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?
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Saturday, May 27, 2006
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.
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.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
"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.
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.
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