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.