This is the end.

Well, friends, this is the end of the blog. We're home, it's the 4th of July, and I've had enough American food to satisfy most (if not all) of my China-induced cravings. I'm sad to report that we did not go to Xi'an; we had problems with out trip getting to Yangshuo, and in the end we came home a few days early instead of traveling in China. It worked out very well, actually. My friend Brandon and his wife Jacie picked us up in L.A. and helped us get our luggage to the airport (we had a long layover) and we got some Wendy's with them. It was a short visit, but fun. They are both such nice people.

We made it back home safe and sound, grateful to get off the plane, and our grandpa picked us up at the airport. We surprised our whole family, which was a lot of fun, and we've been back for a few days now. It's been great to be back. I hope I get to see all my faithful blog-readers soon!

For a final summary, the teaching experience in China was mixed. I loved the students I taught. They were so eager, so enthusiastic, that it made the teaching wonderful. Many of them made great efforts to be our friends and that made our time very worthwhile. That part of China I wouldn't trade for anything. On the other hand, though, we had a terrible situation with our foreign affairs officer. To put it plainly, he was a real jerk, and I hope I never have to see him again. He made our time in China very difficult. I would also recommend to any prospective teachers in China that they live in a bigger city and take some Chinese classes. It's hard to pick up Chinese while you're teaching English, or at least that was my experience. If you're thinking about teaching a semester abroad, though, I say, "Do it." It was totally worth it.

And that's the end. I'm not a fan of blogging, so I'll wrap this up here and begin my life as a real person again. Hope you're all doing well, and I'll talk to you soon.

Greg

The (Second-to) Last Post

This is most likely my second to last post on this blog. I'm just letting you know so that you're not too disappointed when it all comes to an end. We're at the end of our last week teaching, with only Friday left, and it has gone all right. I've shown movies in most of my classes, all themed around what we have talked about in class, and the kids seem grateful for a break. I know that I am! In a couple classes we weren't able to get the tvs to work, so instead we played an improvised version of Jeopardy! The improvised part was difficult, but it was also a little fun, so it worked out in the end.

The weather turned miserably hot again on Sunday, and I can't wait to be back in America where I only have to brave the heat long enough to get the A/C in the car working. The air conditioner in my bedroom has done a good job to keep me cool, though, so I can't complain too much. I've been running it pretty steadily since Monday, so I just hope it doesn't give out before Saturday morning.

We invited some friends out to dinner last night, as a thank-you, and that was enjoyable. We had some people there that aren't really our friends, but who have helped us enough that we felt obligated to invite them, but the dinner was still fun. We're supposed to have another farewell dinner tomorrow, which is a bummer because we thought we were all finished with Chinese dinners, but one more won't kill us.

As of now, our plans are up in the air. We may go to Xi'an, but there could be problems with that. First of all, David can't leave to take us to Yangshuo until Saturday afternoon, which means we won't be able to catch a flight to Xi'an until Sunday (the earliest flight on Sunday is at 4:00 PM, which is also frustrating.) That means we'll really only be able to spend one day in Xi'an if we go, which would be enough to see the terracotta warriors, but not much else. I don't really know if I'm up to all that traveling for just one day. The other option is do a little more touring in Guilin and Yangshuo, but I'm not crazy about that idea either. The Xi'an trip would have been perfect if we could have left Saturday night, it would have given us an extra day to see some stuff and to spread our traveling out over more time, but David threw a wrench into that, so I guess it's not an option.

Other than these little notices, there's not much to tell. Oh, I do have one story. Last week at English Corner I was talking to the students about mice, and one girl casually mentioned that her brother always gives her the mouse's leg to eat. I was so surprised to hear that she had eaten mouse (which I'm pretty sure is actually rat.) All the other students were surprised that I was surprised. Only two of them had never tried rat. In fact, another girl helpfully told me that "field mouse is more delicious than house mouse," so apparently there's a range of taste among different mouse breeds. I did another survey with a different group of students later and found that all but one had eaten rat at some point. So, I'm pretty amazed. Still.

Anyway, that's all for now, I'm afraid I don't have much more. I'll write a concluding post after we get home, letting you know whether we went to Xi'an or what. Hope to talk to you all soon!

Noah's Ark

Josh and I had the chance this week to play the part of Noah as our dear little province of Hunan was flooded. It rained from Sunday until Friday, non stop, and that proved to be a problem for China's limited sewage and drainage facilities (plus the fact that we live about 100 yards from a river.) By Friday afternoon, the northern half of Dao Xian was under water--literally. The water actually made it up to the second floor of some buildings and stayed there for a couple of days. Erin and Dianna, the girls who teach at the other high school in town, weren't able to go back home. Their building was flooded to the second floor (fortunately, they live on the fourth floor, so their stuff was ok.) So they came over and stayed in Josh's apartment, and he moved downstairs with me for a few days.

The flooding was amazing, really. I'll take a picture of the bridge near our house. Josh and I estimate that the river must have risen at least twenty feet, because the water was up past the supports and running along the bottom of the arches in the bridge. It was supposed to rain a few more days, but I guess the storm moved along and we had a couple of sunny days.

The nice part of all this was that it was so cool, albeit very humid. I guess that doesn't really make up for all the homes and businesses that the flood destroyed, but it was a pleasant change from how hot it had been before the rain. Other than that, though, we still had to teach classes, and our power was out for 14 hours on Saturday. That made it an incredibly long day--I guess I didn't realize how much I use electricity for entertainment. On a day that I had stuff to do, it would have been ok, but there was absolutely nothing to do. Very very boring.

Other than that, not much is new. We have two weeks of teaching left, which is great. I'm teaching my last lesson this week, and then next week I'll show a video. Josh has preempted me and is showing a movie this week and next week--Hoosiers. He said the students really like it, but it's about basketball, so it was sort of a given. We're trying to decide what we want to do with our four travel days at the end of the semester, before we go home. Any suggestions? Right now we are leaning toward Xi'an, to see the terracotta warriors, but it's still up in the air.

There's also the slight chance I might have a few days off next week for exams, but that's based on the words of a student. So I sort of doubt it. In any case, I'll just be showing a movie, so it doesn't really matter.

Well, that's all for me, I'll go ahead and say goodbye for now!

Beijing Trip 2008

"One World, One Dream."

"New Beijing, New Olympics."

I was going to try and put as many of those annoying Olympic slogans at the beginning as I could, but I could only think of two. Needless to say, after my trip to Beijing, I have no doubt that China should have never been awarded the Olympics. They're going overboard with it! I even saw guys pushing little Styrofoam carts with Beijing Olympic stickers on them. People have started wearing stickers on their bare skin to show how patriotic they are (although the Chinese news channel keeps insisting the Olympics are "apolitical," especially after people started talking about boycotting the Olympics because of the Tibet problems.)

Yes, yes, we went to Beijing. It was an awesome trip, actually. I had a great time. It was a huge hassle, but we got to see some amazing things, and it was fun to see a part of China that wasn't littered with refuse and excrement (although Beijing had its fair share of those problems, it was nothing compared to Dao Xian.) We had our fair share of problems along the way, so I'll just start at the beginning and tell you everything I can.

I mentioned in the last post (I think) that we knew there was the possibility of a long vacation. So we tried to buy tickets online. It turns out that's not as easy as it sounds. Most of the places require you to pay through pay-pal, while you wait for them to confirm the price they've "quoted" to you. Sounds a little fishy to me, so I avoided those. Then we tried Air China. Well, you might not believe it, but they only take Visa. It looks like those Visa commercials were right about something. So that was out (because I don't have a Visa.) It looked like we were going to have to buy the tickets with cash, but that was going to cost us $200 each ONE WAY. Ridiculous. Then, on Wednesday, we had a break through. Somehow I stumbled across Expedia's Chinese partner, eLong, and I found out you could buy tickets with Mastercard. I booked the tickets, entered all my information, clicked buy, and then got an email saying that I needed to send copies of my passport, my signature, my credit card, and a few other things before I could buy online. It looked like that wasn't going to work out after all.

At that point, I wanted to just call it quits, but the thought of spending 7 days in Dao Xian with nothing to do gave me the motivation to keep trying. I called eLong and found out that we could pay in cash when we picked up the tickets, but there was the possibility the price would go up (if the airlines altered their prices before we got the tickets.) Josh and I decided it was worth the risk and we made reservations.

We packed our bags and left the next morning at 6 AM for Guilin. We got there 7 hours later. The bus rides were long, but not terrible, mostly because we were excited to get going. We paid a taxi to take us to the hotel where they were holding our eLong tickets, and he insisted on us paying him 10 RMB up front, instead of using his meter. I thought that was a little suspicious, but we needed to get to the hotel, so Josh paid him and we got in. He drove for exactly one block and dropped us off. Smart guy. In any case, we found the ticket office, paid in cash, and we were happy to find out the price was what they had quoted online. $250 round trip per person. I still think that was a pretty good price.

After getting our tickets, we decided to get something to eat, and we found a restaurant that had English menus (which is apparently somewhat common in downtown Guilin, because they have so many tourists.) Josh got fried pork, I got fried noodles with beef, and we split an order of wontons. The wontons were by far the most interesting, because they had ground pork wrapped around shrimp. They were very good but very different. I'm not a huge seafood person, so I think I would have preferred just pork, but they were still good.

Our flight was going to leave at 9 PM, and it was only 2:30. We decided we couldn't really do much, since we were still toting around our luggage, so we went ahead and caught the airport shuttle and headed up to the airport. We spent about 5.5 hours there waiting, reading, listening to music, and trying to sleep. There wasn't much else we could do. Aside from selling everything at an outrageous price, I didn't see anything extraordinary about the Guilin International Airport (I would later be proven wrong on this count.)

We caught our plane to Beijing, after a delay because of rain, and finally made it to the Beijing Capital Airport. It was amazing. After four months in Dao Xian, I was shocked by how nice the Capital Airport was. It's brand new, and it looks beautiful. We hurried and got our bag and then caught a taxi to the hotel. It ended up costing us around 100 RMB to get there in taxi, so about $15. Well worth it, I thought, to get from the airport to our hotel at 2 AM. However, the taxi had to drop us about a quarter mile from the hotel because of construction, and when we were walking through the narrow alleys of the hutong, I began rethinking the wisdom of our course. We got to the hotel without any problems, though, and checked in and went to bed. The hotel ended up costing almost $50 a night, but for a room with air conditioning and a Western toilet, located only 20 minutes away (on foot) from Tiananmen square, I thought it was a great deal.

The next morning we found out they had a Western restaurant downstairs, so we went to have breakfast. Granted, it wasn't the full spread that I had hoped for, but it did have some delicious food. Croissants, hash browns, toast, butter, cheese--all the stuff that doesn't exist in Real China appears to be available in Fake China (sometimes called Beijing.) We ate and then headed out on the town.

First we went to Tiananmen Square, which was very impressive (for a square.) I did not realize that the memorial to Chairman Mao is located on the square, and I wanted to go inside to look, but the line was ridiculously long. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but most Chinese people idolize Chairman Mao. We ended up avoiding the long lines and we went to the Forbidden City.

While Tiananmen Square was big and impressive, the Forbidden City was big, impressive, and old. It's hard to believe that people actually lived there--it's a huge complex of gateways and ceremonial halls, coupled with gardens and interconnecting buildings of all types. I thought it was awesome. A lot of it still hasn't been restored, and I actually liked those parts the best because they seemed to be more real. In some ways, the restoration felt artificial to me, like it was overdone. I don't know if I just don't know enough about 15th century Chinese architecture or if it really is over-the-top, but I still liked the older parts better.

We spent a while in the Forbidden City, then made our way back to the real world. We stopped by the Chinese Museum of Art, across from Tiananmen Square, but it was closed for remodeling. It now features a huge countdown clock for (guess what) the Beijing Olympics. Great.

Lunchtime. We stopped and grabbed a "hamburger," which was really just a cold slice of meat pressed between two buns. Still, it was edible enough, and after we ate we headed back to the hotel for a break. About an hour later we headed out again, this time for the Temple of Heaven (Chinese name, Tiantan.) We caught the bus over there, but I misgauged the stops and we got off one too late, so we hiked back. By the time we made it in, there was only an hour left before closing, so we didn't make it inside the buildings. Instead, we explored the grounds, which were very, very beautiful. It's like a huge garden inside a metropolis. I enjoyed it.

It started to rain while we were in the Temple of Heaven, so we headed back toward the hotel. Fortunately, the tourist map that Josh had bought marked out all the McDonald's within Beijing, and so we plotted our course home with a brief stop by a McDonald's. It was my first time eating on the second floor of a McDonald's (as far as I can recall.) The food was delicious. I was never a huge McDonald's fan at home, but it was so good to eat something Western again. And, I'm happy to report, a Big Mac in China tastes just like a Big Mac in Wildwood, MO.

We crashed at the hotel that night, just burned out from all the walking, plus the traveling from the day before. The next day we got up and, after another Western breakfast, started our trip to the Great Wall. Now, if you're a foreigner at a tourist site in Beijing, you will quickly learn that everyone in China is qualified to take you on a tour to the Great Wall. We had three or four people come up to us and offer to take us while we were at the Forbidden City, plus our hotel had a tour company operating on the main floor. We decided not to take any of them up on their offer, though.

Instead, we caught a bus to one of the bus stations, which took almost an hour. From there, we took another bus up to the Badaling section of the Great Wall. That took almost two hours. I don't know if you've ever driven up a mountain road, on a bus crammed full of Chinese people like sardines in a can. If you have, you'll know what I mean when I say, "I don't want to die this way." That's how I felt. In truth, the ride was perfectly safe, but the bus was insanely overcrowded. I'm still not sure why they let that many people on, but I guess that's just how things work in Beijing.

If you go to the Great Wall, you might want to consider a few things. The Badaling section is the most restored, from what I understand, and is definitely the most accessible. For our trip, it was the only feasible option. However, it is also the most touristy. We enjoyed the Great Wall a lot, even so, but I would suggest (if you have the time) going a little farther away to a section that is not quite so packed with other tourists.

The Great Wall is pretty great. In all honesty, it's amazing. We walked along it for a good while, and what I never realized before I went is that it's built right up in the mountains. Parts of the wall were so steep that we were actually climbing stairs to go up, which surprised me. It's also massive; it's hard to believe that people did all that work. Where we were at, we could see the wall curve along the mountains for quite some distance, and it was incredible. It's hard to believe that it stretched as far as it once did.

Before I forget to mention this, I just wanted to say that the weather in Beijing was perfect for the time we were there. Although there is a great deal of air pollution, the sky was relatively clear and sunny, but neither day did it get very hot, and it wasn't humid at all.

We took another bus back to Beijing, and by the time we got back, we had spent over seven hours on the Great Wall trip. We had a very late lunch at KFC, which was also delicious, and headed back to the hotel for a rest. Now, I think I need to defend our Western choices. Most people would think that, on a trip to the most prominent Chinese city, we would of course choose Chinese food. Not so. I was so glad to try some Western food after four months that I didn't even care about trying Beijing food. However, Josh and I both knew that it was our civic duty to have some Peking duck while we were in Beijing. After all, I 'd always heard about it, and that might be our only chance to have the "real thing."

Don't ever make that mistake. Beijing duck, as they call it, or Peking duck, is no good at all. We ordered it, and it cost us 200 RMB. That's about 10 times what our McDonald's meal cost. The duck was terrible. They carved it in the kitchen and brought it out on platters to us, and there was nothing but skin and bones. I've seen other people prepare duck in China, and I have a fair idea of how much meat there is on one, and I have no idea what they did with it. They brought out a huge plate of skin, a smaller plate of bones (with a little bit of meat on them,) and that was it. I think they must have saved the meat to put in another dish. I honestly don't know what happened to it. Really, truth to be told, it was one of the worst meals I've had in China. Maybe we picked a bad restaurant, or maybe I'm just not refined enough to appreciate what I had, but I would not ever recommend Peking duck to anyone.

The next morning we had our last Western breakfast and checked out of the hotel. We grabbed a taxi over to the airport shuttle stop, and then took the shuttle to the airport. I had a scare when I saw that the shuttle was supposed to take an hour and a half--lesson learned, never expect something to take a reasonable amount of time--but it only took 45 minutes, so we had plenty of time to make our flight.

We made it back to Guilin, where there was a fierce rainstorm, and we realized that neither of us had packed an umbrella. I stopped to use the bathroom at the Guilin International Airport, and had the unpleasant surprise of finding out that there is at least one international airport in the world that doesn't regularly stock toilet paper in its bathrooms. Fortunately, I'd been carrying some paper in my bag since February for such an occasion, and I was well-prepared. When all that business was taken care of, we took the bus into Guilin city, in hopes of catching another bus back to Dao Xian.

It was too late for any more buses to leave for Dao Xian, so we stayed in a hostel about a block away from the bus station last night. We met some other foreigners who were backpacking through China and had dinner with them, but they turned out to be a rather irritating group of know-it-alls, so we left them rather early. Dinner hadn't been that good, so we grabbed KFC one last time (probably for my last time in China) and went back to the hostel.

This morning we were up again at 5:30, and we were home by 11:30 AM. The bus ride was terrible. We took the direct bus this time, instead of going through Gongcheng, and although it was faster, there was a 2-hour stretch where we were going over unpaved roads. It was amazingly bumpy and not really a pleasant experience. It got us back a lot faster than if we had gone the other way, though, so I suppose it paid off in the end.

And here we are, back in Dao Xian. We have about 2.5 weeks of teaching left, and I'm excited to be heading back to America soon. I'm sure I'll have a few more good posts before I head home, but I don't know how exciting they will be. After all, I'll be in Dao Xian. I've posted some pictures of our Beijing trip on picasa, but Josh still needs to put his up, so check them out when you have time.

I almost forgot to tell you my best story. Apparently, I'm either an incredible bargainer, or I have an incredible luck for deals, or (most likely) I think I got a better deal than I did. While we were in Beijing, I bought a few souvenirs. One, this great looking chess set, I bartered down from 580 to 360 RMB (around 40% off). That was pretty sweet, although I may still have paid way too much (I just have no way of knowing.)

My true masterpiece of bargaining, though, were these jade and agate bracelets that I bought. I figured they'd make nice gifts for family members when I got home. I asked the lady how much one was, thinking I might pick up a couple. She told me each one was 380 RMB. I was a little shocked--I had only brought 200 RMB to the store, and I had no idea a bracelet could cost so much. I told her that I had wanted to buy six, and that there was no way I had that much money. She asked me how much I had, and I told her 200. After a great deal of me telling her I didn't really want them, and her insisting that she could make me a deal, I walked away with 6 bracelets for 200 RMB. Now, that's approximately 33 RMB each, or less than 1/10 the original asking price. Either: a) I'm amazing at bargaining (not likely); b) the bracelets weren't really jade or agate (likely); or c) they were originally extraordinarily overpriced (also very likely.) Still, it makes me sound like such a cool world traveler, bargaining things down to less than a tenth of their original value. Now, I just hope no one ever gets these bracelets appraised.

Ok, that's all for now. If I remember more funny stories from Beijing, I'll put them up here soon. Talk to you guys soon.

Why I hate Chinese "outings."

Well, Sunday was interesting enough that it deserves its own post. You see, we went on an "outing." At least, that's the most polite way I can think of describing it.

For about a month now, David has been saying that he wanted to take us to these caves that were nearby--conveniently close to another town, called Jianhua. Now, we'd been putting David off because we don't particularly like to go do stuff with him. He's usually condescending, or downright rude, when we don't have other people around, so we try to limit all our time with him. In any case, we tried to avoid this trip as well, by claiming we plans with another teacher, but David was kind enough to call this other teacher and cancel our plans for us. I should have known then that something was up.

You see, David didn't really want to take us to the caves. Oh, sure, that was the reason he gave us. But he doesn't like spending time with us any more than we like spending time with him. That's why it seemed so strange that he was so insistent on going to these caves. I just assumed Jane had told him that he had to take us out somewhere.

Turns out, David's best friend(s) live in Jianhua. And so does his girlfriend. So we left around 10:00 AM on Sunday for Jianhua, arriving around 11:30. We get to the school there, where we wait for about a half an hour for the foreign teachers to arrive. Then we all go to lunch. Josh and I, David, the other two foreign teachers, and then about 8 other Chinese teachers (David's friends and girlfriend.) The actual eating part of the meal took about half an hour, and none of the food was particularly good. Then the drinking started in earnest. Another two and a half hours later, we finally left the restaurant for the caves.

Now, you have to understand, those two hours were like hell for me. I already don't particularly like big social things like that with people I don't know. Then imagine them all smoking (at least 10 cigarettes each) and drinking until they were (literally) drooling (some of them.) They all start to shout after their third glass of rice wine, and so it's incredibly noisy, hot, and smoky. I hated it.

By the way, I hope it's clear that the problem wasn't that they were drinking, but that they were so ridiculous about it, along with all the other problems they were causing.

We finally left for the caves. Qingyen, or something like that. We got there, after Cam (one of the other foreign teachers) had to make an emergency bathroom stop. That part was hilarious, actually, because he was literally begging David to stop the car, and David (who is a jerk by nature anyway) was trying to make him hold it as long as he could, and neither of them understood the other because they were so drunk (and stupid.) So it was just a lot of laughing and yelling.

After we arrived at the caves, we had to wait for half an hour, because they wouldn't take such a small group of us on the tour. Another group of tourists eventually got there and we all went in together. The caves were amazing. Different from the caves we went to before. The first ones, from March, were a "vertical" experience, a lot of climbing, with narrow chambers. These were much more horizontal. We didn't go up and down hardly at all, but the caves were like these massive, massive rooms. Incredibly big, I wish I could have taken decent pictures. There were some beautiful stalactites and other rock formations, although I think I liked the ones in the first caves better. The best part was the boat, though.

We climbed down to this underground river and took a boat along it for maybe ten minutes. Short, but very cool. There were some girls singing songs in Chinese (part of the tour, I was told.) It was a very, very neat experience. Unfortunately, we spent it with David and Cam (who was an equally ignorant person in his own way.)

After the caves, we had to go to another dinner. Imagine the scene from lunch, only everyone (except Josh and me) started off drunk and just got drunker (or more drunk.) That went on until 8:30 PM. We finally got home at about 9:30, which meant Josh still had to plan his lesson for Monday, and I was just sick of Chinese people.

On the plus side. We may be taking a trip to Beijing this weekend. We found out that we have a six day break, starting on Thursday, which would give us plenty of time to go to Beijing and come back. It will be a ton of traveling, but it should let us visit another city before we go home at the beginning of July. Even if we don't make the trip, at least we'll have six days off! I'll let you know what we end up doing.

Oh, one last thing. I'll put up some pictures from our trip. While we were waiting at the school, I took a bunch of pictures of hilarious signs in English. After reading them, you might wonder, as I did, why they didn't just have the foreign teachers help them use correct English. I still don't know what they were thinking. The pictures will be on the picasa address at the top.

Back to Blogging (or Back to Business)

Here I am again, still alive, still in China. Both of those looked doubtful, for a while, but things have certainly improved. I'm sorry for the long silence from my part of the world. I think that in a lot of ways, May was my most difficult month in China (yet; I'm cautiously optimistic about the future, though.) We had so many problems, it was just ridiculous. At the top of that list, and probably most to blame for my failure to blog, was the fact that our internet was out for almost two weeks, and before that it only worked in Josh's apartment.

As Julie Andrews likes to say, or at least as she said once, "Let's start at the very beginning." I just googled that line and realized that a ton of other people have used it in their blogs, and it just seems like a bad opener, so I've decided I don't like it. Anyway, at the beginning of May, we had a ton of problems in my apartment. The internet didn't work, the kitchen flooded every time someone used water in the building, and a few minor things. The situation got worse and worse, and although I called the school several times to fix it, nothing effective was done (although Jane was very helpful and came over with a repairman, they still did not solve the flooding problem.)

Then Josh's computer stopped working, so we didn't have the internet. We weren't able to call home on Mother's Day, which was too bad because I was able to do it two years in a row from Paraguay. The computer problem didn't get fixed for almost two weeks, although I talked to David several times about it (and even bought him a bottle of wine, hoping it would grease the wheels. Unfortunately, it seems that both Mussolini and Dwight Schrute got it right when they said 'Blood alone moves the wheels of history.') Things got to the point where one day I thought, "There's absolutely no reason for me to be here if I hate it so much." So I called Owen and told him that if my apartment didn't get fixed, we wouldn't stay in China any longer. He asked me to stay until he had time to come and see the apartment (and, even though I knew he wouldn't be able to come for a few days, I agreed.) Later that day David came to our apartment (surprise, surprise.)

Imagine that it took him less than an hour to get Josh's computer working again (which I could have done if they weren't using illegally obtained copies of Microsoft Windows.) So that was good progress. He talked to the landlord and said that the drain would be fixed soon.

The next day we left for an English competition in Yongzhou--Josh and I packed into a "bus," which was really an old minivan, with four students, David, Jane, and the driver. I don't think I have been in many situations more awkward than that one. Too my surprise, though, David and Jane were really kind about the whole thing, and they didn't seem offended by our threat to leave (Jane has always been good to us, so I didn't really expect any less from her.)

The competition was interesting. I was a judge, Josh was an observer. We had absolutely no guidelines for how points were to be awarded, what was expected of the students, or really why we were there. We just knew that we had the chance to award up to 100 points total. It was the biggest joke of a competition I've ever been involved with--it was extremely unfair, because the students were given random topics that ranged in ease from "Ping-Pong" to "I'm Beautiful Because I'm Young." What? They also had to talk about a picture for 4 minutes (the only students who got even close to that time were the ones who would say one word, then pause for 15-20 seconds, then say another.) The pictures were equally random, from cartoon strips with a clear topic like pollution, to a big picture of a Peking duck. Wow. My part though, was when a student got up to speak and I started wondering, "Is this a boy or a girl?" The first thing s/he said was, "I bet you're wondering if I'm a boy or a girl." S/he hit the nail right on the head.

The trip actually turned out to be a very pleasant way to spend our time (it took Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, so we had very little teaching that week.) We got to see a bunch of our friends from Buckland and we were able to relax and get away from teaching for a few days. Plus, who can pass up the chance to be a judge?

When we got back, things got a lot better. The drain was fixed by Saturday, with an old-fashioned Roto-rooter machine, and we haven't had any problems with it since. I started responding to emails, etc., but I didn't get around to blogging until today.

Since the trip to Yongzhou, we haven't had much in the way of excitement. We recently re-booked our tickets home because we found out, for sure, that we are done teaching on June 27th. Currently we plan to go to Beijing from the 6/28 to 7/1, and then be back to the U.S. by 7/3, but it seems that we may have a six day vacation next week. If we do, we may squeeze in a trip to Beijing then and try to visit Xi'an or another city at the end of June. Either way, we're excited to be home in time for a good old-fashioned BBQ.

This week I showed clips of Hamlet in some of my classes (those that were able to get DVD players.) I never thought I'd watch the first 40 minutes of Hamlet (the Zeffirelli version) 12 times in my life, but it seems I have outdone myself again. I'm sort of interested to see what the rest is like; I enjoyed the parts that I saw. Even Mel Gibson does a good job, although I have to agree with the students, who all told me that Glenn Close is not beautiful.

I'm afraid that's all for now. I haven't posted any new pictures recently, in part because I loaned my memory card to a student, and in part because nothing picture-worthy has happened. I'll try to take some more of the school to put up, though, because I think some people would be interested in seeing how it is set up--almost like a miniature town within the town. Talk to you guys soon.

English Competition & Dead Animals

Last week was, over all, an average week. Classes went pretty well, I think. I mentioned that we were doing disabilities in class, and I expected some hilarious sentences. I did get some good examples of disablities like "can't smile" and "doesn't have hair," which were hilarious, but on the whole the students did a really good job. For part of the lesson we talked about famous people that had disabilities, and they knew a lot of famous Westerners like Beethoven, Stephen Hawking, Helen Keller, etc. that had disabilities. I think that overall they did a good job. In the key classes, which have the best students, we talked a little about Milton's "Sonnet XIX" on blindness and about his disability. Oh, in the other classes I did a poem by Shel Silverstein about confusing an anteater with an aunt-eater, but no one got it, so I think they might not have enjoyed it as much as I did.

Another important update - I mentioned the mouse in our apartment. Well, he did disappear after we put out the poison (although he ate four out of the five piles of poison, so either it was incredibly delicious or incredibly slow-acting.) I thought that maybe our problems with him were over. However, this morning I woke up to find our kitchen flooded- at least an inch of water over all the floor. Fortunately it's set down a little bit from the hallway, so the water stayed in the kitchen, but it still wasn't a great sight. I got as much of the water mopped up as I could, and then I checked the drain. Now, we knew the drain wasn't working very well (the sink has a little hose that goes into a hole in the floor, so we could see the "pipes.") I pulled out the rubber hose and checked it, and it was working fine, so I figured that our drain was clogged further in and that the other apartments all used the same main drain, so our kitchen was flooding. I don't even know if that makes sense, but it sounded good to me. I thought I'd poke around down there with a wire hanger and see if I could dislodge whatever was blocking the drain (I assumed it was food, since there's no such thing as a garbage disposal.)

After a minute of pushing and pulling with the hanger, I pulled out a dark clump of (what I thought was) moldy food. I pushed it to one side and continued to poke around, but I couldn't find anything else. Then I noticed that the mold had a tail. Yes, yes, it was the mouse. Disgusting, of course. I picked it up using a plastic glove as a bag and put it in a trash bag, which we need to take up to the school dumpster today. As Charlie says on "It's Always Sunny," cleaning out the rat traps "takes an emotional toll." Regardless, I'm glad to know it's dead, and I hope it didn't have time to reproduce before it died. The drain is, unfortunately, still clogged, so David said he'd send the repairman over today.

On another note, yesterday was the English competition. Overall, I think it was good, although it wasn't the best experience of my time in China. We sat outside on the "playground," a.k.a. the huge dirt plaza in the middle of the school, under the burning hot sun. Jane, the vice-principal, lent us her umbrella for some shade, which was nice, and the school did provide bottled water, but still it was unpleasantly hot. Anyway, I ended up having a good time. The students had to give a prepared introduction and a recitation and then talk impromptu about another topic. They all did surprisingly well (especially my students, I'd like to add. It did help, of course, that my students were the oldest ones and have had the most time to learn English.) Some of the highlights were: a Senior 1 student (Josh's grade) came out screaming "We will rock you"; a student saying that many people were afraid of sharks after seeing the movie "Jews" (at least, that's how he pronounced it); a student holding up a piece of candy and saying how "sweet and friendly" it looked; numerous students beginning their speech by saying how they were "confidence" about giving their speech; and last, a student, on being asked to describe her English teacher, said he was "short, fat, and very clever."

Afterwards we were treated to dinner in the school cafeteria with some of the other English teachers, and it was actually pretty nice. The food wasn't that great, but it was ok, and some people actually spoke English to us, so it was an improvement. When we had finished eating, we were told that we could "go have a rest," because they wanted to stay and drink and "talk in Chinese, which you don't understand." It might have been the most interesting way that I've ever been asked to leave a dinner (I don't think I've ever been asked to leave before, but maybe I've just forgotten.)

Today we were supposed to go visit some caves nearby which have an underground lake that you can go across. Unfortunately (not really) it was raining today, so we'll stay home--although we will have to go out to eat, since we have a kitchen that is flooded and has decomposing mouse bits all over. We do, apparently, have a holiday this week. We may end up going to Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province. I'm not sure if we will - it's a 7-hour bus ride, and we don't really know anything about it, but it might be worth it just to get out of the house. Plus it has a Wal-Mart, so, way to go Sam Walton.

All right, I believe that's all for today. Oh, I almost forgot my other story. Twice this week I've been surprised to find animal heads where I least expected them. First, I was at the supermarket buying pork, and it's just all spread out on a metal slab and you just pick up the chunk that you want and have them weigh it. Well, I reached out, grabbed one, and realized that there was a whole pile of skinned pigs' heads looking up at me (eyes and teeth included.) That was pretty gross, but then yesterday at dinner I was helping myself to the mushroom and duck soup when I came across a big bone. Turns out it was the bill of the duck, with the whole head still attached. Also very gross.

Ok, enough. I'll tell you what we end up doing with our holidays. Oh, and I found out I have exams next week, so that means an extra day or two off. Not for Josh, unfortunately.

Take care.

Picnics

Well, I'm trying to be better about putting stuff up here, so I decided I would write about our weekend. It was actually a pretty good weekend, all things considered. After I wrote on Friday, we had our Chinese lessons with Monica and came back home. I can't really remember what we did that night; I'm pretty sure we just hung out at the apartment, which was fine.

Saturday I got up and went to the market, bought some food, and came back. We cleaned my apartment, which desperately needed it, and had some lunch, went to the store. All sorts of boring things. We ran up to the grocery store that afternoon, but it turns out I didn't need to go after all. One of the English teachers, Joy, called me and invited us to dinner. So we went and met up with her and another English teacher named Peng Guin. Both of them are really young - Guin is probably 22 or 23, and Joy might be a few years older than me. We went to the market with them and bought some food to cook, which was pretty fun, and then we went back to Guin's apartment and started cooking. It turns out that Guin's girlfriend lives next door to Josh, and she came over too, so we ended up having a few people there. And it was so fun! None of the weird awkwardness that we usually feel around Lee, or the poorly-masked irritation that David shows whenever he's around us. Sort of like - and here's the amazing part - they actually wanted to talk to us and be around us.

Well dinner was good, and we came back home and watched some Alias. We had agreed to go on a picnic with Guin and Joy and Haiyen (Guin's girlfriend) on Sunday. So we got up and about 10:30 we met up with them at the school - plus 5 students from some of my classes. We got on a bus, went about 20 minutes outside of town to a river, got onto a tiny, rickety boat, and crossed over to the other side.

We found some rocks, built an impromptu stove, started a fire, and cooked dumplings and noodles. It was so good! I was so impressed at how well the students did with everything. The food was good, the company was good, the scenery was amazing. The whole thing was great. About an hour after we got there, another 8 or 10 students arrived. Now, the interesting thing is that these students only have about 4 hours free every week - on Sunday afternoon. So the students (and teachers) who had gone with us in the morning had had to ask for leave from their classes. They are kept insanely busy, so it was pretty cool that they wanted to go do something with us (with such little spare time.)

After we ate, we walked around and explored. It was really fun, and we had some hilarious moments. One thing is that the students are so eager to give us things. For example, during our brief time on the picnic, I was given a clump of weeds that one girl had pulled out of the ground and washed off, several stones of varying shapes and sizes, a whole bag of bamboo shoots, and several floral arrangements (all made on the spur-of-the-moment.) The two funniest moments of the day, as far as I can remember, were: a) a girl holding out a white, flat rock and saying, "Here, it's a hamburger, you can have it." (I threw it away later) and b) a whole herd of cows eating most of the bamboo shoots that we had gathered while we were playing on the river (everyone was so sad, but it was hilarious to me.) I just asked Josh about his funniest moments and he said hamburger rock and Mr. Peng almost getting crushed by a rock. The last one requires some more explanation. We spent quite a bit of time skipping rocks on the river, which was fun, but Mr. Peng loved to sneak up on people and throw a huge rock into the water by them, thus soaking them. When he went down to the water later, a bunch of students threw rocks near him, splashing him, but one girl threw a huge rock so close that I swear it missed him by about an inch. It was hilarious, mostly because no one seemed that worried by it (except me.)

We ended up having enough bamboo shoots (even after the cow incident) to still take some home and cook them. Oh, one last story - as we were leaving, we saw a cow that was giving birth (and we had the right angle to see all of the "business district.") Anyway, the funny thing is that one girl leaned over to me and, in all seriousness, said, "It's sleeping." It was quite an experience. That night Guin and Haiyen came over, and we peeled and cleaned the bamboo. My first time doing that! Then they showed us how to cook it, which was pretty easy, and we had a really nice dinner.

Well, I'm afraid there's not much more to say. Oh, I can already tell that I'll have some golden stories after this week. Our lesson is on talking about disability, so the students have some hilarious comments. Two that I liked today were: "He can't write because his hand is broken down," and "I think that the worst disability would be not being able to watch T.V." Keep in mind that we'd already covered things like blindness, deafness, paralysis, etc.

Ok, enough for now. I'll let you know if I think of any more funny stories. Oh, and check our pictures, because in the next day or so I promise I'll put up a picture of the mousetrap we bought. I think it was left over from the Cold War.

All Quiet on the Eastern Front

China is killing me. Well, not literally, unless I got the Hantavirus from the mouse living in my apartment, but it is certainly killing me mentally. I saw that I hadn't posted on this blog for three weeks, and there are plenty of reasons why.

After my last post, we had a national holiday. Qingming is sort of like Memorial Day; it's a chance to go home, pay respects to your ancestors, and have a big dinner with your family. It was also our chance to have a five day weekend and take a trip to Guilin.

The trip was really nice, and sort of an adventure in itself. We left at 6:00 AM on Friday the 4th (I think) and spent about 4 and a half hours traveling by bus. The bus conductors were really helpful, actually, and we made it to Yangshuo without any problems, although we did get nervous a few times about having missed a stop or something. It was nice to be back in Yangshuo. We stayed in a hotel with running hot water, something I've missed, and it even had a bathtub (which is pretty much unheard of for China.) We went out to a Western-style restaurant (I had a hamburger and Josh had the BLT) and we borrowed some books from Betts, and we looked at a used bookstore. It was a nice night.

Saturday we went to Guilin, and we handled the buses pretty well. We grabbed a taxi once we got there and went to the Prince's City, which is sort of like a city-within-a-city. It was amazing. We've put the pictures up on Picasa so that you can see, but I'll do a quick description. It's the ancient government center for the Guilin area, and it's built around a karst mountain in the middle of downtown Guilin. We looked around at all the old stuff, and then we climbed the karst and got to look out over all of Guilin (although we couldn't see far because of the pollution.) After our tour we tried to walk back to the bus station, got lost, and had to take a taxi back. We made it back to Yangshuo, had a good dinner, I bought a book, and then we went to bed. The next day, we came back to DaoXian (which required calling David on our cell phones to have him talk to the bus conductor to make sure we were on the right bus.) We made it back by about one in the afternoon.

I had gotten sick on our trip, so I crashed for the rest of Sunday. I was so glad that we had Monday and Tuesday off so that I had a chance to get back on my feet. We spent those two days just relaxing around the house. It got really hot, and we had all sorts of problems with our computer, but we managed to figure everything out. Classes went well last week, and then on Friday our Internet stopped working.

Now, our Internet usually goes out at least once a day, so at first we weren't worried. By Sunday, however, I was getting irritated. We talked to David about getting it fixed, but he kept telling us that he couldn't do anything about it, so we kept hoping the school would get around to it. Today I decided I didn't want to wait anymore, so I called Buckland, and within an hour our Internet was working again. Granted, it only works on Josh's computer, but at least we can use it.

So China is killing me because I get so tired of running into these dead-end arguments with people, when the real problem is that I'm not going through the right channels, or I don't know the right strings to pull. Otherwise, things are fine. We are getting a little sick of the seven or eight recipes that I've managed to cobble together, so if you all have any recipes to send me, I would greatly appreciate them. Keep in mind, however, that we don't have access to a lot of ingredients.

Ok, time for some funny stories. This week I taught about international travel, and so part of the assignment was to brainstorm things that you would like to take with you. Most of the students came up with what you would expect, but one student came up with my favorite thing: a poster of Chairman Mao. I guess that might come in handy somewhere...

Also, apparently people earn commission in the soap and toilet paper departments of the grocery store, because every time Josh and I walk down those aisles, at least four women come up to us trying to sell us different soaps / toilet papers. We had two hilarious experiences. In the soap aisle one lady came up to us and (even though I was buying a bar of bath soap) shoved a bottle of liquid hand soap in my face. When I told her, "No, thank you," she rubbed one of her hands and said, "Hello" [pause] "beautiful." I'm not sure if I was beautiful, or if the soap would make my hands beautiful, or what exactly she was trying to convey.

Then, in the toilet paper aisle, we grabbed a 4-pack and we were trying to beat it out of there, but one lady stopped us, pointed to a massive pack of the cheapest stuff, and gave us a huge smile and thumbs-up. I have to give her credit-she was doing her best to sell that stuff to people that didn't speak her language, and she almost convinced me. The fact that it looked a little bit like sandpaper did deter me, however.

Oh, another funny thing. I think I've mentioned before that no one here has arm-hair, so people make a big deal about the fact that I do. Well, in class last week I was bending over a student's desk helping him with something, and while I was talking he just reached up and started stroking the hair on my arm. It was pretty disconcerting, but I took it in stride and just sort of finished what I was saying and beat it out of there.

Ok, last thing. The school recently purchased a new loudspeaker. How do I know? They use it all the time. They play it so loudly, in fact, that it is louder than our TV inside my apartment. When do they play it, you might ask? Oh, 6:30 AM. Every day. My sleep has been so screwed up.

Fortunately, the new loudspeaker has revolutionized the mandatory student exercise time. Usually the students would just line up in the courtyard and shuffle around. Thanks to this new loudspeaker, though, they have a brilliant exercise routine. I videotaped it so that everyone could enjoy it as much as I do. My favorite part is the punching.

(Yes, there is something creepy about a single man videotaping a bunch of high-school students from his window, trying not to be seen by anyone else. I'm fully aware of that.)

Birthday Video

This is just a little treat for the 3 people who actually read the blog. It's a video from Josh's birthday dinner - unfortunately, you can't hear the Chinese people singing very well because a loud American (me) is belting out the song. Listen at the end for the "make a wish" part, it always makes me laugh a little bit.

Tuesday's Embarrassing Moments - in which I confuse a funeral for a party

Well, it's crazy to think that another week has gone by. I always intend to write down my funny stories as they happen, but it seems like something else always gets in the way (usually tv shows or video games, as it so happens.) But last week I did have a couple of funny things happen to me that deserve mention.

It all started on Tuesday. I woke up and went to the market to buy pork (which I said to Kyle, and he has made fun of me since then for saying that.) On the way, I passed this huge procession that took up the whole street: people marching playing instruments, big colorful signs, music, floats, everything you can think of. It had stopped up the traffic for at least a mile. I watched it as I walked, because I had to follow the same road, and I wondered what holiday was being observed (my belief that it was a holiday was strengthened by the fact that we have a few days off school this coming week.) I bought food and came back home, and then I headed up to teach my class.

All the students were sitting quietly at their desks. That had never happened before. I thought, "Gee, maybe this is what a professor sees when he walks into a room." Usually half the kids are out on the balcony, and everyone is talking, and it ends up taking several minutes to get them quiet enough that I can start class. But this time, they were dead quiet. I said, "Wow, you're all so quiet today." A few students said, "Good morning," but that was it. Then another Chinese professor poked his head in the classroom and started saying something. I checked my schedule because I was certain that I had walked into the wrong class, when all of the sudden one girl said, "We have exams." I was so embarrassed that I walked out of the room without my water bottle and without my umbrella, and another girl had to run out of her exam and bring me the umbrella.

I called David and he told me that I wasn't teaching on Tuesday or Wednesday, which was nice enough. So I went home. We ate lunch that day with Lee, who invited us to dinner. Now, it's important to know that Lee was not hosting the dinner, nor was he related to the people hosting the dinner. He just took it upon himself to invite us.

So after English Corner we met him at the restaurant (Grand Fortune Hotel again.) There was a whole family there celebrating something, and we got thrust right into the middle of it. That's an awkward enough situation, but when you don't speak the language and you stand out like a sore thumb, it gets to be almost terrible. Then Lee started telling me (in a very loud whisper) all the social gaffes I was committing. Such terrible things as sitting down too early after a toast, and not toasting other people enough. I realized that he had invited us there to show us off and that we were embarrassing him. Needless to say it made me very angry. I did embarrass myself quite a bit, though, especially when I toasted people, because the waitress kept filling my glass to the brim, so I spilled apple juice over everything (not just once, but several times.) I didn't really want to talk to Lee after that night was over. Actually, come to think of it, I haven't spoken to him since that night.

As for the parade I had seen and the holiday - turns out it was a funeral. I asked one of the students about it. Now, that would have been a moderately embarrassing blunder except for the fact that the week before, at English Corner, I had asked about another "party" and it had also been a funeral. So my advice is, unless you are specifically told it is a party, assume it is a funeral, because it's impossible to distinguish the two by sight alone (maybe I need an a Chinese sense for these things.)

I can't think of much else to say - oh, except my embarrassment on Friday night when I found out that all the movies I had been "buying" were actually rentals. Now, it took about 15 minutes of loud shouting in Chinese and elaborate gestures for them to convey this to me, but I did finally figure it out. When I took a couple of them back yesterday, I got some money back, so I guess we had to leave a deposit - maybe they've had this problem with foreigners before. The nice part is that it only costs us 1 or 2 yuan to rent a movie, which makes it possible for us to rent movies like Doom and not feel like I overpaid.

Well, that's enough for now. I'll try to think up some funny stuff for next time.

A Late Follow-Up / Another Week

Well, this is an incredibly late follow-up to last weeks post about the birthday trip. I'll try to do Sunday justice, but I may have forgotten some of the nitty gritty details. We woke up to a phone call from our F.A.O David, who was calling to tell us that we weren't going to Moon Cave because it was too rainy. That was fine by us - we didn't really want to go that much anyway. So we called home on Skype and talked to the family, we had a nice conversation, and then we started doing stuff around the house. A little while later we got another phone call from David in which he told us that we were going to Moon Cave because the school had loaned us the car (and driver) for the day. This may require a side-note: I can't remember if I already mentioned that being the driver of a car is a profession in itself. In any case, it is a job in China, and Mr. Tam (or Tang, I don't really know how to say it or transcribe it), is the school's on-call driver. So we went to lunch at Grand Fortune Hotel with David, his son Eric, and Mr. Tam/Tang. The food was very good.

After lunch we had a "rest," because apparently China has an equivalent to the siesta (at least for the schools and teachers. I don't think the rest of the country takes two hours after lunch, but all the students do.) We went back up after our rest and met up with David and Mr. Tang/Tam, and then we drove out to Moon Cave. It was another great driving experience in the city, but once we got out into the country everything calmed down. The landscape was beautiful. I'm going to put up some pictures of the cave, countryside, etc. in a while, so check the pictures later.

We arrived at Moon Cave, which isn't much of a cave, and wandered around. It was a very beautiful part of the world. We found out that Dao Xian is the hometown of an ancient philosopher (lived about a thousand years ago), whose name I can't remember. Anyway, apparently we were close to where he had grown up, so we drove over to see the place. On the way, though, we stopped at another cave.

This cave doesn't have a name that I can recall, but it's famous locally because during World War II the Chinese villagers took refuge from 3 Japanese soldiers inside of it. I don't think they knew that there were only three soldiers because the soldiers ended up smoking the cave and killing over 500 of the villagers. David (who uses the phrase "too many" to mean "lots") told us that "If the villagers had fought back, there would have been too many survivors." I had to take a moment to myself to keep from laughing when he said that.

The cave itself, though, was amazing. It had the most beautiful rock formations and stalactites - really an incredible place. They had great names for everything. Apparently the Chinese don't think that we Americans have much imagination, because David kept quizzing me on what I thought the rocks looked like before he would tell me the actual name. I would usually get it wrong (for example, I thought the phoenix rock looked like a dragon, which turned out to be a very stupid mistake). However, I did guess the turtle rock correctly, and David was very happy for me.

The cave was mostly vertical, and we climbed up on brick stairs with rusted iron handrails (not a reassuring thing to see when we were so high up). The story is that the villagers who had been trapped by the Japanese climbed up out of the cave on their own, and we saw the opening at the top where they escaped. I don't think I could have done it without the aid of those poorly-designed stairs.

Ok, this post is getting long. After the cave we went and saw a shrine to the philosopher, built where he had originally founded his college (over a thousand years ago.) It was very cool, but I didn't take pictures because I didn't know how appropriate that would be.

We went back to town and headed straight for dinner. A lot of Chinese English teachers were there, and the food was good. Among the more interesting dishes that I tasted (and liked) were - mutton, moss, and bamboo shoots. There was also tofu that looked like the most delicious flan, and I was incredibly disappointed when I ate it (even though I already knew it wasn't flan.) Oh, and I tried goose, but I wasn't crazy about it. I had had a bad headache throughout the day, though, and by the end of dinner I was ready to die, mostly because we were in a private dining room and every man in China smokes like a chimney, and the cigarettes smell about 10 times worse than they do in America. It was like my own miniature version of Hell (for some reason with a Chinese theme). It was very kind of the teachers to take us out to eat, though, and so I shouldn't complain.

And that concludes the birthday extravaganza. Last week passed pretty uneventfully. I learned how to cook some good food finally, so that means we can start eating at home, and we successfully navigated the open-air market where they sell pig-tails as a specific "cut" of meat. Pork is by far the cheapest meat (well, for Americans at least, since we don't usually eat dog, etc.) and beef is the most expensive. English Corner continues to be like a scene from Jaws - the students crowd around us like sharks smelling fresh blood. They're so friendly, though. On Thursday a girl brought English / Chinese copies of Robinson Crusoe and Anna Karenina. I haven't met that many people in America who have read Anna Karenina, and here I find a Chinese girl in a small town who has an English-Chinese copy of a Russian classic. Sort of strange.

Well, that's enough for now. I'll try to think of something fun to tell you about next time.

Oh, a quick side-story. My lesson last week was on civil rights, and I asked the students to come up with a list of civil rights they had in China. One girl's answer was very specific:

"In China, no one has the right to shoot a panda."

Birthday Weekend Extravaganza

Well, the last couple of days have proved that I really don't know much about China. It all started with me inviting a few people to dinner for Josh's birthday.

Now, a sidenote is that I'm still not sure whether birthdays are really this important in China, or if they think that Americans think birthdays are this important. It might be like their view of cake: Chinese people are convinced that Americans eat large helpings of cake daily, especially for breakfast. Anyway, I'm just not sure, so I can't tell you whether this experience was normal or not.

The important part is that I invited people to dinner for Josh's birthday. Unfortunately, two of the people don't get along, so I had to plan two separate things (one on Saturday and one on Sunday, which brings me to another tangent, the point that only Americans have weekends in China, the other teachers and the students all work 7 days a week, and I think some people resent the fact that Josh and I have two days off every week).

Friday night we just hung out at the apartment. We've been watching "The 4400," which I found on DVD here, and we've been reading a couple of different books, so it was fine. Saturday morning one of the Chinese English teachers came over because he had questions about an exam he had to take (which is apparently part of being a teacher in China). I was told that it was an English exam. When he showed up, it turned out that it was a statistics examination written in English. It took me the better part of 30 minutes to explain that even though I know English, I haven't taken a statistics class in almost 8 years.

Our friend left, determined to find the answers to his exam online (cheating is perfectly acceptable here, it doesn't really have a moral value attached to it). Josh and I spent the rest of the day cleaning, mopping, etc. We had invited the two Canadian girls from another high school over, and so we didn't want to look like slobs. Also, I had to wash all the dishes, because whoever lived here last had just stuck them in the dish sanitizer without washing them (a sanitizer is pretty cool; you wash the dishes by hand, but then throw them in the sanitizer to make sure they're disinfected, because all the dishwashing is done with cold water.) Lots of preparation and work.

Our friend (Lee) came over and we went shopping for all the stuff we needed to cook dinner, and then we met the Canadian girls and went back to our apartment (we hadn't planned for one of the girls to be vegetarian, but she was really nice and I guess there were enough vegetables for her to eat that she wasn't starved). Lee showed us how to cook this great beef dish with garlic and peppers, and we sat down and started eating (note, pictures of all this will be up today I hope).

The food was great. When we finished, we opened up the cake that we had gotten for Josh. It was huge - we still have half of it crammed in our tiny refrigerator. But the best part was the two pandas on top (made by hand out of frosting). Anyway, the cake was very good (for China), and I ate more than my share. We threw in a movie called "A Good Year." Made by Ridley Scott, Russell Crowe as the star. It sounded promising for a romantic comedy. Anyway, it was terribly boring, although it looked well-made at least. The girls and Lee left when it was about half-over, and then Josh and I cleaned up. I ended up reading for a couple of hours and finished Brandon Sanderson's Well of Ascension.

Now, that may sound like a fairly reasonable Birthday Extravaganza - and it was. I was perfectly happy with that. I assumed that Sunday would just be a nice dinner, and then we'd be all done. I had no idea what was in store for us. I'll go ahead and post about Sunday a little later (or maybe tomorrow) because I'm tired of typing.

Side note - After trying to learn the first verse of the Jackson 5's ABC / 123 song, the kids absolutely refused to do it anymore (even though it had been their idea) and insisted on teaching us about China and the Chinese language. I learned about the 4 famous Beauties of China, one of whom was apparently incredibly fat.

Respect / Michael Jackson (again)

Well, I'd like to be the first to tell you that all the rumors that Chinese students are incredibly respectful is a bunch of bull-plop. 3 or 4 of my classes are terrible! And this is coming after my experience as a sub. Now, I haven't had any really bad encounters with students yet, but I can see that a few are on the horizon (I think that I'm going to have to make examples of a few students to get the rest back in line.) The problem is the language barrier - the bad students just pretend not to understand me. For example, in one class I asked two disruptive students to leave the room (there isn't a principal or an office or anything like that). They just sat there and stared at me until someone translated for me. Then one tried to haul the other one out bodily. I ended up letting them stay because it was like a comedy of errors.

Today half of my classes made fun of my laugh. Ok, I know that my laugh sounds funny, and by now I'm pretty used to other people's reactions. But this was like a circus show, it was ridiculous. It wasn't a big deal except for the fact that I couldn't get one of the classes to settle down after that. Don't worry - I got my chance to laugh at them. Some of the attention desperate kids were showing these karate moves as they explained something about the Olympics, and I was so surprised that I started laughing in the middle of class. Fortunately, now I know that they've never heard an American laugh before, so I'm going to control myself from now on.

Tonight is English Corner again. I sort of dread it because, unlike the classes, I can't just teach something and then give them stuff to work on. Instead I have to be a one-man show for an hour (usually Josh and I split up so that we don't have to cram all the kids into one area.) Well, after Tuesday's experience with Michael Jackson, I decided not to give up too easily. Tonight I found a nice little YouTube video with the lyrics for the Jackson 5 ABC song. They said they wanted to learn a song, so I hope this works. Of course, it doesn't help that the internet is so slow right now that I still haven't been able to download the whole song.

All right, I've still got stuff to do before English Corner at 6:00, so I'm gonna go. I know, I still haven't put up the other stuff, but I'll do my best. I am planning on taking more pictures, too, but it's been so rainy that I don't think it's worth it right now.

Yesterday's Stories

For some reason, yesterday was full of hilarious stories. It all started off with my lesson plan - this week we are working on expressing opinions. Most of the students have done a good job with this. After a warm-up and an introduction to the lesson, I usually get them to write a few sentences that are opinions, and I walk around the room and help them as I go. I got about halfway around the room when I stopped and read this one girl's practice opinion. It read:

"I wish that China could be the master of the world."

Chairman Mao would be proud indeed!

Another opinion was that:

"I believe that China will beat the U.S.A. in basketball."

I tried to joke around with the students and say, "No, no. I don't want China to win." They just stared back at me, so finally I added, "But maybe America will lose. After all - you have Yao Ming." By the way, they worship Yao Ming here. They also expect me to know all their other Olympic athletes' names. I don't know how to tell them that I don't even know America's Olympic athletes' names, let alone China's.

Another funny thing that happened was the English Corner, which is sort of like a club for kids that really like learning English. The kids that come are always really fun, and we do it twice a week. It's actually sort of nice, but it's hard to come up with something a large group can do for an hour. Anyway, last night we did music videos, and the artist that THEY picked was Michael Jackson (who, by the way, is incredibly popular here. I am convinced that most 3rd world countries are operating about 20 years behind the U.S.A., and this is evidence.) Anyway, I've never seen someone be scared of the Thriller music video (especially when it is played on a sunny afternoon), but the girls kept screaming and gasping. I'm not sure they have anything like the horror genre of films here. After that we watched Billie Jean and Beat It.

The best part, though, was that I ran out of things to do, so I panicked and started telling them about Michael Jackson singing with the Jackson 5. One of the students (whose English name is Longer, by the way, and his best friend's name is Shorter), cut me off and said that he knew the story. He starts telling a story about how Michael Jackson's dad wouldn't let him learn how to play the piano, so one night, when he was three, he snuck into his sister's room and started playing. . . Sound familiar to anyone? Well, I thought to myself, that sounds like Mozart, but since I don't know anything about Michael Jackson, I'll let him keep going. Then another student, whose English name is Little Stone (and whose big brother's name is Big Stone), cut Longer off and said, "That's Mozart."

So what do I do? I say, "Yeah, but I'm pretty sure it happened to Michael Jackson too."

Ok, I had no idea what to say, but I had to do something. After that I told them it was time to go, because I didn't want to get myself into any more trouble.

After English Corner we went to try a "McDonald's- style" restaurant. We had to point to the value meal we wanted, which actually worked out rather well, until we got our food: Hamburger, fries, chicken nuggets. All pretty good, or at least decent. And then, to drink: Hot milk. Interesting combination. Fortunately I found peanut-butter / chocolate oreos in the supermarket and ate a whole pack (not a U.S. size pack, just so you know - only like 10 cookies) to compensate.

Ok, time to wrap this up. I promise I will tell some of the stuff about the flight next time.

Funny stories to get things started

Ok, so I originally titled this blog "Lies and Petty Vandalism," but I decided I didn't like it. The title is, however, totally true - my time (so far) of teaching English in China has been marked by lies and petty vandalism (ok, just in a joking way really.)

The lies started with the promise in the contract of "western-style" toilets in the hostel that we stayed at for training. Now, it may not seem like a big detail. But, check out this picture.

Shoilet of Shame

(I'm going to try and include pictures when I can, but if they're already on Picasa, I might just include links. This computer is too slow to do extra work.)

So, that was an unpleasant surprise. However, the lies did not stop there. We were told we were going to Yongzhou - we came to Dao Xian. We were told we were leaving at noon on Saturday. We left at 8 AM Sunday. And so on....you can see where I'm going with this.

The petty vandalism takes two different tracks: legal (or acceptable) and illegal (or unacceptable). Our experience here has been that it's ok to smoke, spit, or throw trash wherever you want. I'm counting all of those as petty vandalism, for the sake of the blog. They do have trashcans (or, as they're called here, trash boxes), but they seem to be for show only. The streets are covered with it - especially with the paper from fireworks, which people set off like every 5 minutes (the first time i saw all the red paper I thought it was flower petals, and I thought, "Wow, China has some real beauty here." Then I got closer.)

The unacceptable version of vandalism apparently consists of taking someone else's fruit. Story: We were driving to Dao Xian, and our F.A.O (foreign affairs officer) was explaining what the farmers grew in the area. They stopped the car in front of a huge grove of orange trees and he said, "Do you want to take one?" And I politely said no, and he insisted (maybe three times.) So I climbed across a ditch and he said, "Take, take, take." So I reached up, pulled one off, and he said, "No! No! You must not take." So I just dropped it on the ground (which makes it vandalism instead of theft, I hope.) He then proceeded to take pictures of us pretending to take fruit of the tree. Apparently that is all right.

Picture after my misdemeanor:


Remember - pretending is ok, but actually taking is not (even if someone says, "Take, take, take.") About a half an hour later he asked me if I still had the orange, and I have the strong feeling that he wished he had taken one too.

Ok, that's all I'm putting up for right now, as I have to go teach some classes. I have a couple of funny stories about the flight over and Hong Kong, but nothing great. Maybe I'll put those up this afternoon.