be everyone from Yang Liwei (first Chinese astronaut) to Eminem, to Lei feng (product of propaganda in the early 20th century) to Bruce Lee. It was great. My students are finally relaxing and talking more freely in class...without chaos ensuing.

Random thought.....I think I've figured out the key difference between China and Hong Kong...Imperialism struck the territory (i.e. the formidable British in the 19th century) and basically punished people for breaking rules, hence....order! Thus the main disjunct between HK and China....besides a lack of business regulation on the part of the Chinese, is that there is order in HK. People stop at cross walks and wait for the little green man before crossing the street, people line up on the right side of the elevators to let people pass on the left, heck....people actually form lines, people follow rules printed on signs. In China, if a sign says there is no spitting or public urination, i gaurentee that aforementioned sign is peed and spit on daily, thereby fully neglecting the importance of printed rules. Ha. Back to crossing the street. I was walking across Dongmen Lu the other day (main shopping road in the city), and around 4 in the afternoon, gov't appointed traffic assisters come out to make sure that pedestrians are following the traffic patterns. This is actually useful, b/c when 1000 people are trying to cross the street at once, as well as 1000s of cars going all directions, chaos can ensue, mainly b/c daring pedestrians try to cross when the little man isn't green. Well public safety man gets a red vest (think Wal-mart blue vest, only in this case..it's red) and a whistle and his job is to whistle at people to deter them from illegally walking across the street at the wrong time. On this particular afternoon, a daring man on a Flying Bird bicycle crosses the street at the wrong time and turns a deaf ear to 4 traffic men and their whistles. When he gets to my side of the road, traffic man is waiting for him, grabs his bike and gets ready to send him to the policeman standing behind me to get a ticket or something. Well the dude on the bike has a girl sitting on the back and she promptly bolts down the street. The man then begins to verbally assault the red-vested whistler, and when he does not let go of the bike, bike man punches red-vest man in the face. A full on brawl breaks out, and everyone just watches; such is the mentality here. People just watch others be pick-pocketed and i'm sure are just silently thanking god that they weren't the one being pickpocketed....in this case everyone was thinking that were lucky that the cops didn't catch them.

I bought the most amazing addition to my apartment yesterday. I went to meet a friend for dinner and procure a toaster. This toaster is the best use of US$7 ever! It's waaay cute...white and green, and it makes toast. That was a key part. The only problem here is that bread is very large and square (comes in bags of 8 large square slices) and thus when I pull the lever down to begin the magical toasting process....about 1.5 inches of the bread sticks out of the toaster....so a little 180 degree bread rotation is necessary mid-toasting. However, despite the extra work, the toast and jam is amazing.

Oh and for the most random element of the last two weeks.....no I haven't found a job yet...but...for all of you who think Customs officials are scary and official and have power to keep you in and out of particular countries.....just learn the native language..apparently that's the way to their heart. On my way back from HK last Thursday I wrote my address in chinese on my arrival card as sort of a knee-jerk rx..i'm not sure how to write it in english to be honest. The customs officer reads it aloud and then I tell him that's right, that I am a teacher at the school next door to my building and that I was in HK b/c my students have midterm exams. Well that sent his eyeballs out to Jupiter and back...what?!?!!!! the blonde speaks Chinese? So then he, the customs officer...highest upholder of the Chinese law, asks me for my phone number. I told him i didn't know it...like hell I want to give out my number to a stranger, let alone someone who could change my address to "cell 2 Chinese Jail" at will. Then he asked me for my address. I played stupid foreigner and told him i didn't understand. He was very persistent. What is the world coming to? Last time I left the country the customs man didn't believe my passport photo bore any resemblence to the actual me...this time he asks me out. Strange!

The temperature dropped 30 degrees today...it was 65 and raining, completely depressing. Can it really be the middle of November already?