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.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Sunday, April 16, 2006
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.
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.
Saturday, April 15, 2006
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).
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).
Sunday, April 09, 2006
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.
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.
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