A Night of Impromptu Karaoke

As strange as it sounds, I'm getting so used to this place that it kind of feels like home. I've settled into a sort-of routine and I have a decent grasp of how to get around (so much so, in fact, that I saw a clearly lost man in Longgang the other day and started to stop to help him before catching myself...I may know my way around, but I still can't speak Chinese well enough to share that information). I have my foreign friends and my teacher friends, and (believe it or not) I'm so used to hearing the constant background noise of a language I can't understand that I find myself agape when I happen to overhear an English conversation!
Yesterday at lunch Maggie mentioned something about a singing competition she is going to take part in. She loves to sing (really though, she sings constantly) but feels that she is out of practice so she said she wanted to work on it before the contest. At the time, I couldn't have known how involved I was going to become in this process.
After school I had to tutor from 5-6. Tutoring jobs are one of the lovely perks of being an English speaker in this country; they are absolutely thrown at you and you get to charge pretty much whatever you want. The girl I tutor is in 4th grade with excellent English, so we just hang out, chat, and draw pictures and I get paid 150RMB (~$25) per hour. She also happens to be the music teacher's daughter. Maggie, of course, knows this, so when I went to meet up with the girl she tagged along to talk to the mom about working on her singing.
After tutoring I shuffled off to dinner and was waved over by Maggie who happened to be just finishing up. As I sat down she said, "I'm going to sing on the 6th floor tonight, would you like to join?". Laughing out loud I said no, which, judging by the look on her face, was the wrong answer. Feeling bad I asked, "what time?", only to find out that this was going to start in about 15 minutes. At this point I figured there was little chance to escape so I reluctantly agreed.
After we finished eating and washed our dishes she asked me if I was going to the office. In a last-ditch attempt to get out of singing I said no. Rallying quickly from my shocking answer she said, "Okay, you go to your dormitory first and then meet me at 6:30" (it was 6:25 at the time). Seeing that I was clearly NOT going to be able to wriggle my way out of this one, I agreed that it made more sense to go to the office since I didn't know where this singing room was.
A few minutes later we were trudging up to the 6th floor of one of the buildings where the maintenance guy let us in. I was shocked at what I saw: a massive KTV room right there in the school building! KTV is what they call the karaoke places in China; you and your friends sit in a room the size of a medium bedroom and sing. It is outfitted with plenty of comfy couch space and a couple tables, and there is an all-you-can-eat bar down the hallway. There are usually some colorful lighting fixtures and, of course, a stage. Fu'an School's KTV room was 6 times as big as a KTV, with all the crazy lights and couches, but no food and only the three of us.
Once we got the stereo working, Maggie informed me that she invited everyone she saw that night but only a few were going to come. Great. The only thing worse than karaoke with your friends is karaoke with just two people. Maggie insisted that I go first, but I insisted she went first since I had yet to see any English songs in the book. We found the page and she left me to peruse it as she sang her first song. Now, this was a pretty big book of songs; there were pages and pages of Chinese songs, a couple pages of Japanese songs, and one single page of English songs that was only 2/3 full. To make matters worse, I only recognized about half of the songs and only liked about 5 of them. Oh well. As we took turns singing a few people came and went, so there were always about 3 of us hanging out. I sang "Tears in Heaven" and a lot of Beatles and we all had a pretty good time for the first hour or so.
By hour 3 I was ready to make like a tree and leave, but Maggie still persisted. She insisted on me choosing songs even though I had fully exhausted any and all songs that I had a chance at being able to sing and had even faked my way through a couple. I finally decided that the only way out of there was to claim exhaustion and hit the road. This excuse always works in China because they believe that rest is an extremely important component of your healthy.
So at 9:30 I finally made it back to my room and I just laughed to think about what a strange and random night it was. I also realized that no matter how used to China I become, there will always be something waiting to surprise me.

Typical Junior High Behavior (?)

An incomplete list of the things kids have done in my classes:
~ played badminton
~ threw paper airplanes
~ punched a nearby student
~ knitted
~ played with live turtles
~ one kid said he would like to f*** me
~ asked for my signature
~ asked my blood type
~ given me their phone number
~ broke a clock (I was somewhat responsible for this one too though)
~ gotten a finger extremely stuck in a hole in their neighbor's desk
~ discreetly corrected my spelling of "favorite" and "color" (psst! Laoshi, you forgot the 'u'!)

It doesn't matter if you win or lose, it's how you play the game

Every year in Longgang there is a basketball tournament for the teachers. Each school fields a women's team and a men's team to compete - no p.e. teachers allowed though, because they are "professionals". Because I am an American, and a tall one at that, I must be good at basketball, so they asked me to play. I insisted that I am not good at basketball and I don't even really like the sport, but they took this as me being modest and got very excited because they were certain I would carry their team to victory. Thursday I was given two jerseys and a new pair of shoes before being sent out to attended practice. "Practice" was really just about 20 minutes of shooting around followed by full-court 5-on-5 ball. This, of course, exhausted me. As the practice went on the group of students watching grew, and every time my team had the ball there were chants of Wai jiao, wai jiao! ("foreign teacher" 外教), which resulted in the ball being passed to me over and over, making me more and more exhausted. Finally (and mercifully), the practice ended and I was allowed to go pass out in my room. The next day in class, multiple boys called out "lao shi, Kobe!", with the appropriate basketball-shooting hand motions. I guess they think I'm good...silly youngsters. This Monday was game day and I was informed that the bus would be leaving at 5:30pm. Wally was coming to watch and the school was going to pay for a nice post-game dinner for everyone, so it looked to be turning into a nice little evening. However, at lunch Karina (an administrator) informed me that unfortunately I was not allowed to play because I'm paid by the Education Bureau, not the school. Bummer. I still wanted to watch the games though, and I'm so glad I did because they were absolutely ridiculous. In typical female fashion, the women teams made up for their lack of athleticism and talent by beating the shit out of each other, and the men strutted around like they were NBA All-Stars. In typical Chinese fashion, every man who was not currently playing basketball was smoking. I tried to get a picture of a man in a jersey smoking on the bench, but I couldn't get away with it on the sly...trust me though, it happened! Both teams lost that night, and Tuesday too, so we are out of the double-elimination tournament. Maggie told me that it is not important to win, we just have to try our best. I told her that we have a saying that, "It doesn't matter if you win or lose, it's how you play the game"...but only the losers say it. That, she found hilarious.

Thanksgiving

On Thanksgiving night I sat down at my computer with a glass of "Peanuts and Milk" to write about how strange/funny/etc. the day was in China. If you are paying attention you may be wondering why, then, this post is dated December 11th. There is a very simple answer to that question: nothing really happened.
The Sunday before Thanksgiving all of the CTLCers got together for our best approximation of the holiday feast. We had all of the basics like turkey, mashed potatoes, and yams, but there were some strange additions like these Chinese desserts with plastic dolls on top and orange juice. We all really enjoyed being in our big group again to laugh and commiserate about our experiences here. There was even a pick-up football game!
I had to get back to Longgang that night so I could teach the next morning, and the rest of the week proceeded as usual. I had been teaching about Thanksgiving for a week already and I was teaching it for the remainder of that week as well, so when Thursday came it was just like any other day. I taught my classes (all three of them...it was my "long" day) and at about 6pm I headed down to the cafeteria for dinner. As I grabbed my lunch box out of the cabinet it hit me: I'm getting ready to eat dinner in a cafeteria in China by myself on Thanksgiving. A knot started to form in my throat, but I immediately told myself to get over it because I was being ridiculous.
As I sat down with my food, three 9th grade teachers I don't really know asked if they could sit with me. "Of course," I said, motioning for them to have a seat. It turns out that two of them don't really speak English at all and the other one only kind of speaks it, but we were able to sort of chat in broken Chinglish, and it was nice to be eating with people. I finished eating and as I got up to leave I told them I was so happy they sat by me because it was Thanksgiving and I would have been sad to eat alone. I don't know if they understood or not, but I wasn't kidding; I was thankful for that.
After dinner I decided to head across the street to the grocery store to seek out some American-ish food to gorge myself on in the name of the gluttonous holiday. This particular grocery store is pretty poor in terms of selection anyway, and American food is basically non-existent. I bought a small bag of dried fruit, some cookies that looked like those creme-filled vanilla/chocolate sandwich cookies (they weren't very good...kind of like crackers with a drop of icing on them) and a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Feeling moderately satisfied with my selection I headed home.
At my apartment I enjoyed my pseudo-American feast and cracked open my deliciously terribly PBR as I chatted with my family over Skype. As I talked to them and heard the hustle-bustle of everyone (animals included) I finally felt a little homesick.
I was sad because their lives were going on as usual and mine is completely upside-down and inside-out, I was sad because Thanksgiving came and went without much more than a blip here, and I was scared that Christmas will feel the same. However, more powerfully, I was thankful for the experiences I'm having here and I was incredibly thankful that the people I love are safe and sound and still on the other end of a phone line. Looking back, I realize that in some ways it may have been the best Thanksgiving I've ever had because I learned that I don't need to eat certain foods or even see my family to have a good Thanksgiving; all I need is to know that I am blessed in so many ways and to pause for just a moment to give thanks for all that I have...and the PBR was pretty nice too.

Chinese Health Care

"Amelia, I'm in the hospital"
This is the first thing my, obviously very drugged, boyfriend said to me on the phone Tuesday. Because of my crappy cell phone and his pain- and drug-induced state of mind, the ensuing conversation was very confusing. All I knew was he tore up his knee, surgery was involved, he was going to to be in the hospital for multiple days, and I was too far away to do anything except worry.
The next day I found out that he had been rushed into emergency surgery on Tuesday night and he was laid up in a hospital near his school for at least a week. I was happy to hear he was doing much better and that I would be able to visit him later that day. That afternoon I skipped Chinese class and headed up to Dongmen where I bought a small plant in a very Chinese-looking pot and took a taxi to his hospital (he's obsessed with house plants, he has 10 or more in his apartment).
As soon as I was out of the taxi and surveyed my surroundings, I realized that finding him in this messy complex was not going to be easy. I knew the building number, floor, and room number I was heading to, but this complex looked as organized as a 5-year-olds Lego project: building 1 was next to building 2 which was next to building 6, and buildings 3-5 were not in plain sight. As a further complication, I could not remember the word for "building" so I couldn't even ask anyone if I had to. Eventually I happened upon a map with big numbers on it and saw that I had to walk through a sketchy-looking construction zone to get to the right place. I should not have been surprised by this because there are always sketchy-looking construction zones, and you always have to walk through the middle of them to get places. Such is life in a developing country.
I got to building 3 and saw the sign for "bone and joint surgery" and knew I was in the right place. As the elevator doors opened on the third floor I was greeted with big cloud of cigarette smoke. Apparently cigarette smoke is not bad for hospital patients in China.
As I entered the "bone and joint surgery" hallway I was greeted by a smiling, waving Chinese man I didn't recognize. I figured he must have seen a white person wandering around and assumed I was looking for the only white patient in the place (this, of course, was the correct assumption).
The room (like the rest of the hospital) felt reminiscent of a US hospital in the 1950's: four simple metal beds in a stark-white room, with patients wearing hospital gowns heavily faded from years of repeated washings. The room was full of people talking and shuffling bags of food and bottles of water, and the patient where laying there looking uncomfortable. Wally explained that the nurses in the hospital don't take care of people the way they do in the States: they administer medicine and run tests, but that's basically it. If patients need to eat, bathe, use a bedpan, or otherwise move around, it is up to family members to help them. This is unfortunate for a foreigner whose closest family members live on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, so a school employee has been appointed as his designated caretaker.
I had been there less than 15 minutes when a doctor walked in wearing a mask and well-worn scrubs, dragging a gurney. After a brief conversation with the caretaker it was clear that some sort of test or procedure was in order. I was assured that they don't bar visitors from any part of the hospital, so I was invited along to wherever it was he was headed.
We shuffled onto the elevator then down a twisting hallway to the radiology area. There we took a number and continued to the next building, up another elevator and into an ECG room. I stayed in the hallway while they pulled a sheet around him so passer-bys wouldn't be scandalized by his very un-Chinese amount of chest hair. After handing me the machine printout, we headed back to radiology where I again stayed in the hall while they x-rayed his chest, because they don't bother to protect anyone from unnecessary radiation.
Now, if you have been paying attention you might be asking yourself "If he tore up his knee, why does he need an ECG and a chest x-ray?" The answer is this: God only knows. He has no idea why they ran these tests, nor why they keep testing his blood sugar like some diabetes patient. His best guess is that it is some combination of curiosity about a foreigner, odd ideas of "health" in China, and a desire to run up the bill.
Eventually we made it back to his crowded room and he was (painfully) pushed back into bed. I stayed as long as I could without risking my ability to make it back to Longgang that night, and the rest of the time was pretty uneventful. Only time will tell how knee surgery recovery will go in China, but he seems to doing pretty well so far!

The sports meeting and "Successful Land"

Last Wednesday morning I woke up sick. My throat felt like it had been rubbed with sandpaper, my nose was running, and as the day progressed I got shakier and shakier. Somehow, luckily, I ended up not teaching my two lessons that day because the teachers forgot I was supposed to, and after a trip to the school nurse I was armed with some Chinese medicine. The rest of the day I took it easy and made sure to go to bed early because I knew I had a couple of long days in front of me.
The next morning I was feeling a little better, so I put on my new track suit and ridiculous China shoes and headed downstairs bright and early for the opening ceremony of the "sports meeting". As it turns out, a "sports meeting" is basically a school-wide track meet, and because it is in China, there must be a certain level of pomp and circumstance to start it off. Because I am a token figure, rather than and actual teacher, I got to sit next to the principal and other administrators on the stage as the procession went by. First a group of kids in military uniforms marched by with flags, then each class in each grade went by and paused for some chant right in front of all of us. With nine grades and eight classes per grade, you can do the math and guess how long this whole thing took, but it was kind of cool. Some of the younger kids rode by on roller skates or bikes rather than marching, and some of them wiped out pretty bad. I'd love to say it wasn't funny, but it was.
After the opening ceremony was over and all the speeches were made, the events got going. There were races, shot put, archery, high jump, and the littlest kids did relay races and three-legged races in the middle of the track with their parents. I was asked by several people if this is how our sports meetings are in America. They didn't seem all that surprised when I told them we don't have sports meetings in America (I guess our reputation precedes us).
An hour or so later I heard my name (well, their bastardized pronunciation of my name) and someone whisked me away to the shot put area; apparently this is one of the things I signed up for. Everyone seemed very excited for me to be there because they were sure I was going to be very good at it. I, on the other hand, was nervous because I had never thrown a shot put before in my life, I have no idea how to do the spin thing, and I'm still slightly wimpy about my right shoulder. The first woman went, then the second, and I realized that "correct form" in not even remotely important and it was perfectly acceptable to sort of shuffle forward and hurl the ball. Fantastic. When my turn came, a grinning 8th grade boy who was in charge of fetching the shot put after we threw it, handed it to me with a thumbs up and said "Very good!" High praise indeed considering all I had done so far was not drop it on my foot. I shuffled up and threw it...a good two feet past all the other throws. A chorus of "very good!" and "so strong!" with plenty of thumbs-up showed their approval. My next throw went a couple feet past my first and my third went a couple feet past that. When all was said and done, not only had I beat all the other female teachers by over 2m, I had beat the school record by 7cm. Not bad for a rookie!

Students hanging out

Me with a couple of 7th graders...why do they look so scared?!?!

China Shoes

I was supposed to run in a 100m race later that day, but I didn't hear my name because I was busy chatting with last years foreign teacher, Michael. He teaches at a different school in Longgang this year and had the afternoon off, so he stopped by to watch. We spent the afternoon chatting about sports day and having our pictures taken by students (sometimes they asked first, sometimes they didn't). At some point they told us that there would be a dinner later and they wanted Michael to come along too. He accepted and at 5:30pm all the teachers and administrators piled into a couple of buses and headed to the restaurant. As we turned into the parking lot we saw a beautiful open-air restaurant, situated in the middle of a garden, partially up a hill. We also heard the first murmurs of gou rou.
Gou rou is one of the things in China that disgusts Americans. The mere thought of it makes most of us shudder and think "how could they?!?" Gou rou (狗肉) is dog meat. I was told that many old Chinese people think that gou rou is very good for your healthy and it is warm for your inside. With hesitant anticipation they asked, "will you try?"
"Yeah, I'll try a little"
We sat down and dinner started to come pretty quickly. Gou rou was the second dish to arrive and it was disgusting. I'm sure that this was partially psychosomatic and partially because the two bites I tried were too fatty, but either way I'm not a fan. Before long the toasting started. Since I was just starting to feel better from my cold, the last thing I wanted to do was drink beer. However, since I had put on such a performance last time we all drank together, and because Michael was there, I felt there was little I could do about it without being rude.

I woke up the next morning with a vague memory of being in the Principal's living room drinking tea and found a drunken text conversation on my phone (and was later told I also had a drunken regular conversation on the phone). I also found that, even though my throat felt better, I was completely unable to speak. Mei guan xi ("never mind" 没关系), I put my track suit back on and headed downstairs for day two of the sports meeting.
All the teachers I saw at the track greeted me with a hearty "Hey! Amelia! How's your throat?" (in some combination of Chinese and/or English) and I found out that I had apparently spoken Chinese all night long in my drunken stupor. Fantastic. I was told many times that I speak it very well and I should use it more, though, so that's a moderately good sign. All the students I saw asked "Who was that guy you were with yesterday?" and seemed very disappointed by the answer of "another foreign teacher"; apparently they were really hoping he was my boyfriend.
The very last event of the sports meeting was the teachers' relay race. Each grade picks 4 women and 2 men to compete in a 4x250 race. I, of course, was included in this race and all the other teachers seemed to think this was unfair...except the lone female p.e. teacher who took it as a personal challenge. Before the race I was told by many teachers that I should run slowly and one teacher even said "may your legs work as well as your voice today"...which I thought was hilarious. They explained to me, no less than 10 times, that one teacher was going to hand me the baton when it was my turn to run, and when I was done I was supposed to hand it to this other teacher. I'm not sure why they were so sure I was going to get this confused, but it was nice that they were keeping me informed.
I was the 5th person on my team to go and by the time I was up we were already behind by a few places. I took off running and all the students lost it. They were yelling and screaming and I was running faster than I had any business running. In the last stretch I felt my weight was getting pitched too far forward, but I was able to right myself. Just as I was back on balance, the teacher running in front of me wiped out; I was so glad it was her and not me! I handed off the baton (nearly taking out the teacher I was handing it to) and a few minutes later the race was over and we got third place. Lots of "good job" and "so fast" all around, and it was back to the stage for the closing ceremony. About 45 minutes of speeches and certificates later, I was up in my room preparing for the weekend.

Closing ceremony

Me, Joy, Maggie, and Michael

Earlier in the day I had been invited to an event taking place that evening and continuing through the next day. It wasn't clear what exactly was going on, all I was told was that it would be relaxing, there might be a boat, it would be a good chance to practice Chinese, and it would be cold. With that description in mind I packed a small bag of things and went down to the gate at 5:30, as instructed.
As I waited for someone to show up and tell me where to go, a well-meaning teacher asked me where I was going. The following conversation went on in a combination of broken Chinese and broken English:
"Where are you going?"
"I don't know, I'm supposed to take a bus."
"But the bus just left!"
"I know, not that bus."
"Okay, where are you going?"
"I don't know where I'm going. No one told me, they told me to wait here."
"But if you tell me where you are going I can help you."
"I don't know where I'm going, but the 7th grade English teacher does."
At this point she either understood or got tired of trying because she just smiled and awkwardly said "Okay, I go now!"
Before long some other teachers showed up and we all piled onto a big bus and headed to the nearby town of Fenggang. We ate a delicious dinner in a nice restaurant (complete with some campy-looking live singers who tried to impress me with their English) and then stowed our stuff in our luxe hotel rooms before heading to the spa. At the spa we relaxed for a couple hours and got foot massages before heading back to the hotel around midnight.
The next morning we tried to sleep in (no easy task for a bunch of teachers who get up at 6 or 7am every single day) and had a late breakfast before heading off to the real reason for this excursion: a meeting. Luckily they took pity on me and let me sit out of the meeting which was, of course, totally in Chinese. The 7th grade English teacher also played hooky to sit outside and chat. We had some really interesting conversations about language and culture, and I was shocked at how good her English is when she gets going!
The meeting lasted about 3 hours, so at about 1pm we headed to the next part of the outing: barbecue. We pulled up to a park, cheerily named "Successful Land" and were carted off to the grill area. Now, Chinese dining is generally a free-for-all, so of course a barbecue is no different. You sit around the pit and everyone cooks stuff and eats it as it finishes. We had vegetables, hot dogs, chicken, pork, yams and more. There was rampant bone-spitting and loud chewing, and it was delicious!
The melee went on for about an hour before we were handed some ticket things and told to "go have fun". We rode paddle boats, shot arrows, played with clay, rode a carousel, did bumper cars, rode a horse, and rode the scariest roller coaster I've ever seen. Now, I'm not really a fan of roller coasters anyway because I'm generally not a fan of being thrown around in the name of fun; and riding a Chinese roller coaster sounds just plain suicidal. This thing looked like it was constructed in 1953 and it's last paint job was probably in 1997. It was small and creaky and the seat belts looked like they were swiped from an old Grand Am. Despite my better judgement I got in and held on and, against all odds, survived the experience.
We finally left Successful Land and Fenggang around dinnertime and I rushed off to downtown Shenzhen to hang out with some friends and listen to a live band. Finally, on Sunday I was able to really rest, relax, and start to recover from my cold and the ridiculous events of the last few days!

So beautiful! So fat!

I'm not sure how this happened, but I have managed to sign up for every event at the "sports meeting" that is being held "maybe some day in November". I don't know what exactly this means, but I'm fairly certain I have to run at least twice and throw something. I also don't know when exactly this meeting is going to take place, but I do know this: I get free clothes.
Last week I got a slip of paper from the newspaper lady that was covered in characters with "Coleman" printed at the top. I suspected that this meant I had something to pick up from the post office, and after an unnecessarily long and painful conversation with Maggie it turns out I was right. On Thursday I had a few hours off in the afternoon so I decided to try and get my mail. Because I don't know where the post office is, and I'm nearly certain they won't speak English, this would almost certainly be an adventure. As I was walking out of the school gates to get on the bus, the principal, Mr. James, pulled up out of nowhere in his van and hollered, "Amelia! Where are you going?"
"The post office"
"Mmmm, okay, get in."
So there I was, in a van with Mr. James, Perfect (remember him?), and two people I don't know, going to the post office. Presumably we were going to go somewhere else too, but no one bothered to tell me.
When we got to the post office Mr. James sent Perfect in with me, and it's a good thing he did. In order to pick up my mail I had to fill out some form (written entirely in Chinese, of course) and make a photocopy of my passport. This would have likely been impossible if I had been there by myself.
Package in hand we got back in the van where they finally told me what part two of the trip would be: shopping. The explained to me about sports day (which I had already signed up for earlier in the day) and told me that we were going to pick out a sports outfit that all the teachers get for the occasion.
This shopping took took two hours in two locations, totally in Chinese. Needless to say I was pretty bored, but I definitely know the word for "pants" now (kuzi 裤子). Eventually some decision must have been made because we were back in the van heading home. On the way out the door someone stopped and bought some juice drinks for all of us. I had no idea what it was, but no matter how many times I said that they insisted on asking "How do you say this in English?" We eventually settled on: it is something that sugar is made out of and it comes from Cuba.

Fast-forward to a few minutes ago, when I was summoned by Maggie with the usual "Amelia! Okay, let's go". As we walked she explained that we get free clothes and shoes for sports day, so I need to tell them my size. "Maybe you can get the men's clothes," she giggled. "Maybe," I said through a gritted-teeth smile. She has made this joke before and, given the clothing situation in China, it should be funny. However, as the resident freak-of-nature it's a little irritating to have these sentiments vocalized.
When we got there I was immediately the focus of gaped-mouth attention from the kitchen staff who were almost done trying on stuff. I'm not sure why they were so intrigued because they literally see me every single day. Anyway, I was handed a men's XXL shirt which was waaay to big and then a medium which was fine. They then held up a medium pair of women's pants which were laughably small. No, we all agreed and someone stuck their foot next to mine to compare sizes.
Soon a pair of shoes showed up that (shockingly) fit! Then they decided that I needed a women's shirt, not a men's, and my women's size is definitely a XXXL. I told them that I'm sure that XL would be just fine, but they insisted that there is another woman in the school that is as fat as me and she's getting an XXXL. Yup, they called me fat.
So my XXXL shirt, XXL pants, and shoes are ordered, and I'm still not entirely sure why my presence was necessary since I didn't actually have a say in any of it. As for being called the f-word: I'm not that upset, I guess, since I think they are a little confused about the differences between and connotations of "fat"and "big" and "tall" and "strong". And even if they meant it, I do get told that I'm "so beautiful" every single day, so a good "you're fat" every once in a while just keeps my ego from over-inflating.

I'd rather shower with a garden hose.

On September 10th I wrote about my apartment and concluded with "...but I'll save the shower story for another time." If you have been paying attention to my blog, then you may have noticed that I never followed up on that promise. There is a very good reason for this: I'm not ready to find the humor in the situation yet.
From day 1, showering at my apartment has been...well...bad. The shower is just in the middle of the bathroom, the water pressure is terrible, and (worst of all) the water is rarely warm. Rarely. In the first two months of living here I have had less than 10 warm-water showers, and by "warm" I mean "scalding". Basically I either freeze or boil my skin off.
I have tried different strategies to remedy this situation: showering at different times of the day, turning the air conditioner off 20 minutes before taking a shower, going for a jog right before, etc. with varying levels of success. Some days it's not too bad, and some days I have to keep reminding myself that a lot of people have it a lot worse than this, just to keep from crying.
After a couple months of this I finally had enough and I emailed a CTLC coordinator to see if there was something I could try to do about it, and he told me to ask my school.
I asked my contact teacher about it and she sent the maintenance man up to check it out. Now, if you recall, I have had a handful of warm showers, which means that sometimes it works. Of course, it decided to work when the maintenance man came. You should have seen this man demonstrating how a shower works: "turn this way, warm...turn this way, cold" while making me feel the water, Helen Keller-style.
He chuckled to himself as he left (can you blame him?), and I'm certain that it took all of 4 hours for everyone in the school to know all about it. I was completely enraged by this situation because, not only is nothing going to change, but also I look like a total moron.
The shower has been working slightly more consistently this last week, so maybe somehow the damned thing fixed itself...but only time will tell....

A 50yuan (US$7) day

Next time you need a haircut, I dare you to try and get your wishes expressed non-linguistically. You can say "hair cut" and "how much will it cost", but everything else must be gestured. I double...no, triple dog dare you...
Monday and Tuesday this week I didn't have to teach. I don't really know why, but it has something to do with either parents or teachers from other schools coming to observe. I didn't find out I was off the hook on Monday until I was walking to class, but I knew about Tuesday shortly thereafter so I was able to make plans for the day. I hadn't had a massage in a couple weeks and my friend Alaina happens to have no classes on Tuesday afternoons, so we decided to meet up in Dongmen for massages and a little shopping.
I got up early that morning and put on my new China outfit: black leggings, jean skirt, colorful tank top and red shoes. Whenever I leave during the day, especially when I'm wearing non-teacher clothes, I make sure to leave while the kids are in class so they don't see my "scandalous" clothing. That morning, however, I forgot that people were coming to observe, so even though the students didn't see me, a large group of professionally dressed people did. Oh well, chalk it up to being the crazy waiguoren.
I got to Dongmen relatively quickly and, upon checking the ATM, discovered that I had not been paid yet, which means my original plan of going to the tailor was foiled. Mei guan xi ("never mind" 没关系), I had a feeling this would happen so I had another plan: hair cut.
Now, in China there are two types of stores: those that look like real stores, and those that look like someone stuck a card table into a corner. I decided that I would at least try to find a salon that looked like a salon, rather than a chair on a corner with a scissor-wielding Chinese person. It took about 20 minutes of wandering around, but I found one tucked in the corner of one of my favorite "malls".
I walked in and was immediately pushed into a chair and surrounded by 4 Chinese people asking me questions. I said "haircut?" and they nodded and asked me something I imagine meant "how would you like it cut?" I wasn't sure how to describe this so I asked for a book of pictures. I couldn't find what I wanted right away and they kept asking me if I wanted a perm or something else I couldn't comprehend. I tried to gesture how short I wanted it, but I was afraid that that could go very wrong so, feeling overwhelmed, I took out my translator. They poked around with that asking me "bob?". "Mmm, not really," I tried to express by shrugging and twisting up my face. More scratching, then "mora?". "I don't know what that means in English," I said. I kept searching the books I had while they poked at the translator some more and I finally found a picture that looked like what I wanted. As I looked up to show them, the translator was shoved in my face again. There was a long list of English words associated with the characters they had written, but these words didn't seem to go together. I remember seeing words like, "line", "to draw out" and "diarrhea" and decided that whatever that was, I didn't want it. I said no to that, and pointed to the picture I had found. "Oh!" they said and whisked me away to wash my hair.
Getting your hair washed in a Chinese salon is very different than in an American one. In the States, they only wash your hair if they need to and you're head is stuck backwards into a sink. Not in China. The hair washing section of the salon is separate from the hair cutting part, and rather than bending backwards into a sink, you lay down on this bed thing. Not only do they wash your hair, they massage your head, and it is awesome.
When that part was all done, I was whisked back to the chair where the hair cutting commenced. As I was sitting there I noticed that one of the workers was taking a picture of me on the sly with her camera phone. This is certainly not the first time this has happened, and I always wonder why they don't just ask if they can take a picture!
I got a lot of hair cut off, but the guy did a great job and he did it pretty fast too. I went to pay and was pleasantly surprised to find out that a hair wash, head massage, and haircut only cost 25yuan. That's less than US$4!

Not much later Alaina showed up and we went to the foot massage place. As we sat there chatting she said "oh! will you be my witness for my vote?" "Of course" I said, and as we sat there in a Chinese massage parlor (with 25yuan hour-long foot massages) she voted for the US president.

Only in China....and God bless America!

My new (very short) look!

Sometimes you win, sometimes you won't. Sometimes you beat the devil, sometimes you don't.

It seems as if my life in China is a constant cycle of something good happening, then something bad, then something good, and on and on. The last few days have been an excellent example of this phenomenon.
Last Wednesday night I got a text message from a school administrator telling me that I did not have to teach on Thursday because the kids were taking exams. Awesome. The next morning I slept in a little, waited until after my 9:05am class would have started (just in case I misunderstood something) and then hit the road for the Book City mall in Shenzhen. I spent more time than usual in transit for this trip, but I got some Starbucks coffee, an Oreo blizzard from DQ, a couple of workbooks for the kids I tutor, and my favorite book of all time: Gone With the Wind. I got home in time to tutor and as I was settling in for the night I found out that there had been a fire at my parents' house. Not awesome. Happily and luckily no one was hurt (including any animals) and the damage was relatively minimal considering what could have happened.
The next day I had to teach one class in the morning and then meet up with some friends at a boat show. Class was fine and I stuck around Fu'an long enough to get free lunch before taking off for the beach. I wasn't exactly sure how to get to this place and was planning on taking a taxi, except (for the first time since I've been in China, I'm pretty sure) I never saw one in the 30+ minutes I stood at the bus stop. No good. Eventually I gave up and got on a bus, then the metro, then another bus and a three long hours later I was there. Upon arrival I was tired and somewhat frustrated, but two beers and touring the beautiful yachts served to be pretty decent therapy. After a while we had seen enough and decided to head back to the downtown area for the unlimited beer and pizza night at NYPD Pizza.
Another long bus ride and short metro trip later, we joined our friends at the outdoor seating area and had our fill of English conversation, drinking games, and pizza. Eventually the restaurant closed for the night, so we tried (and failed) to find a bar to go to. First there was confusion with the cab drivers, then we were denied entrance to the only bar we could find in the area where we were dropped off. We ended up sitting on benches outside a 7-11, drinking beers from that 7-11 and chatting some more. This only had limited appeal, so it didn't take long for people to drift away and head back home. I ended up staying over at a friend's apartment who has an extra bedroom.
My own bed = fantastic.
No blanket or pillows and way too much air conditioning = not fantastic.
I slept terribly and was up way before the other people staying there, so I quietly let myself out and headed up to Dongmen for the day.Dongmen is a part of town that is absolutely insane. It is crammed full of restaurants, malls, and street stalls; and the streets are full of beggars, shoppers, and people waving advertisements for manicures, hair extensions, and tattoos in your face. A group of us had decided to meet up there Saturday to shop for Halloween, which was almost certainly going to be a good time. However, because of my sleeping arrangements I ended up getting there at 9am. No problem though, I just milled around for about 4 hours and went to Starbucks twice before my friends got there. We shopped all afternoon and when all was said and done I was moderately successful on the clothing front: a skirt, some leggings, a couple of shirts, and a necklace. Shoe shopping did not go as well. My feet are on the bigger end of average at home (9-10 depending on the shoe), but here I'm a giant. The sales girls at shoe stores openly point and giggle at my feet and a couple have straight up waved me away (it is the same experience at the bra stores...but I only go to those to mess with the salespeople anyway). So, with a small collection of clothes that may or may not fit (no dressing rooms in Dongmen) and zero shoes, I ate dinner with my friends and we tried to figure out what to do with our Saturday night. By the time we decided that no plans were going to materialize, it was too late for me to try going home (if you read my post "Cause the world turns on lessons learned" you'll know why...) so I ended up heading to a friend's to spend the night.

My new, shoe-less China outfit!

This friend didn't have a spare bedroom for me, but they do have a big screen television to watch and extra towels for a shower so I was a happy camper (a shower on the weekends is a bit of a luxury since I'm basically living out of my purse if I'm not in Longgang). I slept wonderfully and chilled there until about 2pm Sunday, when I decided it was time to head home. To get home from where I was, I have to take a short bus ride to the metro, ride for three or four stops, then either take another short bus ride or a 25-minute walk to the bus stop I use to get on the 365. The 365 takes about an hour and drops me off at a stop that is a 5-minute walk from Fu'an. Generally the whole trip should take about 2 hours. If only.

I got to the stop for the 365 at about 3pm. With a coffee and huge bottle of water in hand I waited. Now, since the 365 has such a long route, they only come every half an hour or so and if there are no open seats, you aren't getting on the bus. I have been waved off before, but I have also beat out people for seats before; I figure it's just give-and-take. The first bus drove past waving me off, and I realized that there were about 5 other people at the stop who also wanted that bus. Knowing this, I was prepared for a battle when the next one came about 45 minutes later. It too, was full and waved us off. The next one did the same. So did the next one.

After 8 buses had come and gone and many of the Chinese people waiting for it had long since carpooled taxis (something I knew better than to try doing with my broken Chinese), I was ready to punch the nearest available soft object (no use getting hurt over it); and thanks to the venti coffee and 1.5L of water, I really had to pee. I found a Wal-Mart and a KFC around the corner where I used the bathroom and got some food before heading back to brave the bus stop. Thinking strategically, I decided to see if getting on the bus one stop earlier would make any difference. It did! The bus stopped and I ran onto that thing like my ass was on fire and dove into the first seat I saw. My quick reaction was very necessary because some of the people who got on the bus were shooed off when they was no place to sit. With a huge sigh of relief, I settled down with my book for the long ride.

Normally these rides are very easy: you sit down, they say na li? (那里 "where to?"), I tell them and they buzz my pass-card. Not this time. I told her Huang ge cui yuan and she said...something. Basically she told me that they weren't going to drop me off where I wanted to go, but they would take me somewhere (presumably closer to home than my present location) and I could do something about getting home from there. I said hao (好 "okay"), hoping that wherever they dumped me would be close enough to Fu'an that a taxi would know how to get me there.

45-minutes or so later they kicked everyone off the bus, and she told me something about another bus stop and pointed off in its general direction. I got off the bus and walked to the bus stop where I was delighted to see that the stop I wanted to go to was only two stops from where I was standing. Awesome! I decided to try and just walk home instead, and took off in a direction that I guessed might be right.I didn't get too far before I saw a police officer and I decided that since it was dark I should probably make sure I'm heading the right way. He wasn't really able to understand where I was trying to go so he asked if I had it written down. After my adventure a couple weekends ago, that is something that I always have now. He called someone on the radio and pointed me off in the opposite direction from where I had originally been headed. Before long I recognized where I was and decided on a pit stop at the grocery store for beer and cookies before heading home.

On the way to the store I nearly fell into a manhole whose cover wasn't on correctly, fought my way through the throngs of people on the street, and finally made it home at 7pm, a mere 5 hours after I left my friend's apartment. I tried on my new clothes, which all fit wonderfully, drank my beer and ate my cookies (which tasted a little like meat...) and fell asleep happily listening to my Ipod.

Ironically, as I write this story about good things and bad things coming hand in hand, someone has just arrived in the 8th grade office with a huge box of deliciously sweet oranges for each teacher...and there were 4 rotten ones in there.

Teaching for dummies

If we really thought about it, I bet most of us would agree that junior high was the worst few years of our lives. Your body is changing and so are your social roles, you are ruled by a whirlwind of hormones and sometimes you want to act like an adult but aren't allowed to, while other times you expected to act like a grown-up but don't want to. It takes a truly brave, and possibly crazy, person to willingly stand up in front of a group of these awkward creatures day in and day out, year after year trying to cram some knowledge into their preoccupied brains. To junior high teachers of the world, I salute you.
I did not want to teach junior high. In fact, in my interview I said "I'll teach anything but middle school" and they hired me anyway...and then assigned me to 7th and 8th grade. No matter what country you are in or what language you teach, it is scary to stand in front of a group of 50+ teenagers who constantly giggle, pass notes, and hit each other; and the fact that we can barely understand each other makes it down right terrifying. Luckily for me I have a very powerful weapon on my side: Chinese teachers.
As you can easily believe, the Chinese education system is a world apart from its American counterpart. The days are long and class sizes are huge, teachers move classroom to classroom while the students stay in their room with the same pool of classmates all day, and the preferred teaching style is like a college lecture, rather than the interactive multiple-intelligences approach we prefer in the States. The tests are hard, standards are high, and failure really is an option (the look on the teachers' faces when I tried to explain the "No Child Left Behind" act was priceless, it is simply unfathomable from their perspective). The atmosphere is extremely competitive and every kid knows their exact rank in their class in every subject: the highest are praised and the lowest are shamed. Misbehavior is not tolerated and the punishments are real; kids are not simply sent to the principles office for an "I'm disappointed" speech, rather, they are reamed by a screaming teacher in front of the class, made to stand in corners or on balconies for periods of time, and sometimes even spanked. To these kids an angry teacher is a terrifying force, even I'm a little afraid of them.
Now, my job as the wai laoshi ("foreign teacher" 外老师) is to be the fun teacher. I'm expected to play games, get them to talk a lot, and basically sit around being the token white person. In theory this should be an awesome gig: the kids automatically love my class and I'm essentially goofing off everyday. If only. The problem is that only about a third of the kids ever understand what I'm saying, and those students only understand about half the time (if I speak slowly enough, repeat myself a few times, draw pictures, and write on the board a lot). Something as simple as "get out a piece of paper and a pencil", accompanied by me holding up a pencil and waving a piece of paper in the air, will only result in half the class having both items in front of them. This is understandably frustrating for all parties involved, so the kids will often do what bored teenagers do: the opposite of what the adult in charge wants.
I have decided (for better or for worse) that if they aren't going to listen to me, then as long as they are quiet I don't really care what they are doing. On a regular basis I have kids who sleep, read, do homework, etc. while I'm teaching and I let it go. I have also accepted a certain level of general talking on the assumption that the kids who understand are trying to help the ones who don't. Occasionally (except in the case of 2 classes, with them it is every time) I will have one or more kids who aren't interested in listening to me and would rather spend their time hitting their friends or trying to be the class clown. For these kids I have a simple system: for the first offense they sit in a chair at the front of the room, if they continue to be disruptive they have to stand behind the door, and if they are still a problem they are kicked out of class and have to sign a piece of paper saying "I will not ___ in English class" which is turned in to their head teacher. For most kids, having to sit in front of the room is plenty of punishment and stops the issue (keep in mind that "saving face" is a huge deal in this country). I have, however, kicked a handful of kids out of class and all hell has rained down on them.
My latest and greatest class of demons was the most frustrating by far. The first kid to sit in the chair at the front continued to yell and talk, then refused to stand behind the door. For that I tried to punish the whole class for his behavior (in an attempt to incur the wrath of his peers) by giving them a test. It adds an entirely new level of frustration when you can't even punish a class because they don't understand enough of what you say to even realize they are in trouble (though I did make myself feel a little better by making the last question "Whose fault is it that we are taking this test?"...no one got it...). When that route proved useless, I grabbed him by the collar and threw his ass outside. No sooner had he been tossed, then another kid was in the chair. He was quickly thrown behind the door where he continued to be disruptive, and as I was yelling at him and the class, the head teacher showed up.
Apparently some teacher had happened by, saw the kid standing outside and went to fetch the head teacher for me. He came into the classroom, asked me something that I couldn't understand, then took off with both kids who were in trouble and some other kid who, presumably, was going to explain what had happened since I obviously couldn't. The rest of class went much smoother, but my nerves and emotions were pretty much shot for the day.
The next day I was apprehensive going into class, but I put on my best teacher face and went for it. All three classes went pretty smoothly, with controllable amounts of mischief and I was feeling much better. After the last class of the day, a boy came up to me and handed me a folded up note. He said that it was from his friend who was very, very sorry and wanted me to read this. I had no idea who he was talking about (though I suspect it was him, not some friend) and what exactly a kid in that class was very, very sorry for, but I took the note and said "thanks". The last of my frustration from the previous day melted away and I laughed out loud when I read this poor kids note:


I wanted to say sorry to you!
Last lesson, I throwed a rubbish. I don't want to throw this to you. I only wanted to throw rubbish to one student.
For these reasons I wante to say sorry to you!

(signed) A bad student
2008.10.16

Remember don't say this to my teacher!
Thank you!


I guess that if they aren't all good, then they can't all be bad either. Maybe this teaching thing isn't so terrible after all.

'Cause this world turns on lessons learned

As I've mentioned before, and as you can easily imagine, a 5'10" American brunette with an Irish complexion and a D-cup chest gets a lot of second looks and blatant stares in China. Imagine, if you will, that same tall white woman stomping around the streets of Shenzhen alone at 10:30pm with mascara-stained cheeks, cursing aloud and talking to herself. If I was Chinese, I probably would have taken a picture.
October 1st is National Day in China, and in celebration of the holiday the Chinese declare the entire week a "Golden Week" where people don't have to work and everyone travels. Luckily we got our passports back just in time to join in the craziness of travelling in China. I ended up tagging along with a group of people on a 3-day trip to Macau and Hong Kong. In Macau we saw some pretty sweet fireworks and poked around in a casino for a little while (after all, Maggie did say that Macau is the Las Vegas of China). We had no intentions of really gambling in the casino, maybe just a couple pulls of a slot machine, but we ended up not being able to even do that because of a mix-up with the money. You see, Macau is part of China (trust me, I made the mistake of saying it was another country and was swiftly put in my place), but you have to have a passport to come and go and they do not use the same currency as most of China (the RMB). To prove they are Chinese, they make things unnecessarily complicated and use both the Macau dollar and the Hong Kong dollar. However, the Macau dollar is quite possibly the most useless currency on the face of the planet: shop keepers willingly give it to you as change, but do not necessarily accept it for payment, the casino machines would not take it, and we were unable to convert it back to RMB or HK$ as we were leaving. Macau is very interesting because it is a blend of European and Chinese culture: government buildings look very European-colonial, but the narrow streets are lined by tall apartments piled on top of each other like Mainland structures, you hear many different languages in the streets (still not a lot of English though), and you can see a mixture of Chinese and Mediterranean features in the faces of the locals.

Macau

Now, as interesting as Macau is, one day there is plenty, so we got up early for our ferry-boat ride to Hong Kong. At the ferry station we hopped in a couple cabs and headed off to our hotel. The girl who arranged this trip had never been to Hong Kong before, so she had relied on a recommendation from a friend there to find our hotel. As it turns out, he had gotten a recommendation from someone for this hotel from someone and had never actually stepped foot in the place. If he had, he would have never recommended it for a group of more than two...let alone a group of seven. Our room was so small that we could all barely stand in it! Oh well, we decided that because the room was so expensive anyway, and since our plan included a lot of time on a bar street, all seven of us passing out on top of each other for one night was not so bad. With that decision made, we headed out for food, shopping, and exploring.
After a full afternoon of wandering parts of the city we all met up at the hotel to get ready for our night out on the town. Four of us (me, Alaina, Ashlee, and Jodi) were supposed to meet up with Jodi's friend Scott (a British expat living in Hong Kong) and he was going to show us around. It certainly was an interesting night out, some highlights include: Guinesses at an Irish-style pub, flaming shots at a Euro-style dive bar, vodka shots in a freezer at the Russian bar, a Chinese Elvis impersonator, Scott doing one-armed push ups for reasons we still do not completely understand, me being picked up in the air twice by Scott, spitting contests, motorboating (think "Wedding Crashers"...), Ashlee dancing on the bar, and all of us being denied entrance to a bar because of the fluffy red bunny ear headband Scott was wearing. The night ended with a trip to McDonald's and promises that we would do this again soon.

Jodi and Chinese Elvis

The next day we drug our hungover selves around Hong Kong some more before heading home. The four of us had so much fun on the trip that we decided to continue our vacation with some shopping in Dongmen (in Shenzhen) the next day. We met up for massages and manicures and spent about an hour shopping for "real" fake purses. We had some dinner in a Japanese-style restaurant and then hit up a Cold Stone Creamery for dessert. As the saying goes, time flies when you're having fun, and before we knew it it was 9pm. We all decided that we had better go because a couple of us have very long commutes home from that part of the city. Earlier that day I had been very proud of myself because I had figured out a new and better way to get to the subway from Longgang by reading the bus sign and asking the conductor a couple questions (reminder: people have the terrible habit of speaking and writing in Chinese here). So, feeling confident, I decided to take the new route home. I got to the bus stop to wait and after about 20 minutes the #329 approached. Like a good Chinese commuter, I waved furiously at the bus to get the driver's attention, but unfortunately was waved off and passed by. This occasionally happens with the buses that travel pretty far distances: if there are no seats, you aren't getting on. I was kind of pissed because usually the wait between these buses is about 30 minutes, and I was a little nervous because I had never actually taken this bus home before and I couldn't find my stop on the sign. A half an hour passed and no #329, so now I'm starting to panic a little. I tried to read the sign again to see what time the bus stopped running (they stop curiously early here), but was having a hard time. I started to ask someone and then I saw that the bus had already stopped, so the bus that passed me was likely the last bus to run that night. Shit.
I decided to make a run for the bus that I had used to get home previously, the problem was that I had 3 metro stops and a 10 minute bus ride between me and the only place I know it stops...and 20 minutes to get there. I ran through the metro and quickly got on the train, it got there pretty quickly and I ran up the stairs...of the wrong exit. As soon as I got to street level I realized my mistake and I realized that there was zero chance of me actually getting to that bus. I called my friend to try and stay at her place that was "pretty close" to the metro, but "pretty close" consisted of walking a few blocks then catching a bus for a few stops. I decided that I was better off sleeping in the metro than getting lost, God knows where, trying to find her. My next idea was to get a cab, the problem there was that I had about 30RMB on me in cash, which I knew would not be anywhere near enough. I then set out on a mission to find an ATM so I can at least have some cash before trying to explain to a taxi driver where I live.
By now I am thoroughly pissed off (at what, I'm not sure), really starting to panic, and have been crying on and off for about 20 minutes. Of course Murphy's Law is in full force and the first two banks I find have "Out of Order" signs on all their ATM's. Upon seeing this I become even more enraged and upset, so my talking to myself becomes cursing to myself, and gets much louder. I realize after a couple blocks that this has attracted the attention of a group of Chinese men who are about my age. "I dare you to mess with me f*ckers," I think to myself right before one of them jogs up with a "Ha-llo!". I turn and glare at them and say "what?!?" as threateningly as I can muster. They turned at the next corner.
The next bank I came to had a working ATM, so I got money and hurried to the street where a cabbie quickly saw me and nearly ran me down to make sure he got the fare. After confirming that he does go out to Longgang I hopped in and he asked where exactly in Longgang I wanted to go. I told him the name of the school and the street it was on, but he didn't know it so he more or less kicked me out of the cab. I had a feeling something like that was going to happen because, to put this in perspective, for me to tell a cabbie in downtown Shenzhen that I want to go to Fu'an School on Hua Meizhong Road in Longgang is kind of like me getting in a cab in Urbana and telling the driver to go to Lincoln School on Buchanan Street in Monticello. Without any extra information, it's probably not going to happen.
As I stood on the curb and he drove away, full-blown panic settled in. You see, it wasn't that I was in danger per se. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I have never been safer because anyone who crossed me was asking for an ass-kicking. Rather, it was the fear of being stranded so far from home and unable to even ask anyone for help because I simply don't speak Chinese well enough, and the fact that this situation was not going to get better any time soon. I decided that the only thing I could do now was call someone at the school for help.
Maggie didn't answer her phone, but an administrator named Karina did. She listened to me explain what had happened and what was going on, then patiently said, "Okay, well I cannot understand you at all right now, maybe you should find a police man." I walked back toward the metro stop and found a police man on a motorcycle. I said "Qing wen..." (Excuse me please), and then immediately broke into the same panicked English that even Karina could not understand. The poor man's eyes got as big as saucers and he waved his hands to indicate that he did not understand English at all. Pointing to my phone, I recovered some of my Chinese and told him "Ta shuo Zhongwen!" (She speaks Chinese) and he took the phone. I stood there feeling stupid as the police officer listened to Karina and scribbled a page of notes before leading me to a taxi. Back on the phone, Karina told me that the police man was going to give the taxi driver directions and her number and that everything is going to be alright. After saying thank you to the cop about a thousand times I was in the cab and we were off.
As I sat in that cab, watching a Mr. Bean episode on the television on the back of the head rest (the one where he is too scared to jump off the diving board), I finally started to relax. A little while later Karina called me and asked if I felt safe. I told her that I did, and she asked me to call her when I was safely home. The second she hung up the cab driver pulled over and stopped in the middle of nowhere. "So this is how I'm going to die," I thought. No sooner had I thought that, then a car pulled up out of a side street and a Fu'an driver I recognized popped out of the car! I was so happy that I didn't even notice how much money I paid for the ride (about 120RMB I think).
In the car I said "sorry" and sat quietly, feeling like a teenager caught at a college party by her parents. I know that this particular driver does not speak a word of English, but I decided to try to break the silence with a question in Chinese. I tried to ask him if he had a good holiday, and he responded (in Chinese) "I don't speak English." Apparently whatever I said was such mangled Chinese that he didn't even recognize it as an attempt to speak his language! Shot through the heart on that one, I fell silent again. Soon enough we were at the school and I got out of the car, saying "thank you" and "sorry" over and over again. I felt terrible, it was midnight and all of these people had been disturbed from their relaxing weekend to take care of the lost American teacher. I found out later that even the police man called Karina back to make sure I made it home alright!
On Monday school started up again and, of course, word had spread like wildfire about my adventure Saturday night. And, of course, everyone had a suggestion for me: "maybe next time you should go out with a Chinese person", "maybe next time you should stay with another foreign teacher", "maybe you should always have the address of the school written in characters with you", and so on. I just smiled, accepted my penance, and thought to myself, "Believe me, I've really learned my lesson this time."

Hong Kong

Perfect

"My English...mmm...not so good."
This is a phrase that very often indicates something crazy is about to happen.
Every Wednesday and Friday at 1:15pm I am picked up at the school gate and driven to Chinese class with the other Longgang foreign teachers who go to class. The three involved schools are supposed to take turns driving us there, and when my school is not driving, I'm the last person to be picked up. A little before 1:15, yesterday afternoon, a nice black car pulled up to the gate and waved me over. I walked up and saw that there were no other people in the car, "Me?" I ask. "Yes" he replies with more waving. I got into the car and he proceeded to say something about my classes, so at this point I figured he must be taking me to the right place...well, that or I've been quite easily tricked into being sold into slavery.
We wound around to the main road, merged into traffic and then more or less parked right there in the right-most lane. For some reason this is perfectly legal in China, the rightmost lane of any road can be driven in unless someone chooses to park there, then it becomes a temporary parking lane. Anyway, as we come to a stop he explains that the other school's driver can't bring us back from class so he's going to, and since he doesn't know where the building is he needs to follow the other driver into town. Getting this explanation was no easy task because his English is very broken and he often wanders off mid-phrase to talk to himself in Chinese. Eventually we got it figured out, and eventually I find out that his name is Luo, but only after we exchanged phone numbers and I needed to save his into my phone. With a big toothy grin he states that his English name is "Peedy". He looked so confident in this that I hated to do it, but it made no sense so I said "what?". "Peedy" he said again. "Peedy?" I tried to confirm. He shook his head, picked up his phone and typed in 'Perfect', explaining that his Chinese given name means 'perfect', so that is his English name as well. About that time the car we were supposed to follow appeared, and as we pulled away he told me, with slight embarrassment, that "Um, my English is...mmm...not so good." Perfect.
As we drove to class, zipping in and out of lanes with only inches to spare between cars (which is the way everyone drives here) we talked about the differences in getting a drivers license in different countries, the other foreign teachers in Longgang, what we studied in college, how old we were, he showed me a picture of his 6-month old son (very cute!) and told me about his wife. He asked some odd questions about marriage in the US and seemed quite perplexed when I told him (totally guessing) that it was pretty common for people to get married around the age of 25. This was baffling to him because "you graduate from university when 23, then one, two years after you marry...so young!" Good point Perfect, but then again, he's 29 and has been married for two years. I guess 25 is really young, but 27 is not. I tried to explain that some people get married even younger than that, and that I have a cousin who got married when she was 19. I'm pretty sure I lost him on that though, because I got no reaction.
After going through the two toll booths (where I had to give the lady the money. Apparently Hong Kong cars are driven on the right side, so they have booths for this...though I don't know why Perfect picked that booth) and the checkpoint we made it to class and I told him that we would be back down in a couple hours.
After class we called him and he showed up pretty quickly. The drive back was pretty uneventful: the other two foreign teachers chatted and I read my book. They were making dinner plans and asked me if I wanted to come along. I declined because I knew there was free cafeteria food at the school and I was ready to have some food, read my book, and call it a night. We dropped them off and it was just me and Perfect again. He asked if I wanted to go to the grocery store, well, sort of. After some confusion and nearly stopping in the middle of the street I figured out what he was asking and said that I didn't need to stop, I was just going back to the school to eat at the cafeteria. It took a while for this to get established, but once he figured out my plan he decided that he had a better idea. He insisted on taking me for some xicai, which neither of us knew the English translation for. We again temporarily parked in the street so I could look this up. Xi means 'west' and cai means 'dish'. He wanted to take me to eat western food and he insisted on paying. Perfect.
There are two kinds of "western food" restaurants in China: ones that are actually western-style because they are run by expats and ones that are a Chinese persons interpretation of western-style food. This place was the latter. There was a French phrase on the place mat, but one of the categories of food on the menu was "Nosh" (I tried to tell him that "nosh" is a colloquialism so it was funny to see it on a menu...blank stare). There was certainly a lot of meat on the menu (very western), but there wasn't a potato to be found and we ordered something called 'eight fingernail fish' (which was octopus, as it turns out). He really wanted me to order because I'm the westerner, but because I wasn't sure if this place was family-style or not and because he was the one paying, I insisted that he order. After a long Q and A with the waitress (who was staring at me most of the time) he eventually got some food ordered and before long the soup showed up.
They set one kind of soup in front of him and one in front of me. He asked me some question that I couldn't decipher, but I think he was asking which one of the soups I wanted. I said "what kind of soup is this", which was met with a blank stare. Then I tried the soup in front of me and said "oh, it has corn in it." Another blank stare. Now I don't know what to do so I just stare back. He said "it's good?" I said yes, and he dove right into the soup in front of him. Before long a HUGE sizzling plate of some sort of rib meat and noodles is set in front of me. The waitress picks up the corner of a napkin and holds it in front of me. I though that maybe I was supposed to tuck it into the front of my shirt like some people do at restaurants. Luckily I (correctly) decided this was not what I was supposed to do, just in the nick of time. Instead, I was supposed to hold the napkin in front of me so that the sizzling sauce she was pouring on the meat didn't splatter all over my clothes. Eventually the sizzling settled down and I was allowed to put the napkin down, but I wasn't sure if I could eat yet because I still wasn't sure if this was family-style or not. Mercifully his food showed up and I knew that I was expected to eat this by myself. As he went through the protective napkin procedure he gestured for me to go ahead and eat.
His plate was decidedly more Chinese than mine, so he pointed to his rice and asked if we make "mice" or corn in America. I told him that we grow a lot of corn and soybeans, especially where I'm from. He asked if we ever ate "mice", and I told him that we do, but we have a lot of different types of rice and some are different colors. "Different colors?" "Yeah, black and brown and white" Perplexed look.
Eventually we finished eating (including the 8-fingernail fish) and the waitress brought our coffee. Of course, because this is China, there was some sort of cream in it, but luckily no sugar this time, so I was a very happy camper. He paid the bill and we left. As we got in the car he asked me something about the park: either he wanted to know if I've ever been there or he wanted to know if I wanted to go there right now. Apparently my answer indicated that I wanted to go for a walk in the park, so off we went.
We got to the park and had to circle the whole thing to find a place to park the car. As we drove he mumbled things like "no space, no space, no space" and "oh my god, no place to park" and kept trying to call someone on the phone. I'm not really sure how people know if there is a place to park or not; in America all the parking is relatively neat and tidy with people generally parking between the painted lines. In China, a row of parked cars looks like some giant child dumped out a bucket of match-box cars: people apparently just pull up and stop. Anyway, eventually we found a spot that was about one and a half car lengths long (no challenge for an experienced parallel-parker), and after an approximately 15-point maneuver, we were satisfactorily in the space.
By now we had been hanging out for about three hours, so we had settled on a sort-of pidgin English-Chinese that enabled good-enough communication. Basically we used English, but there is a lot of "zenme shuo" ("How do you say") going back and forth. As we got near the lake he said "there is the lake". "Lake", I repeated. "Who!?" he almost yelled. "Lake", I repeated again, then asked "Zhongwen zenme shuo?" ("How do you say it in Chinese?"). "Who" (hu 湖) he repeated...apparently he already tried to tell me...
As we got around the lake we neared a pavilion, which was full of people moving around with some music playing. He told me that these were "womens who are 40 to 80". "Middle-aged?" I asked, to which he triumphantly exclaimed "They are old ladies!" We walked up the the edge of the pavilion and watched these "old ladies" doing a very traditional dance that I'm sure is very beautiful when everyone knows what they are doing. It was a little chaotic, but everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. It sort of looked like line-dancing, only slower, which I tried to explain to Perfect. Blank stare.
After a while we got tired of that and kept walking. We eventually wound around the lake and walked across a zig-zag bridge to a pagoda in the middle of the water. In one corner there was a group of men sitting around playing instruments: a Peepaw (pipa 琵琶) and two Ah-hus (erhu 二胡). We watched for a little while and he laughingly told me that the old ladies danced over there and the old men sat over here. I guess old men and old ladies get tired of each other in China too...
It was a very moving experience to stand there watching and listening to those men play their music. It's a simple combination: very old music played on very old instruments among old friends. It's something that these men have probably done for years and something that their countrymen have been doing for millenia. Some people noticed me and stared, but most people were too wrapped up in their own worlds to care if I was there or not. It was so paradoxically Chinese: crude but beautiful, simply complex. It was perfect.
A little while later it was time to go. Perfect told me that if I ever need to go anywhere, just call him and he will make sure someone takes me there. He dropped me off at the school and I thanked him for dinner. I laughed to myself as I climbed the stairs to my room; only in China can a drive to class turn into a night like this.

Gan bei!

According to the Google search I just did, the first Tuesday of the first full week in May is Teacher Appreciation Day in the United States.
I don't really have any memories of this holiday as a student, but I'm sure that teachers get some sort of gift from the school and maybe a card or two from students whose parents are teachers. As I tried to explain this to the Chinese teachers, I might as well have told them that we publicly flog our educators and steal their shoes.
You see, yesterday was Teachers' Day in China, and it is a big deal here. I got a call from Maggie, my contact teacher (aka translator and guide to China), at 7:30am telling me that "maybe you should come to the flag raising ceremony now" - which means "you should have been at the flag raising ceremony 10 minutes ago". So I throw on some clothes and run down the 6 flights of stairs from my apartment and up the 3 flights of stairs to the office, where Maggie is waiting. "Ok, we'll go" she says and we rush to the playground/track/open area where all of the student are lined up military-style, filling the yard. A song that I recognize as the national anthem is playing over the loudspeaker and a group of 9th graders are hoisting the flag up a pole. After the flag is up, a couple of people step forward to give speeches and I am shuffled to the front with the other new teachers, where a group of adorable kindergartners in their little uniforms give each of us a bouquet of flowers that is approximately as big as they are. A couple of speeches later we are all allowed to file back into the school and get the day started.
The day proceeded fairly normally, except for the fact that everyone was giving everyone gifts and flowers and chattering about the fancy dinner we would have that night. This dinner is notorious for having lots of good food and lots of drinking...and because I am the only one in the school that does not have an Asian level of alcohol tolerance, I am an obvious target. The debauchery started with the all too familiar yell: "Amelia! Ok, we go now"
The restaurant was pretty nice, and "very famous" according to Maggie. Each place was set with the typical Chinese dishes and two glasses: one for milk and one for red wine. To me, this milk business is pretty bizarre, and it became even more so when I tried the milk and it tasted like a cross between milk and yogurt...yet another example of the many ways in which China is similar to the west, yet so very different.
The dinner was really good and there was a lot of toasting and good cheer all around. It wasn't until everyone had finished eating, though, that the real drinking started.
I knew that things were going to get crazy when the principal came to our table with a carafe of wine. He sat down and said that he hopes I have a very good year at their school and that he wants to have a special toast with Maggie and me. He starts to pour wine in my glass and tells me that he'll pour until I say "stop". When the glass was 2/3 full he stopped pouring, which means he either temporarily forgot how to speak English, or it was a blatant lie from the beginning. He did the same thing to Maggie and then started to fill his own glass. He only poured a swallowful before yelling "stop!" and then started laughing and told us that that's the way to do it. He of course filled his glass and gave a very nice toast, finishing with "gan bei!"
"Gan bei" is like "cheers", but you have to finish your drink or it is considered impolite. So, like the champ that I am, I finish that huge glass of wine and got a round of applause for doing so. Poor Maggie, who is a tiny Chinese woman, also finished hers, and as she set the empty glass down she turned to me and said "I am drunk!"
A few minutes later her face is bright red and she wants to leave, so with an "ok, let's go" we get up with the intention of going home. This plan is quickly foiled when I hear the principal say, "Amelia, come here". He takes me over to the table that is full of 9th grade teachers and we toast again. Then he tells me that each teacher wants to toast with me individually and we are going to switch to white wine.
Now, Chinese white wine is not really "wine" as much as it is rubbing alcohol. Fortunately though, you drink white wine from these very small glasses that are approximately half a jigger. By the time we went around the table and each teacher toasted with me, I had approximately 10 of these. Needless to say I was getting very drunk, and it wasn't over yet. For some reason we started doing toasts where I would have one drink and the other teacher would have three...and then I would have two and they would have three. Luckily someone finally decided that we better stop before someone died, and it was time to go. From here my memories get very spotty: I know that we took a school bus back to the school and that I was trying to speak Chinese to everyone (God only knows how that went), I also remember being handed a bunch of little boxes while I was standing in the guardhouse (it turns out they were pieces of a kit to ward off mosquitoes), and I know that I was talking to people on instant messenger. The next thing I remember was my alarm clock.
My alarm went off at 7am and it hurt: my head was pounding and my stomach was very queasy. I hit snooze as many times as I could, but I had to teach a class at 9:05am, so I eventually had to get up. Now, I love Chinese food and even back in the States I ate a lot of Chinese and other Asian cuisine. But I have never, not one time, woken up with a hangover and wanted to eat Chinese food. Ever. And since my food options were the canteen downstairs or the moon cakes in the fridge, I opted for some cola before wobbling off to class.
I did survive the day without puking, I taught my three classes, and by the time lunch rolled around, the food was a welcome relief for my poor body.