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!