doctor, teacher, policeman and......Mrs. Claus?

Colleen from Junior 1 Class 8 made my day today. During her oral exam with me she answered the question "What jobs do you think are most important in the world today?" with "Scientist, Doctor and Mrs. Claus." Now you might find this quite unmiraculous....but when I've heard 300 students say "doctor, teacher and policeman"....mrs. Claus becomes quite wonderful. Colleen liked Mrs. Claus because her primary school teacher asked her to dress up as Mr. Claus' wife when she was 8 years old and she liked wearing the white hair and thought it was important the Mrs. Claus be a good cook to keep Mr. Claus looking fat so his suit of red would fit. Hahha.

Ewww Bugs and Yummmm Zongzi

It's raining....again.

I have bed bugs, or dust mites or some other random invisible bug that bites in a series of three in my room and my school thinks that a can of Raid will solve the problem. I yelled and they're working on an alternative solution; until then I am staying with Andy and Barbara at their apartment across from school. My mom was nice enough to remind me that any and all of the above insects can carry Hepatitis B....awesome.

My contact teacher told me air out my bedding in the sun....convenient as it hasn't been sunny here in 13 days. I also read somewhere that you need to wash linens in 100+ degree water to kill the insects and then dry them in a dryer. That kind of thing just doens't fly here.....washing machine works on cold water only and my dryer....it's a metal pole on the balcony...quite novel, hanging up washing.

Exams are going good with the kiddos.....some of them really surprised me and prepared well. Perhaps my threat of an F scared them. I told each class that if they walk out to their exam and say "Uhhhhhh Ms. Nelson, I uhhhh don't know uhhhh what to say," then I will respond with "Uhhhh Snoopy (Light, High, Cornelia, Fish, K, No Name #1, No Name #7, etc) I'll uhhhh just uhh give you an F." They all laughed and seemed to remember to prepare something.

I'm going to miss my Chinese tutor....I'm just going to have to hang out in LA's chinatown this fall. However I was shocked and saddened to find out during my visit to CA last spring that the chefs in the kitchen in Chinatown that make jiaozi are Mexicans.....resourcing, outsourcing, alternasourcing everywhere!

The Dragonboat festival is today, but the big races are in Shatin in HK on Saturday; I'm thinking of going. I've been eating lots of zongzi here lately in deference to the holiday. It's a treat of glutenous rice and sometimes meat and sometimes sweet, wrapped in a triangular shape inside of a bamboo leaf and then steamed....yum.

I got the photobook/brochures of the mattress company I lent my face to earlier in the spring. They aren't too bad....tooo much makeup, frumpy clothes and the proclivity for choosing the worst photos to stick on the cover were all part of the finished product...but hey....who is ever going to really see it?

Does that mean I've been in China too long?

The calendar on my wall indicates that I've got under three weeks left in China which in reality translates into increasingly busy days trying to get in "one last time" of just about everything around here. In addition, since I have left souvenir shopping to the very end, I find myself busy scouring shops and markets for unique presents to bring family and friends back from this great nation. This also means that my luggage accumulation is becoming somewhat substanial....ooops.

It would seem that my kiddos are getting sad that I am leaving, for the most part. I've had some criers, some asking for my phone number so they can call me in the states and some that are even cuter. We studied time capsules this week in class and I showed them ten or so things I would put in "Ms. Nelson's" time capsule (truly important things like a passport, peanut butter and M&Ms) and then asked them to make a list of the contents of their own time capsule. One kid said, "and last I would put Ms Nelson in my time capsule and bury it in the school garden so she will not leave us." They're super great....sometimes. Then I finished the week with a class who is usually my favourite, but this week 13 out of the 30 students were missing....they ditched my class to stay with Mr. Bowdoin's half of the class to watch movies. I was really angry, plus I was explaining the exam format for next week, so they missed out. We'll see how they do next week. The annoying part is that they have the best English of any Junior class and so even without studying I am sure they will still get close to full marks.

I am currently questioning whether or not I have been in China too long, b/c my gross-out factor is reaching an all new threshold. I met a bunch of friends for Indian food last night after I spent the afternoon bargaining for pearls and pashminas (I got exact copies of necklaces that anthrolpologie is selling for $298, for the insane price of $8....now who in the US is pocketing all that profit). So we did dinner....yum yum arabic salad, palak paneer and chicken tikka and as we're finishing a cockroach scurries across the table. One of my friends screams, but the other 7 at the table make a motion to kill or corner it without the extra blink of an eye. I smush him with a napkin and we continue the evening. However, he revives himself and starts his table scamper again, Meagan then traps him under an ash tray and we finish dinner and leave. Later this same evening I'm on a 2 hour bus ride (50 cents) with 4 other pengyoumen and cockroaches are coming out of the window jam in force and I'm just sitting there watching them and squashing them as they approach striking distance. Now, someone back me up on this....that's gross right? To not be bothered by a roach army? These last two weeks have been the beginning of the real feel of rainy season......it has rained every day for the last 9 days. And by "rained" I do not mean a once a day and then clearing in the afternoon type of situation. I mean where it rains and pours all day and all night long. The slick pavement has caused all sorts of unfortunate situations as well. I have wiped out in front of the school guard house twice in 5 days as well as my finest moment which resulted in me having to go to class pulling twigs and bark out of my hair. To clarify on the last point, it was raining quite hard last wednesday so I thought i would be smart that day and wear sneakers with my dress to class (however unattractive that visual may be, the thought of falling again was even more grim to me). As I'm walking across the tile and granite quad (totally logical building materials, yes?) I felt my foot begin to slide and then I was sort of doing a Saturday Night Fever type boogie in attempt to regain my footing, but before I knew it, my umbrella flew out of my hand and I slipped and slid into the school flower bed (hence the twigs and bark). The upside of the situation, the students were really nice to me.

I've got one class now that wont speak English to me....I guess it's good that it took them a year to figure out I understand them, but it really hampers the teaching of English now.

I started text-messaging my Chinese teaching colleagues in Chinese recently instead of using English and boy....I've made like 100 new friends. Now all of the teachers who don't know English want to send me messages and be my friend. Perfect, three weeks left and now everyone is pleasant as pie :-)

I'm going to miss it here. As odd as it seems and as fatigued as I am sometimes with China, I fit in here. I love it here; I have to come back. But.....I am jumping out of my pants with anticipation for law school; reason enough to spend three/four years in Southern California.

"No school madam....the Typhoon...it kuai daole (comes soon)"

As a little girl in Jakarta I remember leaving school early and not returning for a number of days because of bomb threats. One time a real bomb was even delivered to the US Ambassador’s house and school was dismissed for almost a week. As a third grader, these impromptu holidays were amazing as I really had no grasp of the concept of being sent home because someone had called claiming to have planted a bomb at an international school with 2000 kids on campus. Even the bomb-sniffing dogs that darted amongst students as they piled on buses headed for home at 9:30 in the morning didn’t phase me.
Well today I can add a new kind of “day-off” to the repertoire that formerly consisted of snow days (in Dallas this was really more of a “threat of snow and perhaps a bit of ice” day) and bomb-scare days…….today is “typhoon day.” Apparently Tai Feng (Typhoon in chinese) Pearl is swirling her way between HK and Taiwan at this very moment aiming to smack into Guangdong province (where I live) this evening. I had heard some hoopla from teachers and in the newspapers here, but didn’t really take it seriously especially not to the extent of school cancellation because lets face it, Chinese kids go to school 7 days a week now, when are they going to make up this day (possibly 2 days) of school? I got up this morning and as I brushed my teeth and got ready for my 8am class I heard the headmaster over the loudspeaker and despite my diligent efforts at Chinese I continue to have a fiercely difficult time understanding anyone speaking Chinese over a loudspeaker….it gets really garbled. What I did catch were snippets of going home, safety, typhoon this evening etc. didn’t catch the “class is over now” part apparently. I head to class and my kiddos are sitting in the dark with the head teacher in the front of the class. A few words exchanged in Chinese (much to her surprise….apparently word does NOT travel around school that I speak Chinese….but that’s good though, only a few classes know that and the rest diligently speak English to me all the time instead of a steady stream of Chinglish just b/c they are lazy and know I understand) and I learned that class was cancelled. It’s all very strange to me. The storm isn’t supposed to come until after 8 tonight, I walked around my neighborhood this morning and it was truly business as usual at every store. I suppose time will tell as to whether or not it was worth sending the kids home or not. All I can say is that the administration will make me really mad if they try to get me to make up the missed classes on Saturday and Sunday this weekend, b/c my 3 close friends and I have planned a birthday (mine)/engagement bachelorette (not mine) outing to Macau for those two days. We want to see the gardens, architecture and eat Portuguese cuisine…..not visit the caninedrome (dog races), formula one racetrack, or the casinos.
In other news, I met a really interesting fellow last week. I went with my friend Andy to teach an English Corner lecture at the University here in the city and I happened to meet the university’s president (a good friend of Andys). But…he is not just a university president, he is also the equivalent of a Senator for Guangdong Province and……he’s a world champion Scrabble player. Yes that is right….world champion, apparently there are competitions on a scale greater that your kitchen table on a Sunday afternoon. He has this idea that he can further English education at the university level by teaching students to play Scrabble. If not for the typhoon, Andy, his wife and I were going to head out to the university tonight and Scrabble it up with the English students.
I had the most wonderful holiday in Beijing at the beginning of this month. At the start of the holiday I was ready to admit that I was ready to go back to America. But after a week in Beijing with my good friend Tammy, I have now changed my jig…..I don’t want to leave here. There is so much China has to offer and while I don’t think I will return to live in Shenzhen, I certainly want to come back and live somewhere in China (hopefully Beijing, Shanghai or HK, but Kunming where all the NGOs work out of is also wonderful). After talking with the University Pres, Ben, for awhile I felt that there really is a place for me here. He asked me what kind of law I was going back to the states to pursue and to be completely honest, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to tell him about aspirations for practicing human rights law in China, but I was feeling sure of myself that day and so I told him. He laughed and then said that would be a good job for me. He said that there are many people who know a lot about China, and conversely many people that know a lot about America, but very few that understand both and can speak both languages. But he seemed to think that I did and thought that people who understand both sides can do a lot more good.
Writing about leaving China reminded me of a funny episode in Beijing. Tammy and her friend Kevin and I were hanging out downtown and we decided we wanted Korean food for dinner (Kevin and Tammy are originally from Korea). Well Tammy decides that we need to check out this North Korean Restaurant in Wanjing (just northeast of downtown Beijing). The place is one of two restaurants owned by the North Korean government outside of their country and whenever gov’t officials from NKorea head over to Beijing, they eat there…even Mr Kim Jung Il. The fuwuyuan are brought in from North Korea as well. The food was wonderful and not expensive…the ambience was completely over the top and the evening ended with a 4-woman North Korean “rock band” belting out Korean tunes while wearing sparkly green tops. In the middle of the meal Tammy and I felt compelled to make a little small talk with the fuwuyuan and turns out they don’t stay in China too long, the gov’t keeps sending over new servers every few months, and…..I was the only waiguoren (foreigner from western country) that had been in there in months. That led me to think for a moment that perhaps CIA peoples were camped out in the apt. complex across the street, seeing what kind of rifraf came and went in the restaurant and that would make them suspect me as a spy or something, haha. Hmmm, we’ll see if the US wants me back in a month when I attempt to return via LA. Also, in the middle of dinner Kevin’s mum called on his cell, from NJ to see how he was doing. When he told her he was in a NKorean restaurant, boy she gave him quite an earful. She told him not to go the bathroom alone otherwise someone might bang him over the head with a pot and take him as a prisoner back to NKorea. We really had our wild imaginations going that evening.
I am in the middle of reading an excellent book at the moment called “My Country and My People” by Lin Yu Tang (Last name is Lin, in Chinese the last name goes first). I was written in the 1930s but does much to explain why China and the Chinese are the way they are. It got a lot of criticism in China when it was first published b/c it did point out elements of Chinese culture that were perhaps slightly unfavorable but he defended his work by saying that he could criticize b/c he still had immense faith in his culture. I strongly recommend it.
For some reason I’ve only recently put my college classes on China to use in debunking why things in this country are done is such a gosh-darn illogical manner. Then I remembered that the President (Hu Jintao until 2012) is the head of the Communist Party as well as the government, which would be kind of like having the head of the church in the US be president for ten years. While people argue that this really isn’t an issue b/c gov’t postings are open to people not in the Party, the reality is that the Party is indelibly intertwined with every element of the gov’t. What is even more unique is that for every post in the gov’t there an equal ‘shadow post’ in the Party….a behind the scenes fella. Then what becomes even more astonishing is that a Party member with a lower ranking than a gov’t official of a particular province, prefecture etc. will always outrank the gov’t officer despite the officer having a technically ‘higher’ post. Thus education and rising in gov’t ranks is not terribly important; it remains that Party affiliation is the most prevalent marking of power.

Subway and Sandstorms

It's May 1st and that means that it is the start of the 7-day Labour day holiday here in China. My friendly, neighborhood Party friend (and by this I mean person working for the Communist Party and my school simultaneously, whose job it is to spy on my and report back to the government...making sure that I am not touting some negative information to students or something) sat down and had a meeting with me to tell me that the Party wants me to be safe over the holiday and to watch out for thieves. Her speech fell on deaf ears though b/c that's my daily life here.....making sure to be smarter than thieves...... otherwise I'll be down another Ipod and that would just be monumentally unfortunate.

I was having dinner in Shekou (where all the foreigners in the city seem to live, esp. those with children b/c the two International Schools are there) with some friends last week and was witness to the very reason that Americans have a terrible reputation as foreigners. We were finishing up at Subway when a boy of about 15 strolls in with a friend. He's on his cell phone practically yelling into the speaker that he is about to get a "free soda" and that he is "so thirsty he could drink all the soda in the store." He tears the phone away from his ear to tell the person behind the counter that he'd like a da (word for big in chinese) coke "give me a da coke now." The kid got the cup, filled it up, drank it down in one gulp while spilling soda out both sides of the cup and onto the floor and then repeated the disgusting act b/c according to him "We're in America if we're eating in Subway and that means FREE REFILLS." Then he yelled to his friend across the store that they should get going. But.....not before the final atrocious act. The kid sees that in Subway there is a sign that says "Baked Fresh Daily" and by this they are referring to the sandwich bread. He then goes on about how he loves the smell and taste of fresh bread. So instead of ordering a sandwish to taste said wonderful fresh bread like the rest of us patrons did in the restaurant....he reaches behind the counter to where the display breads are housed (a glass case of the 5 bread options that patrons can see and choose from ie not meant for eating) and picks up a loaf, takes a big bite out of it and leaves! In what universe are things like this ok to do? Jenny and Tim and I were thoroughly appalled!

The deluges that characterize southern China spring have finally arrived in full force, meaning that it rained for 48 hours straight this week. I happened to be downtown buying a carry on rolling suitcase (looks like a real Swiss-army suitcase, but I paid $16 for it....let's hope to gets me to and from Beijing and back to the US) and the case and the rain created an interesting trip home. It was rush-hour and I decided to wait for a bus that usually isn't as crowded as the main bus into my part of town. I stand under my umbrella trying to protect the suitcase and keep an eye out for the 311 on the road. Well I wait 50 minutes and no bus....not one 311. This is monumentally strange b/c during rush hour they come every 2-5 minutes. By this point i'm soaked b/c the sidewalks are flooded and then people entering and exiting buses are squeezing by with umbrellas and the run-off is getting my clothes all wet. I trudge down to the next stop and cram on an overcrowded 113 bus and head home. But oh the evening isn't over. Some little kid is eating a hamburger near me and crazy bus driver makes 1 of 90 sudden stops and the kid's burger flies from his hand and lands ketchup side up on....my skirt. Awesome. What a long evening.

My classes at school have been cut in half because the Junior 3's are now studying full time for their high school entrance exam, so I have a lot of free time during the day, but my evenings are still busy. I take chinese lessons two nights a week, tutor a corporate exec two nights a week and starting when I get back I am going to teach an English corner at Shenzhen University.

I'm heading up to Beijing tomorrow to see Tammy for a week and am very excited to be going back to my beloved Beijing. Though....I'm not so excited about the massive sandstorms the city has been suffereing from. 300,000 tonnes of sand from far western Xinjiang Autonomous Region 'fell' on the city on Monday two weeks ago! My friend said it looks like yellow swirling fertilizer in the air and forces daily dry-cleaning of work clothes if you're out walking in it for even a minute or two. You can blame deforestation for this problem; there aren't forests to prevent the sand from sweeping across the north of the country. Apparently the sand was seen as far east as Tokyo.

Keep your black cowboy boots and stripey underpants under wraps lady!

Time for catching up on a lack of loquaciousness in recent months. Last night, after classes were over and errands had been run, I found myself with an empty Friday evening. What better way to presumably fill such a chunk of time than with a movie or two for my local dvd family. I hadn’t been there in quite a time and so there were so many new films to choose from. I ended up with 5….A movie with Antonio Banderas where he plays a ballroom dancing teacher who teaches detention students in NY how to dance, Goal, The Pink Panther, Match Point…a Woody Allen film with Scarlett Johanassen, and Spanglish. I watched two last night…..the one with Antonio Banderas and Spanglish and I really liked both and I think part of the draw is that are movies that mum and I would love and Dad and Adam and any other male specimen would absolutely abhor.

After a Nyquil knock-out sleep I arose and went out for a run. 5 minutes into the run as I was going up a hill I hear “Kristen Kristen Kristen!” Now this is seriously peculiar seeing as no one who knows me as anything other than “Ms. Nelson” lives in my neighborhood. It was my friend Xiaosha and some of her teaching colleagues. They were going for their now weekly trek through the hills and mini-mountains of Shenzhen. Xiaosha thinks it will make her slim (she’s 45 and looks perfect to me, just FYI). Well she begs me to join them since our mutual friend Qingling couldn’t go this morning and she wanted a friend to talk to. I agree, thinking we will following the major road up the hill, go down by the reservoir and be done. Oh how I was wrong. We make a sharp right at off the beaten trail and don’t turn back from there. We climbed up steep orifices, walked under some serious sets of high tension wires skirting the side of the mountain, and went down near-90 degree drops by only holding on to trees. We ended up inside Fairy Lake Park after jumping down off a 15-foot ledge. Xiaosha and I spent some time tramping up and down the manicured hills of the park before we headed home. The park was beautiful; I had never been there before. It’s one of the main tourist attractions of the city and costs 20 kuai to get in. I have just been frequenting all of the free parks lately. However, because of our sneaky death-defying manner of trekking earlier….we ended up inside the parks gates without having to pay….we cheated ( and all I had to do was risk my life). It was a nice surprise for a Saturday morning.

I went down to the tailor today to pick up a shirt and a dress that had to be altered after the initial fitting. I am hoping to wear the dress to Easter church tomorrow, if the temp. Doesn’t continue to fall towards freezing (this is after 7 consecutive days of 80+ degree weather with 90%+ humidity). When I got to Molly’s shop there was a lady inside being loud and obnoxious and throwing clothes everywhere. She was there to pick up clothes as well, except she refused to put on the garments behind the cloth in the corner that is the makeshift dressing room. Instead she was taking skirts and pants on and off in front of a large glass window that 100s of people walk by every 5 minutes, not to mention the other tailors sitting outside their shops waiting for business that were very much distracted by an overly-fake-tanned foreigner in black cowboy boots and stripy underpants who could seriously benefit from a daily regiment of crunches. I took a breath and walked into this madness and told Molly’s son Tarly I was here to pick up two things and Miss Cowboy-boots proceeds to spit out to me that “I’m going to be awhile dear….sit down and wait awhile.” I coughed…ok. I sat outside for maybe 5 minutes and listened to the other tailors a) talk about me and b) talk about the crazy lady in the underpants in Molly’s shop and then Tarly came out and had my clothes to try on. Luckily they fit perfectly this time and there wasn’t a need for a refitting that would have cut into Miss Fake-and-bake’s private fitting time.

Alex Trebec...you are my hero

A Grab-bag week of events. Sometimes there are just those weeks in China that fly by with no real coherent thread of logic, but instead are driven by days filled with random moments and memories strung together. The utter randomness of life in Asia was a distinct characteristic of this particular week.

In order to properly contextualize the week of April 9-15,you must understand that in three weeks, during the first week in May, all students and workers (technically speaking) have a 7-day holiday….called Golden Week (7 days only…not 5 work days and two weekends; they make you work thru one of those weekends leaving 7, yes 7 days of holiday and not 9). This means that over that last month people that I know have been batting different destinations back and forth from India to Singapore and when it was all said and done, Bali seemed to be the preferred destination by the majority. Awesome, that’s the one place in the world that my mum and dad are vehemently opposed to me revisiting for the 6th or 7th time in my life because of the unstable political nature in Indonesia. Well, it seemed that all of my friends had decided to cash in a some great round-trip ticket/hotel in Bali deal and those who didn’t were planning on visiting the terracotta soldiers in Xi’an, something I had already done and didn’t really have a desire to return to see once again. Thus, I talked to people around here, both foreign and Chinese and asked them if they had to choose a place to go by themselves for 5 or 6 days, where would they go. The overwhelming answer was hands-down……Bangkok. Now I’ve been to Bangkok before, but I was in 5th grade and my overwhelming memory aside from the royal palace and a sampan ride was the butler who would bring Carly and I movies at night while we stayed in Bangkok’s Dusit Thani…..my first viewings of Showboat and Singing in the Rain were viewed during that week. Ostensibly I thought, hey maybe it’s time to return. Apparently it’s really easy to get around as a foreigner and things are really cheap….and (here’s a major draw)…..they’ve got banana pancakes served as 10 cent street food….who could pass up an opportunity like this? Additionally…..the Thai demeanor is terribly friendly and many many people speak English. Ok, so this is Tuesday that I’ve decided that I will mosey around Bangkok and N. Thailand for a week and I decide to not run this idea around mum and dad asking for permission to travel, but merely send them an email outlining my plans. Wellll……no more than 5 hours after this email was sent, I got a wake up phone call from mum telling me NOT to go. She claims I’ll be ‘stolen’ and sold into slavery! Then she tells me she’s conferred with other members of our extensive international friend contingency that we’ve developed over the years and everyone agrees that a female such as myself cannot go alone to Thailand. Then, no more than two hours after this wake up call, I go down to my classroom and check my email. Dad has been alerted by mum of my travel plans and from the oil fields in Shreveport decides to use his Treo to send me a message saying ‘ok Kristi, you’ve called our bluff….Bangkok is the WORST place in the world to go by yourself….we’ll let you go to Bali with friends.’ Ha….what a stir this has caused. By this time my opportunity to go to Bali cheaply has come and gone, so Wednesday rolls around and I’m still without a holiday destination. Mum is pushing Taiwan…b/c hey at least I speak the language. I finally decide to give my friend Tammy in Beijing a call and see if we can make our holiday plans mesh…and voila! After bouncing between Phuket (too expensive), Taipei (she’d been there), Cheju Island in SKorea (too expensive from HK) and Shanghai (I’ve been there)…..we settled on Beijng. I’m going to come up and see her, see some friends that I haven’t seen in two years, see some fellow Washu alums and just relax and have fun. The weather is beautiful in May in Beijing (think cherry blossoms in DC kind of weather).

Alright, destination Beijing leads me to my next interesting moment of the week. I have two travel agents that I work with, one in HK and one in SZ. When I decided on Beijing I emailed both and asked for price quotes. Both were roughly the same, except it costs way more for me to get to the HK airport and if I were to fly from HK I would end up going through customs 8 times in 7 days (1. leave Shenzhen 2. walk over stinky sewage moat and enter via HK customs 3. go through customs at HK airport as I head to Beijing 4. Upon arriving at Capital Airport go through customs again….repeat in reverse on the way home) and I just don’t really have the need for 24 more passport stamps…..so not worth it. That means that my Chinese travel agent friend, Jackson, who works downtown got my business this week. He was so funny, after I emailed him he responded with an email that had some sort of goofy stationary template that that said “I’ve missed you” and had hugging caterpillars on it. In his note he said that he was very glad I emailed him and that he’d tried to contact me various times since the end of lunar new year (I moved apt). Jackson was able to get me a decent deal and I told him I’d be downtown to pick up the tickets on Friday afternoon. I received a confirmation email…this time on “I’m so excited” stationary with smiling daisies on it. At the end of it he asked me ‘for a favour.’ He wanted to know if I would be willing to take a photo with all the people in his travel agency. Ok…kinda weird, but whatever. I head down to Tehang Air Company today and as soon as I step through the door the man at the front desk yells in Chinese “Jackson your foreign friend is here” and Jackson come sprinting out and shoots front-desk man a death-ray laser eye look and says, “she understands you.” Then as we walk back to his office to get the tickets he reminds all 20 people in the office to put on their uniform jackets…kinda strange? After I pay for my tickets and get all the business squared away, Jackson positions everyone in the office (all twenty of them) around me, in front of the company sign. One minion-like man had the job of standing with one foot in the hall, one in the bathroom in order to take the picture. We took 5 or 6 and everyone at the office looked so happy. Nothing like a semi-mandatory photo-op in order to get tickets to Beijing.

I had fun teaching all of my classes this week and that is something I don’t think I’ve ever said in China. We played Jeopardy; thank you Alex Trebec. Barbara had downloaded a PowerPoint template for Jeopardy and she let me copy it and I made a couple easy ones, then one about jobs (because last week’s titanic lesson focused on listing many different jobs), one about China, and one about Arts and Humanities. We went over forming questions and I told them that you couldn’t get points unless you spoke in question form. We played boys v. girls and goodness it got really competitive in some classes….almost too competitive. There were some close calls where boys and girls almost got a chair in the face (no worries….they’re childsize chairs without sharp edges). I also learned something with my China Jeopardy. What is the tallest mountain in the world? Anyone from America or any other English-speaking country would undoubtedly say Mount Everest. Well there is another accepted English name for it…. Qomolangma Feng. Heated arguments about this in various classes that resulted in having to look up the truth on the internet. In one class I got some funny answers during the Jobs Jeopardy. The clue was “I work in a bakery and I bake bread and make cakes.” One student came up with “What is a Caker?” …the whole class chuckled. Then there was a set of questions regarding clothing and the clue was “If I work outside and my hands are cold, I put these on to keep them warm.” This one kid swore up and down that “What are Sloves?” was correct and when he found out that “Gloves” was actually the correct answer….he turned a funny sort of purplish colour. By the last class today (Friday) my voice was gone. I’ve caught the cold that’s wafting through school and between the weather change and yelling over the dim of 16 classes of 50+ students, I was bound to get sick with something.

….That however was not going to keep me away from Andy and Barbara’s on Thursday night. They invited me and 4 other people they work and tutor with over for a Western dinner at their place. 7 of us managed to fit around a table that’s snug for 4. They really, truly outdid themselves. Barbara made deviled eggs for appetizers (lovely thought, but will someone sometime please explain to me what is so gosh-darn great about deviled eggs….they smell kinda funny and really to me are only good for maybe egging someone’s….envision that smell on an enemy’s car). Dinner, ah, yum yum. We had ribs, steak fillets, potatoes au gratin, asparagus, salad, and mushrooms. Then for dessert we had cherry pie. I thought I died and went to heaven. I hadn’t eaten like that since mum and I were in New Zealand months ago. There was a really nice couple there, the husband works at the Training Center at school here on Saturday and his wife is a pediatric doctor at one of the hospitals downtown. They are both quite witty and have excellent English. Jack asked me about where I was born and when I said Alaska, he instantly said….’oh that’s the states where don’t forget me’s grow. I chuckled and said forget me nots. I think he knows more about Alaska than I do. I helped Barbara clean and clear, just because it was a lot of dishes and no one else was helping (I don’t think that’s custom here) and today she told me I was the best dinner guest ever and that I have to come over for dinner more often. Andy cooked the steaks medium and they were really so good, but Anna made a funny comment about them. She said “Now Andy, these steaks are half cooked, yes?” I suppose literally speaking they are half-cooked, but how often would you walk into a Morton’s and say “Hey…give me a half-cooked fillet please”

I met an old man in the park on Tuesday….well no, I got hunted down by a nice old man in the park on Tuesday. I was walking through the park after my run and smiled and two cute little boys and they waved and then I waved back. Then according to me….the moment was over and I walked on. Well there was this old man teaching them “Wushu” or martial arts and the kids were no longer paying attention to him, they were just sort of running wild. About ten minutes later as I’m leaving the park, this Mercedes van rolls up and the old man jumps out and starts talking to me in Chinese…It’s nice not to be presumed an idiot all the time. He asks me if I would like to take Wushu lessons with those boys on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays from him. We chatted for a bit and it was decided that I would come watch on Sunday (I have no intention of being shown-up by two 5 year olds who aren’t even 1.5 meters tall collectively, but I don’t mind watching).

I’m having a little respect problem with my male students lately in Junior 3. Ever since I moved onto campus they’ve been kind of hard to handle. In class they are marginally polite, but outside…..I get a lot of “Hey sexy” and “Hey pretty lady” and it’s really discomforting. I’ve explained in class a number of times that it’s not polite to say these things, but none of that seems to have stuck. Additionally I caught two boys boring holes in their notebooks so that they could be placed in front of their camera phones to take photos of me during class. Honestly upon going to America in Juen, I will NOT miss anything remotely like that. It’ll be nice to walk around in the states for days at a time without turning a single head….whereas here….it happens every 5 seconds or so b/c I’m a laowai (friendly foreigner) or waiguoren (foreigner) or waijiao (foreign teacher).

Only room for 7

Ten weeks from yesterday…I’ll be back in the United States of America. It seems uncanny that 9 months have passed already and that Easter is next weekend. However, seeing as religion is still somewhat of a taboo issue to speak of publicly, not much will be happening in the way of Easter festivities. That being said recent weeks have not been devoid of entertainment.

This past week I taught a lesson on the Titanic. This was a direct result of a student asking me if we could view the movie Titanic during oral English Class. I had to say no based on two reasons, one being that the movie is almost three hours long and would take up almost all of the rest of class time this term to watch, and two, there are scenes of nudity and suggestive sexual nature that aren’t appropriate to view at school. However, I liked the idea of the Titanic, so I did a little research, found out when it sank, how many people were on board, how many survived and what kinds of people were on board and voila…..a lesson for 12 classes. I gave the students some info regarding the ship, and we worked on how to say fractions in English by deciding what percentage of people survived the shipwreck. Then I asked them for a list of all the jobs they knew how to say in English. This list varied in length and creativity depending on the level of English in the class, but they usually came up with about 30….the most interesting of the week being 1) Churchman 2) Terrorist 3) Counterterrorist 3) Pig-feeder 4)Toilet Cleaner 5) Spy and 6) Thief. The usual doctor, lawyer, teacher etc were in there and I taught them some new professions such as architect, construction worker, and president. Then I showed the class a slide of a lifeboat and said that there were only 7 places in the last lifeboat on the Titanic and there were 30+ people left having those 30+ professions that they previously came up with. It was their job to come up with the 7 most important to save and give me reasons why. With the sporty boys, the famous basketball player was always the first one to be saved. In one class a group came up with saving a model b/c she would be ‘light’ and then they could take someone heavy in the boat and eat him first. Then in one class the students knew the word butcher and asked that the butcher and headmaster be in the lifeboat so that the butcher could cut the headmaster up into pieces (oddly enough I got this response 5 times this week…people really don’t like the headmaster). One group said to save the churchman so he could talk to God and ask for help…how righteous. Then there were the ‘cool’ boys who learned that adding ‘ess’ to most jobs made it a specifically female job, so they wanted to save the waitress, the stewardess, the model, the wizardess (yes that’s the female version of wiazard), the butcheress, the hostess, policewoman and actress. They wanted everyone that was saved to be female and ‘good to look at.’

I finally got an office at school …..with 9 weeks left of school. It’s on the 5th floor, has a great view of the school, a water cooler with no water bottle and no computer. If they ever managed to put in a computer, I’ll spend some time up there, otherwise it’s merely an extra key on my keyring.

My Chinese friend Abby got me a tutoring job downtown for this month. Her boss is going to America in May and wants to improve her English. It’s nice to teach someone who really wants to learn, versus kids who verbally assault you in Cantonese and you cannot do anything about it.

It’s amazing how my mood here is dictated so much by the weather. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday the weather was beautiful and walking to tutoring (mine in Chinese or Ella’s in English) was pleasant and I was able to run in the park by the reservoir and see all my usual ‘friends’. There is the man who rides his yellow bike around this circular path for 45 minutes everyday around 5pm. Then there is the cheeriest lady who carries an open umbrella (rain or shine), a plastic bag with her shoes in it, and proceeds to walk the whole of the park paths backwards and barefoot. There is the posse of old men who sit at the lake and fish all day long and catch heaps and heaps of fish and keep them in this tank and then at 5pm everyday they toss them back in so they can repeat the same action again tomorrow. There’s the woman who sits in the ticket booth at the entrance of the bonsai garden all day long, smiling and I honestly don’t know how she can do it….no one ever pays the 10 yuan to get in. On the weekend there is a man who always plays tennis with himself in the parking lot using a long piece of elastic tethered to his racket and the ball and there are also an uncountable number of fan dancing groups. Awesome. However the last four days it has rained. It’s depressing, and slippery. My quality of life takes a nosedive on rainy days.

I’ve got a holiday coming the first week in May. In China it’s called Golden Week. All of my good friends are going on a cheap package trip to Bali, but I’ve been discouraged by the higher Nelson powers that be not to go….plus I’ve been there 6 times. So, that leaves me with few other options. But I rang up a friend in Beijing and I think the two of us might be bound for Thailand….Phuket to be exact to have a similar beachy-type holiday. Lack of funds and the expensive nature of Japan have finally ruled out my thoughts for Tokyo and Osaka. I think, on recommendation by Jenny, that I will go with maybe 3 or 4 other friends to Macau for my birthday. I think that could be a lot of fun. Some fellow male teachers are there this weekend doing a farewell to one of the guys because he is heading back to the states the beginning of next week. They all have had suits made at the train station and wanted an excuse to wear them. The plan was to go to the casinos in Macau all decked out. Ha, as if they have any money to spend. This week seems to be a week of leavers. I think 4 or 5 more people will leave before the 15th of April.

The wonders of crayola

It's once again been awhile since I've posted...the blames is squarely on the fact that I do not have internet in my room and will not have internet there before I leave as the school has erased the operating system on my computer once already while trying to plug in high speed internet. I have decided not to take further chances with them messing up my computer and will settle for using a classroom computer for these last 12 weeks or so. Am I really down to that little time? It seem surreal. I'm just getting to the point where my students are really comfortable with me and they joke (usually appropriately) with me and the class periods go by rather quickly.

This past week has been fun at school because I have been teaching a lesson about monsters and using vocabulary that is new to them: eyebrows, eyelashes, spots, horns etc. and after week look at many powerpoints of monsters I break them into groups of 4 and give them paper and some crayons and they must draw a monster and then either answer questions about the monster or write a story, depending on the level of english in the class. I think the kids like the crayons the best, as they are from a box that I brought from the states, Crayola in fact. Crayons from the stationary shops here are much more waxy and don't have such brilliant colours. Some of the students are really very good artists, while others, not so much. I can't fault them though; in their 7am-6pm school day they don't have any art classes. In fact the one art classroom that I used to see students in at night doing still-life portraits and really enjoying themselves in, was turned into a book-storage room last week and so there is no more room for special art classes. I guess schools here and ones in the states have that in common, the arts programs are the first to be cut when budget-shaving occurs.

My class schedules of recent have been changing almost daily b/c of testing that is going on and mock-testing for the Junior 3's who will be taking their high school entrance exam on the 15th of June. I had to work on Sunday last week b/c apparently the J3's did so poorly on a full mock test the preceding week, that the school had a meeting about their terrible performance and deemed it necessary for them to re-take the same test on Friday, today. Thus, the Friday schedule was moved to sunday and instead of being able to visit my friends in a district north of here last weekend, I had to stick around and teach two classes beginning at 8am on Sunday. Fun.

It's also a bit ironic that their exam is on the exact day that my contract goes up. All the classrooms have a blackboard in the front and the back of class and the one in the back is keeping track of days left until the 'zhong kao' or 'middle exam' which means so much to them. Thus, in an inadvertant manner its a constant reminder of how much time I have left.....78 days, that's no time at all.

I haven't made any final plans about where I am going to travel during my 7 days off in May, but I am beginning to lean towards Japan b/c the tickets are cheap, even though travelling around there will not be so cheap.

The weather has been beautiful the last couple of days, which is nice b/c in recent weeks we have seen quite a substantial amount of rain that will put even the cheeriest of people into kind of a sullen stupor. I've had many near-falls on slippery pavement, but not wipeouts this month.

I am glad to have come to China and I am glad to have time left here, but I have also realized that I don't want to live alone in a foreign country in the future. It gets a bit lonely when there isn't another person to laugh with while killing swarms of mosquitos in your room, or washing your clothes in the shower b/c there isn't a washing machine.

Living Colonial Style

Living in China has made me something of a tolerant person I would like to think. However my patience has been pushed to the limit in recent weeks, but instead of snapping, I think my demands on living conditions in this country have just gone down to the point where the fact that I have no internet, no hot water in the shower and most recently a washing machine that doesnt drain, doesnt seem quite so bad anymore.

This past weekend was event-filled, most noteably that for one day and one day only, I was a model for a professional photo shoot of nifty Italian mattresses. I was paid a gold mine in China terms and mere peanuts in US terms (so I’m sure some European Model Union is at this time using my head for a dart board realizing that they could have made $8000+ dollars off of a shoot that was outsourced to China where a sucker like me would do it for 1/16 the price). My friend Tim and I were in the photos (they needed a ‘couple’ for some of shots, but really he was in maybe 20% of the pics). We had to travel to the town of Shunde which is two hours away from Shenzhen, so Mr. Luo (the China manager of the Italian mattress company, whose name escapes me right now) picked me up at 6:15am on a Sunday and promised to have me home by 8pm. Ha.

Upon arrival in Shunde, I realized that the city was pretty much entirely furniture, carpet and draping factories and showrooms. As we got out of the mini-van I looked across the street and on a large billboard there was an advertisement for the new summer “Poop Collection” for a leather furniture factory. Either that was a serious typo or some translator really screwed over the company. Though…the color of the furniture was oddly close to uh, poop colour, so maybe that’s really what the company was going for.

Anyho, back to the story. I was ushered up to a really top notch photo studio, mostly for furniture scenes I think and the makeup and hair artists that came with us set to work on my person. It took 2, yes 2, uh huh, 2 hours to do my makeup. That was totally astonishing. I think Mr. Makeup Man spent 45 minutes meticulously covering up every one of my freckles under my eyes and on my nose. He then inquired as to whether he could pluck my eyebrows and I made him show me what he intended to do….he wanted to make my eyebrows about 1 inch long, ha ha ha. I said no, no plucking, but he was allowed to trim. I gotta say….amazing job really. I now have nicely arched eyebrows and they’re still full eyebrows which is wonderful. After 2 inches of makeup was applied, I got ready for him to apply mascara and instead, he pulled out a set of fake eyelashes. Actually, not that’s a lie, he pulled out multiple sets of lashes and tried them out on me before deciding on the right pair. I had never worn fake lashes before…..you have to glue those suckers on !!!!! They were actually glued and then reglued about 9pm that night as shooting began to go way overtime. They looked lovely on camera, but I’ve never felt anything stranger on my eyes before. It almost felt like I couldn’t open my eyes all of the way.

Then came my hair. They decided that my long long straight hair needed to become long curly hair. It looked beautiful, one hour later and through the course of the day had to be redone no less than 5 times. Crazy. Mr. Curling Iron man would set me down between set changes to recurl.
I told them no scandalous or relvealing clothing would be worn by me, so my ‘outfits’ included some rather bizarre elements: a long enormous bath robe with grosgrain ribbon trimming, joga pants and an exercize shirt, and white cotton long underwear….full bodysuit-like. These were all purchased in China, meaning that they were the largest sizes that could be procured b/c I am so much bigger than people here.

The photographer was awesome and his adobe photoshop was even cooler. Almost a second after the photos were taken he went to work on photoshopping out my scraped knee or some errant string on the duvet cover. The resolution was so astonishing….the holes in the foam of the pillows could be picked up on the screen and made to look like swiss cheese.

By 11:30 I was exhausted and cranky and felt myself becoming one of the primadonna models from reality tv. I just wanted to go home. Luckily, shortly after we were able to wrap and be done.

After not having eaten for 13 hours, Mr. Luo wanted to take us for food…..Tim and I were thinking the enormous Mc Donalds that we had passed. Even though I had not eaten Chinese Mc D’s since arriving I felt the evening warranted a hamburger. However, instead we went to a congee (porridge) restaurant. Now, mind you I don’t really fancy Chinese porridge food in the first place, but apparently at midnight the selection at the restaurants goes way down…go figure. The waitress says that they have chicken porridge and snake porridge. I quickly say chicken while everyone else including tim says snake (tim says I should live a little). Well, never fear, the women quickly comes back to say that there isn’t chicken, only snake. So alright snake it is. I’m guessing that cook just didn’t want to make a pot of chicken porridge for one person. Well twenty minutes later a giant cauldron of steaming something or other comes out and the waitress starts to ladle it in our bowls. The porridge part tastes alright….kinda like salty oatmeal….then tim digs his spoon into the bottom of the bowl and pulls out….the jaw, yes the jaw of the snake. Then mr luo spoons up the eyeball, then makeup man takes a mouthful of reproductive organs and I think that I’m going to be ill. I choked down maybe a third of the bowl but honestly, after seeing every bit of the snake grinded up and stuck in that bowl….I really forgot all about being hungry.

Three am I arrived home to my school. I didn’t make it into bed until after 4am for two reasons:
1) I was once again starving so I found it necessary to make some peanut butter toast.
2) I had to wash the 2inches of makeup off of my face (incidentally wearing that makeup into a restaurant at midnight gave me probably my closet feeling ever to being a lady of the night, so to speak). Because the makeup that so thick, I was going to have to use hot and some major scrubbing to get all of it off…..problem….my hot water only worked on Tuesday last week and since then it has been broken. The man came on Saturday with a new hot water heater, but not man for installing. So I am now just sitting around looking at the nice box with the hot water heater in it. Thus, in order to get the makeup off of my face, I had to heat up water in my hot water pot, pour it into a basin once it boiled, added some cold water to it, and voila, warm water. (Incidentally, this colonial-style wash basin showering is how I’ve been doing it for a week since the hypothermic termperatures of the water coming out of the faucet were just too much for me after three showers. When I showed I usually have to heat up 4 pots of water and use the big basin. Just call me Laura Ingalls Wilder….i feel like I should be churning butter or wearing a bonnet while doing all of this too).

3 hours into my well-deserved slumber, I was awoken by pounding on the door. Conveniently, at 7:30am on a Monday, the telephone company decided to arrive to install my phone line. I was mad and happy at the same time…..at least I was going to be in touch with the real world again! However it was strange…in theory they had to install a brand new telephone line because the old one had been ripped out, but really they just cut into the plastic of the tv cable, cut a few wires, twisted them around a wire leading out of the phone and then….my phone worked! Awesome.

I figured since Monday was a good and productive day, then so would Tuesday. Water heater man was supposed to come at 3pm, but oh wait….he never came. I decided that while waiting I might as well get some laundry started. That meant I had to unplug my computer and lamp from the power strip I was using as an extension cord (only one outlet in my apt/room works) and then take it outside, plug in the washing machine to the strip and then plug the strip into the plug in the outside kitchen that is 5 feet up the wall. I pull my clothes in and decided to go for a run.

Upon arrival home (after having fallen on the pavement for the 6th time in china…I’m beginning to worry about myself), I went to hang up my laundry only to find out that…it never got past the wash/agitate cycle. The stupid machine won’t drain. I tried all the different settings and none of them could get past the first of three parts….no rinse, no spin. So…..I got the giant basin, took all of the clothes out and took them to the bathroom to be rinsed. They were….and still are….full of soap. I turned the shower on and spent 30 minutes rinsing and wringing out all of the laundry, but when I went outside to see if they were dry this morning….they felt like they had tons of soap still in them…..kinda yuck. The machine incidentally still has an alarmingly gross coloured water in it.

Other than that, life has been pretty quiet. Im going to a Ball sponsored by the Foreign Experts Bureau on March 18 and had a dress made from a JCrew picture. The dress in the catalogue cost $450 and the copy I had made out of the same silk material cost $20. Amazing. Hopefully that should be a good time.

The school has changed our schedule again. The Junior 1 and 2 students now must do morning exercizes on the field for 20 minutes before school begins, so classes are pushed 10 minutes later, meaning the students get 10 minutes less for lunch each day. Pretty unfair if you ask me. I am teaching a lesson on differences between American schools and Chinese schools this week and some of my students are funny by make me feel sad that the same time. I asked if they have singining, or band, or drama or art classes and they said no. But then I said that I have seen the art room on the bottom floor and they said it is just for show, for when parents or Party members come to visit. I then asked what they do before first period at 8am (they must be at school by 6:50) and they said it’s reading hour, but it usually isn’t reading hour reading…its and hour for the teachers to yell at them. Then they were telling me how easy it is to cheat on tests because the desks are so close and the teachers, when they give the exams, usually fall asleep in the front of the rooms, or put a newspaper on their head or read a magazine. At some of this stuff I just had to chuckle really hard.


Oh China….

In other news, I’m headed back to Dallas on June 16, which means thanks to the good ole international date line….I’ll actually be back in Dallas on the 16th….after 20 hours of flying and a 14 hour time change. 3months….time flies.

The Resume Answer......

My friend Tyler responded to a listserve teacher question yesterday with the following funny response and I thought I'd share. The question was 'how do I correctly document my year in China on a resume?' The results from Tyler follow and are sure to humor:


1. The honest entry:

English Speaking Clown
Shenzhen Education Bureau
09/05-06/06

> Duties often entailed daily public humiliation and embarrassment, as well classroom and occasional birthday party entertainment.


2. The Slightly exaggerated and overly sophisticated entry:

Expert Facilitator of Spoken English Acquisition
Shenzhen Education Bureau
09/05-06/06

> Duties included: extensive and arduous lesson planning, daily lecturing, and school administration responsibilities.


3. The outright, but still feasible and defendable lie:

US Department of Education Foreign Spy
Shenzhen Education Bureau (cover)
09/05-06/06

> Duties included: foreign teacher impersonation, regular maintenance of hand to hand combat and numb-chuck skills, as well as the occasional "elimination" of students deemed as potential threats.


Note: Anyone who actually uses any of the above entries on their resumes can thank me when the said entry lands that dream job as CEO, Corporate Lawyer, Stripper, etc... Thank Yous will be most appreciated in the form of generous financial contributions to the Make A Wish And Make Tyler Rich Foundation (MAWAMTRF).

Hakunamata the desert snowboarder

Friday afternoon.....another week hath been survived. However I must admit that however lame and 85-year old womanish it may be, in order to survive today I had to go to bed at 6:30 last night. I taught 6 full classes yesterday and this week I basically lectured on the Olympics and while the students really liked my dopey demonstrations of jumping in and out of the bobsleigh and doing shooting for the biathlon, lecturing over the voices of 65 children in each class was sometimes a strain on the voice. Then yesterday as I was walking out of the school gates to go home for lunch, I was corned by an admin lady asking me to take part in English Corners (english speaking club) after school that day and that my topic was school rules. Ha, what if I had told her no? Of course I wouldn't turn it down; I get paid extra for it, and it was with my favorite little junior 1 kiddos. But...this meant staying at school well past 6, talking and handing out prizes (provided by the school in the form of pens, erasers and little sweets) to 12 year olds for answering questions such as: "Tell me three school rules," "Tell me two rules you would make if you were a teacher" etc. The most popular prize was the eraser (Bill Yi (aka Bill Gates)) told me it was because in the shops that eraser costs 3kuai and the pens and candy were less than 1kuai.

I came home, contemplated venturing out for dinner...b/c yes I am still living on my couch and will be until oh Tuesday...but instead I grabbed and apple and yogurt and crashed before the evening news came on. I normally teach at 7:45am on Fridays (and all other days now) but today Jack, the English teacher for Junior1Class2 (the 7:45 Friday class) asked if we could swap times b/c he was giving his students a test and some wanted to start early before school. So, of course i said fine and I was able to sleep until 8 and then teach at 8:40. Do no worry, I didn't actually sleep 14 hours last night....i woke up about 3 for a bit which coincidentally coincided with the live coverage of the ladies' figure skating finals. I watched a bunch of women fall, and one beautiful Japanese girl not fall and then popped back to sleep.

My last two classes of the week were attended by 4 or 5 Junior 3 English teachers who had heard from my friend Qingling that I have interesting classes. Alas, I got to make an idiot out of myself in front of my 15 year olds and their teachers today. However the activity I ended class with made teaching each class this week worth it. I asked each student to write a short story about being an Olympic athlete. I made an example: I stuck my face on the body of Ice hockey star Mike Modano and made a story about my name being Hildy Sveldma from Sweden and how I was 39 years old and competing the Turin Olympics. I got some wonderful responses but my favorite was from a student named Abner: "Hello, my name is Hakunamata. I come from South Africa and I am playing snowboarding for my country in the Olympics in Italy this year. I have never seen snow, but I am going to Italy to play snowboarding. My father and I practice the snowboarding on the desert for 15 hours every day. We go home at night and my mother cooks potatoes. I think snow will look like mashed potatoes. Go South Africa" See...sometimes teaching the kiddos is rather rewarding.

Here's my debunking of common thought for the moment: I've heard from many people, as well as on many movies that if you exude confidence and look someone in the eye, then they're not going to look down and see what you are wearing. Well I chose to extend this little saying into including personal footwear. But, in China, for me, it's oh so wrong. I smile brightly at just about everyone I see...it order to melt those leers into smiles on passerby. They usually smile right back but I can't keep their gaze; it goes down to my feet. I think this is becuase people here are not used to seeing women my height and they figure that I must be wearing heels. But, much to their dismay I am wearing flat shoes and not just flat shoes, flip flops. In case you didn't know, flip flops are 'poor mans' shoes here and so in their head, my passing by had caused quite a conundrum....why is she tall, why is she a foreigner wearing the poor shoes? So much for blending in and being smiley....it doesn't prevent the double, triple and quadruple take.

Speaking of takes, my friend Tim and I are going to be in mattress ads here in Shenzhen! Hahaha. One of my student's fathers own a mattress factory in the SEZ and the student asked my good friend Xiaoxia (his English teacher) if she would ask me if me and a 'tall, handsome' friend would be in the adverts. Xiaoxia has assured me that it is legit, we'll be sitting on mattresses, fully-clothed etc. hahaa. Xiaoxia is 45 and is my Chinese mama, so she's looking out for us and will be our translator (i dont know much mattress lingo in Chinese). This all transpires next week. The money is great....for 3 hours tim and I get 3/4 the amount we're paid for teaching each month. Super!

Love for Handsome Lake

I cannot count the number of times my colleagues who teach oral English at other schools tell me how much they hate teaching junior 1 students (about 12-14 years old). *Quick aside: The reason for the large age span in any given grade of students has to do with their professed ages being based on the lunar calendar. See, when a Chinese baby is born he/she is already one year old and then will turn two on the lunar new year. Sooooooo, if child was born a day before the lunar new year, then he'll be two when he is merely two days old. Conversely, if the child is born a month after the lunar new year, he will not turn two until he is 11 months old in our was of customary counting.* Well I love my Junior 1 students. This term I am teaching 8 classes of them: 4 small classes where Barbara and I divide big classes in half, and then 4 large classes. The large classes are Junior 1 Classes 5, 6, 7,8. Classes here are ranked, Class 1 is the best, and Class 10 is the worst. So by logic you'd think that these would be the bad classes. Admittedly, their English is not quite the same as Classes 1-4, but what they lack in skill, they more than make up in eagerness....except for Snoopy, who spent 30 minutes standing outside of class because he thought "fuck you" to be terribly funny to shout over and over. Today I found my favorite student of all time and his name is Handsome Lake. Yes that is correct, Handsome Lake. He's adorable and funny and loves to speak English and he is a member of Class 8, my new favorite class. They were full of energy and eager to learn; a teacher's dream quite frankly.

News on the less meritable front:
I was supposed to have been moved out of my apt. last weekend, but due to 50,000 things that are wrong with the place, I am still sleeping on the couch of my old empty place, bringing clothes back and forth from my new school apt. via backpack each day. Yesterday, after they still had done nothing to fix anything, I went through the place and found the following things wrong:
1) No phone line (has phone and lots of holes in the wall that could maybe in the future house phone wires)
2) No place for internet (in my contract)
3) Refridgerator doesn't chill (kinda key factor for said contraption)
4) No water or power to washing machine
5) No hot water (that was fixed this morning)
7) One (1) electrical socket that works (that means lots of extension cords and a monster power strip will be needed to plug in tv, two lamps, water cooler, fridge, washer, and internet.....haha does it sound like they need to do something)
8) Toilet doesn't work

Addressing the last part: I went in yesterday between classes to use the toilet only to find upon test flush (i do these kind of things now b/c i've been in china long enough to know there is about an 1/7 chance it's not going to work) I find that no water fills the toilet bowl. So, I go down to admin, tell my boss the problem and say that I cannot move into this place until the toilet at least works...i mean the rest can be dealt with after if NECESSARY. Well he says no problem, no moving until the apt. is all ready (wonderful that he says this after it was demanded that I move all my effects out of my old place last weekend). This morning I go up to the room at school to get a roll of TP (for a clever game for my Junior 1s) and am overwhelmed by a smell I can only liken to vomit coming from the bathroom. I open the door and where the non-functioning toilet was yesterday, today there is just a hole in the ground. And later I find out that all of the dorm toilets were backing up into said hole in the ground in my bathroom today....hence the horrid smell. When I told them the about the toilet problem, I would have thought that a new U-tube or a couple cranks of a pipe would have put it back in order, not take the whole darn thing out.

The only thing to do on a day like this is to remember that my students are awesome, the weather was perfect to run by the resevoir, and TIC (this is China) and I've come to expect the illogical and idiotic to happen on a daily basis.

Never Underestimate the power of.......

......a Safety Pin.

Yesterday morning at 6am I made a trip to the bathroom in my all-packed, chilly apt, only to find, that in addition to the bathroom light being burned out, the kitchen light being on the blink, that yes indeed, there was no running water in my apt. I hammered time after time with my hands on the flusher button and to no avail; there wasn't any water to be had. And in addition to aforementioned said drama, I broke the chain on the toilet....again. So at 6am, in the dark of my bathroom, i had to stick my hand down the slimey, mildewy, tank to reconnect the chain with....a safety pin. What a totally, utterly comepletely useful contraption.

4 hours later the water came back on. Yah! Two more days of hot water showers (the hot water in my new room doesn't work).

However, the day was made wonderful with Mexican food and good friends. There is always a silver lining to any rocky start.

P.S. I get to feel like a princess for 4 months in my new place. The bed is topped with a canopy and mosquito netting draped down to the floor. (Granted, the whole thing is made out of aluminum piping and is tied with raffea to the headboard).

500 People doing "The Lawnmower"....I know you're jealous

And so….after 6 weeks of jam-packed traveling and visiting, I return to Shenzhen for 2nd term (albeit a shorter term than last – MidJune will be upon us before we know it. There are stories to be told about every moment of my travels, from the beauteous Shanghai that Adam I and encountered, to the crazy travels of three ladies in Sichuan that landed us on top of a mountain where no tourist had tread for probably months, if not years where we huddled into a makeshift king-size bed (two twins pushed together for purposes of body head) and savored the incremental wafts of warm air from the heater on the wall, and finally to mum and I taking on some of the world’s finest real estate, New Zealand. Those stories and many more will be added in due time, but for now, I return to the present.

The new term started Monday, and as the first school bell rang I was sitting, and perhaps half dozing in a cramped airplane seat aboard a flight from Auckland to HK. I had informed my school in December that ‘gee, I didn’t book the tickets, they were a gift and I can’t help it if I miss the first day back.’ In actual fact, I booked the tickets myself, and I wanted an extra day in NZ, haha what can I say. I must admit, flying was much more glamorous when I was more of a pint-sized person (ie 10 years old), b/c man the airlines are scrimping space right, left and center and then before you know it someone like me who is 6 feet tall, begina to lose circulation in my legs as soon as 23B right in front of me decides it’s time to recline his chair. And when I was a kid, children’s meals were leaps and bounds better than the regular stuff served; oh how I wish I still fit into that ‘under 12’ category.

Arriving back in HK mum and I were greeted with…..the worst pollution in town since September. It was so bad that it sent 200 of the 40,000, yes 40,000 runners from the Standard Charter marathon in HK the day before to the hospital and one person actually died! It made me want to jump back on a plane and head back to NZ. The ONLY thing that was undesirable about NZ is that they only let you take 20kg of weight per suitcase on the airplane (JAL and China Airlines lets you take 32kg internationally). The 20kg severally hinders purchasing power.

I’ve got a great schedule this term….no teaching on Mondays or Friday afternoons. This means I have the potential to travel, but instead I think I’m going to take a job with a tutoring firm that finds tutors for CEOs and important people in Chinese companies who need to learn English for their jobs. It might be very different teaching people who really want to learn English, vs. some of my students who are just there to take up space in the classroom.

That said, I love most of my students this term. I’ve got all my junior 3s back and they’ve been wonderful this week and I’m teaching 8 classes of junior 1s. I love them; they’re still small and innocent and want to please the teacher.

Also upon arrival back at school I was greeted with the crew for the tv show that has been filming at our school for the last 4 months. (side note: Wouldn’t you think that if your school was the grounds for a tv show, that they are probably getting paid a lot for this use? I think so. So…..why do I have to move out of my apt. and into this closet type “apartment” (think big room with tv, bed, desk, outside kitchen, etc) b/c me living outside school is just ‘too expensive’ for the school. Haha, oh well). I walked out of class yesterday and the courtyard to the left of me was dry but as I peered straight ahead, I saw a deluge of water coming down. I was perplexed, thinking that a raincloud over a mere part of the school was unlikely. It turned out that they were filming a rainy scene for the tv show and the local fire truck was out there creating rain for all these people to stand around in with umbrellas for the show. Today there was a ‘track meet’ at school for the show and kids from the local primary school down the road, were recruited to be the opposing teams for the meet. There were even cheerleaders which are totally out of groove with what really happens in China. I would bet money that 90% of kids don’t even know what cheerleaders are (the other 10% are the basketball obsessed students named LeBron, Carter, MJ, McGrady etc. that watch NBA on TV). I mean the closest thing that any of my students do to cheerleading is something called ‘morning exercises.’ This is a routine that is done in formation in synch with some dude at the front shouting numbers out to the group. While the students usually utter some dopey half baked answer about morning exercises ‘making you healthy,’ it can be assumed that the corporate masters in Beijing are the masterminds behind such formational exercise. (Incidentally, these Corporate masters probably spend the rest of their time playing with their magic Yahtze dice, rolling them to decide when public holidays occur….i swear it’s that arbitrary……”doubly sixes…..ok no May Holiday until June 21”). Now what is morning exercise you say? Just picture 500 students in perfectly straight lines doing 70s dance moves like the shopping cart or the lawnmower…without music of course. If you can envision this, then you’ve got a fairly accurate grasp of the daily scene around my school. They do lots of spins; there’s a move where they rotate their fists really fast around one another like a spinning wheel, and they take the spinning wheel fist thing up high, and from side to side to down low… im surprised there’s no between the legs or behind the head either. Personally I think they would be better off doing the ‘Hustle’ set to nationalistic Chinese propaganda.

Good to be back. I missed my polluted-taking-years-off-my-life-air-and-hygeine-quality city. Oh yes I did.

No words to express.....

Well, after three weeks of no blogging, I'm back for 12 hours before I head out to Chengdu and Chongqing with a good friend of mine here. We're off to explore the wonders of Sichuan: pandas food and all.

The last two and a half weeks have been filled with vacation time. Adam came to visit me and we made 17 days into a most fantastic holiday. We spent a week in Shanghai, Suzhou and Hangzhou. These three cities for all who are unfamiliar with China encompass the spectrum from European Imperialism all the way to quaint garden cities that are the basis of Chinese myth about the West Lake. We ooohed and ahhhhed over the mix of modernity and 19th century European influence in Shanghai and then jetted out to garden cities of Suzhou and Hangzhou to stroll along the banks of the West Lake, climb the stairs of the Linyin ancient Zen Buddhist temple and meandered through the secret gardens of Suzhou. I introduced Adam to all kinds of Chinese food....from classy to hole-in-the-wall establishments, while he cultured me on the fine dining of Indian food.

We spent time in Hong Kong and I tried to convince him of HK's "top 1 city" status in my book. We gazed at skyscrapers road the midlevels escalator, walked the avenue of the stars and ate Indonesian food in Causeway Bay.

I spent a week showing him my personal stomping ground: Shenzhen. We walked parks filled with kite-flyers and families and ate chinese bbq.

At then end of it all Adam may have gone home with a pair of worn-out shoes (we walked and walked and walked literally everywhere all day long), but I am here left with the feeling that I love showing people the country that I so dearly love. Travelling and experiencing China all over again made me love this place all that much more.

I'll be back in a week armed with backpacking adventures and hopefully pictures of pandas.