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