Be careful what you wish for

I was pleased with the way my first class had gone, but I hoped that from now on, the students would be able to focus a little more on their English and a little less on kissing my ass. We had gotten into an interesting discussion about homosexuality (they brought it up and pushed the issue, I swear!), which surprised me. I had been told to avoid controversial issues at all times, and while homosexuality in China isn't controversial, it's not exactly embraced, either. But, I wanted to keep my students engaged, so when they went there, I happily followed. My third session of class was devoted to a "formal" class debate over gay marriage. Before we began, I assigned roles and positions and made it clear that they should not voice their personal opinions, but those of the roles I had given them. Everyone was really into it, and despite a few bumps along the road, it went really well (pro-gm won). I was thrilled!
Up until this point I had been feeling kind of lost. Having been given no text or guidelines to follow, how would I make this a cohesive course, rather than, "every week we get together and play games in English"? Thanks to these first few classes, I now had a vision. The students were clearly interested in hot topic issues and wanted to know about American culture, so every week or 2 I would base the lessons around a new contemporary theme (racism, global warming, etc). They would learn about America, I would teach them English, and I have clearly become China's Greatest Teacher.
I was totally excited for class this week. What should we tackle next? The war on terror? Gender issues? Why democracy is a better political theory than communism? (lolz, jk! please don't arrest me, China) As China's Greatest Teacher, I was totally going to open their eyes to a new world, equal parts Whoopie from Sister Act II, Julie Andrews from The Sound of Music, and Julia Roberts from Mona Lisa's Smile. Nooot so much Dangerous Minds' Michelle Pfeiffer (Meg Ryan? Melanie Griffith? Which is which? I never know, except that Meg Ryan has those god awful new lips, and 1 of the others married Antonio and is now completely unrecognizable with her new plastic face. But as far as their acting resumes, I have no idea. I digress.).
I am China's Greatest Teacher, my life is like a movie, blablabla ...and then I receive an email from my "classroom monitor," aka student in my class who takes attendance and erases the chalkboard:

Dear WCBF,

We are happy to have you teach us and your hard-working has made us interested in English much more than before. However, in order to make our class more interesting and lively, we have some suggestions. [smiley face]

1.As you know,We'll go out to teach Chinese as a second language.So maybe you can tell us more about interculture communication.

2.Some of us would like to improve their listening.Many of us are poor in listening.What about telling us more perfect usages or American slangs?

3.Would you show us some part of movies or English songs that are more about culture?

All of us like you very much and Thank you a lot.

Wish you have a happy teaching with us.

PS:Maybe there are some mistakes [smiley face]

I'm really sorry for so many classmates not coming for class

Oh hell to the naw! Seriously, this student is giving me tips on how to run my class so that it will be more interesting and lively!? But they love me! They all run up to talk to me after class, and they all tell me how beautiful I am, and they all want to be my friend! Also, we've only had 2 weeks of class, out of 17, so unless someone forgot to tell me that this was actually "Intercultural Communications: American Pop Culture through Film and Music," I'm pretty sure it's ok that I haven't shown them Mean Girls yet.
I held off replying until I had a chance to talk to some other teachers (verdict: I'm right, students are stupid). This delay resulted in a text message from my monitor, asking if I would be responding. Clearly not China's Greatest Teacher, quite yet.

Cooking in the Chinese Kitchen #2

I still can't get my stove to turn on (above), but since it scares me, I'm kind of ok with leaving it off. It scares me because yes, that's a gas tank, yes, it's attached to my stove, and yes, if anyone in the world would be able to blow up a kitchen thanks to their exposed gas tank, it would totally be me. So for the time being, I'll leave it off and just use the coolest electric kettle in the world!

ta da.

By day, a normal electric kettle. By night, awesomeness:

Heating Up... Ready!

And I didn't even know it did this until I got home from the store and plugged it in. Yay I love China. Since this is my only means of cooking, I'm now limited to a diet of Ramen noodles and tea, but it's not like I was very savvy with a spatula in the U.S.

Being a vegetarian, it's a bit difficult to buy pre-made food at the grocery store. Even crackers and noodles are often covered in shrimp dust or pork flavoring (ew). So, when I saw frozen black bean dumplings,

I was thrilled for 3 reasons. 1) could be made in my Super Cool Kettle 2) vegetarian and 3) clearly delicious judging by the child's smile on the package. Imagine my horror when, after boiling them as directed, I dumped them into my bowl, and they looked like this:

I tried to eat them, but the consistency caused me to lose my appetite before the dumplings even made it to my mouth. ...and then I didn't need dinner after all, so obviously win-win. The End. (ps cute chopsticks, WCBF!)

My stuff is here!

I originally brought way too much stuff to China with me. All of this stuff (shoes, skirts, extra makeup) was of course absolutely necessary, but I had to leave most of it in Beijing on account of the weight limit for Chinese domestic flights (20 kilo? Are you kidding?). My aunt and uncle kindly volunteered to send my stuff to me, and I arrived in Jinan with just a few days worth of clothing etc, knowing that the bulk of my things would safely arrive later that week.
No sir! It was not until last Friday that I received my shipment! That's what, like three weeks? When I got that phone call, that my suitcase was in the office on campus, ready to be picked up, I literally laughed with glee before skipping off to pick it up. Carrying it home was quite a workout, since it's about 1m x .75 m and weighs like, not that much less than I do (sidebar, have we noticed how I'm embracing the metric system? I've decided it's time I learn how all that works). Although the handle was of course encased in the package, a make-shift handle had been fashioned out of burlap, which made things... easier.
Burlap you guys. My suitcase was not sent in a box. It was sent in cellophane. And burlap. And yellow duct tape. And my gigantic suitcase looked like this:

These pictures make my suitcase look small. Picture 110lbs of this.

I unwrapped Santa's sack, surprised to find that, underneath all the packaging, my suitcase still managed to get covered in dust, just like the rest of China.

The rest of my Friday was spent putting things away and smelling my clothes, scented with the fragrant aroma of American fabric softener.

Oh what a beautiful morning!

Since my traveler's visa expired last Saturday, I decided it was high time to make myself legal. A young woman working in the International Office went as my translator to get the physical required for a worker's visa. She insisted we go to the clinic at 7:15, which was great because then we got to sit around for 45 minutes until it opened. Eventually I spoke (avec translator) with a receptionist, who yelled at me for having the wrong size photos and not having a Chinese translation of my name before sending me (and translator, who had also taken on the position of "stuff holder") to cubicle #1 where I was asked for my height and weight, which I do not know in metric, and which took long enough for me to figure out that a crowd of people, next in line to give their stats, started to gather outside the door. Mid-calculation, my phone rings.

"Hi! Hello! This is ChineseNameIdontknow of the Mathematics school. Someone is here from your university. Can you come to meeting now?"
"Now? Um, I knew he was going to be here this week, but I wasn't told when, and I'm kind of busy. I'm at the hospital--"
"Hospital?"
"No no, clinic for my visa."
"Well at 10:00 he has to meet with SomeoneIdon'tknow and then this afternoon he has to give a lecture, so I don't know when..."
"I'm sorry, can I call you back?" Great.

Ignoring the call for now, I was sent to a new room, where a woman glanced up, looked over at a blood pressure machine (like the one at the grocery store) and told me to go at it.
Next back to the reception area, where I was yelled at again for my photos and told it was time to pay for the physical. So I stood in line to get my receipt, took it to the cashier's office, and stood in line to pay my 50 USD.

"Is that it?" I asked my new best friend/translator/stuff carrier.

"Um, haha, no."

Back in the reception room, I was directed to another cubicle, where I find an overweight, surprisingly hairy Chinese man pulling his shirt down and sitting up on a hospital table, which was covered in "distressed" towels in lieu of a nice sanitary piece of wax paper. Once he left I was told to hop on up, and my top half was doused in... water I think? which came out of a scary looking jar and was applied with an... old...bristly... wand thing. It wasn't until two of the EKG suction cups were placed on my nipples that I thought, "this is SO going in my blog."

Then I went upstairs and had blood drawn in the stinkiest room in all of China. Why so smelly? Oh, I don't know, maybe because 60 blood and urine samples were sitting there in open test tubes on the counter. No lids, just chillin' right next to my arm, which is starting to turn purple and tingle from the strangling rubber tube the nurse had tightly tied around it. As the woman haphazardly draws blood from my arm, glancing anxiously at her blinking cell phone, I can't help but think how much it would suck if she accidentally puts an air bubble in my vein or uses an infected needle and I die, and how the last bit of air I breathe will be heavy and putrid and gross.

Fortunately I didn't die or spill any test tubes and next came my ultrasound. The woman who did it yelled at us because we interrupted her game of Spider Solitaire. srsly. Good news: Not pregnant! With my shirt clinging to the ultra-ooze left on my stomach, I made my way down to the x-ray room, then to the eye examination room. As I read the lines off the wall (E... A, M, F... R, V, T, Q...), each letter was translated into Chinese, which cracked me up. Finally came my last run-in with the receptionist, who told me that I would have to come back on Friday and bring larger photos.

"No problem!" I told her.

Chinese: The Easy Way*

Just so you're all clued into the life and times of ME, I'm taking Chinese class here. Actually, 2 classes. Actually, for 20 hours a week. For those who remember my stellar attendance record in college [motto: if I can get an A in your lecture and only go 3 times, I should be praised, not penalized], you won't be too surprised to discover that it's not exactly easy for me to show up for class at 8-12, Mon-Fri. But I try, and really what more could possibly ask of me?

I've totally rekindled my love for IPA, something I was sure I'd never need again since my singing career... um... slowed down. But now I'm basically going to IPA the entire Mandarin language.

The students in my class come from all over the place, which makes for interesting conversation when we can manage.
US
Canada
Brazil
Australia
Germany
France
Russia
Japan
Korea
Hong Kong
Democratic Republic of Congo, which kind of blows my mind.

I sit next to the Korean Plastics. When our teacher tells us to speak through a dialogue, I usually don't participate because, as a teacher taking the class for free fun I'm more of an observer than a participant. The KPs beside me don't participate either, because apparently "work with your partner" in Chinese means "check your makeup" in Korean, and both of them pop open their compacts without a second thought. During class breaks, the studly trendy Korean guy comes in, and we all giggle and bat our eyelashes. On Wednesdays, we wear pink.

Also, the Russian girl in class told me her goal in life is to meet Paris Hilton.


But seriously Chinese is hard, ya'll.


*The post title came from a book I swiped from a fellow teacher. The title of the book cracks me up, and best of all, it comes with a guarantee! right.

This just in

Late breaking news bulletin:
China has blocked me from accessing anything blogger, xanga, livejournal, etc related. Also, no Wiki. Obviously, I can edit my own blog, but I can't read it, which makes perfect sense, because if I could read what I wrote, I would totally rebel against the CCP.

or something.

Anyway. The blockade is particularly tragic because, as we all know, I'm quite a fan of stogging (blogger stalking... you know you do it too), and now that I can't, I just don't know what to do with myself (cue music). Though I'm smarter than China and can bypass the system, it takes like seriously five minutes, which is an eternity in internet years. Also, I can't get around the block when it comes to writing comments, so please note that my silence in that dept. is not by choice.

ps I got a cell phone and the number is like, 30 digits long.

Update: I can visit this site but not the one that shows how to quickly and easily remove grease stains.

Molly Malone and the Blarney Stone

Went out last night to celebrate St. Patrick's day. I looked everywhere for these but found no success, despite the fact that there is more plastic crap for sale in China than I have ever encountered in my entire life:

ps will you be my boyfriend?

After an appearance at the "Foreign Kids' Party," which is much cooler than at home since we're not all Indian engineers and Korean violinists (kidding, of course. I love the foreign kids!), we headed over to the Bandjo Bar to celebrate the evening with my Irish neighbor. Contrary to the name, no banjo music, but there was a decent cover band. I wanted to hear Alice since that's the only Irish song I could think of besides Danny Boy, but the band stuck with The Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel, aka the only English music in China. We missed the presentation of the candle-lit "Wishing You a Happy St. Patrick's Day" cake but still managed to have a good time.

There were 2 rules for the evening:
-No referring to your pseudo-Irish heritage
-No asking the Irish kid about his pot of gold, lucky charms, 4-leaf clovers, etc.

I was being REALLY good, but as soon as someone successfully got Irish to dance a jig, we all decided that rule time was over.
Me: Hey, do you know Sean Connery?
Irish shakes his head in disappointment.
Australian guy: Isn't he Scottish?
Me: Oh. I thought... wait, isn't that the same thing?
etc etc, burns ad nauseam

I hope he didn't care, but based on the fact that the pictures which follow this one involved much less flag and much more skin, it's more likely he doesn't remember.

Open letter to China

Dear China,
Hey! What's up? I just wanted to send you a quick note to say Happy New Year! There are a lot of reasons to celebrate this one. I mean this is the year of the pig, which is supposed to bring good luck to all of us! Did you know that I'm a pig? Yeah, 1983. Cool, huh?
Also, thanks for the nightly celebratory fireworks. Really. I was worried I wouldn't get to listen to them any more, since the New Year's celebrations were supposed to end 3 WEEKS ago, but I am super psyched that they are still goin down each and every night.... and day! lol! Remember on Tuesday, when you set off fireworks at 6am and woke up the whole neighborhood? omg that was hilarious, you were so wasted.
LYLAS
-WhatCouldBeFina

Sister, do you know my name?

Was told this morning that my first English class would be... tonight! Making the discovery Day Of meant that I was throwing things together last minute. Typical, both of me and China. I'll be teaching oral English for 2 hours, 2 evenings a week, which is great since I'm pretty much dead to the world until mid-morning, anyway.

Tonight I arrived for class 20 minutes early (whaaa? I know.) to find most of the class already there, giggling anxiously at their desks. Three boys greeted me in the hallway by shouting my name overandoverandover and then proudly ushered me into the room. As they presented me to their classmates, a wave of whispers ran across the room-- lots of oohs and aahs and murmurs about the new "pretty teacher." The boys took their seats, front and center, and the rest of the students crowded into the first few rows of desks. With that, I called the first session of my fan club to order (China chapter, obvs).

I began class with introductions. In the US, this would take maybe 5 minutes and go like, "Hey, my name's Bob, I'm a French major." Here, introductions for my 30 students took nearly an hour--
"Good evening, Lovely Teacher. My name is Wang Xufeng. I come from the Foreign Language School. My major is literature and English, but I would like to one day be a teacher. I am from Xi'an, which is a beautiful and ancient city of China. I hope you will one day see it. Jinan is also very beautiful, and I would like to show it to you. My English is very bad, but I hope we can become great friends and help each other. I think you are very nice. I would like to know, pretty lady, why are you so charming?"
So they're basically all getting A's. In all honesty, I hope the flattery dies down a bit.

Most students have an English name that they've used in previous classes as well as in real life, since many foreigners can't pronounce their Chinese names (myself included, though I'm getting better). Students often pick a name themselves, or they receive one from a teacher, in both cases resulting in some pretty entertaining choices.

Some favorites from my class:
-Smile
-Snow
-Peppy
-Orange
-Shaqee
-Librae
-Cherry
-Iceberge (his spelling)
-and my personal favorite, Thomas Jefferson

Ok seriously, would you be able to call on Thomas Jefferson or Iceberge without laughing? Yeah, me neither.
Two female students requested that I give them English names. Without hesitation, I gave them each a beautiful name and then wrote both on the chalkboard so everyone would know the proper spelling:

OPRAH

TYRA

DVDealer

As promised, one of the guys from my hometown took me to the local sketchy DVD place this afternoon. It was basically amazing.
We go in this electronics store, which, by the looks of it, doesn't sell many electronics. Walking past the employees, we go into the backroom and climb up these stairs, where we find this long hallway of closed doors. A young girl stands lookout. At this point I'm pretty sure we're actually in a brothel and may or may not be expected to purchase some crystal meth.
Down the hallway we find an unoccupied room, go in, and take a seat. There's a coffee table and random crap everywhere, but I don't see any DVDs. In walks this woman with this box of probably 200 DVD cases. She drops it off on the coffee table for us to sift through before returning with another box. Then another. another. and one more.

I walked away with 5 DVDs and $4 less in my pocket. And then I washed my hands.

I gots friends, ya'll!

Over the weekend, the couple who live in the apartment below mine invited me down to tea. No crumpets, but they did have dried seaweed, the taste of which is growing on me. Since they both DJ as a hobby and “practice” every day, I kiiind of wanted to hate them (why no headphones, guys?), but unfortunately they were very nice. We went out to dinner with a few other people from our building, and as far as I know I didn’t embarrass myself.

The next night I played a kRazY game of LOTR Monopoly, which was actually pretty fun until I lost. Same game as the traditional version, except the pieces and properties were different and I couldn't pronounce anything because I'm not a loser and consequently never saw the trilogy. I met another neighbor, who’s a wee li’l Irishman. It’s a good thing there wasn’t any drinking involved, because I definitely would have asked about his pot o’ gold and he definitely would have punched me in the face. Everyone's been very friendly and welcoming, but I don't think I've found anyone who would enjoy shopping for pointy stilettos or cocktail dresses with me. Though on my budget I'll need a Chinese sugardaddy to take me shopping, anyway.

Number of people here who grew up within 30 km of me: 2.
The Chinese keep asking why all Americans are from the same place.

Cooking in the Chinese Kitchen

Since I can't figure out how to work my stove, I spent tonight's dinner money on wine glasses. Real classy!

Ripped from the headlines

From today's local English paper, China Daily:

-A Harmonious World in Theory and Practice (thanks to China)

-Ridding Poverty in Numbers (in China)

-Win-win Foreign Policy (China's)

And my personal favorite…
-Man on Moon Quite Possible in 15 Years!!

What could be fina, indeed!

CIEET: Day Two

It snowed today. It hasn’t snowed here this late in the season since 1951.
Yesterday it rained for the first time in almost six months, so needless to say, everyone was quite concerned about the weather and the impending apocalypse.

The Chinese who attended the college fair pretty much just wanted to know about rankings and test score minimums, so it was pretty boring.

Highlights included:
- Students who wanted information on our school's "Master's program." [singular] who had no idea what they wanted to study.
-Students who understood no English but would like to come to our school anyway.
-Students who would like to apply for our "#1 program," regardless of what this program actually is.
-Students who would like to know the demographics of our Chinese population, including M vs F. Hint: if you would like to find a Chinese husband, I suggest you stay in China.
-Students who asked very specific information about the location of our school and the weather there.
-the Mom who asked for information for her daughter, who couldn't come because she was FOUR YEARS OLD.

CIEET: Day One

The Chinese International Education… something something was a college fair held in Beijing this weekend, and I met up with a delegation from my home university to act as a representative. There was an estimated attendance of 55,000 people (over 2 days). I'll spare you the details but know that it was basically the hottest, stuffiest, smelliest, noisiest day of my life.

Goose and Duck

Tonight my aunt and uncle took me to their favorite expat pub. Some of their friends came, and there was a good band... they even let me play drums!

and then I made some German friends.

...and clearly drank too much.

What more could a girl ask for?

because I had no other plans for 6 am

This morning my aunt and I caught the flag raising ceremony at sunrise in Tiananmen Square. I figured there wouldn't be many people there, since it's a daily event, it's off-season, and we'd probably be the only people awake in Beijing. WRONG! There were already thousands of people there, all invading each other's personal space to get a good view of the flagpole. Really, the only people who could see were those in front of the pack, and I'm pretty sure I don't have enough motivation to be one of them. Maybe if there had been more dancing. It was an excuse to see the square at dawn (largest in the world, thank you), which in itself was pretty impressive, and watching the millions of Chinese soldiers disperse in formation was cool (and their coats are adorable).

Proud Party Member

Worthy of note: we were the only non-Chinese people out of the whole crowd. Everyone else was on their pilgrimage to the Center of It All. Oh, and I had my first stint of western celebritydom when a Chinese girl asked to take a picture with my aunt and me. Because why not.

For dinner tonight, we went to a Tibetan-themed vegetarian restaurant called Pure Lotus, which was like, in a mall but had an amazing ambiance once you got inside (run by monks?). Here's how they presented the meals:

big stone bowl + fruit + dry ice = Zen

The dishes were all named things like "bitter melon soup from hell" and "I love you-- no discussion." Some were much more ridiculous but of course I've now forgotten. I'm pretty sure they were supposed to be deep, not comical, but whatever.