Intro to Chinese

We are Moving

2006-07-31T09:51:00.000-07:00

I thought my departure from China six weeks ago would spell the end for one of my favorite passtimes--blogging.
I didn't feel like I could or should carry on with a name like Intro to Chinese and nothing especially novel to write about.
But I am still here and have been inspired to stay very much a member of this Blogosphere. Follow me to bloggingtheworldover.blogspot.com where I can tell you about my recent inspiration and my upcoming plans to move to the Galapagos Islands.

Conclusion to Chinese

2006-06-15T21:09:00.000-07:00

Dear China,

We both knew this day would come. Tonight, I’m leaving with a one-way ticket on a westbound plane. Don’t know when I’ll be back again.

I am not exactly ready to close the China chapter of my life, so no doubt you will see more of me. Soon. My money says I will beat that Olympic flame to Beijing.

Late this morning, on my way home from my last exam, I watched you like a nostalgic slideshow--- coasting on my bicycle with music in my ears drinking you in one last time. (In the back of my mind, I prayed your crazy motorists wouldn’t take my life on my final day here.)

We really did have good times. I feel like I was just getting to know you and your people…and that multi-toned language of yours. Whew! I sure did have fun pretending to understand that.

Special shout out, of course, to your food; “Gan bian yun dou” will be missed. As will your various forms of sweet potato (which will now be dubbed digua in my vocabulary): baked, dried, and caramelized.

I am going to miss all the familiar faces and smiles of those I see daily but can’t communicate with, like the little boy with the thick, green, glasses. I’ve been seeing him every day on my morning ride to work. He rides backwards on his Mom’s electric bike and points his tiny silver, plastic gun at imaginary bad guys. On the first day we met, I was sitting on my bike directly behind him at a red light and caught him with his gun pointed directly at me. I threw my hands up, “Don’t shoot!”
Since that day, I have sat facing him at many red lights, many days in a row. And when I was swallowed into the mob of bicycles, and I could see him up ahead looking for me in the crowd. This morning, I wished I could tell him not to look for me after today, that he wouldn’t see me anymore. I wanted to tell him that he was the highlight of my morning.

Well, its time to go now. Intro to Chinese has come to an end, but I can leave with the peace of mind that there will be more Chinese courses in my future.

Thanks again,

Betsy

Changing lanes

2006-06-06T03:24:00.000-07:00

“Man zou” is a Chinese expression that I have grown very fond of hearing. It means, “walk slowly” and every time I am told “man zou” as I exit a store or restaurant, I smile because a complete stranger cares enough to remind me to stop and smell the roses. At least that’s how it feels. I wonder if a non-native English speaker feels touched when told, “take it easy”?

In the days after I was told what “man zou” meant, I took it very literally. As soon as I heard the words, I would make a conscious effort to slow myself down in view of the adviser. As I drifted quietly up the sidewalk for a hundred yards, I looked tenderly upon my surroundings. And in those meandering moments, I would imagine a more peaceful version of myself doing everything more slowly…walking, eating, drinking, and cooking---all in sweet slow motion.

Then, to my disappointment, only a couple of hours later, I would find myself at home trying to put on my pajamas, take out my contacts and brush my teeth all at once.

Whose idea was this so-called “multitasking” anyway? I’ll tell you what multitasking has gotten me: burnt lentil soup, overflowing bathtubs, and toothpaste on the keyboard. It’s hard to think of anything especially positive in my life that has sprung from the ability to multitask. What’s the big hurry? In fact, as I recall, one of the most beautiful days I’ve spent in China was the day after a bout of food poisoning in Lijiang. After hours in the bathroom, I emerged out into the city feeling very fragile and wandered around at a snail’s pace. That evening, I remember thinking I was glad I’d been sick; otherwise I wouldn’t have taken the time to see the city so clearly and find, in the smallest of details, such serenity.

When in a hurry around here, it’s hard to see beyond bad traffic, crowded buses and the sheer frustration of a language barrier; it takes a long hard look to find the beauty. But, sure enough, when you slow down, there it is… bare-bottomed babies wading in a fountain, a fruit vendor and her basket of ripe red cherries or a Chinese dog in a stylish sweater.

I am trying to change my ways and not only slow down, but focus on each individual task until it is completed. So far monotasking is proving difficult; I routinely catch myself wandering off to check my email in the midst of scrambling eggs or trying to floss with a mouth full of foamy toothpaste.

So, thank you, China, for reminding me, in your novel way, to be here while I am here.

Man zou, dear reader.

One way or another...

2006-06-05T15:41:00.000-07:00

Sleep at last

2006-06-04T00:07:00.000-07:00

The past month’s hot weather has brought us unwelcome houseguests. No, not the family. The mosquitoes. Every night before bed, Josh closes himself into the bedroom and goes mosquito hunting. It just so happens that all the doors in our apartment have small windows like laboratories or…an insane asylum--windows through which one can observe a subject. As I brush my teeth I stand out in the hall and observe Josh. He holds completely still in the corner of the room, his eyes pass slowly over the walls and ceiling.

Without warning, he begins to stalk across the room with his fingers wrapped around the handle of a fluorescent orange fly swatter. In a sudden fury, he leaps across the bed and SMACK! Then, he pauses for just a moment before slowly peeling the swatter off the wall to reveal a dime-sized explosion of bright red blood and splattered mosquito parts. This ritual goes on for ten to fifteen minutes.

And most nights do not pass without one or two midnight hunts........I hear a faint buzz, and then I feel a pillow placed on top of my face. A moment later, through my eyelids and the pillow, I can sense the light has come on. I peak out from between the pillow sandwich and see Josh sitting pretzel style on the bed, eyes roaming around the room looking for prey.

Last night at 3am, Josh had had enough. The room was hot, our hands and knees were itchy, and Josh had a long day of work ahead of him.

“Can you get up? I am going to set up the tent.” I could hear the exasperation in his voice.

I stood by the bed squinting and sleepy as he pulled the sheets off the bed and set up the tent in less than four minutes.

Once we settled into the tent, Josh wiggled around on the sheets and made little happy noises like a kid with a Ninja Turtles tent set up on his bed---only now the tent is REI.

Dealing with the heat

2006-06-02T01:03:00.000-07:00

Hot weather has brought about a change of scenery around here. Women carry parasols to escape the sunshine and the men, desperate for some ventilation in a shorts-less land, roll up their pants and shirts to bare calves and midriffs.

Last week, my classes met at a nearby sports-field and played (sort of) Kickball. It was a lot of fun. Though some students opted out for fear of what color sun exposure might turn their skin, another group of students, who are often quiet in the classroom, really pushed their own boundaries to communicate with me about the rules of the game.

Getting to Hangzhou

2006-05-29T03:38:00.000-07:00

In the Shanghai train station, I prepared the family for the train boarding madness. I had to coach my Mom in particular; “Don’t be nice” I told her, “look out for number one---that’s you.” We were at a slight disadvantage with four large suitcases, which some men in blue shirts may or may not have been trying to help us check. I was reluctant to let go of the luggage because I didn’t understand what they were telling me. I informed the family of my lack of understanding and they agreed it was better not to risk the nightmare of losing our bargain-price souvenirs and knock-off designer bags acquired in Shanghai.

We stood with a growing crowd between two long aisles of chairs, feet planted and ready to push through with the crowd once boarding began. Our seats were assigned; urgency lay in the need to find overhead space for the luggage.
If it sounds to you like we were being pushy, you are correct.

Waiting in a line to board would mean that all the passengers would have to have some faith in each other’s commitment to such line. But because we-the-mob can’t be sure everyone will commit, we-the-mob decide to pass through the turn-style as the mob. Perhaps, observed from above, we look like little molecules trying to escape through the neck of a bottle, all pushing on each other until one bursts through and then another and then another. The harder we push on those around us, the sooner it will be our turn to burst through the opening.

Once boarding began, we each fought our tendency to give way and pushed. With great success, we were among the first on the train. After stowing our bags, we took our seats and set up our little picnic of snacks. We watched as the train filled up, pleased that we could avoid the ensuing congestion. Several minutes later, a group of passengers paused near our seats. They looked from their tickets to the seat numbers to us and back to the tickets. I produced one of our tickets and a helpful onlooker gestured to the stairs, pointing out the little character on my ticket that meant we were “up”.

We gathered our snacks and guidebooks, went upstairs, floundered through a trade negotiation so that we could all sit together, took our new seats, and began to unpack again. Just as we began munching on crackers, another man appeared looking pretty confident that I was in his seat. I was slightly confused and completely arrested by my inability to explain that I had traded for this seat with a man who was now drifting off to sleep in my original seat.

I gave the seat to its actual ticket holder, stood up and leaned against the side of Jake’s seat. Not 30 seconds passed before the man who was drifting off jumped up and gestured that I take his seat (my original seat), most probably explaining that he actually had a standing room only ticket. And not 10 seconds after I sat down across the aisle from the family, the man now sitting with them offered to trade with me. At last, I was seated back with the family and the snacks.

Any amount of musical chairs would have been worth it. Just look at the place. You can see why the Chinese call Hangzhou “Heaven on Earth”.

Dragon Boat Festival

2006-05-29T03:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday (5/31/06) was the Dragon Boat Festival--one of the four big festivals in China.
The night before, one of Josh's students came by the apartment bearing weeds and glutinous rice. He instructed us to hang the weeds on our door to protect ourselves from evil and disease for the rest of the year.

Weeds on door: check.

He also handed over bag full of sticky rice dumplings and said, "Eat these tomorrow".
I found out that a Chinese poet, Chu Yuan, drowned in 277 B.C. and after his death, citizens threw sticky rice into the water so the fish would eat the rice instead of the drowned poet. Nowadays, the rice is eaten by the people themselves.
We steamed a couple and ate them right up. The purple one had dates and peanuts inside. Pretty tastey.

Last night, I was on my way to bed when my dad called, "You didn't eat any sticky rice dumplings today, did you Bets?"

"As a matter of fact I did, Dad. How did you know about the sticky rice?"

"Because I just read an article entitled, China warns of poisonous Dragon Boat dumplings."

Taking it Easy in Shanghai

2006-05-28T23:05:00.000-07:00

After a week of Q&A with the family classes, it was time to give the family the vacation I had promised. And what city could be better than Shanghai---the East’s most Western city where it appears Chinese only outnumber foreigners 2:1.

We found many willing helpers upon arrival at the airport and after a short negotiation we were on our way to a hotel with a room for four. Along with the dead cockroach and rowdy neighbors, we made ourselves at home. Next door we found a charming establishment that served noodles and wan ton soup for breakfast and across the street was a massage parlor in which we proved to ourselves that we would endure any conditions for a cheap massage. That’s right. No matter what shoddy alley we find ourselves standing in, and no matter how dodgy the characters behind the glass doors appear, if we see massages advertised for $4, we’re going for it.

After a long day of walking and sightseeing, we lingered outside the doors of the massage parlor near the hotel. The attendants pushed the doors open and ushered us up the stairs. Like zombies, we traipsed up the stairs and were instantly swallowed into a negotiation for a “Chinese massage”. I glanced over at Jake who looked positively frightened, “You guys, is it okay if I skip it?”

I assured him that massages were about pleasure and if he didn’t feel comfortable, of course he should go.

The three of us, however, were going for it. Just one request, You can not smoke? In response to my broken Chinese, all the men in the room with cigarettes dangling from their lips nodded enthusiastically, “Fine, fine. No smoke.”
It did not occur to us that that wouldn’t make a sliver of difference. Twenty years of stale smoke had settled into that room, into the air, and into the furniture.
Before we were seperated into three smaller smoky rooms, I reminded Mom and LeaAnn of the Chinese word for “pain”. After 45 minutes of drumming, cracking and slapping we reemerged and compared our war stories. Mom told us of a potent face massage given by a woman who had recently chopped garlic, LeaAnn of her uncontrollable laughter brought on by tickling, and I described my face pressed into a smoky mat while a man drummed out a beat across my arms.

That wasn’t the only time we found ourselves in dodgy surroundings to experience relaxation and luxury. The next night, we followed man into a small dark alley because he came up close to us and whispered, “Gucci. Prada. Coach”. We followed him for two blocks further and further from bright lights and busy streets. At last he pulled a sheet aside revealing a doorway into a small room filled with knock off designer bags. While the man stood near the doorway peaking behind the sheet every so often, his wife pulled bags of shelves, said "Latest style" and punched prices into her calculator. Good times in dodgy places.

In Shanghai, we learned that Jake is the man when it comes to bargaining. You wouldn’t know it looking at that smile.

Shopkeepers grimaced as Jake punched numbers into the calculator. He whittled them right down from the "friend discount" to "Now, you make me lose money".

Because my Grandaddy will be tickled pink

2006-05-28T22:59:00.000-07:00

If you are from New Mexico, you should recognize these men...

The State Department Dinner

And get this...the keynote speaker at the biggest event of the week: none other than Jake's office mate from JPL, Kobe Boykin!

The Family Comes to China

2006-05-25T15:48:00.000-07:00

The flight back to China went just as I predicted. We stowed our carryon baggage, keeping the essentials in the seat pocket—Sudoku, Oprah Magazine, and I-pod for me--- unwrapped blue airplane blankets and stuffed little white pillows into any space still available. Once we were finally situated, Mom sighed---half nostalgic for the week that had just passed and half relieved that she could finally relax.

Jake immediately whipped out a piece of blank paper and started to make notes of some basic phrases he wanted to learn in Chinese before our arrival.

I understood bits and pieces of the flight announcements made in Chinese and felt a sense belonging on the flight. Off to China, a destination where I never expected to live and suddenly I couldn’t imagine my life without it. I couldn’t wait to show off my China.

With all the in-flight entertainment, meals and naps I didn’t even pick up a Sudoku until we were taxing to the gate in Beijing. When you are excited to get somewhere, that final stretch always feels like it takes the longest.

At the arrivals gate, Lea Ann was waiting—a vision in pink and khaki. We found a spot of tea, for a price that nearly gave me heart failure, and heard stories of Lea Ann’s journey from Baghdad, which included an after-curfew departure in an armored car and apache helicopters. We sipped fine tea as Lea Ann told us about kicking it with Vince Vaughn and Jeb Bush, mortars and car bombs, pool parties, dust storms and 130-degree temperatures. Most importantly, she assured us that she feels safe and she has a lot of fun out there. Its nice to think of the troops getting a chance to take their minds off war, missing family and hot temperatures with an event planned by Lea Ann and her staff.

When we finally arrived at the apartment in Jinan that night, we found Josh curled up in a ball determined not to mess up the immaculately clean floors that had taken him days to complete.

The next few days were so much fun and they passed way too quickly.

My students were beside themselves with excitment to meet the family. Can you spot Jake in the photo below? One man was convinced Jake was part Chinese.

On Tuesday, my students had a highly acclaimed guest lecturer, Josh. The rest of us headed to the home of Confucious--Qufu.

In Jinan, we introduced our friends and our favorite dishes to Lea Ann, Mom and Jake. The family even through caution to the wind and exhibited such "risky" behaviors as eating street food. Mmm!

We hit all the popular desintations in Jinan including the square and 1000 Buddha Mountain where Jake led us in some of his own unique Tai Chi-type exercises.

I took Mom and LeaAnn to my facial/foot massage spot where they experienced pain and laughter.

At night, I walked the famliy back over to the campus hotel which was rumored to have HBO. Jake turned on the TV to show me, but look who was on TV! Ha ha, what a coincidence! The family never let me live down one of my cheesy lines, but I hope this trip proved to them that "convenient" is a good word to know!

My students are still requesting that I email them photos of Jake.

On the last night, we had dinner with my tutor, Sharon (in green). The timing was bad, because I was fresh out of Chinese dishes that I knew how to say. The true extent of my Chinese language comprehension was revealed!!!!

Next stop: a city rumored to be like ten New York City's----Shanghai.

Long birthday

2006-05-25T06:07:00.000-07:00

I got a lot of mileage out of my birthday this year. The celebrating started with the earth’s dawn (roughly) of May 24^th in New Zealand, and then peaked several hours later here in China. CONUS, as I have grown fond of calling it, took the baton when China was too tired to continue. And at last, the day came to a close in Albuquerque, then LA, then gone.

I am thinking of my next move in terms of how it can broaden the longitude of my birthday.
And I haven’t even read The World Is Flat yet.

It was a good day. An old student came to class with a small wooden comb wrapped in pink birthday paper subtly enlightening the rest of my students of the occasion. Of course, I wanted to announce it first thing in the morning and was delighted that my former student rescued me from saying, "Hi, its my birthday". I know you are supposed to play it cool on your special day, but secretly I've always want to steal Claire’s approach: “Happy birthday to me” as a substitute for hi, hello, how are you, and even as a phone greeting for the full 24 (+ 17) hours.

The highlight of the day was dinner at Wei Wei’s in the Muslim district. Wednesday has recently become foreigner’s night at Wei Wei’s. We ate the usual boiled peanuts, grilled lamb on bicycle spokes and drank a lot of local beer. A Shandong T.V station came to get some footage to help promote a new website designed to help us wai guo ren meet each other and have a good time in Jinan.
So today, at 5:30pm I watched the Shandong news report and got to watch myself turn red and awkward as a flute player, summonsed by a friend, came over and played a beautiful rendition of Happy Birthday for me. That is a long song.

Really a very happy birthday. Thanks for all the birthday wishes.

How a computer virus ruined my life

2006-05-22T15:44:00.000-07:00

No, not really, but I like the ring to that title. It reminds me of an article you might find in a woman's magazine with an inset photograph of a woman cradling her face in her hands. The photo has to be slightly blurry, of course, to give you a feel for her unending pain.

In truth, it is Josh who is fighting this virus most hours of the day. He has loaded on a half dozen virus scanners and protectors. My favorite is called "Search and Destroy". It really feels like we are in combat.

Its almost too frustrating to use the computer at all. Everything is sooo slooow.
The good news is we have been getting a lot of good advice, and I think this sucker is going down today.

Oh, and another thing: after spending a week trying to recruit my family to gmail, I have to admit that right now it is driving me insane! About 6 seconds after I log on, it experiences "technical difficulties" and never recovers. I watch the seconds tick down as it tries to connect and then it starts over at 3 minutes. Is anyone else having this problem with gmail?

Congratulations

2006-05-21T23:15:00.000-07:00

Amie...
First Class Honors Graduate of Victoria University of Wellington 2006!!

Where were we?

2006-05-20T21:13:00.000-07:00

Thursday's awards ceremony at the National Academy of Sciences was awesome. I can't think of a better word.

For starters, Ede, my close friend from high school, was able to attend. Ede works for New Mexico congresswoman Heather Wilson on Capitol Hill. Visiting her at work is pretty surreal. She stands in a smart business suit amid tall white columns and powerful politicians---the first of my friends to officially have crossed over into adulthood.

Jake’s high school buddy, Elias, now a concert pianist based in Washington DC also joined us. With Aunt Terri, Uncle Randy, Jake, Elias, Ede and me, our Miss New Mexico Science cheering section filled out nicely.

Soon, the theatre darkened and a large white screen lowered above the stage. A slideshow of the awardees headshots and hometowns was projected onto the screen accompanied by the Top Gun theme song. Next came a movie made up of cuts and clips from the week, heavily featuring an interview with Mom filmed a few days earlier. Having watched the filming over her interview, I must say I was not surprised that they used so much footage from it. A particularly thoughtful clip was when she described watching one of her students have an “aha!” moment in class.

Finally the feature presentation: I felt like a proud parent at a high school graduation as a I watched my Mom’s row stand up and ready themselves to cross the stage. My heartbeat quickened as Mom got closer and closer. Finally, “Rhonda Marie Spidell, New Mexico, Science”.

In Washington , it was so nice to get to meet my Mom's group of friends. With their help, I got tickets to every event and help physically getting myself to the events. I know the fellows are really going to miss each other.

above: Egda

Group photo: John, Heidi, Jennifer, Steve, Cassie, Deb, and Pam

Breaking up is never easy

2006-05-19T06:51:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, in front of a youth hostel in Beijing, we all went our separate ways.

Josh and I set off for the train station leaving the others to finish packing their silk, tea and other souvenirs snugly into suitcases. Jake knows the Chinese word for “airplane”, so I presume they made it to the airport with no problems. At this moment, Mom and Jake should be half way through their flight to Newark. Mom is likely to be snapping pictures of the North Pole through her window on the airplane. I imagine nearby passengers squinting at the burst of light streaming through her window. Jake is reading by the light of the North Pole, waxy earplugs sealed over his ear canals.

Lea Ann will continue to travel in China for a few more days. Tonight she is in Xi’an awaiting tomorrow’s tour of the Terracotta Soldiers.

For the next day or two, I’ll know just what everyone is up to. I can look at my watch and say, “Jake is on a bus to Pasadena” or “Lea Ann is on a flight to Dubai”. We are slowly moving away from each other, but its almost as if I can still see everyone.
Inside my head are neatly divided squares. One is Jake, one is Mom, and one is Lea Ann---each one shows what’s happening in real time. The fourth square is what I’m currently seeing through my eyes. It’s like surveillance cameras, but with the more upbeat vibe of that opening bit on The Brady Bunch. Do you follow?

Real-time-Betsy-cam is going to be dark and boring for the next 9 and half hours.

Good night.

Today is the Day

2006-05-04T04:20:00.000-07:00

Tonight is the awards ceremony, when the nomination officially becomes an award with President Bush's signature.

Everyday this week, Mom has been out the door before 7am for a full day of "professional development" and various brunches/lunches/meetings with the other awardees.

Yesterday, while Mom was at the Willard having breakfast (seen here with "Miss New Mexico Math") and catching up with George at the White House, Jake and I picked up Aunt Terri and Uncle Randy from the airport.

Last night, we went on a dinner cruise along the Potomac river. The sites were spectacular.

After dinner, all those awardees got up to shake a tail feather. Of course Mom was among the first on the dance floor!

All those teachers really know how to have a good time.

And finally, I included this last photo because it perfectly captures how this week feels.

We fly to China in two days. I am looking forward to having my Mom in one place for 14 hours so I can finally talk to her!

Jake Day Festivities

2006-05-02T05:51:00.000-07:00

You call it May Day, but I call it Jake Day because yesterday I was reunited with my favorite brother, Jake. And, boy, did we celebrate.

Jake was not impressed with US Airways, as they only retuned ONE of the TWO bags he gave them in Atlanta!!

On the way home, Jake told us of his journey from Atlanta.

Shortly after Jake's arrival, we began the weeklong festivities to honor Mom and other recipients from around the nation.

We had the entire Smithsonian Museum of Air & Space to ourselves.

First: an IMAX about the brain (Wired to Win) with a follow up from the film director and Q & A with a neurologist. The big question of the night (from all those math and science teachers): How can we motivate the unmotivated?

Next, hors d'voures, wine, jazz and of course..the exhibits (Did I mention that we were the ONLY ones in the ENTIRE museum?)!!

Jake gave us the scoop on the Mars Rover. We were disspointed to see they left his part off the model in the museum!

What a night. It was a Jake Day I will never forget.

Breakfast at Old Ebbitts Grill

2006-05-01T07:18:00.000-07:00

They call them The Einstein Fellows. Each one has left his or her teaching position for a yearlong stint in the capitol. They are here to add an educator’s perspective to organizations like NASA, NSF, and NIH.

At breakfast on Saturday, some fellows got together in attempt to answer important questions surrounding the current state of education in America.

With their interim positions in Washington, each fellow wields some power to make change at a national level. And they are whole heartedly determined to make change before the year is out.

To be at that table was a special privilege I will long not forget. The subject matter was so near and dear to the hearts of these fellows that I could feel the yearning as they spoke.

It was invigorating to be at a table with people invested in making a change. Their personal experience is invaluable, and their ideas innovative. This was not a table full of people complaining or feeling defeated; this was a table full of people with vision and hope.

The food was good and the experience was unforgettable. That morning, I felt a defining moment, which revealed to me that I want to be a part of this cause.

2006-04-29T23:42:00.000-07:00

Over the Arctic Ocean and through the Hudson Bay...

2006-04-27T22:05:00.000-07:00

And here I am in Washington DC almost 30 hours after leaving Jinan this morning…or was that yesterday morning? These long journeys amaze me. Poof! Its as if I snuck up on the other side of the world to see if it was still in motion. It is.

As I walk down the terminal, I am convinced that my Mom has been waiting at Reagan National ever since she dropped me off nine months ago. She comes back to life the very moment I lay eyes upon her. We hug to confirm each other’s warm living bodies. With similar astonishment, she examines me and asks, “Did you really just come from China? I can’t believe it! All that way.” Hugs and more hugs. We wait at baggage claim and I make stories out of nothings that happened on my flights. I characterize passengers and tilt my head subtly across the conveyor belt in their direction.

The journey was pleasantly uneventful. Meals, movies, screaming infants, travel documents, flotation devices and oxygen masks. For my own safety, and the safety of those around me, I dutifully watch the flight attendant’s demonstrations. I nod in all the right places hoping to give her encouragement as everyone else flips through the in-flight magazines and fiddles with carry-on luggage throughout her presentation. I wonder if she is annoyed that no one is listening and she will have to explain it all again in the event of an emergency. Only then, everyone will be panicking and she will think to herself, I told you to listen the first time, but did you? No.

Its nearly 1 am here and I am determined to get myself on this time zone pronto. We have quite a week ahead. All in honor of this unique lady who I call Mom:

Leaving on a Jetplane in seven hours

2006-04-26T14:35:00.000-07:00

In a few days, I will watch my Mom receive a Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching---the nations highest honor for mathematics and science teaching. My brother, aunt and uncle will all be there to join the weeklong celebrations in Washington DC. I am over the Earth with pride.
Seriously. Check this out.

Please remember me

2006-04-23T00:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I bid farewell to my nurses. Belinda, another foreign teacher at Shanda, is going to replace me. It was a convenient transaction for a number of reasons. I have family coming for two weeks in May, I want to leave ASAP in June, and she needs some extra cash to ship her freight back to Finland this summer.

There were a few tears shed when we said our goodbyes. I sensed they felt slightly abandoned. A girl came up to me as I was leaving the classroom, “Why are you leaving? Our English is so poor?”

Heavens no! That’s not the whole reason.
I do think they will see more improvement under Belinda's instruction. She has been teaching English for 20 years.

The skits, activities and games I presented were designed to get them thinking on their own and give them a break from the usual books and drilling. But my plans somewhat backfired. I did not factor into the equation that it’s a lot easier to curl your eyelashes when you are working in a small group instead of repeating words after the teacher.
And its also much easier to text someone or pluck your arm hairs when you are supposed to be watching another group present a role-play. It felt like I gave them in inch and they took a mile.

They really are precious, though:

I took some photos and then they took some photos.

I think I have been preparing for this for a long time

2006-04-21T02:31:00.000-07:00

They say there are two types of people in Jinan: those who have been in a bike accident and those who will be in a bike accident. Josh is now the former.
Easter Sunday started calmly enough, but when the phone rang at 5:45pm—30 minutes after Josh was due home—the day took a frantic turn.
It was Josh, “I’ve been in a bike accident.”
I gasped as my mind flashed through a dozen dreaded scenarios.

Where to begin? Josh and I have our own bikes. Nice bikes. Gears, shocks, working brakes, shiny paint, you name it. Our bikes stand out just as much we do and we are usually the fastest moving wheels on these congested streets. Very convenient, but potentially dangerous.

In this land where bicycles are built for two, men can be seen ferrying a dainty lady friend gingerly seated over the back wheel with a hand gently placed on the tummy of her partner, legs dangling off to the side. Josh has a need for speed, so his lady friend can be found 25 meters behind him.

Cut to the Easter dinner. I walk into a banquet room full of mingling foreigners and announce:

“Josh was in an accident.” (Pause for group to gasp) “He was on the bike path and hit by a car. A big car.” (Pause for group to shriek).

Caught up in the frenzy of newly concerned Christians, I forgot to mention that Josh said he wasn’t hurt and didn’t even sound all that shaken on the phone.

When Josh walked in to the dining room, I dramatically threw my arms around his neck. We all gathered around while he told us the real story:

“I wasn’t hurt at all. I was only hit by a motorcycle cart. Really, it was nothing.”

With Josh’s speedy ways established, I'd like to one thing make clear: The accident was not his fault. Not even in the slightest. The driver of a large cart-towing motorcycle is to blame. As Josh sped home along the bike path, a blue cart-towing motorcycle roared out of an alley and into Josh’s bike. Miraculously, Josh pushed himself off the back of the bicycle and watched as a reckless cart-towing motorcycle driver mangled the front wheel of his bike!

The man on the cart-towing motorcycle was a bad driver, but a good guy. He immediately stopped his cart-towing motorcycle and apologized. Next he took Josh’s bike across the street to a man with tools who fixes bikes and waited as the man with tools who fixes bikes fixed Josh’s bike. While Josh, and the cart-toting motorcycle driver waited for the man with tools who fixes bikes to fix the bike, I was at Easter dinner telling everyone about the big car that hit Josh.

I swear, I thought a car hit him.

Jinan Couture

2006-04-20T03:25:00.000-07:00

The fashion sense in Jinan is undoubetdly unique. Basically anything goes.
What you might not even wear to a Mismatch Party is in vogue in Jinan.

This is the first in a series of entries introducing the highlights of Jinan fashion to you. Here is a taste of what the ladies are buying:

Today's What's hot?:

The color Mustard is very hip with the ladies right now. Mustard pants, boots, tops and sleeve garters and assorted accessories...

Coming soon:

More on sleeve garters
black ankle socks and white high heels
The "bloated pants" and acid wash denim jacket
Mens fashion

J'adore China

2006-04-15T23:47:00.000-07:00

Seems like there have been a lot of tears in my recent posts. Here are some photos to reassure you that I very much like the China! There's a lot around here that puts a smile on my face. Everyday, I am discovering things I will miss about this crazy life in China. [And one of Tui, because I think its so funny when her lip gets stuck like that! Happy Easter!]

Birthday twins.

Josh's students.

Happy Easter!

2006-04-14T15:41:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of DRevov 2005

Something to think about

2006-04-11T21:20:00.000-07:00

Below is a thought-provoking and eloquent response to This Woman from Jake B. Following that is Josh B's response to Jake. I'm interested in any other thoughts anyone might have on the matter.

Jake B. wrote:

I would think of it not so much as her bragging, but rather her being extremely pleased that she made, with one set of customers, what it would likely otherwise have taken her a good four or five hours (at least) to make. Alternatively, you could think of it in terms of the number of street lunches she will, in turn, be able to buy for herself (her kids?) for the next week or so. Don't forget that, howevermuch it seems as though it isn't on a day-to-day basis, you're in a communist country. It might not be so much that she was charging 5 RMB for the coconuts because she thought she could get it from Waiguoren, but that you paid 5 RMB for coconuts because you could afford to. You know your budget while you're there. Did a fiver for a coconut seem too high? If so, don't pay it. If it didn't until you overheard the lady's reaction, then it probably wasn't too high. After all, not a whole lot of Westerners get the opportunity to drink coconut milk straight from the coconut while they walk down the street in an Asian city as complex as Jinan, and there are fewer of us still who get the opportunity to write about it on a blog for the equivalent of about seventy cents, US.As I recall, about three years ago the going rate for a glass of Pepsi at the TGI Friday's in Beijing was 12 RMB, of which I'd bet about 1 mao goes to the waiter that served it to you. Who's more deserving of the "tsk:" street-vendor lady and her coconut drink, or Fridays?Of course, if she made her remark in a condescending sorta way, I find that returning the next day and dropping 20 RMB or so into the can of the one-legged guy playing the erhu next to her cart, then throwing her a wink does the trick.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jake, your reply is appreciated. I freely admit that your spin on the coconut event is definitely the broader view of the issue. You're right, Betsy and I are from wealthy families in a wealthy country. Most foreigners in China are pretty privileged folks, if they weren't they wouldn't have been able to afford the plane ticket. Even as foreign teachers living in China, we are paid a kingly sum for work that is not all that difficult or skilled (it is skilled in the hands of some teachers moreso than others). A woman who sells coconuts on the street in China was dealt a poorer hand in life, no doubt about that. 5 RMB means a helluvah lot more to her than to us. However, I don't think it's difficult to understand (rationalize?) our feelings about the matter.
Bets and I are, afterall, American. In the context of our own culture, charging one person more for an item based on their race, sex, nationality, ignorance etc. doesn't sit all that well in our collective stomach. Imagine a store owner in Cincinnati who didn't advertise his prices so he could charge white people more than blacks. What do we think about credit card companies who give cards with astronomical interest rates to college kids who don't know any better, even if they are rich? But, granted, Betsy and I live in China by choice. If we weren't in the mood to leave our own cultural beliefs at the door we wouldn't be here. But a good number of Chinese I know aren't particularly fond of the mercurial pricing in this country, either.

Perhaps all of this is not the point anyways. If there were a 10 or 15% increase in pricing across the board for foreigners, I'd complain about it but wouldn't resist. A woman who sets up her shop in a touristy area and advertises a price 50% higher than the price in the country, I can see that. That's the market at work, and how communist is China really? But I've seen Chinese students who help their foreign friends with bargaining get vehemently cursed by vendors who were asking a 200% mark up. I've noticed sly smiles and little giggles from shopkeepers who knew they were fleecing a tourist, they rarely look you in the eye. The behavior just seems a little underhanded to me. It doesn't feel like I'm paying a little extra to help balance the economic inequity of the world, the vendor and I both know I'm getting cheated. The many vendors who charge me a fair price and look at me with warm eyes, they have my business for the entire two years I'm in China. That woman will never sell me a coconut again.

This Woman

2006-04-11T02:18:00.000-07:00

THIS WOMAN couldn't wait the three seconds for us to walk out of earshot before she bragged about how much she charged us for a coconut!
It was our first coconut, so we didn't know what price to expect. We handed over the 5 RMB (more than 50 cents) and turned to stroll away sipping sweet coconut milk. Just as we turned our backs I heard her exclaim, "Five RMB!!!" (in the same tone one uses to exclaim, "Suckerzz!!") to the pineapple guy. At that moment I turned and saw her face---she looked pretty satisfied with herself.

I heard a loud "tsk!" come out of my mouth. She looked over at me and instantly morphed into a 9-year-old girl about to get into trouble. I didn't say anything more, I just raised my finger--mouth still hanging open-- and pointed at her before I turned to walk away. Of course a minute later, a winning comeback came to me!

Boy am I ready for the next time!

Severing ties too soon

2006-04-10T01:10:00.000-07:00

Last week, an emotional breakdown brought my beauty shop visits to a grinding halt.
There I was lying on my back as a young woman massaged my face with beautifying lotions and potions. My eyes were closed and I was drifting into deep relaxation, but acutely aware that four or five women standing nearby were talking about me. I know this because I heard, “She doesn’t understand” several times.
Suddenly there was tapping on my shoulder. I opened my eyes to find a box in front of my chin and a sales pitch for some aromatherapy kit followed. The price was outrageous, tailored to a foreigner’s wallet. I smiled and said, “No thank you, not today”. At this they looked very disappointed. One persistent woman knelt down close to my face and spoke so quickly I couldn't understand a word. “No, I don’t want it.”

She began to jab at my face-- my forehead, my cheek, my chin. Presumably she was explaining why I need whatever is in this box. At this point, they were all looking down at me frustrated at my unwillingness to comply. Each “Sorry, I don’t want it”, prompted them to reconvene and intensify the pitch. More jabbing. More words I don' know.

To discourage them, I closed my eyes. And then I felt my face wrinkle and harden. My eyes became moist under my eyelids and tears were trying to push their way out. Damn! They slid out and formed two small puddles in the corners of my eyes. Then, puddles overfull, the tears began to roll down my cheeks. I heard a woman inhale sharply. She alerted the others. The word spread fast. I closed my eyes tighter, but I could feel that a crowd had drawn around me. I could sense everyone’s confusion, especially my own. I felt someone blotting my tears with a towel. A woman spoke softly into my ear, “No problem. No problem”.
I choked out “I had a bad day”--a lie--and then I heard those words passed through the room in whispers. “She said she had a bad day.” I imagined watching myself from above, this extra large foreign woman laying on her back crying for no apparent reason. And at the embarrassment of this, the tears began to push themselves up and out faster.
Finally the room was quiet and I could breathe. With such a limited vocabulary, I found myself saying, “I don’t know why”.

After a half hour of silence, my facial was finished and my eyes were dry. I sat up to put on my shoes. Everyone was quiet, glancing at me sideways. I imagined they were thinking, “Don’t say anything. The foreign woman might cry again.”

My plan was to go back a week later and try to explain myself, so I asked my tutor, Sharon, to help me construct some sentences. After I told Sharon the whole story, she looked at me quizzically and said, “I think its best you just don’t go back. ”

Big minds, little board

2006-04-06T19:27:00.000-07:00

Last night Maceo brought his chessboard down. Though I have played chess only a handful of times, I feel very comfortable in the presence of chessboards. I used to hang around at chess tournaments and watch my brother, Jake, compete. Or, more likely, play outside with the other little chess brothers and sisters. Despite Jake's efforts to mold me into a worthy enough opponent, I never did stay on the board long enough for him to practice the moves and strategies he read about.

He did get my Dad into the game, though. At the time, my Dad flew international flights for Delta Airlines and over the space of a few years Jake accumulated some 10 unique chessboards from maybe five or six different countries. As for my Dad, he stuck to the portable electronic boards in which you played against the computer. I remember he once told me, “Bets, flying is a breeze. After takeoff, I put the autopilot on and play chess until its time to land.”

Hospital or Hot Zone?

2006-04-06T05:25:00.000-07:00

The sore throat is back and this time it’s angry. The real trouble is that I turn my entire mind and body over to its strangling grip of death. All I seem to want to do about is cry. Cry that I am in pain, cry that nothing helps, cry that I can’t decide whether or not I should miss work, cry that I feel guilty if I do. Enough already!

Last night something gave me hope. Josh and I had dinner with our friends Willa and Harmony. Willa is from Guangzhou and Harmony is from San Diego. They have lived together in Jinan for a few years now. Harmony is blonde with blue eyes and she speaks impeccable Chinese. Not only that, but the woman drives a seriously hard bargain. The standard price for eggs around here is 1.5 RMB/500g and when Harmony was quoted 1.7 RMB, she raised hell! I love to be with her in times like these, just to see the looks on people’s faces. We stroll around appearing to be the dopey foreigners, and then Harmony opens her mouth and jaws drop. I like to imagine that onlookers presume me to be just as savvy.

At dinner last night, after I mentioned my throat pain, Willa told me that there was too much heat in my body from over consumption of “hot foods”. Together Willa and Harmony went on to explain which foods were “hot”, which foods were “cold” and why it was so important to keep the yin (cold) and yang (hot) in balance.

Too many hot foods (chicken, onion, garlic, ginger, oats, apples, sweets) will give you a sore throat, a mild fever and night sweats, so many Chinese are careful to balance their diet with cold foods (lightly cooked vegetables, many fruits, tofu). There seems to be a little bit of debate over which category some foods fall under.

Indeed, the symptoms of too much yang in my diet fit me to a T, but just where did all that yang come from?
Up until last night, my knowledge of that black and white circle was pretty limited. In the sixth grade, Lizzy Brown and I bought a necklace set and each wore a half of the symbol.
In the seventh grade, when Pogs swept through Albuquerque, it was the yin yang symbol that decorated the top of my “slammer”. Other than that, I hadn’t ever given yin or yang much thought.

At last we discovered the source of heat. A couple of weeks ago, the city streets saw a small change: the baked sweet potatoes vendors disappeared and pineapple vendors took their places. Now, you can’t walk two blocks around here without passing a glass case full of pineapples peeled, quartered and skewered onto sticks. And I haven’t gone a single day without a slice of pineapple since they arrived. As soon as I said “pineapple”, Harmony and Willa smiled at each other. Together they looked across the table at me, and shared, “pineapple is very hot.”

I became an instant believer and felt a whole new world of knowledge had laid itself before me. It would become my mission to master the balance and release myself from an inflamed throat, among other ailments, once and for all.
Last night, I went to sleep hopeful and dreamt of cold foods.

At 4am, I woke up in agony. There was no chance of getting back to sleep and I desperately needed the kind of distraction that only the Internet can provide. I started with one of my favorite blogs, and followed one link to another to another and next thing I know, I’m reading about the sink in Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown’s “crack den”.

To get me through my morning class, I devoured two packages of lozenges. Seconds after the last one had disappeared in my mouth; I knew the tears weren’t too far off. Once home, I lunched on cold foods and continued to fight off the tears.
It wasn’t until Josh suggested that I go for a run to get my mind off the pain that the floodgates came unlatched. I nearly bit the poor man’s head off and then gave in to the tears of my mounting self-pity.

At last, with the urging of my Mom via MSN chatting, I decided to go to the hospital and have a Strep test. So quickly I had given up on the healing power of cold foods and yearned for my familiar antibiotic drugs. I roused a Chinese-speaking friend and hailed a cab to the hospital.

The hospital was a real run-around. In amidst the crowds of people, many of which, to my horror, were smoking, we ran up and down flights of stairs. We paid at one window, collected forms from another, and turned in forms at still a different window on a different floor.

At last, in a long crowded hallway, I hopped up into a dentist type chair and, with an oversized Popsicle stick restraining my tongue, and said “Ahhh”. Comfortingly, all tools were sterilized for a few moments over an “antifog machine” before they entered my mouth. The doctor pulled some matter out of my throat with long tweezers and declared that I had an infection. The specifics of which were lost in translation.
After her conclusion, I produced an enormous bottle of Amoxicillin from my pocket, wondering if she might tell me that’s what I need to be taking. But she was unable to recognize the name on the label and wrote me a new prescription. After standing in a new line in front of a new window, I collected my medicine. In amidst all the Chinese characters, it read “Amoxicillin Capsules”.
And with two of those capsules down the hatch, I just know the end is in sight.

A Sizable Cultural Difference

2006-04-01T23:08:00.000-08:00

In February, our friend’s’ dad was visiting from Michigan. He is a rather large man and attracted more than the usual attention a foreigner can expect around Jinan. One morning, we went out to brunch at a nice hotel. A woman at a nearby table watched us. Despite our 'Okay, yep. That’ll do' glances in her direction, she continued to stare. Midway through our brunch, she walked over to our table, looked at Michigan and said, “I can help you”. She handed him a leaflet with before and after photos of people who had shed a considerable amount of weight. The woman lingered for a moment smiling at Michigan. He put his hand up and waved her away with a “No thanks, I am only visiting.” I wanted to reach up and sock her.

Recently I attended a culinary contest with a larger foreign teacher from Tennessee. Tennessee reached out to shake the hand of a Chinese chef. Chef shook Tennessee’s hand with his right, and reached for a handful of Tennessee’s midsection with his left. Chef nodded and smiled wide eyed. “Yes, I’m fat. I know.” Tennessee sighed in a manner that suggested to me this was not a new experience.

A few weeks ago, I had dinner with Bonnie from the Jinan TV station and a student. As dinner was winding down, Bonnie reached out with her chopsticks to pluck some sliced pork off a dish. “Make sure to keep fit,” said my male student who was watching her.
My eyes bulged, What?!?
Bonnie nodded and then turned to me, “If a woman is overweight, but she is beautiful, what word can you use to describe her?”
“Uhh, ‘beautiful’.”
Bonnie laughed at this, “Chubby?”
“Nooo… just ‘beautiful’.”
She still looked disbelieving. Finally, I offered up ‘curvy’, but tried to explain that we wouldn’t necessarily choose an altogether separate adjective in this case.

My students’ favorite adjective is ‘beautiful’.
Your bike is so beautiful. Do you think this restaurant is beautiful? I like your camera; it’s beautiful.
I told them that, in America, "beautiful" was reserved for someone or something truly breath-taking and they were shocked.
Is that right? Don’t we usually use “great”, or “pretty”, or “nice”? I associate "beautiful" with exotic models, or girls headed off to senior prom.

I told my class the story of Michigan and going out to brunch. I explained that even though it was clear this Chinese woman was sincere in her offer to help, that kind of thing would never fly in America. If you approached someone who was trying to enjoy a meal with a line like "I can help you", you’d be asking for a knuckle sandwich. Again, they were surprised.

“We are very sensitive about our weight in America and unless you are well acquainted with someone, it is extremely rude to comment on his or her size. And even if you are well acquainted, it’s a very delicate subject.”

This year I've heard my students make a number of remarks about each other’s weight that we would never tolerate. It has gotten me to wondering if one way is better than the other. To ignore and avoid as we do in the West? Or to open up the subject for comments and discussion as is done here in China?
Could this difference be a contributing factor into why we are curvier than the Chinese?
I would be very interested to hear what you think. (Comments!!)

This class discussion led into one about offensive words pertaining to people with disabilities. Jinan is the largest city I have ever lived in, perhaps even visited, and yet it is extremely rare to see someone who is disabled here. Wheelchair accessibility is virtually non-existent. At a university of 40,000, none of my students knew of a student who used a wheelchair. They very frankly told me that those with any kind of disability go to different schools, and don’t go to universities at all. They said people with disabilities “just stay home.” I tried to hide the shock on my face.
It was the matter-of-factness with which they spoke that disturbed me a little. Of course, what they say might not be the whole story.
I think it would be interesting to meet a radical and outspoken Chinese. Someone who is outraged, and unwilling to comply! Like one of those 4 million “protesty” Kiwis!

A Day for Lovers

2006-04-01T02:53:00.000-08:00

A special event took place at Qianfoshan (1000 Buddha mountain) yesterday, Qianfoshan Shanhui. Thousands gathered for the sole purpose of making a love connection. At the foot of the mountain flowed a sea of single people (and parents ready with attractive photographs) looking for a match. I don’t think Single’s Functions’get much bigger than that. Some of my students said they’d be heading there after class.
On the first day of class this term, many of my male students expressed that they want to find a girlfriend this year—a task made even more difficult by the unbalanced ratio of men to women. I’ve heard that there are some 16 million more men in China.

As far as I can tell, my university students are stressed out in just about every possible capacity. A fiercely competitive job market ramps up the stress level at university. And out of that environment, it seems to me that a number of students have developed a proclivity for cheating. During the final examination last term, I had at least one incident of cheating in each of my seven classes. A dictionary hidden under the desk, a note passed, a whisper.

The suspicious behavior is not hard to detect; I can feel when a student has one eye locked on me. If someone’s mind is consumed with how they will go about the process of cheating instead of the exam itself, I can see it on his or her face. I dread having to make eye contact with that person.

If I had it my way, no one would ever take the risk, but I’ve seen it a number of times and had to give that look. At the very moment of eye contact the recipient’s entire body stiffens and the lungs pump a huge swell of air into the throat. Damn.

Yesterday, I was faced with one of these uncomfortable situations. Right now, my university students are giving oral presentations. I’ve allowed them to have a few notes to refer to, but made one thing perfectly clear: use your own words.

One of the quieter students who sits in the very back corner (where seven men cram into a row designed for four when there is plenty of space up near the front) came up to present.
“These are my thoughts,” he began timidly. And without taking his eyes off his notebook he described his various moods, “heavy”, “soulful”, “playful”...
His descriptions were beautiful in such a simple way that had me convinced he was secretly a very talented writer. I considered that he might be slightly embarrassed to reveal his talent in the presence of the back-row posse.
He continued, “As I write this, I am in my playful mood. I am like my kitten ready to pounce.”

When he finished, he shyly looked in my direction. With complete sincerity, I raised my eyebrows to show my delight and then very softly and sincerely mouthed the words, “That was beautiful.” I hoped that only he could hear me and that my comment wouldn’t cause him any embarrassment.
Before he returned to his seat, I said, “Wait there just a moment.” I stood up to ask the class, “Do you all know the word ‘pounce’?”
Their faces were (not uncommonly) blank, so I looked at the speaker and asked him to translate the word “pounce” into Chinese. He too looked at me blankly. “Pounce.” I said again, “You wrote about your kitten, ‘ready to pounce’.”
I nodded at him waiting for him to register which word I was talking about. His face wrinkled nervously. I began to walk towards him in order to point out “pounce” in the notes that he had written. I was expecting him to respond, “ooOOooh, pownts” in a Chinese accent, revealing to all that the misunderstanding had been because of the way I pronounced the word (the correct way). That kind of thing happens a lot in class.
When I reached him, I looked down at his notebook and gestured for him to open it back up. He did it very slowly and, as I now recognize, reluctantly. He opened his notebook to reveal a page torn from a book.

Our eyes met for a split second, then I awkwardly turned to the class and began to describe the action of pouncing. The whole class knew exactly what had just happened. Maybe my face told them, but I hoped not. I don’t even remember what I said for the next minute of class. My heart was pounding.
Looking back, I wonder why these kinds of things make me so awkward and incapacitated. I think it would all be different if I were dealing with students a couple years younger than myself.

When I taught at Nature’s Classroom, last year, my weakest point was discipline. But by the end of the year, I had learned a great deal and felt I’d made vast improvements in my classroom management. I was no longer giving off the "I invite and encourage you to walk all over me” vibe.
Unfortunately, I feel as though I can’t apply any of what I learned to manage the university students. I guess it just feels rude somehow.

"Enjoy your English. Enjoy your Day" is the signoff that sadly replaced "You stay classy, Jinan!"

2006-03-31T01:58:00.000-08:00

I was asked back to the TV station to do another show today, which I figure was for one of two reasons. Either they liked me or they liked what they had to pay me. Nothin.
Either way I have fun doing it, so I went back for more. Today Bonnie and I taught a local Jinan man how to give directions to a lost and confused foreigner. “Turn right at the second intersection.”, “The No. 1 Bus will take you to the city center.”

The whole process is very casual. From what I have learned so far about conducting business in China, you don’t get much information up front. And in my experience, what information you are given doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. This is a pretty good setup for someone who is comfortable making their own rules, but for those who don’t work well without specific directions, it can be a real headache. I’ve become pretty comfortable with this and enjoyed the chance to interpret each job on my own. And heck, if it’s not what they had in mind, someone will let me know. Or not. Whatever.

This afternoon I applied a heavy coat of makeup, and rode my bike forty-five minutes across town to the TV station. By the time I arrived, my made up face was buried under a thick layer of dust, exhaust, and assorted particulate matter.

After freshening up, I edited the “script” to make it sound native. Next, we moved lights and extension cords downstairs to a little auditorium. A few minutes later, the cameras were rolling. Bonnie, the Chinese host, says to me, “just teach us this” and points to the page of sentences I’d edited. No problem. Except maybe just one small one today; it felt and sounded as though a helicopter was landing on the roof. Right when we were in the groove, right when we were “enjoying our English and enjoying our day”, we had to stop all of the above and wait for the building to finish vibrating.
Despite that obnoxious interruption, we managed to shoot seven short episodes in two and half hours. I was feeling pretty pleased with my smooth performance up until the last task. The cameraman asked Bonnie and I to look at each other and nod for several moments so they could edit that into the show if necessary. I was useless…completely incapable of looking and nodding without laughing at the awkwardness of it all.
It took me right back to seventh grade Spanish oral presentations when I could barely speak through my fits of nervous laughter.

By 4:30, I was pedaling home and gathering another layer of pollution.

This is the crew. From left to right: local Jinan man, director, cameraman, station owner, Bonnie, Betsy.

Take me to the nature

2006-03-27T21:45:00.000-08:00

I couldn’t be happier to bring you the official news: Spring has sprung in our little part of China.

A couple of weeks ago, there was one lone flowering tree on campus and every time I passed by, someone was standing in front of the tree surrounded by a wreath of pink and white flowers having his or her photo taken.

It didn’t take long for word to get around that a whole forest of such trees was hidden away in the Botanical Gardens. Before you could say “pink enchanted forest”, Josh and I were pedaling across the city.

As if we’d never seen real flowers before, we immediately dove into the tangle of pink and felt fresh offshoots swat our cheeks. Then we tucked our heads in between branches and sniffed the tiny pink petals up into our nostrils. I think the bees felt displaced by our up close and personal devotion to each tiny blossom.
After snapping some photos of the happy moments, we made space for another group of beguiled visitors to lose themselves in ‘the nature’.

If you like counting down as much as me

2006-03-26T14:34:00.000-08:00

Check this out. It's is personal countdown that tells me precisely how many seconds until I hug my Mom at the arrivals gate next month. You can make your own at the site.

Jiminy Cricket--this is post #100

2006-03-26T05:14:00.000-08:00

With the 100th post, I celebrate blogging by creating my first link.

This is Muslim BBQ. Lots of meat, lots of bicycle spokes, and extra large bottles of local beer.

Hot Pot

2006-03-26T04:17:00.000-08:00

Huo Guo or "Hot Pot" is a tasty experience.
A pot of spiced water and oil is kept boiling by a gas burner below the table. You can order a great deal of raw meat and veggies or noodles to boil.
We like paper thin slices of lamb, frozen cubes of tofu, cabbage, spinach, and potatoes. After everything is boiled, you have your choices of sauces. The favorite is a peanutty tahini type sauce.
And while you wait for everything to cook, you can munch on pickled garlic. Whew!

If it weren't for all the boiling water splashing about, I think this idea could take off in America. Or has it already?

Josh and the Cat and the Couch have some good Color Coordination going on

2006-03-26T04:12:00.000-08:00

Nothing to worry about, Diane

2006-03-24T03:08:00.000-08:00

In the show (which looks like it was filmed in some high school auditorium) we taught a taxi driver some English relevant to his profession in preparation for the influx of lowai in the summer of 2008.

My Chinese cohost, BaoJie or "Bonnie", said she needed a sign off for then end of each show (we filmed seven) and I convinced her to say, "You stay classy, Ji'nan!"
I told her to point to the camera and wink, but she didn't go for that.

Talking the Walk

2006-03-22T07:26:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Josh and I set out to walk to the supermarket. Seconds after we were through the university gate, I let out a long and distressed sigh. My companion did not take notice of the sigh as I'd expected, so I asked myself, What’s on your mind? and what I found was a little surprising. There was nothing on my mind.
So what was the deep sigh all about? After a moment of confusion, I discovered that it was just a habit I’d formed. Every time Josh and I go for a walk, I empty out the contents of my mind as though it were a ‘junk drawer’ from the kitchen. With the scattered contents, Josh facilitates a discussion in which we throw out all the useless junk and organize the important stuff neatly back into the drawer.
Thankfully I have a number of friends with this skill. I don’t know how well I would survive without them.

I decided to tell Josh about what had just taken place in my head and how I had been a Pavlov’s dog with the walking and my sigh. We walked and I told him of how my drawer felt a pleasant emptiness, the conversation periodically interrupted by our need to separate for survival. [Sharing a narrow and pockmarked sidewalk with fruit stands, birdcages, cyclists, parked cars and moving cars makes it impossible to stroll side by side.]

I was having one of those days where I'd decided most of my thoughts and words were needlessly thought and spoken. In a way, though, I felt like I had cut myself loose from the need to think. Loose from everything that bothered me. I was suddenly so detached that I couldn’t even remember what it was like to concern myself with…anything.

All those thoughts about my future. All those thoughts about my past. All those thoughts about what other people are thinking of me. All those thoughts about what I think of other people. All that time.

“We are just floating around out here. I feel so insignificant and ashamed for thinking about myself so much. All that struggle to make sense of myself; what a waste of time. What is time anyway?”
Josh quickly replied, “Ask that to someone with cancer. Every minute is defined. We have all of eternity to float around; we only have a finite number of years to be here. You can only talk this way because you aren't suffering.”

And then I felt clarity. I thought, I have to become part of something more important than myself and I have to do it quick. I felt rushed because in the very back of my mind, I knew these feelings wouldn’t stay with me for long. Now, they were so crisp and tangible, but soon I would be in the grocery store and in the midst of all those people and products and sounds, I would lose them in aisles of soap and air freshener. I would let them get lost.

It would be just like that feeling you get when you walk out of the theatre after watching a movie like Hotel Rwanda; so desperate to help. Absolutely inexcusable to stop thinking about this movie and to forget about suffering.
Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Can I think myself into action?
I feel like I need to sit down have a serious discussion with myself in which we carefully consider what sacrifices I can make. I am trying to get all up in my face and make a lasting impression.

All in a day's work

2006-03-18T16:20:00.000-08:00

At some intersections around here, you might get the idea that a big concert or sporting event had just let out; people are pouring across the road weaving through cars awkwardly crammed onto the street as if lanes were an afterthought. Sometimes this disregard of the road rules infuriates me. It feels like one huge game of Chicken. Everyone is out for himself. Those of us with a little less nerve will move and accommodate at the last moment. You might call us considerate or maybe just cautious.

I don’t often see road-rage around here, its more of a road-recalcitrance. On a fellow commuter, what may look like a smile that says, Beautiful day, huh? is really an apathetic smirk that says, Oh, am I in your way? Did I just cut you off? Sorry, sucker!

But sometimes I see things differently. Sometimes I see this beautiful ebb and flow of cars and bikes and people, a symphony of constant motion, maybe even an unspoken cooperation between all of us.

Work was kind of like that today too. At first I couldn’t see beyond my bad mood, but eventually I came around.
Last week I was sick and had to cancel my English class with the kindergarteners. My contact at the school laid the guilt on me pretty thick for canceling. Today, all I could remember was how upset I was over the guilt trip and how hyperactive the kindergartners were. So after a long morning of teaching at the Medical school, I was dreading the kindergarten class.
But when I knelt down and twenty Chinese six-year-olds surrounded me, I felt my bad mood loosen its grip. We sang and solved riddles. Mostly we laughed the six-year-old laugh that starts in your belly and reverberates all through your body until your head tilts back, your lips are stretched wide, and sound is bursting up and out of you. They laughed at my animal impressions and I laughed at their six-year-old laughs.

On the way home, the five o’clock traffic was in harmony. Through heavy smog and pollution, the sun cast a reddish glow. I thought everything looked beautiful. Even the litter in the gutters was gently rippling, almost dancing like the plastic bag in American Beauty. I gazed at couples doubled up on bicycles. I saw a mother and son eating ice cream on a stick and guessed that it was her idea to throw out the rules and have ice cream before dinner. I imagined the two of them ten minutes before and I could see his light up when she said, How about some ice cream?
I love China, I love China kept circling through my mind and every time I exhaled the words would tickle my lips, itching to be spoken-----like when you want to say something so badly that it swells up and repeats in your head until you can’t concentrate on anything but those words. In the end I just swallowed them back down and let the thought take its time to bleed out of my head. And before I knew it, a new thought had worked its way in and taken over, What’s for dinner, what’s for dinner?

2006-03-16T03:53:00.000-08:00

It seems my rock star status has worn off with the Medical college girls. Now, I am just another person trying to get them to think at four in the afternoon. They get that labored look on their faces and are beginning to squirrel around in their seats.

Last week, if I broke a piece of chalk and muttered “oopsy”, I heard little “oopsy” echoes and giggles all around the room. And if anyone let out a peep while I was talking, two dozen “shhhhhh!”s would hiss all around the room until there was nothing but air particles and chalk dust in between my words and their eager ears. It was beautiful. Now who’s doing the shushing? Me.

Look out, Diane Sawyer

2006-03-12T02:04:00.000-08:00

This week I will fulfill my secret lifelong dream of becoming famous among millions. I will be the star of my own television show. At least that’s the gist I got when this proposal came to me.
A student of mine said that Jinan Television Station wanted to find someone to co-host a show that teaches a little English lesson everyday. I told him I was certainly interested and not two days later, I got a telephone call from someone at the station. The woman suggested that we discuss all this over dinner. How very businesslike. I played out scenarios in my mind of how my big break into stardom would later be described as having humble beginnings at a small television station in China.

Last night I dressed up extra special for our dinner meeting. I wanted to radiate charismatic TV personality. We made a little bit of small talk as we walked to a restaurant of my choosing, but I couldn’t wait for Bonnie to start talking showbiz with me. The first thing Bonnie said to me on the topic was this: We can’t pay you, is that okay?

I could feel a big smile sweep across my face as I had a little laugh at myself. I was reminded of an experience I had at the United Blood Drive shortly before I came to China. My agenda was to determine my blood type. It seemed to me the perfect combination of giving (blood) and receiving (information and oatmeal cookies). When I signed in, I asked about the blood test and the nurse told me she could mail it out to me in several weeks. The blood results were not going to be timely so I turned to head for the door. A split second before calling “okay, thanks anyway!” over my shoulder, I remembered that I was not in the blood test store; I was in a place where people come to give. How could I dare to add my name to a list of givers---a list of good people---with such a selfish motive? How on earth could I forget about giving? Luckily, I was the only one who knew of my secret agenda and my sudden instinct to leave; a nurse promptly whisked into a little office to give some personal history. After forty minutes, it seemed I was the ideal blood donor.
Just one more thing, have you had any unusual injections lately?
As a matter of fact, I had been stabbed with a number of needles only the day before, I was carrying a little bit of Hepatitis B, a drop or two of Japanese Encephalitis, and some Typhoid fever. And so it happens, they didn’t want my temporarily diseased blood.

Back to We can’t pay you, is that okay?
Of course I said, "yes that’s fine". It was the fame I was after; the riches would surely follow. But I did have the realization then and there that this was probably going to be a low budget production. No make-up lady, no trailer, no snacks. And my visions of reading off the teleprompter were shattered when Bonnie asked if I would please write the script and print out a few copies.
Hold up. Did I just go from Michelle Pfeiffer in Up Close & Personal to an unpaid English-speaking intern before we even looked at the menu? The straight story is that we will do our own make up, film it all in one afternoon, and every night a five-minute segment will air.
So, the beginnings might be really, very humble.

You know the one

2006-03-09T03:25:00.000-08:00

Last night we went to a big party for the Bank of China. Everything was wonderful except I had a really sore throat. The kind of sore throat that makes you carefully weigh the pros and cons of dismembering your entire head and neck. The one where you would prefer to let someone is push whole Doritos down your tonsils than to swallow your own saliva. The kind of sore throat that when you yawn, it feels like 30 stitches are about to rip apart somewhere down there.
At one point, Josh asked me if I would pay $1,000,000 for the sore throat to be gone. That question is absurd because I don’t have that kind of money, but it did make me consider how much I would pay to part with the pain: US$150.

When squeezing a steady stream of honey down my throat proved unsustainable, I tried gargling saltwater and then tried to get some crushed aspirin to have a wee rest in between my mouth and my stomach. But alas, nothing helps the cause for too long.

I sat up in the middle of the night and imagined the Word document I would have to type out to Josh in the morning. I planned to describe to him that it was too painful to talk and ask him to make some phone calls for me. When I finally did get up, I let all the pain and stress of inconvenience overcome me until I was in tears making everything worse. Even though I knew working would be a step in the wrong direction, I wanted someone to say, “You can’t teach this morning! Are you crazy?! Go back to bed!” and thus relinquishing me of any guilt attached to making that call by myself.

In the end, I didn’t teach my morning class in hopes to get enough rest so that I could teach in the afternoon. It would be my first day at my new job at the Medical College. My new boss, Wangju, called me early this morning and I thought it might be my opening to explain to her that I was really not well enough to come in and teach,

Wangju: Hi Betsy. The driver is coming to get you today at 12:45pm today. At the South gate, okay?
Me: Oh, hi, Wangju. Actually the reason I am at home right now is because I am feeling very sick. I might need to go to the doctor.
Wangju: Oh, you are going to the doctor today?
Me: No, not today. Maybe tomorrow.
Wangju: Then you teach here this afternoon, okay?
Me: Uh…okay. Yes.

It’s my own fault for being such a sissy. I know that subtle hints don’t work around here, but I didn’t have the courage to come right out and say I couldn’t do it.
Fortunately, I felt a lot better by midday when I had well and truly put an end to my pity party. And as it turns out, teaching at the Medical College is a lot of fun. I teach one hundred and fifty of China’s future nurses; one of them is male. The rest: a sea of 19-year-old girls. Not only are they extremely easy to please, but also they are more than willing to participate. I think I will look forward to my classes at the Medical College.

Speaking of ladies, it turns out yesterday was Woman's Day in China. So, all us ladies handed in our banquet tickets to take a spin in one of those big barrels that turns with a handle. Ten tickets were drawn from the barrel on stage. I had a side bet going with Josh on whether or not my name would be drawn. He bet no and I bet yes.
One Chinese name after another was called out as the tickets were drawn out of the barrel. And then there was a long pause that caught my attention. Suddenly, two heads were looking down at a ticket. Then, a third man was called over to study the ticket! I knew it!
"Bee..eezz...buh ezty?"

Yes! I won! This is me collecting my prize from some important men at the Bank of China. My prize: BeiBei, JingJing, HuanHuan, YingYing & NiNi! These little Olympic mascots are big celebrities around here!

Big Day

2006-03-04T16:43:00.000-08:00

The workload is extremely comfortable around here. With five different groups of students, we are able to use the same lesson plan all week long. On a Friday, this could result in a flawless execution of the lesson or a sick-and-tired-of-this-material drone. Of course we aim for the former.
I am just going to put it out there: we teach for 15 hours a week at the University. I try to take a moment every day to appreciate that this will probably be the most casual workload I have until retirement. That moment usually takes place somewhere between my daily siesta and Oprah.com.

On the occasion that we have to work a grueling six hour day, we come home completely incapacitated, unlock door and directly plant face on couch. Yesterday was Saturday and I taught for two hours. Now, all this weekend activity has left me with aching eye sockets and the taste of blood in my throat. Before you jump to conclusions regarding my sluggish ways, I should mention that on top of my two hours work yesterday, I also sampled dishes at a culinary competition for Jinan’s most acclaimed chefs.

This was more than your average food tasting, I think. Four Americans, including myself were swept up in a mob of photographers, and reporters. We posed with chefs. We posed with food. We gave interviews in which we declared a soup “delicious” or pumpkin turned eagle “absolutely amazing”. The whole situation had me divided. Half of me loved all the attention, one quarter of me did not, and the other quarter just felt embarrassed that we had done nothing to deserve this attention other than simply being western.

Others who attended the competition watched us with their arms folded. I was certain they must have been thinking how ridiculous it all was. I longed for a way to express to onlookers that I knew I wasn’t anyone important and didn't expect to be honored just for coming.

But honor us they certainly did. In a private room, we had an elaborate lunch with the five finalists of the competition, the hotel owner, the event coordinators, and two translators. The food just kept piling up, cicadas, squid, various mushrooms, vegetable balls, boiled peanuts, and a large fish surrounded by squares of tofu. As it usually goes in China, we were encouraged to try everything. Eat.Eat.Eat, they told us. The chefs smoked cigarettes, and watched us as we ate and ate and ate.
Every few minutes someone would stand up and propose a toast. We would all lean into the circular table and reach across with our glass of red wine. To show respect to someone, you hold your glass lower than theirs when the two glasses clink. Quite often, during a toast, two glasses will quickly travel down towards the table, both people unwilling to clink until they are holding their glass lower. When the two glasses finally come together, an inch short of crashing into the lazy susan, there is an exchange of laughter and smiles.
“To Chinese friends and Foreign friends” Gambei!
“To Chinese cuisine and wonderful chefs” Gambei!
“To beautiful women” Gambei!

And then when we had shown our utmost appreciation by way of eating through 11 lbs of food apiece, we were asked “Now, noodles or rice?” It’s traditional to have some noodles or rice at the end of the meal, to fill you up of course.

The man who writes with soapy water has a well trained dog

2006-03-01T05:29:00.000-08:00

This man writes with soapy water and his sweater clad dog trots through the maze of slippery characters. Never a single paw misplaced.

Dear Sixth-Grade-Betsy,

2006-02-28T03:28:00.000-08:00

Tonight I went searching for a business envelope and found you instead; one page front and back of your bubbly cursive from 11 years ago. Another 11 years and nine inches have passed and its time I get back to you. To answer your question, OJ was found not guilty. Some teachers let us watch TV in class when the verdict was read. During passing period, we ran up and down the red brick path at school spreading the news. We wrote, “The juice is loose” on every white board in the science building. The smell of roses will forever remind you of the OJ trial because right when it was in the thick of things, a porcelain bottle of rose water in Mom’s bathroom fell off the counter and shattered. The scent of roses wafted through the house for days. You spent a lot of Friday nights watching TGIF perched on the corner of Mom’s bed, while the others watched Unsolved Mysteries in the family room. That show scared you. A lot of things scared you over the next few years. And yet, even with your fears, you continued to hide in Jake’s room in the dark and whisper to him. When he sucked in a gasp of air, body tense, and eyes wide, you laughed and laughed. It was never funny, but you wouldn’t figure that out for a few more years.

You went on to learn that friendship was much more than you ever expected. I remember when that was an original thought in your mind. Through high school, college, and work the one constant was friends as a close as famliy. Last year, you moved to China, and after the culture shock wore off, you felt something missing. Something really big. Finally you put your finger on it: friends. You are different without your friends. Kind of boring, and you annoy Josh a lot. You know that now, but you can’t stop. At this age, you know lots of things you should change about yourself, but somehow the current is too strong to fight, and you have resigned to letting time smooth you out.

Along with your letter, I found your transcripts and had a sinking reminder that you were a solid B student. And with the grades were comments. I had forgotten about the pages of thoughtful comments that came with the grades and was struck by the memory of how hard all your teachers worked, how evident it was that they were willing to meet you and others half way or more. You could have gotten more from all their hard work, I think. A’s probably would have taken you on a different path. Maybe not to New Zealand, though its impossible to say. I’d like to think that A’s or F’s, New Zealand was your destiny somehow; the ultimate adventure passed onto you from your Mom along with her spirit.

Some years after Space Camp, you stopped pursuing that whole astronaut thing. I was relieved to see in writing that you wanted to be an astronaut or a teacher because you have come back to the teacher idea, but sometimes you aren’t so sure. You’ve been looking for this so-called “passion”. You can’t “find it” and you have come to believe it must be the most precious commodity on earth. Finally, instead of tying yourself in knots about passion, you have decided to settle for something you like, and that happened to be teaching. That’s what you are doing now. Last year, you did it too. Its fun, but its harder than you thought. I am not certain, but I have a hunch that most of all you are passionate about travel and adventure---and you are drawn to the idea of those three months of summer vacation wide open for adventure with family and friends and one day your kids.

You remind me of how uncomplicated life can be. Most of your favorites are the same: dogs, blue and chocolate. Spaghetti and Entertainment Tonight got lost somewhere along the way. Soccer has also become a stranger, but you’d have it back in an instant if you could. The setting is all wrong here.

Has Jake told you yet that “we are all our own person”? He was really marveled at that idea back in the early days at Macallan Road. Those words would form in his mouth and his eyes revealed that his whole paradigm had shifted. He said we lived “in our own worlds”, his ‘Jake’ and mine ‘Betsy’, and that we had control over our own actions and feelings. You would go on to hear that a hundred more times from other sources, but when you finally got it, you thought of Jake and how he wantd to share it with you years back.
It hasn’t always felt that way---the control---and there have been times when you have wanted to deny that it is true, but he is right. It’s a neat thought, and if you can wrap your head around it, you suddenly feel like you’ve been given the most valuable and fragile gift.

I don’t remember what you expected, but things have turned out well. Your story is a happy one. You didn’t win lots of awards “like Jenny Burney”, but you will continue to tell anyone who will listen about that plaque from the sixth grade. Sixth Grade Scholar, wasn’t it?

So. You and me. The same person. That’s weird.

Colder than Bageezuz

2006-02-27T21:32:00.000-08:00

Dear Betsy:

It's becoming cold for these days.Please wear more clothes for warmer!
Must look after yourself! Have a good day our sweet angel!

Yours sincerely,
Echo

The courtyard in front of our apartment block. We live on the first floor, so thats the tree in our yard.

Leaving for work this morning. The main gate of our campus.

A Hop on Easter

2006-02-25T18:24:00.000-08:00

Last night, we got a jump-start on Easter celebrations with an English Easter Party for kids at Josh’s second work, the Australian/English School. You might be wondering if an Australian/English school means English is taught with a seasoning of, ‘G’day mate’, ‘Throw some shrimp on the barbie’, and ‘no worries’, but alas it was originally set up by Australians, and is now owned and operated by a Chinese couple. The couple that call Josh asking for favors every day, “I think you need to look at our new text books and write some lesson plans for the teachers. We need it by tomorrow night, okay?”. The couple that had his signature on a yearlong contract up until a week ago. They are certainly not bad people, but I think they have taken advantage of Josh’s willingness to help when he is asked.

Back to the Easter story. So, last night I tagged along because they needed more dancing bears and it meant I got to spend some time with Josh, whose work steals an unfair share of his time. When we arrived at the school, things were in their natural state of disorganization. We carved a path through a crowd of parents waiting outside the school doors, and up the stairs to where the foreign teachers were sitting around asking each other “So, what exactly is going on tonight?” Finally, Gao, one of the owners, quickly swept us into a little classroom. He hurriedly tried to explain where we needed to be and what we needed to do. And of course, in these situations where something is explained under a time limit, there are always those who interrupt and say, “Wait. Sooo, do we staaay where we aaare or follow the stuuudents?” or any obvious question that starts with squinted eyes and each word is painfully drawn out “Wait, sooo…..?”

Gao told us that we each had 15 seconds to introduce ourselves to the kids, and to “Make it very, very funny. Make the kids like you in two sentences.” Darn. Humor is not my strong point.
The woman called Shelley demonstrated that her name rhymed with belly and then tickled several kids’ bellies. An instant hit. Josh, of course, was in his element. The man has a gift. He pulled out a little persona I have seen before at Nature’s Classroom, “Hi, my name is Josh. I like to sing” (lets out a meek “Laaaaa” like the young, shy nun from Sister Act), “and I like to dance” (flails his arms and legs around like a Muppet).

To borrow from Miss Elizabeth, I assure you I am not afflicted with false modesty when it comes to silly humor. My 15 seconds came and went in a lull between a limb flailing Muppet and a rendition of Jingle Bells by a man called Jing from Cameroon.

Next on the party agenda was for Shelley to tell the story of Easter through a Chinese translator. Shelley started, “Easter is the most wonderful holiday in the Christian church. It is when we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection” then turned to the translator who walked back and forth sputtering Chinese in front of an audience of smiling six year olds. I wondered if it was okay to talk about this in front of six year olds in China. I thought he might translate something different. And then he stopped, and quickly flung his arms wide out to his sides, let his head fall onto his shoulder and crossed his legs. Although I could not understand what he was saying, I could certainly see what he was demonstrating.
And so there we were: talking about Jesus in China with a translator posing as Jesus on the cross and giggling six year olds.
Next came egg painting, the hokey pokey, and quick exam for each student to assess their English level. The foreign teachers sat at desks in a classroom with a stack of papers and a bucket full of pencil bags. We would ask a series of questions like “How are you?” “What time is it?” “What’s the weather like today?”, give each student a mark from 1-3, award them a pencil bag and say “Next!”. Josh had so much fun with that, he is considering a career change to bank loan adviser.
Tonight: the same routine two more times. Maybe I will buzz around like a bee. Bee for Betsy?

In case you were beginning to suspect that there were never any students

2006-02-22T14:34:00.000-08:00

Language Lab 415

Common Courtesy Lost in Translation

2006-02-21T06:43:00.000-08:00

Last year, as the weather got colder, I received a number of emails from my students. Each one went along the lines of, “Dear teacher, it is getting cold these days. Make sure to wear many warm clothes now.” And then at least once a day in class, someone would say to me, “Teacher, you need to add more layers.” Never mind that my arms are sticking out like a puffed up penguin. Never mind that I am a grown up. And never mind that I am the teacher, I still got the “you need to” treatment. In English, as soon as you hear “need to”, you want to groan, you want to protest, you immediately start searching for excuses for why you don’t need to, no matter what it is. This, of course, is lost on many who’s’ first language is not English and so “you need to” rolls off their tongues left and right.

One student asked me how my Chinese was coming along, and when I answered a modest, “Oh, not that great, but I am working on it” he nodded sympathetically and said, “Hmmm, you need to study more”. Of course you have to agree, its much easier than trying to explain that telling someone they need to do something is usually a job reserved for that person’s parents.
Another funny, if not mildly irritating, gesture is when you are pulled out of the road abruptly if a car or bicycle is slowly approaching. This too, I know, is done out of love, but the situations in which you are yanked back by the strap of your backpack are not life threatening. They don’t involve vehicles traveling at high speeds, or even real roads. This takes place on campus roads where the students walking to class outnumber the cars 30:1, where you would have noticed the car only a moment later and taken a step to the left or right so it could pass.

Today I must swallow this ungrateful attitude because at the intersection of two real roads, a ‘grab and yank’ from a complete stranger saved my life, or at least saved me from minor injury. It went like this: I was crossing at the designated crossing time on a journey led by the green man. Almost to the other side of the intersection, I was distracted by the brave actions of an elderly crossing guard. She was a small lady in a long blue coat armed with a yellow flag. In America, we don’t defy the crossing guard. We all know that when the flag, or the sign, or even just the flat palm of a crossing guard is in action, you are going to pay attention. It’s for the safety of the people.
But the crossing guards and yellow flags are not given the respect that they deserve around here, particularly not from big and shiny black cars with tinted windows who seem to think they own the roads. So, two big and shiny black cars begin to turn the corner side by side despite the fact that our crossing guard has both arms extended to her sides, is prominently displaying the yellow flag and is gesturing for the cars to stop. I watched as she gallantly jumped side-to-side using her body as a blockade, but they weren’t stopping. The moved slowly forward, forcing the crossing guard to choose her life and turn sideways, as the two cars continued on parting the herd of pedestrians. I had been watching the situation unfold as I crossed unaware that now my eyes were facing the in the opposite direction that my feet were traveling. I felt someone grab the collar of my jacket and quickly jerk me backwards, squealing something frantically in Chinese. Alarmed I looked at the woman who restrained me, and then my head spun around to find a taxi one inch in front of me. The driver sped on by and gave me a look that said it all.

Work?

2006-02-15T00:12:00.000-08:00

Getting back into this whole work thing is not easy.

Josh studies his characters.

And two minutes later....

Halfway through the week and we have already met 100 new students each. I learned so much last term and was eager to get right into it on the first day with pronunciation drills and correcting their oral English at first chance.

We did pair interviews and introductions to warm up:

“This is Liu Bo. He—“

“She.”

“Oh, yes, sorry. She is from a beautiful city called Wentai. His major—“

“Her major.”

“Her major is Civil Engineering.”

That scenario comes up a lot. In Chinese there is no distinguishing between the two. ‘He’ and ‘she’ are both said “ta”. Of course the characters are written differently.

Other than the, his/her/he/she agreement, I let everything else slide because some of the students are like hermit crabs. And my job is to coax them out of their shell, not to scare them all the back in to the darkest corner never to trust again. Just as I remember doing in Spanish class, many of my students try to become in invisible by avoiding eye contact with me when it seems I am about to call on someone for an answer. As a student I always thought it was subtle and effective, but it can be a disheartening—or just funny---from where the teacher stands. Suddenly everyone in the room is checking to make sure his or her shoes are tied.
I might be standing next to a student, smiling right at them and saying, “Would you introduce your partner?” and they will still be trying very hard to look preoccupied and unaware of my presence, desperately hoping I will give up and move on to someone else. Finally they will look up at me surprised, glance quickly side to side, blink a few times, point at themselves and ask: “Wo?” meaning "Me?" I feel the urge to laugh at the obviousness rising in my throat but let it translate only into a warm, encouraging smile. "Yes, you."

Well, I'll be darned

2006-02-14T23:51:00.000-08:00

I was catching up on my American news stories at today.reuters.com when I saw a headline: Northeastern US hammered by snowstorm
Sun Feb 12, 2006 11:58 AM ET

'Wow, DC got a lot of snow.....look at the Capitol building...pretty.....wait, that woman looks familiar...is it?...nooo....It is!....It's my Mom!"

Rhonda Spydell, of Washington, takes a picture of the U.S. Capitol after the first major snowstorm of the season hit February 12, 2006. Airports from Washington to Boston are shut down due to high, gusting winds and large accumulations of snow. REUTERS/Gary Cameron

I said CEASE FIRE!!.......please?

2006-02-12T04:33:00.000-08:00

What gets me are the 8am fireworks. It’s not even dark. Who gets up to do that? WHO?

Today is the Lantern Festival.
What I know about the Lantern Festival:
Everyone eats sticky rice balls filled with bean paste and there are a lot of fireworks--- all. day. long. From where I am sitting in the computer room, there could very well be golf ball sized hail falling on our ‘tin roof’, while drummers from a high school marching band practice in the living room and hundreds of small Chinese children are throwing handfuls of gravel at our windows. Can’t leave out the pirate ships run aground in the courtyard firing canons over the apartment building.

Surprisingly, fireworks are not the main attraction of the Lantern Festival; Lanterns are. We followed a crowd out the North gate of campus, and under a red archway where the crowd thickened considerably. Big crowds feel like an out of body experience to me. I become a zombie, rhythmically moving forward with the mass. I feel like I don’t even control my own legs; we, as a herd, share one brain. Josh, on the other hand, feels very alert in a big crowd; one hand clutching wallet in pocket, other hand tethering zombie girlfriend, eyes darting every which way. Eventually the combination of dense crowd + deafening fireworks became too much and we ducked into an alley that took us around the campus and up to the South gate. Not before we got a few blurry pictures.

Bei Bei Jing Jing Huan Huan Yin Yin Ni Ni

Just another Saturday Night Out in Jinan...

2006-02-11T04:08:00.000-08:00

...with cresanthemum tea

and the guy who squirts hot water from his long-spout tea pot.

Paradox of the Lazy Good for Nothin'

2006-02-10T04:40:00.000-08:00

We only have one weekend left of this long winter break and all I've got to say to that is THANK GOODNESS. I am so cooped up that I can't even motivate myself to leave the apartment. Make that any sense does?
Fortunately there is plenty of good reading material around thanks to a recent motherly care package.

And of course, there is always the planning of the future, which seems to be an ongoing project in my life. It involves flow charts, Ven diagrams, list making, parental consultations, groupthinks, and endless Internet research. I have made a full time job out of looking for a job. At least for now I have settled on a plan, and that is to head for the homeland after this summer and get myself a real honest to goodness license to teach. Not only for the big bucks, but darned if I don’t love how this job brings you something new everyday. Whether it be headstrong sixth graders or demure Chinese grad students, just lemme at ‘em. But maybe I need a little more formal training first.
Right now there is a man in Florida by the name of Quicksall who just might be panicking. But don’t worry, Dad; Jake can support me. Right, J?

Josh plans to stay in China until he can read the local newspaper, or at least for one more year. He will take another contract with Shandong University and terminate the contract with the Australian school he had agreed to work for next year. That might cause a little friction, but having worked for both schools for four months now, he can clearly see which one he would prefer to give another year to. We have gathered, from the talk of English teachers around town, that Shandong treats its teachers best.

And so there is the end product from many days’ worth of decision-making. The upcoming term will bring about a couple of changes. Our classes will be three hours long, and our students will be the half with the lower scores from the English proficiency test given at the beginning of school year—before we got here. Last term we taught the higher-scoring half.
We are to leave out writing skills and focus entirely on listening and speaking.
New students, longer classes, less content to cover; bring it on.

If they weren't looking before...

2006-02-08T19:10:00.000-08:00

If we had a pet, I'd say "No, pet, we aren't going away again. Josh is packing up for his pack test."

This morning Josh's task was to make his backpack weigh 45 lbs. It was the one time he was frustrated that all his gear is so light! He added books, cans, sweaters, two bags of laundry detergent, kitchen appliances...

Yep, now its heavy.

Josh wanted to see if he has what it takes to pass the fitness test a wilderness fire fighter must take: 3 miles in 45 minutes carrying 45 lbs. No jogging allowed.

And he does. 43 min 24 sec!

The things we do for fun around here.

A Whole New World

2006-02-07T23:58:00.000-08:00

Would you believe that it took nearly six months of living in China for us to begin studying the characters? No joke. I was convinced that just speaking and listening would be sufficient. Reading and writing? Nah, not necessary. It would slow down my learning considerably.

To be fair, Josh has always said he thinks we should learn to write and he has been studying characters in earnest for over five days now, diligently teaching himself five new ones every day. He even gave himself a pop quiz yesterday, graded it and everything; thirty words with their pinyin spelling and their characters for a total of 90 points. He showed me his paper marked up in red pen and said, “What really killed me was labeling the tones on the pinyin.”

To learn how to write, Josh has a book where on each page is a character and a grid with nice little boxes to practice in. You are shown how the character is created one stroke at a time. Because if you draw, you will have the Chinese in fits of laughter, as my students were when I drew my Chinese name on the overhead projector. At me, not with me. The stroke order counts big time.

So this book is pretty neat. It separates out each component of the character. It identifies radicals and their meanings. For instance, there is a radical made of four strokes that looks kind of like a stick figure with a third leg in the middle. It means ‘tree’ and it’s a component of the character guo* (fruit) to suggest the idea of fruit growing on trees, but also found in the character bei (cup). The character for bei combines the tree radical with bu (not) to suggest that cups are not made of trees or wood.
So if you saw that character, you might say… “hmm… Not tree…. oh yes, of course, cup!”

All this to say that I picked the book up yesterday and taught myself a dozen characters. Later that afternoon we walked to the grocery store and it was like stepping out into a whole new world. I finally figured out why Josh has been staring out the window of taxis looking forlorn and distracted for the past few days. I’d ask the girlfriend-y “Whats wrong?” and he’d say he was just looking at all the signs and billboards trying to recognize a character.
I was taken with the labels in the grocery store. I felt like we were in Disneyland, but instead of pointing and shouting “There’s Mickey Mouse!” or “Look! Over by the castle! Its Sleeping Beauty ”, I said: “There’s the character for ‘enter’!” and “Look! Over by the frozen foods! It’s the radical that means ‘roundish object’!”

As we walked home I felt like I was a the barcode scanner from the grocery store scanning thousands of characters all over storefronts to see if I recognize anything.

……………..blip…………………………………………blip…………………….

We would notice really intricate characters and say, “Woah, check that out. That’s gotta be, what…14 strokes at least.”

* The pinyin is not entirely accurate, as I have not indicated a tone.

Just to get a closer look at the foreigners

2006-02-05T18:07:00.000-08:00

Communication Consultation Days Are Over

2006-02-02T06:44:00.000-08:00

An easy way to get laughs out of my students is to try and say something in Chinese.
Some mornings before class began, I'd walk over to couple students and try out a new expression. Nine out of ten times, I would be met with the same reaction: a blank stare and then "Wait. Ooh..Are you speaking Chinese?"

I have taken note of a recent development in our Chinese language communication abilities (OCLCA) . Previously, when Josh or I wished to communicate with someone in Chinese, there was a process involved:

A: Do you think we should go ask that taxi driver if he knows where Sanfo is?
B: Yeah, that might not be a bad idea. Do you want to do it or do you want me to do it?
A: I don't mind. Here, I'll do it.
B: Okay. Just go say "Sanfo zai nar?"
A: Yeah, I know. I will. (clears throat) Oh wait. Do you think he'll be mad cause we don't want to actually take his taxi? >>>insert any excuse<<<<
B: No, I doubt it.
A: Okay... Oh, shoot, I think that lady is about to get into the taxi. Yep, he's busy now. Hmmm.
B: Should I just go ask that man by the bus stop?
A: Yeah. Go ask him. Or do you want me to do it?
B: Yeah. Sure. If you don't mind. Thanks.
(A takes a moment to get him/herself into the zone/psyched/pumped. A lets out a quick breath and dauntlessly embarks)
B: Nice one. What did he say?
A: (coming back with an exhilarated expression) Huh? Oh. He didn't know.

Very time consuming. But with our recent trip came a change.
A confidence was gained. A barrier was broken. Open the flood gates and let our 30-word vocabulary flow.

Still banging in the new year

2006-02-02T06:18:00.000-08:00

"BLAMMY!" is Josh's favorite new expression in light of incessant firework blasting (and multiple viewings of Anchorman) alleged to last until February 6th.

Its been pretty much non-stop since we got home a few days ago. It picks up at night time. Who likes fireworks this much? Just. so. dang. loud! BLAMMY!

People are starting to emerge from their secluded familial gatherings to restock on food. Everyday a few more shops are open, and a few more people are on the street. I missed everyone. The streets have been lonely. No traffic, no bicycle mobs, no nothin' out there.

Tropical Trek

2006-01-29T00:31:00.000-08:00

We spent one day in a tropical city called Jinhong before setting off on our final trek. Jinhong is home to dozens of ethnic minorities. It felt as though we had left China. There was Dai script on street signs and storefronts, the people looked completely different, and although rice, meat and vegetables were the main staples, the flavors were refreshingly different---chicken stir fried with coconut milk or sticky rice served in a pineapple.

This is our guide, Ainipah, looking out over a village. Only 21 and he speaks the Bulan language, Mandarin and English (sort of). Ainipah left his Bulan village when he was 16 and moved to Jinhong to go to high-school.

On Day 1 the three of us hopped on a bus before sunrise and had a bumpy 3-hour journey to the starting point for our trek: a tiny town called Mengmeng (sounds like Mungmung).

In Mengmeng, we had a steaming hot bowl of noodles and then set off. For six long days, Ainipah led us through tea crops, coffee trees, banana trees and sugar cane. Some paths were so narrow and vegetated that if you followed too closely behind, you would be repeatedly whapped with leaves and smacked with branches.
Other paths led up the terraced hillsides with no escape of full sun exposure.

Every evening around 5pm, we would happen upon a village and Ainipah would go about finding a family willing to provide dinner, breakfast and a place to sleep. Most villages supported about 70 families.

Fog filled the valleys every morning.

This man was tickled when Josh offered his headlamp. I think he was glad to take the heavy metal flashlight out of his mouth. Looks like it didn't taste very good.

Each home (made of bamboo and grass) is one large room built ten feet up off of the ground. There is a fire in the center of the house that has continued burning or smoldering since the day the house was completed and the family moved in. The room fills with smoke, but you get used to it and it keeps the mosquitoes away. (We did take Mefloquine to prevent Malaria just in case. There werenÂt any mosquitoes but we did have crazy and vivid drug induced dreams.)

Every night we sat down to a big meal of boney chicken (the heart and liver were proudly delivered to Josh's bowl) , a vegetable or melon soup and something or other that was pickled. Usually the men would join us a the table and encourage us to drink more of the homemade rice wine. The women never sit at the table. Ainipah says they always eatseparatelyy. They did make sure that our bowls were always full of rice and encouraged us to "eat slowly", "drink slowly", "walk slowly". I quite liked all that advice.

Josh and Ainipah after a particularly long day. This night we stayed with a family who had the newest house in the village--made of cinder block and plaster. It was our warmest and quietest night. No rats. No roosters.

These boys were excited to prepare one of their chickens for us.

Everyone lends a hand to get a house built in one or two days. We definitely slowed down progress for a few minutes.

Many of the villagers told Ainipah that we were the first foreigners they had ever seen in real life. Even though every family has a television, they sure were fascinated to see us up close and in person. Most everyone came out onto his or her bamboo porch to have a look. Young children stared at us agape, and, I thought, maybe a little frightened. According to Ainipah, they were all bewildered at why we would want to walk all day to the next village when we could take a tractor in this modern time.
Pigs, chickens and water buffalo everywhere!

Our trek nicely coincided with passing through this Bulan village when they were hosting a big party to celebrate the opening of an outdoor museum.
There was quite a crowd, including some local government officials. Four moretravelerss (two Chinese men, a German woman and an Irishman) met us there to join the trek for the last three days.

Every village that we came across had a temple for daily worship. Young boys become monks when they are 10 or 11 years old.
We had an unspoken agreement with these monks: We are tall and white, you are monks. Lets just stare for a while.

Ainipah cleaning up in a stream.

On our last night, the grandfather of this household gave each of us a massage. There was no choice in the matter. Without saying a word, he would enthusiastically point at you and motion over to a mattress on the floor. The massage was about three minutes long and the final touch was to crack your back: hands clamped behind you, he pushed out with his knees and pulled you back by your arms (see below).

That is an expression of pain and pleasure.

Fabian (the Chinese guy in black) thought he could hide, but the grandfather found him.

Lijiang--home of the baba

2006-01-29T00:24:00.000-08:00

I did not take this picture, but I wanted you to see what a baba looks like. If you have ever had a sopapilla, then you know what a baba tastes like and if you have ever had fry bread, than you have eaten a baba. Put honey on it, put pinto beans and green chile on it, eat it plain...you just can't go wrong.

This image, BabaCopyright 2003 by Philip, is from: http://www.globaltravelwriters.com/Galleries/Lijiang/pages/Baba.htm

We stayed in a charming area of Lijiang called 'old town'. Narrow stone alleyways lined with red lanterns, and a soothing stream that has been directed every which way through the old town. This is a very popular tourist destination with a number of little cafes and coffee shops where you can pay American prices for something western and while away the hours reading English magazines and books. (Do I sound like LP?)
The current situation in 'old town', according to LP, is that the Han Chinese (Han constitute 90% of China's population) have moved down to Lijiang taking away jobs of minority peoples and are taking over souvenir shops selling the minority goods and crafts.

Shopowners use cute dogs to lure you in.

At Lamu's Tibetan Cafe drinking milk tea.

Tiger Leaping Gorge---Hutiaoxia

2006-01-29T00:21:00.000-08:00

In order to avoid carting an extra 50 lbs along with us, we tore out the appropriate pages of our China Lonely Planet and referred to it as the Word. It was so much a part of our trip that I felt like a third wheel. Of course we nicknamed it: “LP”. LP told us where to find buses, hostels, embassies, temples, restaurants, and trailheads. But in the case of the Tiger Leaping Gorge trailhead, LP let us down. We knew that our hostel was near the beginning of the gorge hike and as we emerged early in the morning, one of us (I won’t say who) spotted a red gate off in the distance that she (oops) thought could have been the entrance to this rather popular natural wonder. BUT LP—the authority---had us on what felt like a treasure hunt. “Cross the small schoolyard until you see a football pitch. North of the pitch, you will see a tractor road. Follow the tractor road until you find a painted yellow arrow on the lamp post.” It was fun for a few minutes, but knowing that we had eight or nine hours hiking in front of us that day, I was not impressed when the “yellow arrow” lead us up a steep path to no avail. We stopped to re-consult LP and up the path came an old woman and her granddaughter carrying heavy baskets on their backs by way of a strap that crosses the forehead forbidding any neck movement. Josh bravely asked “Hutiaoxia zai nar?” and the young girl, with her head perfectly still, looked over at us from out of the corner of her eye. She lifted her arm and pointed back down the steep path.
Back to square one. After scaling one brick wall with glass shards embedded into the top, we found a tractor road which led us to a… red gate and then we were on the trail.

It was a long day of hiking, with a certain “28 bends” up the mountainside that had me puffing. Josh marched ahead saying “C’mon. We’ll rest at the top!” How about resting at every bend, I thought. It was beautiful. We finally made it to a hostel at dusk, took off our boots and felt happily spent. We met a great group of travelers: one Ukrainian, an English guy and three Americans. They each started as solo travelers and met on a bus a couple days earlier. The seven us played cards, ate massive dinners (followed by even bigger deserts) and drank one Tibetan milk tea after another late into the night. We liked them so much that the next day, we all hiked to the bottom of the gorge together. At the bottom of the gorge, there is a narrow river with a ferry crossing and then you have one last steep hike up and that’s that.

The two men running the ferry were asking 20 Yuan per person to cross. This price was outrageous considering I could easily throw a rock to the other side of the river and there were seven of us. That would be 140 Yuan for three minutes work but that’s economics, I guess. There was no other way to cross.

Ever the bargainers we argued until we were blue in the face (well the American girl who spoke Chinese did. We stood behind her with our eyebrows furrowed and arms crossed nodding every so often). She accused them of trying to cheat us because we were foreign and told them that LP says it’s only 10Yuan to cross. They weren’t going to budge, so we started to back up and act as though we would climb back up and find some alternative. And, guess what, they called our bluff! It was so embarrassing. They turned the motor on and crossed right back to the other side. We just stood there deserted and defeated. We all agreed that we would rather swallow our pride than climb back up to the top of the wrong side, so we yelled over and motioned them to come back. We begrudgingly paid and had a very silent, disgruntled, and humbled three-minute crossing.

Yunnan Province, Wenhai Village

2006-01-29T00:09:00.000-08:00

To make a long story short: We had a stopover in Kunming en route to the North of the Yunnan province when we were tempted by a Greek salad on the menu at a western Restuarant and despite being told over and over "Fresh vegetables bad! Lettuce bad!", we ordered it.
The next day we suffered. We woke up at 5am for an early flight feeling normal, but by the time we had made it to the airport, we were rather (the kind of 'rather' that means 'extremely')uncomfortable. At the boarding gate, we sat looking across at each other's queasy expressions and experienced the progression of symptoms in unison. I won't go into detail but I will tell you that in flight air sickness bags were involved and we spent the rest of the day in a dark, freezing (there is no heating in the south of China) hotel room cocooned in our sleeping bags.

After 20 hours of convalescence, we went back out into the light of day and had Snickers for breakfast, Snickers for lunch and oranges for dinner. We were having some trust issues with food. Can I just digress for a moment here? If you have not had a Snickers bar lately, I am strongly urging you to go out and get yourself one today. You will remember how amazingly delicious they are and wonder why you had forgotten about them all these years.

We were fully recovered just in time for our first trek to begin.

This man was our guide into the Wenhai village. Wenhai village is inhabited by an ethnic minority called the Naxi (sounds like Nah-she) people.

The 'ecolodge' courtyard at Wenhai village.

Looking down over Wenhai Village. 3,100 meters above sea level.

This moutain is called Jade Snow Dragon Mountain. Josh and I set our sites on climbing to a secondary peak to get a good look from the top.

A view from the top. Wenhai Village is the dark patch on the near side of the lake.

The wonderful Naxi woman who cooked for us at the ecolodge. Naxi women are in charge of the household, business affiars and agriculture of the community and villages. Pretty unique.

After a couple of days in Wenhai Village, we walked with a guide for a day to a small town called Qiaotou--the starting point for a trek through Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Everywhere a Foriegner

2006-01-28T23:39:00.000-08:00

Directly off the train from Jinan to Beijing, we spotted a Baskin Robbins next to a Starbucks and felt instantly giddy with the excitment of how much western food we would be feasting on over the next four days. Yes, of course, we wanted to see the Great Wall, and the Forbidden City....yaddiyaddiya.., BUT we were not ashamed to admit that locating the Papa Johns was of equal importance.
One the first day we hit TCBY, Starbucks and Subway just because they were there!

Beijing is overflowing with foriegners. I couldn't stop myself from staring.
We noticed straightaway that nobody was giving us a second glance. As we passed people on the sidewalk, I watched their faces waiting for them to register that we were white and take a longer look... but nothin!

We found a youth hostel that was warm and clean (the YHA) and got ourselves a couple beds in a room of four bunks. What I love about youth hostels---and this is true of hostels anywhere in the world, I think---is after you have stayed there for a night, you feel like you own the place. Some new travellers come into the bunks nearby and after introductions, you find yourself behaving as if you have graciously allowed them to crash at your place for a night or two, tempted to say things like "go ahead and makes yourselves comfortable...the shower down on your left has the best pressure...just let us know if you plan on coming back late tonight."

We decided that this view was nice enough that we didn't actually need to go into the Forbidden City.

Lamu Temple

IKEA!!

We took a long bus ride out to Simitai--a section of the wall with very few visitors. After we got off the bus, I pretended that we were beginning the Amazing Race. Our competition: all the other young foriegners on the bus.

Putting the Kung POW in Kung Pao Chicken

2006-01-28T05:59:00.000-08:00

Its the Chinese New Year and fireworks have been exploding non-stop for hours.

We arrived home to find only dehydrated mushrooms in the cupboard, so we had no choice but to venture back out into the pyrotechnic frenzy.
Driven by our hunger, we jogged through the cold toward familiar and accountable golden arches off in the distance. At 6pm, the streets were dark and barren. The sky was cracking and clapping and bursting with light. It felt like we were running for our lives through a desserted war torn city. When in reality, and favorably, we were running for hamburgers through China on the biggest holiday of the year.

Our trip was one great adventure after another, and we have hundreds of photos to show for it. Tonight I am wrangling with the computer to format, save and name the photos. I just know there has to be an easier way!

If we had a pet, it would know we are going somewhere

2006-01-03T23:58:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow we are heading to the Olympic city of Beijing. We hope to claim a good spot to watch the marathoners come by in 2008, so we're taking the tent, sleeping bags, Whisperlite stove, and enough dehydrated mushrooms to last 946 days.

Okay, lame joke. Sorry.

We’ll only be there for a few days before we head down to the Yunnan Province with all of the above items (excl. the mushrooms which I am well and truly sick of) for some trekking.

Josh began planning the details of this trip a week after we arrived in China. To go this long without backpacking has made him a little CRAZY. This morning he was dizzy with excitement as he pulled out his gear. He slid from room to room in his socks looking for flashlights and Ziplocs, making lists, announcing that he had “just had a thought”. I could hear him laughing and talking to himself in the other room while he folded, stuffed and rolled.
He does have some really impressive gear. The compression sacks are my favorite; I have eaten burritos bigger than the current dimensions of his sleeping bag.

We will be high in the mountains thick in the jungles of S. China--a stone's throw from Vietnam and Laos--for more than 20 days.
Link to a map: http://www.warriortours.com/images/map/chinamap.gif

Until then...I bid you zai jian!

Ping-Pong Skills Unleashed

2006-01-03T02:51:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while, Josh convinces me to play ping-pong in the gym with him. (I’d like to mention that surrounding the two ping-pong tables are several large glossy posters from the 80’s of men and women clad in bright aerobics outfits, sweat bands and heavy make-up (a little extraneous detail to set the scene)).
Josh is much better than me; I ping the ball too high enabling him to slam it back down on my side so fast I can’t even see it go by. I only hear it bounce off the table and then turn around to retrieve it. So, it’s really more a game of fetch. Sometimes I try to engage him in conversation, but his responses are pretty limited: “Uh huh”, “really?” , “mm hmmm..”.
He squats way down, bites his bottom lip and mercilessly defeats me. Really the only reason I ever have points at the end of a match is if he gets “too greedy” and tries to smack the ball so hard that it misses the table completely.

That was then.

Tonight, something deep inside me shifted. (If you have ever played ping-pong against me before, I am going to ask you to ignore that memory in order to truly picture what I am about to describe). I stepped back and bent my knees until my eyes were in line with the table. And then it began... I smashed and cracked the ball wide and low---exacting it off edges, tapping it so lightly that it barely cleared the net. Josh didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, the competition was so stiff. At one point, his whole upper body flailed onto the table for a save. We impaled ourselves on corners, cursed out loud, and slapped our paddles so hard that it stung!

First match: 21-19 to Josh

Second match: 21-18 to Betsy (marking the first time I have ever beat anyone in ping-pong, including both my grandparents)

But then, something in the air changed. Literally. I don’t know if it was the flourescent lights or some kind of mold, but I began to sneeze uncontrollably. I could barely keep my eyes open. It turned into a ping-ponger's nightmare!

Third Match 21-14 to Josh (ouch)

I convinced Josh to play one more match to prove that the first two matches were not a fluke, that it was the sneezing that got me! The sneezing by gosh!! He agreed.

Fourth match 21-11 to Josh

Being a good sportsman, I nodded and accepted that my moments of ping-pong excellence were short lived...now faded into the past like sweat bands and leg warmers.

Haaaa-ppy New Year!

2005-12-31T16:46:00.000-08:00

Just like that, its 2006. A clean sheet of paper to start afresh on. If only I could draw a comparison between that paper and the newly fallen snow here in Jinan, but alas the snow is overwhelmingly dirty. And smelly. It looks white and innocent enough from the window, but once you venture out into the apparent winter wonderland you encounter a murky slush. The previously described dirty, oily sidewalks are covered in a dirty oily sludge impossible to avoid.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: "If only I had a high pressure hose."

My Dad has this hose that hooks up to a pump and the water surges out at around a million PSI---give or take. It can cut through your leg like a million tiny daggers if you step into it's furious path. Sometimes I have these fantasies of giving Jinan's streets, sidewalks, allies and storefronts a nice hardy pressure wash. I could get some suds and really go to town...

Last night, we hit the town for New Year's Eve. We went to a club called The Pyramid owned by two brothers from Iran.
I spent my 1999 New Years Eve sleeping on a bridge in Sydney next to my Mom and brother while they celebrated with millions of raucous and disorderly Australians at the Harbour. Ever since, I have not been able to keep my eyes open to see in a new year. I call it the Y2K jinx. Last night, I asked Josh to provide some serious enouragment to keep me awake if I were to show signs of fatigue--like curling up in a corner of the dancefloor and using my (fluffy down) jacket as a pillow.
And guess what? I made it. After we counted down with a very worldly bunch, we looked at each other and I said, "Ready?" Josh said "Yup." We grabbed our coats and were in a taxi not three minutes into the new year.

No napping, its almost midnight!!

Fun with rehydrated food

2005-12-28T04:01:00.000-08:00

Do you remember those little neon dinosaurs you could buy at the Dollar Store? You drop it into a sink full of water and watch it grow into a spongy T-rex. And the fuzzy little bricks that turned into washcloths--those were fun.

I found the adult version: rehydratable (sic) food. Check out the before and after on these woodear mushrooms. A backpackers dream, I think. Jake, are the astronauts onto these things?
I know they're not much to look at, but they take on the taste of anything you cook them with and I like their gelatinous consistency.

They look like something that might wash up on the beach... but trust me, they are truly enjoyable just as long as you are not picky about the texture of your food----or the color---or the appearance.

They're in that dish we call "MooShoo Pork" (Mooshoo is similar to its pronunciation in Chinese: muxu (that's the pinyin)) and countless other dishes around here.

The enlarging mushrooms were really the icing on the cake to a top notch day. ("Mushroom" and "icing" in the same sentence?!) After giving my final exam this morning, I met Josh and Phillip for lunch at our favorite BBQ spot in the Muslim district. Muslim BBQ is lamb or beef skewered onto bicycle spokes cooked outside over some hot charcoals by a guy called WeiWei. With a cigarette dangling from his lips, WeiWei shakes hot spices onto the meat and twirls the spokes over the grill outside. The grill is maybe 25 feet long and 10 inches wide---with enough room for 6 or 7 characters like WeiWei to stand side by side spinning spokes.
The Muslim district is lively-- a hubbub of shouting, laughing, squealing and squawking. Like one big family, really. There is a row of women sitting next to their individual blankets piled high with all sorts of animal parts for sale while the men wheel carts full of hind legs and minced lamb to and fro. Grillers call out trying to entice you to come and eat at their BBQ. For us, always a distinctive invitation: "Helllooooo? ...helloooo?"

Lastly, I thought I would take this opportunity to show you my festive finger nail art before I scratch it off. Snowflakes, flowers, golden glittery stripes... always good times at the beauty shop.

Christmas Lunch

2005-12-27T16:46:00.000-08:00

This was a lunch of all our favorite dishes.

From left to right:

dumplings filled with pork and cabbage

(what we call) "potstickers" filled with lamb and carrot

basa digua (sweet potato pieces covered in melted sugar--is that called "candied"?)

The soup is a sweet egg corn soup

green beans fried in salt, chillies and garlic (no longer nutritious--but oh so delicious)

Shredded firm tofu stirfried with some herbs and greens.

Hard to make out is a dish with peanuts and onions in Chinese vinegar.

Phillip from Australia and Maggie-- a beautiful Chinese woman he hopes to make his girlfriend.

The 11 minutes of Christmas

2005-12-24T16:26:00.000-08:00

This morning marks a first for me. I completed my normal weekend morning routine--wake up in a quiet apartment, check my emails, make some toast, watch some English news...but its Christmas--a morning that is usually unusual. Normally abnormal. Ordinarily extraordinary. I am careful not to use the a-word (alone) because this is not a pity party, it's Christmas... and I have learned a valuable lesson this season: Christmas is what you make it.
Allow me to explain:
When you are surrounded by your family, familiar Christmas ornaments and comfort foods, you are on the Christmas escalator. Around here, there is a lot of talk about Christmas----with your students and other foriegners, but you can't see Christmas. And you definitely can't smell it. So you don't really know what is going to happen when that big day comes. And then it hit it me, if you want a special Christmas so far from home, you have to walk up the stairs. Are you still with me? There is no escalator to take you there, so you best start walking or you will still be on the ground floor come Christmas Eve--and you will probably just be cold.

We consolidated all of our Christmas accouterments to create a Christmas scene where I can sit by the light of the desk lamp and have a cold bag of milk. Last night, we went out for Peking Duck and tonight we will attend a party where hot buttered rum and fudge is promised.
Along the stairway, there have been some nice surprises. Less than an hour ago, I was buttering some toast when the phone jingled. On the other end my family was singing (!) and what followed was eleven minutes of concentrated Christmas bliss by way of speaker phone. Mom, Jake, Aunt Terri, Uncle Randy, Uncle Gary and even Tui painted a picture of Christmas at the lake and as the seconds on the phone card curtailed I hurriedly tried to drink in the experience. And when the last goodbyes were sung through the waves and wires, I stood with the phone on my ear for a few more seconds--my heart still leaping and bounding and my mind sifting back through the joyful cloud--I believe antlers and twice baked (or double stuffed) potatoes were somehow involved.

When Josh gets home from work (in thirty minutes), we will lean up against the wall next to the Christmas tree and open presents! His phone-call Christmas is scheduled to take place shortly after his homecoming.

So I guess you could say that this year we made our Christmas from concentrate. Its not as good as homestyle or extra pulp, but its slides down pret-ty nice.

And then, of course, there will be French toast. And most likely (okay, definitely) some dark chocolate too. Can't complaaain.........can't complain.

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

2005-12-23T00:11:00.000-08:00

Chinese lesson--Beauty session

2005-12-17T02:44:00.000-08:00

Classes are over and its time for exams! Ordinarily, I would be making colorful note cards and outlining potential essay questions, but it appears the tides have turned and this time I will write and administer the exam. Next week is oral exam week. Each student will come in for five minutes and discuss a topic of my choosing. I dreaded my Spanish oral exams and I really liked the idea of being the teacher in that situation until it occurred to me that I would have a five-minute meeting with 250 students! On the week after that, I will give the listening and writing portion of the exam. Merry Christmas!

As for the studious side of me, I have found a magnificent (and terribly indulgent) new way to practice Chinese. There is no shortage of hole-in-the-wall beauty salons around here, each with two or three older women out on the front steps trying to entice passers by to come in for a facial treatment or foot massage. Months ago, I slowed down and looked in the direction of a beauty shop to see what would happen. Sure enough, within seconds, three smiling women came over reaching out to touch my hair and my hands. They pulled me into the shop where other young ladies were in white coats and white masks, and then they all spoke Chinese to me at once. On my first visit, I was still an overwhelmed newcomer around here and when people spoke Chinese to me I would repeat Chinese for “I don’t understand” over and over until they gave up on trying to communicate. But nowadays, the trick is to keep pretending you understand so that they won’t stop talking. Twice now, I have gone into the shop with my Chinese textbook, notes and dictionary and when I lay down on the cot for a facemask, I place the books on top of my stomach. Initially this was for my reference, but now three or four of these friendly young ladies pick up and pass around the books. They flip through searching for questions to ask me (“Do you like to sing?” “Do you have a boyfriend?” “What do you like to eat?”). I learn some new vocabulary and get a chance to work on my pronunciation. In addition, they offer to massage my hands, head, shoulders and even feet! What could be better? As a final touch, two young ladies will apply some makeup to my face and I get a great review lesson of colors and parts of the face. Granted, when I leave I have bright purple eyelids and red orange lips…but it’s completely worth it.

An entry by Josh......

2005-12-16T21:29:00.000-08:00

December in Jinan is a month for the senses. Leaving for work in the morning, wrapped in scarf and mask, I open the door and suck in that first breath of outside air. It’s cold enough to shock the throat always makes me cough once or twice on the first breath. At about 7:30 the sky is blue overhead, but the sun is still not quite high enough to take the edge off. Pulling the bike out the door after me is always an angry little struggle. The bicycle is difficult to maneuver in close quarters and I still want to be in bed, so we don’t get along very well. It does wake me up, and gets the blood flowing.
The bike ride to work is mostly in the shade so it’s always quick and painful. Left out the main gate of Shanda Xinxiao. Right on Minziqian Lu. Stopping at traffic lights, I can hear the little breaths of winter wind wander down Quenchan road from the west. Soon the breeze finds me and searches for any little swath of exposed skin to chill. Only two more blocks until warmth and swarms of little Chinese kids who call me Mr. Josh.
Underneath most of what I smell on these rides is my wet breath in the mask, but over it sometimes I pick up the scent of a sweet potato vendor or hit the sour cloud of stench from a manhole. If I could perceive this world by smells, like a snake or a bear, this city would probably be the most fantastic place on earth. As a human being, most of the time it is just bewildering. There are pleasant smells, exotic but easily traced to their source: a street vendor selling noodles, a jaozi restaurant, or a Muslim barbecue. By far the majority are foul ones that seem to come from nowhere. Suddenly, I’ll just get broadsided by some queer odor and as much as I look around and investigate the source is always a mystery. I’m still not a big fan of how this city smells. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by how subtly sweet a pine forest in New Hampshire smells, or the dry purity of the air in the Sonoran. Here it just smells like people, over a billion people.
Finally arriving at work, I say good morning to the Chinese teachers, fill my tea bottle, do my thing for two hours, and go home. Same smells, still cold.

There’s something other than coal dust in the air these days in Jinan. Christmas is coming in the orient as well. Personally, I haven’t sorted out what I really feel about seeing a big old white Santa Claus face on the wall in a Chinese restaurant. It’s hard to get at the root of their enthusiasm for a holiday that is so western, so Christian. Santa Claus, holly, and ornaments are everywhere. In Carrefour, a supermarket owned by a French company, the cashiers all wear Santa Claus hats. I wonder if it is just the product of a company policy that was unchanged to fit non-western nations “From November 24-December 26 all Carrefour employees (everywhere!)wear red Santa Claus hats at all time, even if Christmas was illegal in your country up until the 1980’s.” Maybe the Chinese just dig jolly fat guys, Buddha did seem to catch on pretty fast here as well. The cynical Chinese nationalist would say that Western capitalists just want to import the idea of holiday shopping to make a buck selling presents and tinsel in the world’s largest almost free market. Who knows, but it is fun to hear Chinese try to sing English Christmas carols. It’s so well-intentioned but awful it warms the heart.

Heavens to Betsy?

2005-12-10T05:13:00.000-08:00

Last night, a routine dinner outing took an unexpected turn.
A week ago I agreed to go to dinner with a Chinese colleague of mine (ooh that sounds rather grown up… “colleague”) and a few other Shandong English teachers from around the neighborhood. I met five English teachers—two Chinese, three American-- on Shandong’s “old” campus and we made our way to a large seafood restaurant decked out with bright lights and Christmas trimmings.

In these types of restaurants, the first step is to spend some time in a section where you can view the raw material (tightly covered with plastic wrap) of each dish that’s offered. It’s all neatly displayed under bright lights on refrigerated shelves complete with tanks full of fish, frogs and some large bowls of lively scorpions. A waiter follows closely with pen and pad. You point, they record and a menu never enters the equation.

While this is a handy option for those of us who don’t speak the language, in my opinion platefuls of raw meat and wilting vegetables under fluorescent lights doesn’t a tummy rumble make.

We were seated upstairs to a private room called “Amsterdam”. At each place setting there was a small capsule of vinegar the size of your pinky that you puncture with a tiny straw to wet your whistle before the meal. The dishes began to arrive not long after we were seated; fish balls, shrimp and scallion pot stickers, fried fish pieces, beef and vegetables, and pile of chopped up taro root covered in melted sugar. When separating a bite size cluster of taro with your chopsticks, wisps of melted sugar stretch endlessly into the air. Cleverly a bowl of hot water is placed next to this dish and with a quick dip the sugar dissolves leaving no chance of having long sticky sugar whiskers dangling from your chin.

A half-hour into the meal, the conversation entered some unfamiliar territory for me—how each of us had accepted the Lord into our lives. Everyone told an uplifting story citing books, verses, and psalms. When it became obvious that it was my turn to contribute, my cheeks went a little red and I said that in fact I was not a Christian and I would rather listen if they didn’t mind. The conversation went on for hours. They spoke of starting a Bible Study group for their students, but all agreed that was a bad idea with the consideration that it is against the law. The two Chinese women asked the Americans a lot of questions about faith and “the truth”. They all remarked on how sad it was that young people these days believe there is no such thing as absolute truth. At one point, someone said something along the lines of art and literature not being truly great if they were contrary to “the truth”. A Chinese woman asked “How can I know if the author or artist has God in them?” I was surprised but tried not to let my eyebrows show it.
At one stage, I was given some suggestions of Christian singers who sing about people with doubts about Jesus.
After two hours of sipping tea, I went to the ladies room with my Chinese colleague who hosted the dinner. She told me she hoped I didn’t mind the conversation. I said I didn’t and that I liked to listen. Then she said “I brought you here tonight to hear this conversation. I hope you don’t mind my purpose”. In fact everyone but me had known what the “purpose” of the dinner was. “Oh…” I realized. That’s all I could come up with. I stared blankly at her unable to think of a response.
“Thank you”? “No thanks, not interested”?
On my walk home, I was a little puzzled. Why me? Don’t I seem happy enough?

An unfamiliar cold

2005-12-05T04:14:00.000-08:00

When the temperature drops, I am usually quick to make the statement "This is the coldest cold I have ever known." I don't know if it is true, but it sure feels like it.
The time has come to retire the bike. The bitter wind on my morning pedal to work gives me an ice cream headache. And I wear so many layers of fleece and down that I perspire just enough for a thin layer of ice to freeze on me after I have been in class for about 10 minutes. I just don't feel like a professional when I stutter over my words because my teeth are chattering. But then again, I should admit that I am a big wuss in the cold weather. And with that said, I will stop whining.

The day without power and water turned out to be a day without heat and power---only until 6pm. It wasn't so bad. For most of the day I was out shopping. There is an indoor market here that has just been renovated. Its called the New World Market and has anything and everything you could ever imagine. There is an entire floor of fabrics and tailors where you can have curtains, duvet covers, dresses, skirts, wool jackets and more made to suit you right down to the last detail. What a pleasure it will be to have some pants made to order precisely in my dimensions for five dollars.

On Friday afternoon, I gave a lecture at a high school. They asked me to talk about American life, the stress of studying, pressure from parents, "puppy love" and of course the very popular "American foods and superstars". I made a few notes, but figured I would be pretty safe winging it. When I arrived at the high school, I was whisked into the teachers lounge to "have a rest". Around here, people are always asking me if I would like to "have a rest" and telling me to "add more layers".
After my rest, I went into the auditorium....where 600 students were seated!! I could not believe my eyes. As I walked up to the podium and microphone, a young girl in red warm ups ran across to the stage and handed me a boquet of flowers. The students all applauded and I was starting to panic a little. The head of school gave me a little introduction (she called me a professor and I felt like a fraud) and then she turned it over to me. Oh dear.
If you had asked me, I would have said my speech went over like a lead balloon. They laughed when I spoke some Chinese (that always gets 'em!), but otherwise it was hard to tell if they were interested. Its hard to talk to that many people. You can't do the little impressions or hand gestures that you do when you are in a smaller group or the classroom. It could be said that when you are up on a stage with a microphone (in front of 600 people), you need a polished speech. I delivered an hour of aimless ramble, but fortunately I was the only native English speaker in the room, and with any luck the only one who truly knew how bad it was.
I don't know whether the teachers really thought so, or if its the Chinese way, but afteward they laid the compliments on pretty thick and I felt a little better.
I guess, when it comes down to it, the main thing is that the English was authentic. I will stand by that. I may not be a professor, I may not be a good speech maker, but I can speak English with a thick American accent and sometimes that seems to be good enough.

Precious moments of power

2005-12-03T15:29:00.000-08:00

The power and water are supposed to be shutting off any moment now. We will be dirty, parched and in the dark for 24 hours.
No, I kid. We have plenty of water and candl

A night at the Opera

2005-11-29T16:07:00.000-08:00

Last night Harmony called with a last minute invite to an Opera.

When we first arrived, many of the seats were filled with young soldiers. I thought a row of green uniforms in red seats would make a neat picture. After we found our seats, I had gathered up enough courage to go snap that photo. As I set forth, I could feel Josh sink down into his seat for fear of any association with me and my camera.
I expected they would all bunch together laughing, delighted and amused to have their picture taken.
I held up my camera and asked "ok?". There were no objections but they weren't showing the sprightliness I had anticipated so I assumed they may have been confused--'does she want us to take a picture of her?'. To clarify, I raised the camera to my eye, certain that they would now understand and begin smiling and laughing. But then suddenly, there was a man (a more senior soldier--maybe a general) by my side saying "No! Sorry, sorry, no!". My face went bright red. I quickly apologized and turned to leave. Then I slumped down in my chair and stared at nothing while I re-played 'the incident' in my mind. Looking back I dont know why I was so dumbfounded and emabarassed; I suddenly felt like an ignorant intruder.
You can see the man in charge coming towards me and the soldiers look uncomfortable.

As for the Opera, it was hard to follow. Not only for us, but even for those who understand Chinese. I couldn't help but thinking it might sound more pleasant if the microphones were near the singers instead of clipped onto their costumes. In fact, I am not sure microphones were even necessary. The funny thing about it being so loud was that the audience felt it was acceptable to talk and answer cell phones through the whole performance. We were no exception; Harmony was whispering the storyline to me every few minutes and I was advised Josh of upcoming words. "Psst. That guy is gonna say "shi bu shi" any second now." I could follow the dialogue through the text in the program based on the four Chinese characters that I know combined with the electronic display of the words that appeared when someone was singing. Not that the Opera wasn't entertaining enough on its own...It was about a man who quit his "iron rice bowl" job with the government to seek a cure for his friend's paralysis. He became sick from testing his own concoctions and the family was now destitute from him being out of work and spending money on his laboratory. In the next act he becomes rich and famous from making medicine and is faced with a telling business decision where they honest path may cost him millions of yuan. He deliberates while singing in the rain, makes the decision we all want him to and by the end of the Opera, he has an even better government job and the family couldn't be happier.

He has become sick from drinking his medicine and his wife sings a loud song of sorrow.

At this point an American (in brown and yellow) enters and offers a lucrative business deal involving Western medicine. Our hero rejects the American man and sings a song about how Chinese medicine is slow but its effective, whereas Western medicine works quickly but the results are not lasting.

Once in a lifetime

2005-11-26T18:18:00.000-08:00

It only happens once in your lifetime. Yesterday, Josh turned 26 on the 26th and while America shopped till the dropped, we celebrated until we .....dropped!

First, we went to the Sofitel for a 5 star buffet with delicious western food.

Josh's 5 favorite foriegners were there.

The Sofitel is ready for Christmas!

Phillip, Sean, Mrs. Clause, Josh.

Everyone knows how much Josh likes to read, so they gave him some recycled books and he was thrilled.
Josh with his present from Gerry (in blue, from Ireland).
After a huge lunch, Josh and I went to the culture market with Harmony.

These are candied crab apples---sweet and sour. Not my favorite street stall treat.

Josh's special day continues

2005-11-26T17:21:00.000-08:00

Candied mandarin slices--thats more like it.
Chinese medicine and tea...

This man wrote my name. Look! He charged me 10 times the price because it was in English, but it was still only $1. After I took his photo, he asked me to "take out" in English. I showed him the memory card from my camera. I said the picture is "in this", I can't "take out". He was really dissapointed that I could not instantly remove the photo from my camera.

I like dogs and wanted to give this shivering puppy a home. I thought the power of this puppy's face + my puppy face + Josh being really happy because it was his birthday= enough reasons to take the puppy home. But no such luck.

The birthday boy started to get really sleepy as we wandered through the culture market. Some sweet sticky rice perked him up.

Josh and Harmony.

That night, Josh and I went to an English party hosted by two of his students/basketball buddies (to steal the term from Jake). We participated in all kinds of English activities. Josh and I led a couple of "repeat-after-me" songs from Nature's Classroom. The post graduate students got into them even more than 6th graders!

They surprised him with a cake.

Josh's buddies (and students).
This birthday boy got one heck of a lot of attention and adulation from 100 Chinese students, 5 foriegners, 1 girlfriend, and a very exciting late night call from home.
He is sound asleep now.

Happy Birthday Tui!

2005-11-24T15:57:00.000-08:00

Dear Tui,
Happy Birthday! I cannot believe you are 2 already. Last time I saw you, you were jumping off the dock into the lake without hesitation. It was a little painful to swim near you in case you needed a rest, but you were a natural swimmer. When you kicked it into "high gear", you could almost catch up with Jake. Do you remember how Jake would dissapear and then reappear behind you? You always looked so confused. He was swimming under you.
Have the other lake dogs accepted you? I heard that Aunt Terri taught you how to open a and close a door! Which one?

There are lots of dogs here in China. They are not like you at all. They are small and a little bit scruffy looking. They are unfriendly and don't care for any attention--only food. They have such short legs that they often have to get rides in their owners' bicycle baskets or be carried around.

Tui, there is no other face that can bring me such joy. I have shown all my students photos of you. When I tell them how big you are, they ask me if you are dangerous. They say that, in China, all the dogs as big as you live out in the country.
I think of you daily. It brings me peace to think of the life you have with Aunt Terri and Uncle Randy. I miss you all more than you can imagine.
Love,
Betsy

Thanksgiving Dinner

2005-11-24T05:52:00.000-08:00

It was a Thanksgiving day miracle---turkey was on the table after all! We had a pot luck style dinner with a variety of delights---apple salad, sushi, nachos, mashed potatoes, hummus and veggies, meatballs, homemade mac and cheese, applesauce (made by yours truly), and even an apple pecan pie! There was a lot of "Where did you find refried beans/black olives/pecans/Hershey's kisses??" going on.

I think we felt proud to share this tasty American holiday with folks from Isreal, Russia, China, Australia, Finland, Japan, Pakistan, Ireland...even if it wasn't exactly the way we celebrate it in the homeland.

Armena and David (fell in love online, he came over from NY a month ago and plans to stay indefinitely).
Australian Phillip, Betsy, Josh.
Arshawn (sounds like, but can't be true spelling of his name) from Xinjiang province in Western China and our good friend Sean from Michigan.

Holiday friction keeping us warm

2005-11-23T06:17:00.000-08:00

Have I been sleeping? Did the nocuous emissions get through my aseptic mask?
The weeks seem to be passing with the blink of an eye here. We have dubbed Thursday "Friday" on account of not having work on the real Friday, but tomorrow we will slow down and fully embrace my favorite Thursday of the year.
Sixty foriegners, maybe 1/4 of which are true Yankees, will celebrate the turkeylicious day in the hotel on campus. Due to some kind of a flu bug, it seems a bird is going to be hard to come by. No pumpkin pie, no cranberries, no stuffing, no green bean supreme or 24 hour salad. But there will be sweet potatoes--which just happens to be my favorite dish anyway.
There may also be some perturbed guests. An argument by vehicle of email has ensued amongst many of the foriegn teachers and some feelings have been hurt. I may have mentioned that many of the teachers here are religious, mostly Evangelical Christian. One of these teachers wrote a mass email asking if anyone would be offended if a prayer was said at dinner. Because we may have more than 10 nationalities and who-knows-how-many religions present at the dinner, another teacher suggested a moment of silence may be more appropriate. Then yet another teacher was very upset because...well let me just say that the e-spat is heating up and some of us are singing the old "C'mon guys, its Thanksgiving!" song.

I am sure it will be lovely, I'll take my camera.

When in China

2005-11-20T00:27:00.000-08:00

While a tad frightening, these masks serve many purposes. Go without...blow your nose...and you will see.

I hit rock bottom---and it was crunchy

2005-11-16T05:42:00.000-08:00

Last week at the grocery store, the foreign “out of our price range” item of cheese was on sale: "2 for 1". We came home with 24 individually wrapped slices of New Zealand cheese and have since enjoyed cheesy delights such as: cheese on scrambled eggs, grilled cheese sandwiches, and cheese on apple slices.

On Monday, at the supermarket, I made a grave error when placing a jar of crunchy peanut butter into my shopping basket. Skippy Super Chunk----it’s cheaper than cheese. Maybe you should be required to carry a license to buy peanut butter, so that people like me cannot make the same mistake over and over. About three or four times a year I trust myself with a jar of peanut butter, but it always ends in tears.
On Monday, I had a spoonful to celebrate its presence in the cupboard. On Tuesday, I had a PB and J Sandwich for dinner...and then a heaping spoonful for desert.
Tonight at 6:30, I had a big spoonful and placed the jar in the back of the cupboard: "That’s all for me tonight." I told myself. For the next two hours, there was a steady flow of traffic between the kitchen and the couch: me and my spoon. "Okay, just a little more" quickly turned into, "well, if I’m gonna be bad, I may as well be really bad" turned into "I feel full and uncomfortable, but it still tastes good" and finally into "I should eat it all so its not in the house anymore".
Fortunately, I heard the key turn in the door at 9pm. It was Josh and I was saved! I fell to the ground in the hallway---spoon sliding across the floor (this is no joke).
"I am sooo full, I ate soo much peanut butter tonight."
"Do you want me to hide the jar?"
"…...no...there is just a little bit left."
Josh winced at my peanut butter breath.."Lets get you to bed, cause you're gonna have the shakes tomorrow."

This is true story.

Wherever you go, there you are

2005-11-13T03:10:00.000-08:00

With my new pastime of jogging on the treadmill, I have found myself with some hours of headspace to fill. I spend a lot of the time staring forward into the mirror at my face, marveling at how much I look like both my Mom and my Dad even though the two of them don’t look alike at all. How does that work? From certain angles, I am the very image of my Aunt Maribeth, and from others you’d think Jake and I could be twins. Cool.

I might also spend some moments calculating how many more minutes (according the calorie count on the treadmill) I would have to run to cancel out the three Oreo cookies I enjoyed earlier, okay seven Oreos.

But lately, I have been trying to force myself to have deep thoughts (cue scary music) about my future. Because that’s what one does when winter approaches and another year is coming to a close. I think about where I will go after China. I wonder about how long I should stay in China. I think about other countries that I would like to spend time in after China and also about how nice returning home will be. And then there is New Zealand…sigh, whatever happened to my big plans to move to become a permanent Kiwi?
And then there is the voice in my head that tells me I am cheating. My sources tell me that most of your young life is supposed to be about preparation. Advanced degrees should ensure a well paying job…a well paying job leads to a secure retirement. And then I imagine you get to exhale and enjoy the twilight years.
So, what happens if one doesn’t prepare thoroughly for the future? Because even though the notion of living for the day is romantic, is it a good idea? Welcome to the debate in my brain. You see life in China is pretty comfortable. The pay is more than enough…to live in China, and for heaven’s sakes they call us foreign “experts” here. The voice tells me that this isn’t the real world because I have not really done what it takes to earn a well paying job yet, and especially not earned the title “expert”… in anything. So my sweat turns a little cold for fear of survival in the real world when the time for re-entry comes. I think of where I will go next, perhaps I should choose a place that my future will thank me for (i.e. graduate school). That or I will find a host family on the Mediterranean who needs someone with a general knowledge of Spanish to take their children on outings to the beach and the zoo (Andy, have I mentioned how jealous I am of you?).

When one door closes

2005-11-11T16:28:00.000-08:00

Our Chinese class is held at a Women’s International College at the top of a steep hill on the South side of the city. Last week, I finally accepted Josh's offer to ride his fancy bike up the hill. Within two days, I had a fancy new bike of my own. I have now joined the club of gear-shifting. smooth-cycling elitists. The downside is that I can't just lock the tire and park it anywhere. I have to find something to lock it to. And I feel just a little tension in my chest every time I leave it for fear that it won't be waiting for me when I return.
In any case, I now float across town barely feeling any resistance as a I pedal. My other bike was a great source of exercise, it felt as though the brakes were always in use--coasting downhill was a little slow, pedaling on flat road felt like uphill and pedaling uphill was unforgiving!
Fortunately, just as the mobile exercise bike left my life a new gym has opened up in the Foreign students building. The only requirement to join is that you be a foreigner. Its a little pricey, but well worth is. With the current state of air quality here, running on the treadmill beats running outside.

Life here is becoming easier and more rewarding as our Chinese vocabulary expands. Just last week, I had three honest to goodness Chinese conversations not involving the purchase of anything. I was able to communicate to our land lady that our office chair had broken (the word for 'broken' is one we learned early on and tends to come up in conversation a lot around here) and that we needed a key for the door to our porch. The sense of accomplishment was thrilling.

Last night, we had "jay-guh" for dinner. That’s when we just point at and item on the menu and say the Chinese word for "that" (it sounds like "jay-guh" so we have termed that kind of dining as going out for "jay-guh"--always a surprise!). Last night both of our jay-guh selections had a particular sweet chili on it that doesn't agree with me. I called the waitress over, pointed to a vegetable in one of the dishes and asked for a dish that was only that vegetable. It worked and I was jubilant.
Sometimes when I am speaking my broken Chinese, I become nervous and fill in the gaps with Spanish adverbs and articles. I imagine that my default foreign language folder must be set to Spanish.

The small stuff

2005-11-05T23:02:00.000-08:00

A mouse was a source of stress for us this week. Not the cute gray kind that eats popcorn kernels and can be spotted sprinting across the room from couch to chair to fridge. In fact it was the computer mouse that troubled us. Imagine a mouse that suddenly only moves west to east along the line AB. You are looking at an inbox with some unread mail...but you just can't click on it! Why would this happen? Had somebody been drinking tea with honey near the computer again? No, I hadn't! (my honey was responsible for some sticky keys a month ago--whoops!) We took the mouse apart and blew on it because thats how you fix stuff.
That didn't do it, so again the mouse came apart and we operated it like an Etch-a-Sketch. First, you turn the tiny wheel that moves it up to down, and then the other wheel that moves it side to side....and then back up a little, ooo..no, too far...to the left...a little more..."click" and you are checking your email.

BYO T.P.

2005-10-31T04:36:00.000-08:00

I just can't believe that tomorrow is a new month. Then again, I think I say that everytime I turn a page in the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta calendar (the nicest piece of art on our walls--thank you Granny and Grandaddy). There are no more China surprises. Nothing on the streets of Jinan phases me anymore. Its November, and everything has become...normal.
It has become normal to sleep on a very firm surface: a 3 inch pad seperating me from a wooden board.
It has become normal to pour myself a little milk from a bag, to bleach and peel the skin off of fruit, and to carry toilet paper in my pocket.
It has become normal to ride my 1-speed (sans helmet) to work in a mob of bicycles, scooters and rickshaws.
Its normal to see cars in the bike lane. Infuriating, but normal.
Its normal to see taxis and cars using the oncoming lane of traffic for their passing lane.
Its normal to see toddlers eliminating on the sidewalk, little dogs in bicycle baskets, and caged chickens on the sidewalk.
Its normal to see people carrying large bags of soy milk, raw meat, or tofu. Normal to see a tower of steaming bamboo cookers, and hear bull horns advertise corn on the cobb over and over.. and over.
Its normal be pointed at and stared at.
I hardly notice the incessant horn honking. Give it another two months and I might even spit on the ground. But lets hope not.

Dancing Bear Routine

2005-10-27T23:06:00.000-07:00

A week ago, I got a call from a Chinese woman called Susan. She told me that she was from the English department and that there was an English meeting on Tuesday night. I told her I was free and could make it. The last thing she said was: "I will call you back on Sunday and tell you what the topic is."
The topic? I assumed she meant a meeting for English teachers. How else would she have my name and phone number? Josh guessed right away that it might be what his brother, Jake, had experienced a time or two here: 200 students in a lecture theatre and you up front with a microphone and an hour to fill.
When Susan called back on Sunday, I asked her what exactly the meeting was about. She said it was just a chance for some Chinese students to communicate with foriegners and there would be no lecture. Okay, I could handle that. I didn't mind going along on a Tuesday night to chat, as long as I didn't have to prepare anything. After teaching in the morning and taking class in the afteroon, I can't promise my wits will be completely about me come dinner time. Susan came by the apartment to take me to the meeting at 5:30pm. As I put my shoes on, she suggested I give a short performance.
Uh, what kind of performance?
A song or a dance would be fine.
Josh was sitting on the couch, completly amused by the whole thing.
No thanks, I don't think I will perform. I haven't prepared anything and I don't like to sing.
If there is one thing I have learned how to do since I came to China, it is how to say "No". Because of the language barrier, you can't rely on polite and subtle hints that signal that you are not available. You have to say "No"---sometimes two or three times. "No" is essential to keeping some personal time for yourself. Otherwise, you could easily promise all your free hours away to students and strangers who want to "become friends" (practice English).
I made sure that Susan understood me very clearly. We got to the "meeting" and slowly the auditorium filled up with 250 undergraduate students. There was stage with a few chairs set up, a couple of microphones and some bottles of water. Susan introduced me to the hosts of the event and they prepped me on the questions I would be asked. I was at ease and even excited. There was also to be an Australian student and and a Tanzanian student at the Q & A session. The hosts asked us questions about our relationships with our parents, impressions of China and religious beliefs. Then, the students had a chance to ask us some questions. Just about all the questions were for the "American teacher", but Louise (the Austrlian student) felt more qualified to answer a couple of them.

Q (from student in audience): My foriegn teacher is also American. I told her that I like Bon Jovi and she laughed at me. Why did she find that funny?
A: (me standing up with the microphone)...hmmm....well,
A: (Louise seated behind me with no microphone) Because its so gay!!
A: (me again) ...no..I don't think thats it. I'm not sure I can tell you why she laughed. Its fun music to sing along to. Maybe she was envisioning you singing along to "Livin' on a Prayer".

Louise was not afraid to speak her mind. She was especially animated when she spoke about how disgusting she thought the toilets were here and how annoying she found the sound of people cracking sunflower seed shells with their teeth (you see/hear a lot of that around here). In those moments, I was a little embarassed and concerned that all the students would see us as the same person because we looked and sounded alike.
But, they loved her performance. Yes, Louise had prepared a short Chinese song to perform and she got a standing ovation. In fact, she said many amusing things that scored generous laughter and applause from the audience.
With all of the special attention foriegners get around here, you could really get the wrong idea about yourself. As we left the auditorium, students caught up with us and asked for phone numbers and to pose for photos. Susan held my water bottle while I wrote my email address in loads of little notebooks and stood for some photos. It can be quite the head trip.

With Josh's permission, I get to be the bearer of some rather exciting news of his. His boss at the Australian school has been really impressed with the progress he has made with the students and the suggestions he has made for the course. They asked to help write an ESL text book and to sign a contract to work full time with them from Sep '06-July '07. He has officially signed the contract. So there you have it. Just like that, he has enthusiastically committed to another year in Jinan.

Changes in the air

2005-10-22T03:23:00.000-07:00

In the past two days, the temperature has dropped greatly. We venture out in layers of fleece and down, looking like we've stepped out of an REI catalog. If anyone is prepared for the cold, it is surely Josh. He has enough warm gear to camp on the ice in Antarctica. In fact, this cold weather has him wishing he were on top of a mountain with the wind burning his face, stirring up Swiss Miss on his whisperlite stove. He really comes alive when the temperature drops. I am the exaggerated teeth chattering type who says "It.Is.Frr-ee-zing!" every 5 or 10 minutes. But I am enjoying it too. What I have most enjoyed is the new street food that is appearing with the new season. Candied crab apples and sweet potatoes. Every street corner accomadates a man in army surplus gear with what looks like a kiln full of baking sweet potatoes. The wrinkled skin peels away to steaming orange sweetness and it reminds me of Thanksgiving.
We did actually get an American food fix recently at Jenny's Cafe. It was like stepping into a cafe anywhere in the Western world. You could have a latte on the sofa, a Budweiser at the bar, or deluxe nachos at one of the tables. Josh and I split a salad, nachos and french fries. The nachos were a great dissapointment, six chips arranged on the plate with beef, lettuce tomato, and hardly enough cheese to register carefully piled on each chip. It was a comforting meal, but cost us nearly six dollars, so we won't be eating there often.
We have begun our Chinese classes, which have turned out to be rather intense. Our teacher speaks mostly in Chinese to us. We can't understand what she is saying, but we know when to repeat after her. Right now, we are working on tones and pronunciation with a few vocab words thrown in here and there. The language really breaks down into sounds, and each sound may have four different meanings, depending on what tone you say it in. Its going to be a long road ahead, but I want to learn the language more and more everyday, so I am glad to finally be in class. I keep my students updated with my progress, which they find endlessly amusing---maybe not a good sign.
As of yesterday, we have eaten in the campus cafeteria twice. The food is extremely cheap and apart from not always being as hot as I would like it to be, its really tasty. There are three floors with a variety of vegetables, meats, soups, buns, seafoods, eggs, rice and tofu. We fight through the crowds, swipe our card and take a plate full of what looks good. The cafeteria swarms with thousands of students at the designated meal times, I feel like I am having an experience I missed out on in college. It would be interesting to study the culture of college cafeterias around the world. Here, the students sit down with a full tray of food and eat it fast. Nobody seems to take of their jacket, or work on any math problems with dinner. I wonder if students in France linger in the college cafeteria, savoring each morsel?
In keeping with the theme of change for this entry, I took a trip to the Red Leaf Valley today. Josh was busy with work, so I jumped on a small bus with 20 foriegn teachers. In a rather reflective mood, I decided to venture out on my own as soon as we arrived. It was a perfect cold, sunny Fall day. The scenery really took my breath away today. I don't know what it was, a combination of everything maybe...the smells coming off of the grills, the ducks, the waterfalls, the weather, my mood...I thought, maybe, it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen.

Red Leaf Valley

2005-10-21T23:46:00.000-07:00

Fumbling back into the light

2005-10-20T06:37:00.000-07:00

The internet has been down for three days and I've suffered a range of withdrawal symptoms that might indicate I have an addiction. At first, I was frustrated. I looked for a distraction, but found myself repeatedly opening up the Google page in disbelief. Was China mad at Google?..and hotmail...and Oprah...and everyone??? Next came a sense of abandonment followed by an eerie calm. Tonight, the internet has come back into our lives and I am overwhelmed. So many choices...pictures, and pages, and options, and keys! Where do I start? Do I even remember how all of this works? The lesson I have learned is not to become too attached, the Internet may decide to leave my life without notice at any moment. Next time, I will be ready.
On a lighter note, there are many new experiences to write about.
I was beginning to worry that we were getting so adjusted that I may no longer have anything new to write about and the blog would become dull with the occasional grumbling entry.
Its late now, but I wanted to make it known we are back in the cybersphere....although, China might indeed be mad at hotmail because that page still "cannot be displayed".
Every night, I visit http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/personal.html?sort=2 and let my imagination decide what you are doing.

Party of 25

2005-10-16T15:35:00.000-07:00

I wanted to organize a lunch meeting that students may attend on Thursday's and figured that if each student brought 5 yuan, I could make up the difference. Shandong University gives me a little bit of extra money every month for my transportation costs. Since I am riding my bike, I pocket all of that money and thought a good use for it would be to subsidize lunch for a group of students. I told both of my Monday morning classes that they were welcome to meet me on Thursday at noon for lunch and a chance to practice English outside of class. As they left the classroom, about 10 of them said "See you Thursday". I thought that ten students seemed like a lot of people for lunch and eventhough probably not all of them would show up, I figured I better not tell my classes for the rest of the week just to play it safe. I presumed I would have other lunch days available to other classes. On Thursday, I went to the main gate at noon and within five minutes, twenty five of my Monday students arrived. I suppose it was naive to think that I wouldn't get a big turnout when there was food involved. We walked to a nearby restaurant and packed in at two large round tables. (Many restaurants here have large round tables with "Lazy Susan"s in the middle). As you might guess, the majority of the lunch time discussion was in Chinese except for the 5 or 6 students nearest to me who asked me to compare Western food to Chinese food among many other questions related to my fondness for Chinese dishes. It was all rather chaotic and the bill was very large. The students insisted I accept 8 yuan from each of them, playing the "it would make us uncomfortable if you pay so much" card. It was nice that they helped out more, but I was embaressed because they could have spoken to each other in Chinese and eaten in the cafeteria for 3 yuan.

Second attempt:
Josh has office hours at our apartment on Wednesday nights. About ten or twelve students sit in the living room laughing and carrying on about interesting topics for a couple of hours. I am always envious because he gets to see personalties of his students emerge and hear what they have to say about politics, loveless marriage and a wide variety of topics that can't be thoroughly discussed in the classroom. I decided to plan some office hours of my own, but it was proving difficult because I live on another campus. It is too far for my students to commute in the dark and cold. Also, far too time consuming of a journey (unless you are bike) in the city's bumper to bumper traffic. At last I found a classroom on the other campus that could be unlocked for me between 2-4 on Mondays. Today, I went to the classroom and within minutes I had forty students (including five people I had never seen before). The worst of it was they all looked at me like it was a class and waited for me to speak. I tried out a couple of dicussion topics, but a discussion with forty people just wasn't happening. Eventually, we broke into five groups and had free-talk time. Many students were dissapointed. It felt like a problem without a solution. I went around a participated in each discussion group for 15 minutes, but we all left feeling rather dissatisfied.
One solution is to have seperate office hours for each class, but another solution is to not have office hours at all, and I am leaning towards the latter. Afterall, they can find ways to practice English on their own, right?

This week I am teaching each class how to write a business letter, cover letter and other practical communication skills as well as some Western manners.
My students were absolutley shocked and embaressed when I told them it is uncommon to end an official letter in "Yours very truly". I went as far to say that you would probably not use "yours" unless you have a close relationship with the person you are writing to if not a romantic relationship. Many of my students have written me emails with the close "Yours very truly" and I know they had to be a tad embaressed when I brought this up. There is a chapter in their textbook about official letter writing. The authors suggest you use "yours very truly" or "yours faithfully". I was very surprised to see this. For the longest time I've believed it was too personal. Am I wrong?

Googled

2005-10-12T07:38:00.000-07:00

There are some things that are very tempting to write about. For instance: the dynamic between all the foriegn teachers in this apartment block. But I resist...because, eventhough I would write harmless characterizations and comical scenarios, they could one day be discovered by a late night web surfer and I would feel just awful. Its like saying something behind someones back, and then the next time you see them you are paranoid because there is that chance they have heard through the grapevine. Just out of curiousity, I wondered what someone would have to search in Google to discover this weblog. One combination I tried was "Betsy China". This blog did not appear on the first page of results, but I did discover http://www.betsygoestochina.com/ (See? The late night surfing takes you places you would never expect!). This woman is interesting. Her life sounds like a lot of fun and she takes amazing photographs. You should visit the site for the photographs alone. Many are regular sights we see around here that I have not been able to capture.

Wanting more

2005-10-12T04:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday had its ups and downs. The students I see on Tuesday's have earned themselves a reputation of being quiet and unwilling to participate in class, so I am always a tad apprehensive as I head to work that day of the week. I have noticed that I too am slightly unwilling to give as much of myself to them.
There are times when I ask a simple question to the class and suddenly, as I look out at the class, all heads have shifted carefully and slowly in order to avoid eye contact with me. First, I give them the benefit of the doubt: that they did not understand the question. I phrase it again, slowly and clearly. Same response. Then, I feel a mixture of dissapointment and frustration. I am tempted to move on, but instead I wait. I look out at them and I silently count to ten in my head. By 'seven', we are practically suffocating in akward silence, but it is rare that a student is willing to break the ice with a response. Then, I move on and I sense that my point has been made. This is an approach a veteran foriegn teacher suggested to me. Its excruciating, but I must find a way to reach my Tuesday students.

This week, the students gave presentations on regions of the United States they have been studying for a couple of weeks. Many of them were visibly nervous in front of the class--wavering voices, looking only at the map or at the floor. The most common mistakes they made were in pronunciation. "Th" sounds like "Z" (souzwest, zis and zat), Virginia turns to "Wurginia", and quite often an "uh" sound blurs one word into the next. Theseuhmistakesuhare ubiquitous amongst Chinese English speakers. It is not as if the English is beyond comprehension, but it would be nice to find a way to get the students to think about these details as they speak. My Wednesday students are very playful and talkative. The two hours flow smoothly with them, and it always feels we have made some progress. We did pronunciation drills today, really exaggerating the movement of our tongue and lips. I cringed throughout the whole excercise because I felt I was insulting their intelligence by asking them to repeat after me over and over. But, in fact, I was pleased to see that it made a difference in the clarity of the presentations today.
I think I am finally warming up to the idea of what it means to be a teacher. In other words, for the first 5 weeks, I was hesitant to correct the students. I was quite happy to teach, but I delicately tried to avoid pointing out their mistakes. With many students, it feels like trying to coax a shy kitten to come over to you. You don't want to make any sudden movements and scare it back into the corner. You have to be encouraging. Today, I was more critical (constructively) and it paid off.
My fear is that some students are thinking: Who is this young, rich, American kid and what are her qualifications anyway?
Ah well, English class is mandatory for them and it just so happens I am fluent in English, so here we are. Each day is something new and different. I am sometimes frustrated with cultural differences and my inability to have a meaningful conversation with anyone Chinese. I also get cramped with the feeling that there are some topics that are tabboo here, feeling like there is a big elephant in the room that nobody will recognize. I want to know what they think about the television strategically going blank for seconds at a time during the news or about not being able to access some web pages, but in this indescribable way I feel like their lips are sealed or their level of English fluency just won't permit it. Pride, fear..? Perhaps we just haven't found the right setting for it yet. And I suppose we haven't been here that long.

Today had ups and downs and stops! I got my brakes fixed.