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).