Insane. So this thought has been slowly digging at me for the past few days, and every time I acknowledged it I'd sort of be in awe, and then get distracted by something else enough that the thought lost its relevance, only to stew around a little longer, getting more relevant as time wore on. Ok, I know I said just a "few" days, but it's been a weird week for time, what with the long weekend.
Anyways, one of the tasks I have set for myself at the library is to catalogue, label, and store a box-load of CDs that was left in my possession back at the beginning of my tenure here, as well as all the new ones that get recorded as we continue to have programs. At first it seemed like a pretty daunting order, because someone's really been neglecting these things for a while now, but with a trusty (or as trusty as it gets) mail merge set up in Word, it's going way faster than I'd ever anticipated. In fact, I have already completed pretty much every program that I have been present for, and am now moving on into the territory they usually call "before my time."
It's eerie, really, and I'm having trouble articulating why, to now be faced with all of these program names and speakers to which I have absolutely no emotional attachment. Trying to come up with a proper comparison has only led me to remember what I read about the Capgras delusion on wikipedia. Documenting these CDs hasn't exactly been a pleasant stroll down memory lane, or nostalgic at all for that matter, but I was getting used to expecting familiar titles and flier layouts, and such. First of all, to have rushed through that whole time span in a matter of hours was jarring, and I admit I'm a little confused when I look at some of these old program fliers, since information that I now expect to find in certain places is now hidden elsewhere.
It's been like going through a geological sample, watching the devolution of style (not to say that it gets worse, or to say that it doesn't) as the dates go farther back. It's just weird to suddenly be among such unfamiliar objects, and also a little weird to think that while these were being recorded by people I may or may not know, I was somewhere else entirely doing something else entirely.
Which actually leads to the thought I referenced at the start of this whole thing. I have been here almost a year. While it's unlikely that I'll continue loitering here until September (I'm not planning on it at least), that would mark a year of being *here* and that's hard for me to grasp. In less than three months I will have been back on home turf (as it were) for a full year.
A year ago today, this whole situation was as distant from me as the moon. Actually, no... more distant, because I can see the moon pretty clearly. What was I doing? May 29, 2007 (ok, technically May 30). I guess I would still have been teaching as if it weren't no thang. Riding the bus to China Care a few days a week. Breaking out the tank tops for summer. Buying those shorts and capris probably happened at some point around here. Stopping by the fruit stand, drinking lots of water, getting tofu after classes with Russ & Dave, perhaps watching YooHee with Alice and Tara, interviewing teachers, stopping by the French restaurant, reading Lolita, listening to the Stars, shopping at the new grocery store, eating modified ma la chuan and squid and diao zha bing and popsicles, sitting by my window, dreaming about coming home. The entire month of June is missing from my blog, so I have no record of it except for the dates embedded in my digital photos, but I'm assuming that I was busy enough that I didn't waste much time reflecting on it. I wonder if I knew already at the end of May that I'd be spending the rest of my summer in Beijing? I mean, a quick gmail search could answer that question for me, but I'd rather just pose it. I'm wondering if I ever mentioned the frisbee game that we struck up one afternoon, or our various attempts at badminton, or that one housewarming party I went to with Alice.
So it's weird, to be removed from all that by the length of a year. And a strange year. I've been in San Francisco for about 9 months, and I'm still of the mindset that it's temporary. The result is, of course, that I'm even more disconnected from the people around me than even new transplants. It's awkward, but I get the feeling that I don't want to invest myself too much in my surroundings because I *should* pick up and go.
Ok, that was personal. But anyways, should I pick up and go? I'm committed until the end of July, at which point, I ought to have a next step. I don't really remember how to set that up, nor do I really know what I would count as a valid "next step" anyways. What am I going to do in August that will eventually lead me through the course of another year, back to yet another today? That is a very good question.
Part of me says very much that I should just go back to China, no matter what it takes, because something interesting is just bound to happen there. What a bizarre rationale. But...
Showing posts with label Baotou. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baotou. Show all posts
Friday, May 30, 2008
Saturday, February 02, 2008
For foreign teachers series: The School System
How about I introduce the context and see how it goes?
Go outside around lunch time, and you'll see for yourself just how many students attend the Baotou public school system. If you have a good eye, you'll be able to to tell the Baogang #1 students from the Baotou #5 students by the different track suits each school chooses as their uniform. In some cases, you'll also be able to tell which students are boys and which are girls, and in others, whether they are 3rd years or 1st years. It's a very strictly organized system. However, since Baotou has a lot of schools, it took me a little while to figure that system out.
First of all, there's the nomenclature. Nearly every school in Baotou is referred to by an affiliation, followed by a number, followed by it's level. Schools are numbered in the order that they were founded. For example, Baogang #1 Zhong is the first high school founded in affiliation with the Baogang Steel Corporation. I originally thought that the affiliations were district designations, but that is not the case. I am still not entirely sure how the affiliations came about, though at one point I heard that the Baogang #1 school was originally founded for the children of Baogang employees. If that was ever really the case, it no longer holds-- BG1 accepts students from all walks and all over the country. Meanwhile, there is no specific locus point for schools with the same affiliation-- that is, you could leave one Baogang school and come to a Baotou city school before you see another Baogang school; they are interspersed. In the end though, when you're talking about high schools, locations and affiliations and numerations really don't mean a whole lot.
From my observations, what really runs the system are the schools' rankings. These rankings determine the "quality" of the students at any given school, the amount of tuition the school can demand, and, frankly, the degree of cooperation an extra-curricular teacher might expect from his or her classes, among other things. The rankings, in turn, are determined annually, and are based on the collective gaokao scores of each school's graduating class. Now is as good a time as any to state that the Baotou school system has evolved almost entirely in response to the nationwide college entrance exams, or gaokao. More on those later, but while BG1, BT9, and YJ1 have all been known to claim the title of best in the city, the true distinction goes to whichever one of those schools turned out the best scores on the exam.
Once there is the notion that one school is better than the rest and some schools are better than others, there is also the prestige of having attended one of the elite schools, or "key schools," as they're often called. There is clever saying among parents that I am sorry I can't remember word for word. The gist of it is that once a student has made it into BG1, a good university isn't far away. Not only does the name mean something, but the school is presumed to better equip students to score high on the single most daunting exam that any of them will face in their entire lives.
Therefore, admittance to the key schools is highly selective. In fact, a student's prospective high schools are not determined by anything-- not location, not what schools they've attended in the past-- but their previous academic performance. While it is illegal for schools to exclude students who wish to attend, only high-scoring students are eligible for reduced tuition, and elite educations do not come cheap. Those willing to pay a higher tuition for a better education also understand that they are submitting themselves to a more rigorous curriculum. Meanwhile, low-scoring students find that their choices are rather limited. Though I expect that one could find intelligent and hard-working students throughout the school system, the campuses of Baotou's key schools is where you'll supposedly find the best students in the city.
Ok... that's sort of messy, but I guess that's what a "first draft" is all about.
Next time: School Life
Go outside around lunch time, and you'll see for yourself just how many students attend the Baotou public school system. If you have a good eye, you'll be able to to tell the Baogang #1 students from the Baotou #5 students by the different track suits each school chooses as their uniform. In some cases, you'll also be able to tell which students are boys and which are girls, and in others, whether they are 3rd years or 1st years. It's a very strictly organized system. However, since Baotou has a lot of schools, it took me a little while to figure that system out.
First of all, there's the nomenclature. Nearly every school in Baotou is referred to by an affiliation, followed by a number, followed by it's level. Schools are numbered in the order that they were founded. For example, Baogang #1 Zhong is the first high school founded in affiliation with the Baogang Steel Corporation. I originally thought that the affiliations were district designations, but that is not the case. I am still not entirely sure how the affiliations came about, though at one point I heard that the Baogang #1 school was originally founded for the children of Baogang employees. If that was ever really the case, it no longer holds-- BG1 accepts students from all walks and all over the country. Meanwhile, there is no specific locus point for schools with the same affiliation-- that is, you could leave one Baogang school and come to a Baotou city school before you see another Baogang school; they are interspersed. In the end though, when you're talking about high schools, locations and affiliations and numerations really don't mean a whole lot.
From my observations, what really runs the system are the schools' rankings. These rankings determine the "quality" of the students at any given school, the amount of tuition the school can demand, and, frankly, the degree of cooperation an extra-curricular teacher might expect from his or her classes, among other things. The rankings, in turn, are determined annually, and are based on the collective gaokao scores of each school's graduating class. Now is as good a time as any to state that the Baotou school system has evolved almost entirely in response to the nationwide college entrance exams, or gaokao. More on those later, but while BG1, BT9, and YJ1 have all been known to claim the title of best in the city, the true distinction goes to whichever one of those schools turned out the best scores on the exam.
Once there is the notion that one school is better than the rest and some schools are better than others, there is also the prestige of having attended one of the elite schools, or "key schools," as they're often called. There is clever saying among parents that I am sorry I can't remember word for word. The gist of it is that once a student has made it into BG1, a good university isn't far away. Not only does the name mean something, but the school is presumed to better equip students to score high on the single most daunting exam that any of them will face in their entire lives.
Therefore, admittance to the key schools is highly selective. In fact, a student's prospective high schools are not determined by anything-- not location, not what schools they've attended in the past-- but their previous academic performance. While it is illegal for schools to exclude students who wish to attend, only high-scoring students are eligible for reduced tuition, and elite educations do not come cheap. Those willing to pay a higher tuition for a better education also understand that they are submitting themselves to a more rigorous curriculum. Meanwhile, low-scoring students find that their choices are rather limited. Though I expect that one could find intelligent and hard-working students throughout the school system, the campuses of Baotou's key schools is where you'll supposedly find the best students in the city.
Ok... that's sort of messy, but I guess that's what a "first draft" is all about.
Next time: School Life
Blast to the Past
On this quiet Friday evening, which I am spending alone and indoors, I'm going to take the cosmic hint and work on that foreign teacher's report I've been putting off for... well, an embarrassing amount of time. Let's revisit the Baotou public schools, shall we?
For the fall semester of 2006, I taught at the Baogang #1 Senior High School, or Baogang Yizhong. Someone at some time attributed to this school the honor of being not only the best in the city, but one of the best in Inner Mongolia and the whole region. It had an acclaimed math and science program, and was working on improving its English program. On the walls near the listening rooms were photographs of smiling foreign teachers from an earlier time.
Spring semester, I taught at Baotou #9 Senior High, or Bao Jiuzhong. This school also claimed to be best in the city, as the students would proudly assert. It's possible that their claim was legitimated with the results of that year's college entrance exam, but I can't be sure. In any case, this school was well-known for its English program and focus on the humanities in general.
In both cases, my class was something of an extracurricular-- students freely signed away their recesses to take part in our non-graded courses, which met once a week. The powers that be recommended that the other teachers and I teach on a rotating schedule, which meant that it could be two to three weeks before I saw any given class again. Classes tended to start out large before exams and other commitments pared them down to a few handfuls of dedicated students.
Ok, so maybe I'll work out the introduction last. In any case, so begins a series on English and the Baotou public schools.
For the fall semester of 2006, I taught at the Baogang #1 Senior High School, or Baogang Yizhong. Someone at some time attributed to this school the honor of being not only the best in the city, but one of the best in Inner Mongolia and the whole region. It had an acclaimed math and science program, and was working on improving its English program. On the walls near the listening rooms were photographs of smiling foreign teachers from an earlier time.
Spring semester, I taught at Baotou #9 Senior High, or Bao Jiuzhong. This school also claimed to be best in the city, as the students would proudly assert. It's possible that their claim was legitimated with the results of that year's college entrance exam, but I can't be sure. In any case, this school was well-known for its English program and focus on the humanities in general.
In both cases, my class was something of an extracurricular-- students freely signed away their recesses to take part in our non-graded courses, which met once a week. The powers that be recommended that the other teachers and I teach on a rotating schedule, which meant that it could be two to three weeks before I saw any given class again. Classes tended to start out large before exams and other commitments pared them down to a few handfuls of dedicated students.
Ok, so maybe I'll work out the introduction last. In any case, so begins a series on English and the Baotou public schools.
Friday, August 03, 2007
Leaving Baotou
Well, I'm not really sure why I haven't been updating this more frequently.
Anyways, I'm in Beijing! I got here... several weeks ago. The day I left Baotou, Julie called to say that she had to make an emergency trip with one of the babies, and so would be coming along on the same train. She needed to trade her ticket for a bottom bunk, so we thought it would be best if we could just trade our tickets onto the same car.
I actually finished packing mid-afternoon, and rather than ponder my fate in the sweltering apartment, I went out for a last chat with my fruit friend.
Alice came home, and we loitered for a while until Emily, one of the volunteers at the children's home, came to help with the move. Then the three of us loitered around until Linda and Alice's mom showed up, and we started to carry things downstairs. We found Helen's dad waiting outside the gate, and he went up to wrestle the large suitcase down the stairs and into the backseat of his car. Then we all piled into the two cars, and drove off.
We got to the train station just about on time, but Julie was late! All of us went onto the platform and finally got onto my car. There was some difficulty in this choice because we had originally planned to trade everything into the car they had. It's difficult for me to explain now, but her ticket was for a top bunk while mine was for a middle bunk, and bunks are valued and priced based on their vicinity to the ground. Extremely fortunately, Mr. Bao knew the family of the girl in the bottom bunk of my berth, and she was really nice anyway, so they traded right away. Then I went out as Julie came busting down the stairs with a bundle and a kind of harassed look about her.
We still needed to trade me into the car with all my luggage though... while it wasn't entirely necessary, I preferred it that way. After much ado and random flusteredness and bartering, everything worked out fine, the train rolled away, and I waved byebye to my Baotou friends.
A lot of times I think about going back up for a visit... though mainly to see certain babies and eat certain foods. But I think I'm mostly finished up there, it was a good year, but it's seriously just time to move on.
Anyways, I'm in Beijing! I got here... several weeks ago. The day I left Baotou, Julie called to say that she had to make an emergency trip with one of the babies, and so would be coming along on the same train. She needed to trade her ticket for a bottom bunk, so we thought it would be best if we could just trade our tickets onto the same car.
I actually finished packing mid-afternoon, and rather than ponder my fate in the sweltering apartment, I went out for a last chat with my fruit friend.
Alice came home, and we loitered for a while until Emily, one of the volunteers at the children's home, came to help with the move. Then the three of us loitered around until Linda and Alice's mom showed up, and we started to carry things downstairs. We found Helen's dad waiting outside the gate, and he went up to wrestle the large suitcase down the stairs and into the backseat of his car. Then we all piled into the two cars, and drove off.
We got to the train station just about on time, but Julie was late! All of us went onto the platform and finally got onto my car. There was some difficulty in this choice because we had originally planned to trade everything into the car they had. It's difficult for me to explain now, but her ticket was for a top bunk while mine was for a middle bunk, and bunks are valued and priced based on their vicinity to the ground. Extremely fortunately, Mr. Bao knew the family of the girl in the bottom bunk of my berth, and she was really nice anyway, so they traded right away. Then I went out as Julie came busting down the stairs with a bundle and a kind of harassed look about her.
We still needed to trade me into the car with all my luggage though... while it wasn't entirely necessary, I preferred it that way. After much ado and random flusteredness and bartering, everything worked out fine, the train rolled away, and I waved byebye to my Baotou friends.
A lot of times I think about going back up for a visit... though mainly to see certain babies and eat certain foods. But I think I'm mostly finished up there, it was a good year, but it's seriously just time to move on.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
The last 2 days
Apologies to my future self (and anyone who happens to care whether I update or not) for my delinquency. You know how it is when lots of smaller significant things happen and you don't want to write about all of it because you think you might be sitting in front of the computer a long time and somehow cheapening the actual experience with poor diction. I might as well mention a few things though. I don't know when people start showing up here to start using the computer, so we'll see how far I get.
So that "last thoughts" entry didn't work out at all, for the obvious reason that I didn't want to spend my last day in Baotou sitting in our sweltering apartment just blogging about it. Would you believe that I wasn't packing up until the last minute this time around? That isn't to say that things weren't hectic though or borderline dramatic even. The greatest obstacle, and a number of people have noticed my rants about this, was the disappearance of running water from my life. I've been doing anticipatory loads of laundry for weeks, and was systematically storing everything in my suitcases as I went. The weather got wet and chilly just before Chen's visit, causing me to break out a few heavier articles, but things were going more or less efficiently. Until Monday. I got up at 6:30 to put an early end to all the laundry business, and managed to wash the vast majority of everything, but then spent the rest of the morning at the children's home. I was back and ready to dig in again at about 3 in the afternoon, at which point I managed to dampen what remained of my dirty clothes with just enough water for things to be really difficult before never having water again. Ting shui isn't the rarest occurrence around there, and often will just result when one of the upstairs households uses the shower or something. Typically if they actually just shut the water off, it's back within hours at the most. So I spent pretty much the rest of the day going back and forth, checking the status of the shower, and subsequently cursing the heavens above.
No water has a lot of other consequences too. Water is an integral component in the operation of flush toilets. To wash your hands, you traditionally need water. And really, just forget about showering and all the other trappings of personal hygiene. For a while, the toilet situation was workable. Just hold it for a few hours as water trickles into the tank, and complete one satisfying flush cycle before hoping that you won't have to pee again anytime soon. Then, for post-potty handwashing, take advantage of the tiny 5-second jet that spews out of the faucet (also once every couple hours) and remove residual suds with baby wipes. And that worked fine for a while, and I still sustained the hope that our water would, at some point, return.
Packing went smoothly enough, though I did get very gross and dusty in the process. Even as my luggage filled, it seemed there was still plenty of just plain crap sitting around EVERYWHERE.
But I went off to Alice's house for dinner with her family, and when we all came back, there was still no water. Flushing became hit-or-miss. Around 11, we took our toothbrushes and biked back over to her apartment so that we could at least wash up a bit before bed. Her mom said that if water didn't come back the next morning that I could finish my laundry there.
Got up early the next day, came comfortably close to being finished, then called up Alice's dad about borrowing their machine only to discover that they no longer had water either. In fact, most of Baotou reported that there was no water. Well, most as in everyone Alice and I talked to. As the day went on, lower floors got water back... The fruit guy had his usual bucket of water on the sidewalk... other signs like that... but for us on the 5th floor, well... the toilet had quit flushing altogether. The situation still hadn't resolved itself by the time I left, and all I could really do was apologize for not having been able to do the dishes or clear the toilet of its... contents.
I hadn't showered in two days, which while bearable, was undesirable in the Baotou heat/dust.
As for the laundry, it wasn't clean and it wasn't dry. So that all went into random plastic bags to be dealt with here. The problem was that my Cornell sweatshirt actually managed to bleed all over my other things while they were sitting in the washing machine (it bled like a wounded animal), so... that was a nice discovery.
But anyway, I was at a stopping point at about 3... maybe earlier, and was pretty much just this bundle of nervous energy. You know like when you can't stop moving at all and nothing can calm you down. I was extremely aware of the heat and stuffiness, and also of the toilet being the way it was. So, in my final hours, I took my book and my ipod and went out for a stroll.
I got through a few pages of Lolita then had to stop. I couldn't really calm myself down. It had started after lunch time-- I had lunch with Dave at a Muslim noodle shop, as kind of a book-end to our first solo meal back in February-- and on the way back just got to thinking about being home and about being in Beijing, and doing something new at last. It got my blood circulating and I went off like a runaway train. But more like a sentient runaway train that suddenly realizes that it has no track. So I closed my book and began walking. The idea was to go to the fruit stand, but the fruit guy was across the street. As an alternative, I started walking towards the training center. It seemed like a place I should visit "one last time." The campus was really pleasant and quiet. Still on kind of an internal rampage though.
On my way back, YJ was back on his side of the street. So we talked until Alice came home and I had to get back to crunch time.
I already miss him a lot. You really don't expect in this day and age to meet someone that you can never see or communicate with again. But that's what happened in this case. There is absolutely no practical way for us to keep in touch at all, and slim is an optimistic way of describing our chances of ever running into each other again. I dunno, I have really strong yuanfen with some people sometimes, so I guess we'll see. But it's all just very sad and poignant.
There was actually some drama on Monday night that I'm not going to get into here, but it's a really... interesting story.
Getting to Beijing was another thing entirely, and I'll have to talk about it separately. I need to go check out my phone options. Trying to decide if I should just recharge my Baotou number or just forget it and replace it with a Beijing sim.
I'm ok though, if a bit itchy, and I showered twice last night!
So that "last thoughts" entry didn't work out at all, for the obvious reason that I didn't want to spend my last day in Baotou sitting in our sweltering apartment just blogging about it. Would you believe that I wasn't packing up until the last minute this time around? That isn't to say that things weren't hectic though or borderline dramatic even. The greatest obstacle, and a number of people have noticed my rants about this, was the disappearance of running water from my life. I've been doing anticipatory loads of laundry for weeks, and was systematically storing everything in my suitcases as I went. The weather got wet and chilly just before Chen's visit, causing me to break out a few heavier articles, but things were going more or less efficiently. Until Monday. I got up at 6:30 to put an early end to all the laundry business, and managed to wash the vast majority of everything, but then spent the rest of the morning at the children's home. I was back and ready to dig in again at about 3 in the afternoon, at which point I managed to dampen what remained of my dirty clothes with just enough water for things to be really difficult before never having water again. Ting shui isn't the rarest occurrence around there, and often will just result when one of the upstairs households uses the shower or something. Typically if they actually just shut the water off, it's back within hours at the most. So I spent pretty much the rest of the day going back and forth, checking the status of the shower, and subsequently cursing the heavens above.
No water has a lot of other consequences too. Water is an integral component in the operation of flush toilets. To wash your hands, you traditionally need water. And really, just forget about showering and all the other trappings of personal hygiene. For a while, the toilet situation was workable. Just hold it for a few hours as water trickles into the tank, and complete one satisfying flush cycle before hoping that you won't have to pee again anytime soon. Then, for post-potty handwashing, take advantage of the tiny 5-second jet that spews out of the faucet (also once every couple hours) and remove residual suds with baby wipes. And that worked fine for a while, and I still sustained the hope that our water would, at some point, return.
Packing went smoothly enough, though I did get very gross and dusty in the process. Even as my luggage filled, it seemed there was still plenty of just plain crap sitting around EVERYWHERE.
But I went off to Alice's house for dinner with her family, and when we all came back, there was still no water. Flushing became hit-or-miss. Around 11, we took our toothbrushes and biked back over to her apartment so that we could at least wash up a bit before bed. Her mom said that if water didn't come back the next morning that I could finish my laundry there.
Got up early the next day, came comfortably close to being finished, then called up Alice's dad about borrowing their machine only to discover that they no longer had water either. In fact, most of Baotou reported that there was no water. Well, most as in everyone Alice and I talked to. As the day went on, lower floors got water back... The fruit guy had his usual bucket of water on the sidewalk... other signs like that... but for us on the 5th floor, well... the toilet had quit flushing altogether. The situation still hadn't resolved itself by the time I left, and all I could really do was apologize for not having been able to do the dishes or clear the toilet of its... contents.
I hadn't showered in two days, which while bearable, was undesirable in the Baotou heat/dust.
As for the laundry, it wasn't clean and it wasn't dry. So that all went into random plastic bags to be dealt with here. The problem was that my Cornell sweatshirt actually managed to bleed all over my other things while they were sitting in the washing machine (it bled like a wounded animal), so... that was a nice discovery.
But anyway, I was at a stopping point at about 3... maybe earlier, and was pretty much just this bundle of nervous energy. You know like when you can't stop moving at all and nothing can calm you down. I was extremely aware of the heat and stuffiness, and also of the toilet being the way it was. So, in my final hours, I took my book and my ipod and went out for a stroll.
I got through a few pages of Lolita then had to stop. I couldn't really calm myself down. It had started after lunch time-- I had lunch with Dave at a Muslim noodle shop, as kind of a book-end to our first solo meal back in February-- and on the way back just got to thinking about being home and about being in Beijing, and doing something new at last. It got my blood circulating and I went off like a runaway train. But more like a sentient runaway train that suddenly realizes that it has no track. So I closed my book and began walking. The idea was to go to the fruit stand, but the fruit guy was across the street. As an alternative, I started walking towards the training center. It seemed like a place I should visit "one last time." The campus was really pleasant and quiet. Still on kind of an internal rampage though.
On my way back, YJ was back on his side of the street. So we talked until Alice came home and I had to get back to crunch time.
I already miss him a lot. You really don't expect in this day and age to meet someone that you can never see or communicate with again. But that's what happened in this case. There is absolutely no practical way for us to keep in touch at all, and slim is an optimistic way of describing our chances of ever running into each other again. I dunno, I have really strong yuanfen with some people sometimes, so I guess we'll see. But it's all just very sad and poignant.
There was actually some drama on Monday night that I'm not going to get into here, but it's a really... interesting story.
Getting to Beijing was another thing entirely, and I'll have to talk about it separately. I need to go check out my phone options. Trying to decide if I should just recharge my Baotou number or just forget it and replace it with a Beijing sim.
I'm ok though, if a bit itchy, and I showered twice last night!
Friday, May 11, 2007
Dirty Weather
It's dirty. Just plain dirty. It's been cooling off a bit the past couple days and the wind picked up a whole lot. The clouds moved in and I haven't seen the actual sky for a while now. Anyways, yesterday when I left the orphanage, I noticed that all the cars parked outside were coated with something. I figured it was the weird seed fuzzies that have been floating around for the last week or so, clinging to what might have been a light drizzle leftover from when I was indoors. Upon closer inspection, it turned out that the cars were all covered with a dense layer of what looked like splatters from a mud-soaked brush. I thought maybe the rain had condensed whatever film of dust must be already stuck to the hoods, but I looked even closer at the windows on the bus I rode home, and yeah... it was actually just the rain. It was raining dirt yesterday.
Today counts as a sunny day, but the wind's pretty strong. I went out for lunch and the dust from the street was getting blown everywhere. Turns out, if you part your lips for even a second, grit will get stuck in your teeth, so when you close your mouth there's this mineral grind between them. I didn't realize where that was coming from at first, and then just resolved to keep my mouth closed.
Today counts as a sunny day, but the wind's pretty strong. I went out for lunch and the dust from the street was getting blown everywhere. Turns out, if you part your lips for even a second, grit will get stuck in your teeth, so when you close your mouth there's this mineral grind between them. I didn't realize where that was coming from at first, and then just resolved to keep my mouth closed.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Like a polaroid picture
A little more than halfway through my class with the primary-age kids last night, we had ourselves a bit of an earthquake. I was explaining some exercise from the textbook when our 2nd floor classroom did the rhumba. You got the sound too... a low grumble. That's actually the real sound effect! I didn't know! It was very cinematic. The kids started yelling and whatnot... some popped under their desks as a joke (I think). I personally wasn't really sure what had just happened, but one of the dads insisted that it was just a big truck driving by and that everything was fine. Whatever, everyone knew it was an honest to goodness di zhen.
Earthquakes aren't a big surprise for people in Baotou. Some years back, there was apparently a big one that caused the only school closure in recent memory. The English teachers who were working here at the time got moved out of their apartments to live in a bus, which I think sounds pretty rad.
Technically earthquakes aren't news for me either. My grandparents live in Berkeley, and according to my mom, every time we visit, there are tremors like every single night. It's just that I've slept through every single one (though I did once respond with a sleeptalked "rumblerumblerumble"). So while I've been party to numerous little quakes, this is the first one I've ever consciously experienced.
So yes, it was exciting for me. I remember sitting there asking myself questions like "will the lights go out? will a huge chasm manifest on the floor of the classroom? what exactly should we do?" until it stopped. Then I sort of waited to see if there would be any follow-up, but there wasn't, so life continued almost as normal. We got out of class sooner, which was awesome cuz I was really tired of teaching them last night. I don't know how focused they were anymore anyway, and outside you could hear indistinct chattering, and inside people were having trouble dialing out for info. As class ended, someone confirmed that yeah it was an earthquake, and so I headed home really interested to see if Alice had any commentary to make about it. She was totally oblivious though that it had even happened and was actually disinclined to believe me! Snap!
But everyone else knew. Folks in Hohhot knew. And now you know.
This morning, I found two late messages from students asking me if I knew about the earthquake and if I was all right. Bless them! I don't know exactly what that means... whether or not it was stronger elsewhere, or whether they just think I'm weak-constitutioned, but I guess it's cool that someone cared.
The kindergarten class I'm making up this morning was cancelled last night, but then was uncancelled this morning. So it's a good thing I ended up not sleeping in like I'd planned, cuz otherwise I would have woken up just as the first students started pounding on the door.
Random note: saw a commercial last night that used the star wars theme. then shortly after, was the commercial in which computer animated multicolored condoms threw a tantrum. it honestly might have been a commercial for vascectomies, but it was pretty hard for me to tell. anyways, the condoms cheered and threw a party at the end, so whatever it was worked out.
Earthquakes aren't a big surprise for people in Baotou. Some years back, there was apparently a big one that caused the only school closure in recent memory. The English teachers who were working here at the time got moved out of their apartments to live in a bus, which I think sounds pretty rad.
Technically earthquakes aren't news for me either. My grandparents live in Berkeley, and according to my mom, every time we visit, there are tremors like every single night. It's just that I've slept through every single one (though I did once respond with a sleeptalked "rumblerumblerumble"). So while I've been party to numerous little quakes, this is the first one I've ever consciously experienced.
So yes, it was exciting for me. I remember sitting there asking myself questions like "will the lights go out? will a huge chasm manifest on the floor of the classroom? what exactly should we do?" until it stopped. Then I sort of waited to see if there would be any follow-up, but there wasn't, so life continued almost as normal. We got out of class sooner, which was awesome cuz I was really tired of teaching them last night. I don't know how focused they were anymore anyway, and outside you could hear indistinct chattering, and inside people were having trouble dialing out for info. As class ended, someone confirmed that yeah it was an earthquake, and so I headed home really interested to see if Alice had any commentary to make about it. She was totally oblivious though that it had even happened and was actually disinclined to believe me! Snap!
But everyone else knew. Folks in Hohhot knew. And now you know.
This morning, I found two late messages from students asking me if I knew about the earthquake and if I was all right. Bless them! I don't know exactly what that means... whether or not it was stronger elsewhere, or whether they just think I'm weak-constitutioned, but I guess it's cool that someone cared.
The kindergarten class I'm making up this morning was cancelled last night, but then was uncancelled this morning. So it's a good thing I ended up not sleeping in like I'd planned, cuz otherwise I would have woken up just as the first students started pounding on the door.
Random note: saw a commercial last night that used the star wars theme. then shortly after, was the commercial in which computer animated multicolored condoms threw a tantrum. it honestly might have been a commercial for vascectomies, but it was pretty hard for me to tell. anyways, the condoms cheered and threw a party at the end, so whatever it was worked out.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
May Day!
So, I had a post started that talked all about class schedules and stuuuuff, but I don't want to deal with it, so I'm starting a new one.
At the tail end of my "vacation" now. We had a whole slew of makeup classes last weekend (and a few more this weekend), and then starting Tuesday and going until tomorrow, we've had days off. Not gonna bother checking back over the grammar of that one, so whatever. Currently doing laundry, which is taking predictably forever.
It's been a pleasant enough week. Tuesday, May 1, was a big deal, but one which thankfully didn't produce any fireworks. We'd been planning on hitting "the mountains" but were at kind of a loss as to which/where/how the hell to get there. Dave and I grilled some of the high school students about Meiligeng, which he'd somehow heard about, but most students said just not to go there. We didn't really know of any alternatives (weren't even really sure what Meiligeng itself even entailed), so Russ ended up asking one of his students, Ann, who ended up taking us to Meiligeng anyways, which ended up being gorgeous.
Tuesday morning, we met up at the walking street at 8am, and piled into a car. It was a taxi-ish car, but slightly bigger, nicer, and black. That ride cost us Y150, which I thought was pretty steep. We split it 3 ways to treat Ann, which honestly was unexpected... I don't mind saying that I thought we were gonna do 4 ways. Whatever though, not a huge loss (except then I might have considered taking a cheaper car... I can be an assy skinflint when I want). Apparently when locals go, they take a bus or even just their bikes. So yes, we were just basking in luxury in that car. It was the first time I'd gone to the east side of the city... I remember asking Alice during Chinese New Year if she wanted to walk that way, and she adamantly declined, saying pretty much that it's disgusting cuz the only thing there is Baogang. Well, she was sort of right. The sky turned outright gray, and the streets were crowded with coal trucks and other trucks, and so on. We had to drive a ways before the sky cleared up again. I started taking photos at that point, where you could just barely make out the outlines of the Qingshan range in the smog, and photographed the progression from that out to the countryside. There, garbage lessened, civilization was spread a lot thinner, and the sky turned an amazing crystal blue. You could see the mountains pretty clearly after that.
The drive wasn't even an hour, so I guess that means we were ripped off a bit on the ride. But you know, we got there fast, comfortably, and relatively safe, so... yeah I'm not really sure how much that's worth to me exactly, so I'll just leave the whole topic of money cuz I sound stupid when I talk about it.
Since most people take May 1st off, we were expecting a good number of people to be at the mountain, one of the few (but proud) places of interest around these parts. Alice had to go to the monastery again with her company, and reported that it was crowded there also. But since we got there early, the population was still pretty manageable. We really lucked out on the weather, which was absolutely perfect: few clouds, bright sun, slight breeze, warm, not hot.
Not sure what I was expecting when I heard "mountains," but for some reason it didn't occur to me that there'd be admission. It was only Y20 though, which is less than half the price of the monastery, and really for triple the chance for enlightenment. Alice told me that back in the day, it was a dangerous place to go, and people died in ways ranging from falling to drowning. She didn't say that this happened regularly, but that's the image I got in my head. Anyways, since then, it's been "cultivated" into a tourist-friendly sort of trek, through the addition of steps and railings, and a few well-placed "no-climbing" officers with walkie-talkies. Once you start up the path though, you're given a choice every now and then of the safer, easier route, or the "more dangerous and more exciting" one. Of course we took the latter, which consisted of railings plugged next to footprints carved into the rockface, some set for strides much wider than my own. To its credit, the "wilder" paths really did make things much more interesting than, say, Taishan, which is just stair after stair after stair. There was a surprisingly slim margin for error in some places, and people stumbled fairly often.
For the number of people at the mountain that day-- there were some bare areas where folks literally looked like they were meandering through an ant farm (I have photographic evidence!)-- there was still quite a bit of unobscured view. In all I took about 250 pictures of... well, more or less the same thing. Blue sky, gnarled pines, scrubby bushes, and rock. Mountains of beautiful frictive rock. It's the kind of landscape you really just want to clamber all over.
The attractions of Meiligeng are usually listed as the following... "green" and "water." People were in various states of denial over whether or not there'd be either at this time of year. Fortunately, there were both. The waterfalls and creekbeds were already flowing, in a very benign and non-lethal sort of way. The trek up the mountain passes a lot of smaller waterfalls, all unique and interesting in their own rights, to a tall gusher at the top. The volume of water was much less than, say, Taughannock-- people were skipping across the pool to stand on a rock just in front of it without getting so much as sprinkled-- but it was still pretty impressive. If you hold out your right hand in front of your face and turn it 45 degrees counter-clockwise, you have the rock formation that the waterfall's nestled in. It's called the "hand of Buddha" or some such, and the water flows down the crook between the thumb and index finger. The resemblance really is there too. I have a semi-detailed record of all the waterfalls, having been inspired by the h2o pictures on Drew's website. I could really sit around and take close-ups at the same stream of water for like... an hour or something. Of course, the outcome is different every click!
All around the "summit" as it were, are the people who got there before you, staking out rocks and other hard places for their families and friends. You see things like picnic blankets draped over boulders, heated card games, and cans of beer cooling in shallow pools (cuz that water was freeeezing!). People of all ages start at the foot of the waterfall and scramble downwards on the rocks to find a place to settle down. Uniformed guards stand here and there saying goodness knows what into kschhhhking radios while also taking photos for various groups of people and occasionally yelling at others to quit climbing stuff.
I ran into two students up there, which was vaguely awkward, but we took some photos and said "seeya" and moved on. I sat around a while, a ways from Russ and Ann (some interesting, but ultimately confused observations there) and ate a quick snack. Dave had marched on ahead of us long before and spent 30 min or so at the waterfall before heading back and bumping into us along the way. I took more photos. Eventually the three of us started picking our way down the rocks to go back.
Actually, going down was the hard part. It was only about 11, but more people had arrived by this time and were making their way up. Meanwhile, a lot of folks who had already been sitting around were making their way down. Here and there, both groups must use the same narrow path/bridge/stairs/footprints. Then there are the people who think they can take shortcuts but going off the path (I participated at times), and while that does get you there faster, it's still sort of at the expense of others. I have the utmost admiration for the parents who carried their babies/small children both ways.
We met up with Dave and headed back to the front to get some food. There's one restaurant there, and I guess it's part of the Meiligeng resort. Yeah, there's a whole litter of villas where dwell large parties of vacationers. Actually, I think the restaurant was booked mostly full of them. We may have been the only ones there who didn't live on-site. That food was expensiiiiive, but I have no complaints about flavor or any of that. I mean, service was slow, but it's cuz they were also taking care of 3 full tables next to us, and it ended up giving us time to just unwind. The most interesting dish was the last one... chicken and mushrooms, where the mushrooms were like... big honking mushroom caps and stems. Very chewy and, uh, resilient, but I got a kick out of them. They held the sauce pretty well.
Afterwards, we started the long walk back. Meiligeng is actually at the end of a long road along which there is nothing. It's apparently around 8km long, but we figured what the heck, we like walking, and just went ahead. We were like the only people walking at the time, even though I know we saw a whole bunch of people coming the other way that morning. It was maybe 2:30 at that point. We walked a real long time, but it wasn't the least bit tiring or anything. The sun felt good, but my right hand and wrist were turning gray and totally mummifying. I couldn't really wiggle my fingers so well because of how dry my skin was getting. Also my fingers had swollen quite a bit. When I finally looked down I was all like "holy crap!" On either side you could see piles of scree, some last trickling vestige of the waterfalls and streams, scrubland, boulders, and weird animal tracks. Every now and then a vehicle would come literally screaming by. There was a temple on the side of the road, but it was gated and quiet. Also there was a small colony of abandoned tourist yurts, which intrigued me.
The end of the road fed into the road home, and the mouth was clogged with people waiting for the bus. Ann had planned for us to take the train back, so we walked a ways further away from town to a totally deserted train station. I didn't even realize there was a train station there. Anyways, the first thing I thought when we got there was how much like a computer game it felt to be on a totally empty platform and to be staring at signs but at no people. Very Myst-like, or at least Syberia-esque. Despite that, we went inside to inquire about tickets and the employees informed us that the schedule had been changed and the train now comes at 3 instead of 4 or 5 or whatever we thought it was. Aaaand it was 3:30. So we turned around and decided to hail a cab. But the road wasn't really a happening place either, and most vehicles coming by were 3-wheeled cars and cargo trucks. Otherwise you'd see cabs that already had fares or which the owners were using to take their families out for the day.
We walked back past a mian jing restaurant (how much business could they possibly get out there?), where a woman standing outside started asking us if we were looking for a taxi. She said she could get us a car. We took her up on the offer of a van for Y80 and went inside while she called whoever it was. He wouldn't do it for Y80, but Y100 was about what we expected, so we offered that instead. Then we waited around for the van. The woman looked sort of like how you'd expect Natalie Portman to look if she were Chinese.
We went back in a nice white van along the very bumpy terrain of Liuyuan district (or something to that effect). Suspension on these vehicles is really, uh, springy (I don't even know if suspension is what i'm talking about), so a lot of bumps sent me bouncing off the rear seat to the degree that all body parts lost contact with all car parts. Getting air that way was pretty fun. Got some more pictures of the drive back. I kept dozing off and smacking my head against the window.
He dropped us off at the far end of the walking street, so I walked back home via the north gate of our xiaoqu (uh... small district/living district/apartment complex/subdivision/what have you), and took pictures! So now you can see what my neighborhood is like.
I got home at about 4:30 maybe, and fiddled with pictures until almost dinner time. Alice and I took the bike back over to her place and I took pictures along the street too. We posed with the bike a bit, and her mom took pictures of us. Then we had a nice fairly light meal. I ate mostly xiancai (pickes) and this tofu rind(?... i'm just calling it that)-cucumber salad cuz it was goood. We made fun of the tv for a bit, and came home to watch It's a Boy/Girl Thing.
I don't know why I've never heard of this movie, but actually it was... cute. Parts of it were really dead-on in the humor department... others, not so much. It's weird that after all these years since Freaks & Geeks and The OC, Samaire Armstrong is still playing a teenager. Anyways, it wasn't the best movie experience cuz Alice was QQing with some pilot the whole time, but whatevs. I then decided to sleep, and I did.
At the tail end of my "vacation" now. We had a whole slew of makeup classes last weekend (and a few more this weekend), and then starting Tuesday and going until tomorrow, we've had days off. Not gonna bother checking back over the grammar of that one, so whatever. Currently doing laundry, which is taking predictably forever.
It's been a pleasant enough week. Tuesday, May 1, was a big deal, but one which thankfully didn't produce any fireworks. We'd been planning on hitting "the mountains" but were at kind of a loss as to which/where/how the hell to get there. Dave and I grilled some of the high school students about Meiligeng, which he'd somehow heard about, but most students said just not to go there. We didn't really know of any alternatives (weren't even really sure what Meiligeng itself even entailed), so Russ ended up asking one of his students, Ann, who ended up taking us to Meiligeng anyways, which ended up being gorgeous.
Tuesday morning, we met up at the walking street at 8am, and piled into a car. It was a taxi-ish car, but slightly bigger, nicer, and black. That ride cost us Y150, which I thought was pretty steep. We split it 3 ways to treat Ann, which honestly was unexpected... I don't mind saying that I thought we were gonna do 4 ways. Whatever though, not a huge loss (except then I might have considered taking a cheaper car... I can be an assy skinflint when I want). Apparently when locals go, they take a bus or even just their bikes. So yes, we were just basking in luxury in that car. It was the first time I'd gone to the east side of the city... I remember asking Alice during Chinese New Year if she wanted to walk that way, and she adamantly declined, saying pretty much that it's disgusting cuz the only thing there is Baogang. Well, she was sort of right. The sky turned outright gray, and the streets were crowded with coal trucks and other trucks, and so on. We had to drive a ways before the sky cleared up again. I started taking photos at that point, where you could just barely make out the outlines of the Qingshan range in the smog, and photographed the progression from that out to the countryside. There, garbage lessened, civilization was spread a lot thinner, and the sky turned an amazing crystal blue. You could see the mountains pretty clearly after that.
The drive wasn't even an hour, so I guess that means we were ripped off a bit on the ride. But you know, we got there fast, comfortably, and relatively safe, so... yeah I'm not really sure how much that's worth to me exactly, so I'll just leave the whole topic of money cuz I sound stupid when I talk about it.
Since most people take May 1st off, we were expecting a good number of people to be at the mountain, one of the few (but proud) places of interest around these parts. Alice had to go to the monastery again with her company, and reported that it was crowded there also. But since we got there early, the population was still pretty manageable. We really lucked out on the weather, which was absolutely perfect: few clouds, bright sun, slight breeze, warm, not hot.
Not sure what I was expecting when I heard "mountains," but for some reason it didn't occur to me that there'd be admission. It was only Y20 though, which is less than half the price of the monastery, and really for triple the chance for enlightenment. Alice told me that back in the day, it was a dangerous place to go, and people died in ways ranging from falling to drowning. She didn't say that this happened regularly, but that's the image I got in my head. Anyways, since then, it's been "cultivated" into a tourist-friendly sort of trek, through the addition of steps and railings, and a few well-placed "no-climbing" officers with walkie-talkies. Once you start up the path though, you're given a choice every now and then of the safer, easier route, or the "more dangerous and more exciting" one. Of course we took the latter, which consisted of railings plugged next to footprints carved into the rockface, some set for strides much wider than my own. To its credit, the "wilder" paths really did make things much more interesting than, say, Taishan, which is just stair after stair after stair. There was a surprisingly slim margin for error in some places, and people stumbled fairly often.
For the number of people at the mountain that day-- there were some bare areas where folks literally looked like they were meandering through an ant farm (I have photographic evidence!)-- there was still quite a bit of unobscured view. In all I took about 250 pictures of... well, more or less the same thing. Blue sky, gnarled pines, scrubby bushes, and rock. Mountains of beautiful frictive rock. It's the kind of landscape you really just want to clamber all over.
The attractions of Meiligeng are usually listed as the following... "green" and "water." People were in various states of denial over whether or not there'd be either at this time of year. Fortunately, there were both. The waterfalls and creekbeds were already flowing, in a very benign and non-lethal sort of way. The trek up the mountain passes a lot of smaller waterfalls, all unique and interesting in their own rights, to a tall gusher at the top. The volume of water was much less than, say, Taughannock-- people were skipping across the pool to stand on a rock just in front of it without getting so much as sprinkled-- but it was still pretty impressive. If you hold out your right hand in front of your face and turn it 45 degrees counter-clockwise, you have the rock formation that the waterfall's nestled in. It's called the "hand of Buddha" or some such, and the water flows down the crook between the thumb and index finger. The resemblance really is there too. I have a semi-detailed record of all the waterfalls, having been inspired by the h2o pictures on Drew's website. I could really sit around and take close-ups at the same stream of water for like... an hour or something. Of course, the outcome is different every click!
All around the "summit" as it were, are the people who got there before you, staking out rocks and other hard places for their families and friends. You see things like picnic blankets draped over boulders, heated card games, and cans of beer cooling in shallow pools (cuz that water was freeeezing!). People of all ages start at the foot of the waterfall and scramble downwards on the rocks to find a place to settle down. Uniformed guards stand here and there saying goodness knows what into kschhhhking radios while also taking photos for various groups of people and occasionally yelling at others to quit climbing stuff.
I ran into two students up there, which was vaguely awkward, but we took some photos and said "seeya" and moved on. I sat around a while, a ways from Russ and Ann (some interesting, but ultimately confused observations there) and ate a quick snack. Dave had marched on ahead of us long before and spent 30 min or so at the waterfall before heading back and bumping into us along the way. I took more photos. Eventually the three of us started picking our way down the rocks to go back.
Actually, going down was the hard part. It was only about 11, but more people had arrived by this time and were making their way up. Meanwhile, a lot of folks who had already been sitting around were making their way down. Here and there, both groups must use the same narrow path/bridge/stairs/footprints. Then there are the people who think they can take shortcuts but going off the path (I participated at times), and while that does get you there faster, it's still sort of at the expense of others. I have the utmost admiration for the parents who carried their babies/small children both ways.
We met up with Dave and headed back to the front to get some food. There's one restaurant there, and I guess it's part of the Meiligeng resort. Yeah, there's a whole litter of villas where dwell large parties of vacationers. Actually, I think the restaurant was booked mostly full of them. We may have been the only ones there who didn't live on-site. That food was expensiiiiive, but I have no complaints about flavor or any of that. I mean, service was slow, but it's cuz they were also taking care of 3 full tables next to us, and it ended up giving us time to just unwind. The most interesting dish was the last one... chicken and mushrooms, where the mushrooms were like... big honking mushroom caps and stems. Very chewy and, uh, resilient, but I got a kick out of them. They held the sauce pretty well.
Afterwards, we started the long walk back. Meiligeng is actually at the end of a long road along which there is nothing. It's apparently around 8km long, but we figured what the heck, we like walking, and just went ahead. We were like the only people walking at the time, even though I know we saw a whole bunch of people coming the other way that morning. It was maybe 2:30 at that point. We walked a real long time, but it wasn't the least bit tiring or anything. The sun felt good, but my right hand and wrist were turning gray and totally mummifying. I couldn't really wiggle my fingers so well because of how dry my skin was getting. Also my fingers had swollen quite a bit. When I finally looked down I was all like "holy crap!" On either side you could see piles of scree, some last trickling vestige of the waterfalls and streams, scrubland, boulders, and weird animal tracks. Every now and then a vehicle would come literally screaming by. There was a temple on the side of the road, but it was gated and quiet. Also there was a small colony of abandoned tourist yurts, which intrigued me.
The end of the road fed into the road home, and the mouth was clogged with people waiting for the bus. Ann had planned for us to take the train back, so we walked a ways further away from town to a totally deserted train station. I didn't even realize there was a train station there. Anyways, the first thing I thought when we got there was how much like a computer game it felt to be on a totally empty platform and to be staring at signs but at no people. Very Myst-like, or at least Syberia-esque. Despite that, we went inside to inquire about tickets and the employees informed us that the schedule had been changed and the train now comes at 3 instead of 4 or 5 or whatever we thought it was. Aaaand it was 3:30. So we turned around and decided to hail a cab. But the road wasn't really a happening place either, and most vehicles coming by were 3-wheeled cars and cargo trucks. Otherwise you'd see cabs that already had fares or which the owners were using to take their families out for the day.
We walked back past a mian jing restaurant (how much business could they possibly get out there?), where a woman standing outside started asking us if we were looking for a taxi. She said she could get us a car. We took her up on the offer of a van for Y80 and went inside while she called whoever it was. He wouldn't do it for Y80, but Y100 was about what we expected, so we offered that instead. Then we waited around for the van. The woman looked sort of like how you'd expect Natalie Portman to look if she were Chinese.
We went back in a nice white van along the very bumpy terrain of Liuyuan district (or something to that effect). Suspension on these vehicles is really, uh, springy (I don't even know if suspension is what i'm talking about), so a lot of bumps sent me bouncing off the rear seat to the degree that all body parts lost contact with all car parts. Getting air that way was pretty fun. Got some more pictures of the drive back. I kept dozing off and smacking my head against the window.
He dropped us off at the far end of the walking street, so I walked back home via the north gate of our xiaoqu (uh... small district/living district/apartment complex/subdivision/what have you), and took pictures! So now you can see what my neighborhood is like.
I got home at about 4:30 maybe, and fiddled with pictures until almost dinner time. Alice and I took the bike back over to her place and I took pictures along the street too. We posed with the bike a bit, and her mom took pictures of us. Then we had a nice fairly light meal. I ate mostly xiancai (pickes) and this tofu rind(?... i'm just calling it that)-cucumber salad cuz it was goood. We made fun of the tv for a bit, and came home to watch It's a Boy/Girl Thing.
I don't know why I've never heard of this movie, but actually it was... cute. Parts of it were really dead-on in the humor department... others, not so much. It's weird that after all these years since Freaks & Geeks and The OC, Samaire Armstrong is still playing a teenager. Anyways, it wasn't the best movie experience cuz Alice was QQing with some pilot the whole time, but whatevs. I then decided to sleep, and I did.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Life on the Streets
Today I randomly purchased two small bags of fruit for Y20. Included were strawberries and loganberry/mulberry-ish things, and they smelled so good that I just let myself get ripped off.
Alice had a day off today, so we went shopping! I found a pair of running shoes last night that cost only Y86 (the cheapest ones in WFJ were like 200+, with Adidas running about 600-1000), so like... I bought those. Also, I bought some really awesome zipper shoes... hard to explain, but they're really awesome, even though they will probably make my feet bleed a lot. Uh... also I got a shirt. And CDs.
In a shoe store, I found some awkwardly wingtipped sneakers, and realized that I would ultimately like to own a pair of slick, wingtipped ballet flats. If I had me a pair of those, I don't know what else I would ask for. I mean... well... figuratively.
Also, I realized something. All those random splashes of liquid that I thought were people emptying tea mugs on the street-- not that at all. So, diapers aren't really *in* here, most babies just wear pants with the seam split open in the back, so when they squat it's like one of those coin purses that pops open to reveal familiar excretory orifices. So I knew that parents coax their babies into peeing in the shrubberies and along the curbs and on the cobblestones near the playground, but I sort of convinced myself that I was skirting baby puddles pretty well. Today, outside the bank, we saw a family walking their baby along, encouraging it to leave this astonishingly long streak of baby pee in its wake. I mean, I avoid all street puddles on principle, but to be shown so vividly that the ratio of pee-to-actual water is actually much greater than I thought, that I run a high risk of stomping into *that* kind of puddle should my vigilance fail just once... well, it was humbling.
Yeah, shopping here isn't something I opt to do much on my own. Too much sales pressure. Like, I've never really been "pee-shy" (as Ryan called it) in public restrooms or anything, but I imagine that it's something comparable to what I feel when I walk into a store here. For example, I went into an outdoor gear shop last night and immediately there was a girl on my left and another on my right, intently following my gaze so that they could describe (as if I wasn't already looking at it) every object it landed on. So like "that's a t-shirt... those are swiss army knives... shoes... belts..." aaaargh! I just can't go about my business while under so much scrutiny. There is really no store where this does not occur, and it really gets me so... hulihutu that I no longer trust my own taste or judgement and feel so beleaguered and vulnerable that I eventually just have to get the hell out, abandon ship, mayday mayday! And so I do. So if I ever do elect to go shopping, I also elect to have Alice with me, because, strategically played, the presence of a second warm body increases the amount of personal territory we have between us.
I have learned that I have a new class on Saturday afternoon. I did find out just a few hours ago. I am going to lose my mind lesson planning tonight and tomorrow (mostly tonight, I suppose, dammit... or according to the people who subtitled the Friends DVD we have, TMD!). Glad I brought that coffee with me.
Alice had a day off today, so we went shopping! I found a pair of running shoes last night that cost only Y86 (the cheapest ones in WFJ were like 200+, with Adidas running about 600-1000), so like... I bought those. Also, I bought some really awesome zipper shoes... hard to explain, but they're really awesome, even though they will probably make my feet bleed a lot. Uh... also I got a shirt. And CDs.
In a shoe store, I found some awkwardly wingtipped sneakers, and realized that I would ultimately like to own a pair of slick, wingtipped ballet flats. If I had me a pair of those, I don't know what else I would ask for. I mean... well... figuratively.
Also, I realized something. All those random splashes of liquid that I thought were people emptying tea mugs on the street-- not that at all. So, diapers aren't really *in* here, most babies just wear pants with the seam split open in the back, so when they squat it's like one of those coin purses that pops open to reveal familiar excretory orifices. So I knew that parents coax their babies into peeing in the shrubberies and along the curbs and on the cobblestones near the playground, but I sort of convinced myself that I was skirting baby puddles pretty well. Today, outside the bank, we saw a family walking their baby along, encouraging it to leave this astonishingly long streak of baby pee in its wake. I mean, I avoid all street puddles on principle, but to be shown so vividly that the ratio of pee-to-actual water is actually much greater than I thought, that I run a high risk of stomping into *that* kind of puddle should my vigilance fail just once... well, it was humbling.
Yeah, shopping here isn't something I opt to do much on my own. Too much sales pressure. Like, I've never really been "pee-shy" (as Ryan called it) in public restrooms or anything, but I imagine that it's something comparable to what I feel when I walk into a store here. For example, I went into an outdoor gear shop last night and immediately there was a girl on my left and another on my right, intently following my gaze so that they could describe (as if I wasn't already looking at it) every object it landed on. So like "that's a t-shirt... those are swiss army knives... shoes... belts..." aaaargh! I just can't go about my business while under so much scrutiny. There is really no store where this does not occur, and it really gets me so... hulihutu that I no longer trust my own taste or judgement and feel so beleaguered and vulnerable that I eventually just have to get the hell out, abandon ship, mayday mayday! And so I do. So if I ever do elect to go shopping, I also elect to have Alice with me, because, strategically played, the presence of a second warm body increases the amount of personal territory we have between us.
I have learned that I have a new class on Saturday afternoon. I did find out just a few hours ago. I am going to lose my mind lesson planning tonight and tomorrow (mostly tonight, I suppose, dammit... or according to the people who subtitled the Friends DVD we have, TMD!). Glad I brought that coffee with me.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Gravity, and how it applies to me
Well, since coming to Baotou, I've developed an interesting fear that I did not have before. I am talking about my newfound fear of falling down a manhole. Is this a distinct possibility? Well... I really can't say. I have unwittingly walked very near open manholes, and I have to say that they do kind of sneak up on you. It's not like you expect to find open manholes anywhere, but every once in a while, someone will remove one of the covers and leave no trace of a warning. Knowing my own tendency towards falling in all manners, and my hit or miss attention span, I would say it's a valid fear. Manholes, for their part, are inexplicably dark for how sunny it is outside, and unreadable in their depths. Also, I'm sure that they're full of all sorts of nasty shit, and that any sudden descent into the sewers would be every bit as painful as they make it look in cartoons.
Having shared that...
It is cold once again. We had a warm spell, but boy, was it short! What followed was a lot of snow and an intense wind that lasted for 2 days. I watched the wind blow from my window at night, more or less drawn by the sound-- the equivalent of a train whistle. The streets create a kind of wind tunnel, so everything was swept efficiently away. Everything includes a few of the lanterns people had hanging out for spring festival. With snow, as always, comes the solid sheet of ice that covers all the roads and most of the sidewalks. Going anywhere becomes a perilous enterprise, and with the wind... well, my mass is such that high wind + low friction = wooooo!
Don't ask why, but I was so sure that we were out of the woods for this type of weather. But no. Actually, I should have known. It had to snow one more time at least, so that I could wipe out at least once. Why on earth would I suspect that I could live through such an icy winter without falling on my ass?
So today, I fulfilled my destiny. Dave and I were on our way to teach our first classes at No. 9 Middle School when I unwisely stepped on this little ice... slope... and I had the most spectacular fall-- even by my standards. One of my mittens, which I was wearing, even went flying a few feet. Because the fall involved my sliding very quickly down a gradient (the part of a the sidewalk that slopes to meet the street), there was that feeling of going horizontal in mid-air before coming crashing down. I made contact with the sidewalk all along the right side of my body, and it was like snowboarding all over again. I have a nice long bruise down my thigh, though it's mostly the invisible kind, and also tennis elbow in my arm. I guess maybe it's because I landed on my hand (the one that lost the mitten, so it didn't feel nice). It hurts to sit and also to put my hood up, but like...not a lot. Mostly just enough for me to talk about it. Anyways, I elected not to look too closely at the patch of ice where I fell, though I do know that there was a discarded apple core very near my face.
But anyways, that was an exciting addition to my day, and therefore I ended up dwelling on it... a lot. I mean... I did have class, and it was interesting, and I did have dinner, and it was tasty, but mostly today will be the day that ate it. Though... actually I have been having a lot of flashbacks to dinner and the vinegar that was there. Ooooo.
Class... well, I modified a lesson from last semester that was really fun, but in my opinion, it felt really dull. So I was really bored with my own lesson. That means I'll switch it out with something else when we have class again on Friday. The students were really... bright-eyed. If they had tails, they would have been bushy. So I felt bad that my lesson was so yawn-tastic. Ah well. Next time. I will redeem myself!
Dinner was xian[r] bing, but a different variety than I've had before. These were more like round guotie, and the filling was a bit drier. Also, they were smaller and therefore 500 times easier to manage. I think I prefer these, and foresee many take-out trips to this restaurant, which is right across from the school.
Apparently my arm/wrist hurts also when I type a lot, which I do not like, so I am stopping now. I get to visit the orphanage tomorrow... I hope I can find something to do there!
Having shared that...
It is cold once again. We had a warm spell, but boy, was it short! What followed was a lot of snow and an intense wind that lasted for 2 days. I watched the wind blow from my window at night, more or less drawn by the sound-- the equivalent of a train whistle. The streets create a kind of wind tunnel, so everything was swept efficiently away. Everything includes a few of the lanterns people had hanging out for spring festival. With snow, as always, comes the solid sheet of ice that covers all the roads and most of the sidewalks. Going anywhere becomes a perilous enterprise, and with the wind... well, my mass is such that high wind + low friction = wooooo!
Don't ask why, but I was so sure that we were out of the woods for this type of weather. But no. Actually, I should have known. It had to snow one more time at least, so that I could wipe out at least once. Why on earth would I suspect that I could live through such an icy winter without falling on my ass?
So today, I fulfilled my destiny. Dave and I were on our way to teach our first classes at No. 9 Middle School when I unwisely stepped on this little ice... slope... and I had the most spectacular fall-- even by my standards. One of my mittens, which I was wearing, even went flying a few feet. Because the fall involved my sliding very quickly down a gradient (the part of a the sidewalk that slopes to meet the street), there was that feeling of going horizontal in mid-air before coming crashing down. I made contact with the sidewalk all along the right side of my body, and it was like snowboarding all over again. I have a nice long bruise down my thigh, though it's mostly the invisible kind, and also tennis elbow in my arm. I guess maybe it's because I landed on my hand (the one that lost the mitten, so it didn't feel nice). It hurts to sit and also to put my hood up, but like...not a lot. Mostly just enough for me to talk about it. Anyways, I elected not to look too closely at the patch of ice where I fell, though I do know that there was a discarded apple core very near my face.
But anyways, that was an exciting addition to my day, and therefore I ended up dwelling on it... a lot. I mean... I did have class, and it was interesting, and I did have dinner, and it was tasty, but mostly today will be the day that ate it. Though... actually I have been having a lot of flashbacks to dinner and the vinegar that was there. Ooooo.
Class... well, I modified a lesson from last semester that was really fun, but in my opinion, it felt really dull. So I was really bored with my own lesson. That means I'll switch it out with something else when we have class again on Friday. The students were really... bright-eyed. If they had tails, they would have been bushy. So I felt bad that my lesson was so yawn-tastic. Ah well. Next time. I will redeem myself!
Dinner was xian[r] bing, but a different variety than I've had before. These were more like round guotie, and the filling was a bit drier. Also, they were smaller and therefore 500 times easier to manage. I think I prefer these, and foresee many take-out trips to this restaurant, which is right across from the school.
Apparently my arm/wrist hurts also when I type a lot, which I do not like, so I am stopping now. I get to visit the orphanage tomorrow... I hope I can find something to do there!
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
an update but only sort of?
At last, I've found an internet bar where the connection's speedy enough to connect to this damn website!
Anyways, currently I'm in Hunan, which is a far way from where I was... before. For the curious, Liz's visit was quite exciting, though the most interesting thing I could do for her was to take her on a food tour of the city. She did come with me to all my classes, and we managed to take a trip to Hohhot and watched lots of movies, but it was cold enough that I was mostly content to feed her and stay inside places.
Turns out that I had to administer a test on Thursday to the training center students. Let's just say I found out about that one very recently. I think I made up a pretty nice test though. The only thing was, that it was sort of a more... ostentatious type of exam, meaning that *cough* they're supposed to pass *cough*. I made them work for it though. I only copied about 30 pages though, since an average of only 6-12 people had been showing up the last couple days. Whew. Nearly everyone showed up. It was really, um, surprising. I'll miss that class I think.
As soon as Liz left on the 10th, I definitely got an itchy throat. It progressed to screaming burning pain over the next couple days, and after having taken a bunch of random medication, I took a nap on the 13th only to wake up unable to speak at all. It was just a sort of feeling that said "don't even bother trying." So I didn't.
Ooh. I have to leave. Haha, not what I meant to say, but there you have it.
Anyways, currently I'm in Hunan, which is a far way from where I was... before. For the curious, Liz's visit was quite exciting, though the most interesting thing I could do for her was to take her on a food tour of the city. She did come with me to all my classes, and we managed to take a trip to Hohhot and watched lots of movies, but it was cold enough that I was mostly content to feed her and stay inside places.
Turns out that I had to administer a test on Thursday to the training center students. Let's just say I found out about that one very recently. I think I made up a pretty nice test though. The only thing was, that it was sort of a more... ostentatious type of exam, meaning that *cough* they're supposed to pass *cough*. I made them work for it though. I only copied about 30 pages though, since an average of only 6-12 people had been showing up the last couple days. Whew. Nearly everyone showed up. It was really, um, surprising. I'll miss that class I think.
As soon as Liz left on the 10th, I definitely got an itchy throat. It progressed to screaming burning pain over the next couple days, and after having taken a bunch of random medication, I took a nap on the 13th only to wake up unable to speak at all. It was just a sort of feeling that said "don't even bother trying." So I didn't.
Ooh. I have to leave. Haha, not what I meant to say, but there you have it.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Happy New Year!
And here we are again. It's not that I've been too lazy to update, nor have I necessarily been too busy. Frankly, I've been terrified of the sheer bulk of things left unrelated that I tend to shy away from any commitment that I could make to getting it all down. But anyways.
I'd really like to share my holiday experiences, since they were fun for me this year. So, there's actually a Christmas season here in Baotou, and it's characterized by Santa Claus posters and beer advertisements (the best) in the windows of most shops and restaurants, as well as people selling tinsel and fireworks on the street, and also a large Christmas decoration sale by the entrance of the Wangfujing department store. The department store itself had an impressive display involving a structural frame of a Christmas tree bedecked with lights and what looked like giant stuffed bears trapped inside and trying to break free. I have a picture, don't worry. Christmas here was a strange animal... it didn't really have any religious aspect to it (Santa reigned supreme), but surprisingly, it was also missing the rampant commercialism (which comes pre-assembled as a phrase, so forgive the cliche). There were no crowds comparable to the human seas we get back home, and no insistence that your Christmas would be any worse if you didn't spend NOW. It was more like an amusing little reminder that Christmas was happening elsewhere in the world, which was nice seeing how I almost missed both Halloween and Thanksgiving.
I bought myself a set of tiny string lights, which is amazing, as well as a bunch of dinky little ornaments... and a felt stocking. All of these were displayed around the living room at one point... well, for one night, but the ornaments had to come down before the elementary schoolers even set foot in the apartment just because.
In terms of observation, there was plenty of celebration to take part in, but I didn't get a break at all... opposed to Russ who managed two days without real classes. It started on the 23rd, Saturday, when I met Russ and our combined adult students at a bath house after my Saturday morning class. I made Alice accompany me to the door since I had no idea what I was doing. They made me check my shoes in the lobby and wander sock-footed up a flight of stairs to a locker room/dressing room/salon-type place. It was a big pretty room with a handful of women ready to assist. It's just that I had no intention of taking a bath and was really only prepared to find the dining room, which was the meeting place.
Oh, so the bath house phenomenon... it seems pretty straightforward. When I first heard about it, I assumed it was just a public bath situation. But if you ask anyone "what's the bath house like?" you get answers like "well, you can watch movies," "there are lots of games," "you can eat 3 meals there." No one really talks much about actually bathing, which, while I guess it's assumed that you'd just take a bath, just confused me a lot more.
So then, after a confusing few moments with the ladies in the changing room, one of the hospital students walked by and I latched onto her. She helped me straighted things out and I was presented with "pajamas" (shui yi) and a key to a locker. I got changed while the student just stood there chatting with me, which was ok I guess, and then the two of us made our way to the dining room. The dining room was an all you can eat buffet, and some of the foot was pretty good. I had a good time with the meatballs. The students were divided in two tables kind of far away from each other based on what class they were in, which was just silly. I don't see why Russ allowed them to do that, but whatever. So there was a lot of running back and forth, taking pictures with one or the other group, eating bread at one place, and meatballs at another, and finally I was just like "let's go meet them." And things were easier after that.
We sat around a little while, and at last there was a group decision to go play some games. So we went to the... game room? It had a pool table and two ping pong tables. Yes! Two games I love, but unfortunately am untalented at. So I got myself into a pool game against Russ and one of the hospital students, with another hospital student on my team. We got killed, really, but it was fun. Not only was the other team more skilled, but... actually, maybe they were just more skilled. I know my teammate was just playing for the fun of it anyways, and every turn I had, I was lined up with shots that I simply couldn't figure out. Well, and also, seeing as how my conception of physics is sincerely warped, there was just no contest. After that though, I ended up in yet another game... and then another! I got a little better, but never quite won. Then I went into ping pong volleys with one of my students and actually worked up a sweat. It wasn't the ping pong so much as the heat. The bath house is hot and humid throughout, which I guess is what necessitates the pajamas... loose-fitting short sleeved v-neck shirts and matching... bermuda shorts? I enjoyed myself though. At the end, one of my students looked up at me and said "you are funny." Was I being a kid again? Maybe, but it felt good!
After that, I had to take off because I told Alice I'd be back around 3 to decorate the apartment for my Saturday night class with the #9ers. When I got back though, she was asleep, so I ended up watching most of Step Up and attempted to decorate on my own. Turns out that the string lights could only go in one place-- along the back of the couch-- because of the way the outlets are set up. I tried to make my own garland of ornaments using dental floss, but... what I got was the most hopeless knot I've ever encountered. I ended up untangling part of it, which is hanging on the cabinet thing next to the tv, but cut mercilessly through the rest of it. Those ornaments I hung from the string lights. So things didn't get much more festive around here, but you could at least sense that there was an attempt. I set out a bunch of junk food I bought the day before and hoped that the kids wouldn't count on me to entertain them.
Perhaps they did? So I taught them how to play hold-em, using my vast amount of candy leftover from Halloween as chips. I'm not sure if they really caught on... one boy was making infuriatingly poor choices when it came to betting, but it was all right. We also did Secret Santa and then played Psychiatrist, which is always a good game for bonding and whiling away time, even if it is at the expense of a single person. He was a good sport about it though.
I decided early on that the elementary schoolers would be coloring Christmas cards or Christmas posters. And that's just what they did-- their pictures are hanging prominently on one of our doors. I doubt I'll be taking them down anytime soon... same with the lights. Just carrying on that Pan family tradition of eternal Christmas. Unfortunately, I had to pull the jack-o-lantern face off the tupperware for my Thanksgiving cooking experiment, so there are no Halloween decorations to complete the effect.
That afternoon, I did another class party with the other high schoolers at Russ's apartment. We did Secret Santa again, which was a little less interesting than the night before, but ok. Then Psychiatrist again. What's funny is that the student who was psychiatrist the night before also came to this other party and got to play on the other side. He enjoyed it better, I think. The kid I was hoping to get short straw this time did, but he didn't take the role as well as I thought he would. It seemed like he was having like... an internal battle when Russ came back with more food, so I had Russ join him. They figured it out together, but it took almost 2 hours, which is insane.
After the kids took off, we watched LoTR for a while before going out to meet Linda, the mother of one of the students in the Saturday class who organized everything and shows up to pretty much every class. She's a cool lady. Anyways, she'd invited us out for dinner with some of the students and their parents. The restaurant was amazing, and it served some of the best Chinese food I'd ever had. It was described to me as "farm food," but... something doesn't click. Diana and Sean (students) were already there when we arrived, and Diana came down with us to pick the dishes. You walk through what looks almost like a cafeteria... maze... of liang cai (cold dishes akin to salads), soups, breads, meat dishes, steamed veggies, and so on, and we ordered a ton. We waited a while for everyone to show up, then dug in. One of my favorite things was this salad made of what appeared to be the leaves of a jade plant. It was actually some succulent herb that's good for sore throats, but it tasted great. And the fact that it was a succulent made it very refreshing. Also notable were the mushroom dishes. I took many pictures. The company was excellent too. These students obviously work hard at school and still manage to put plenty of effort into our class. But they're also really easy to get along with, and I had a good time chatting with the girls throughout. Russ got really annoying as the alcohol flowed, but all I could really do about it was to edge as far away on my seat as possible to avoid his flailing arm gestures. Oh well. Dinner ended up lasting almost 4 hours with all the conversation. Very memorable!
Next day Alice and I went over to Russ's for a party he was having for the hospital students and, oddly, one of the TC students. I had a fun time? It was weird. Turns out that Connie still seriously believed my name to be Christine. I left early with Alice so that she could go home and change for...
That night we had to go to a... function hosted by the Baotou Municipal Government for the foreigners in town. I was given my invitation as we walked in and was stunned to find that I had been renamed "Kathavice Pan." Why wouldn't you question that? I mean, they got the "a" right, but really... They hand out gifts at this thing every year, I guess, and last year Tevie got a plastic jar that I actually think looks pretty cool (she gave it to Alice). This year we got what was generally agreed upon as "really ugly" pig figurines. Mine is a pig hoarding a large bag of money, I think. I haven't looked at it a second time. When I visited Alice's apartment a few days later, her mom sat down next to me, pointed to Alice's pig, now poised on top of their TV, and exclaimed how ugly it was. I wound up seated next to two 22 year old girls from Chicago and was very excited. One of them reminded me a lot of Deb from home, actually. But at the time there wasn't a ton to talk about, so who knows. Turns out that one of them is friends with one of my sometimes students though, which is cool. The whole dinner was just... odd. They had cool performances, including these girls who were like hula hooping geniuses, and also this crazy British man who insisted on singing Frosty the Snowman and made us all feel a little awkward.
And that was the holidays. I audited my last English class at #1 on Monday morning, actually... I hit an 8am class, which was really hard, actually. Two of my Saturday students were in that class and I love how enthusiastic they were about it. One of them forgot to bring his gift for the class though, which sort of screwed up their system and I was slightly disappointed. But he managed to remember both his gifts for the weekend, so I figured he deserved whatever slack it took. Turns out the lesson was sort of dependent on my presence. I mean, the teacher could have done it without me, but anyways... first she had them do ping-pong to spoon relay races, then had me shout out random 3-digit numbers for them to formulate in teams with cards with the digits 1-9 written on them... that was a little funny when they came up and the numbers were backwards, and the students were like screaming for my attention (cuz sometimes it's just who you see first). Then she had me make random sentences for them to do competitive Telephone. I couldn't come up with anything particularly clever, so I just went with "I can't seem to find my keys," and "My favorite band has a concert on Friday." For the first one, one of the teams came up with a sentence so discombobulated that I couldn't believe that they could have believed that I actually said that. They both did pretty well with the second though.
Seems that people here are told that Christmas is a mega-holiday that ranks in importance with the Spring Festival. "Is Christmas the most important American holiday?" is a question I was asked a lot. I didn't want to be the spokesperson for the American people, but... Probably "yes" if you're just considering the whole agglomerated holiday season, but for obvious reasons, but I tried to convey "no" in the fairest way possible.
As for New Years, I was in the shower. That is exactly where I was when midnight hit. Oops. But with the rearranging of schedules to accomodate the holiday (which doesn't seem like it should be one, but whatever, people deserve it), I had 2 classes on Monday, so I really justed wanted to be lazy and homey.
Uuuum, so wrapping up classes now, and preparing for a mid-Jan departure and some highly anticipated vacation time and travel. I know I don't work nearly as hard as some of my friends stateside, but I could use a break nonetheless. Meanwhile, Liz has wandered into my clutches. She flew into Beijing and then into Baotou today, and hopefully she'll enjoy her mundane everyday taste of this somewhat remote city. Nah, it's a pretty interesting place to me, and maybe she'll think so too!
I'd really like to share my holiday experiences, since they were fun for me this year. So, there's actually a Christmas season here in Baotou, and it's characterized by Santa Claus posters and beer advertisements (the best) in the windows of most shops and restaurants, as well as people selling tinsel and fireworks on the street, and also a large Christmas decoration sale by the entrance of the Wangfujing department store. The department store itself had an impressive display involving a structural frame of a Christmas tree bedecked with lights and what looked like giant stuffed bears trapped inside and trying to break free. I have a picture, don't worry. Christmas here was a strange animal... it didn't really have any religious aspect to it (Santa reigned supreme), but surprisingly, it was also missing the rampant commercialism (which comes pre-assembled as a phrase, so forgive the cliche). There were no crowds comparable to the human seas we get back home, and no insistence that your Christmas would be any worse if you didn't spend NOW. It was more like an amusing little reminder that Christmas was happening elsewhere in the world, which was nice seeing how I almost missed both Halloween and Thanksgiving.
I bought myself a set of tiny string lights, which is amazing, as well as a bunch of dinky little ornaments... and a felt stocking. All of these were displayed around the living room at one point... well, for one night, but the ornaments had to come down before the elementary schoolers even set foot in the apartment just because.
In terms of observation, there was plenty of celebration to take part in, but I didn't get a break at all... opposed to Russ who managed two days without real classes. It started on the 23rd, Saturday, when I met Russ and our combined adult students at a bath house after my Saturday morning class. I made Alice accompany me to the door since I had no idea what I was doing. They made me check my shoes in the lobby and wander sock-footed up a flight of stairs to a locker room/dressing room/salon-type place. It was a big pretty room with a handful of women ready to assist. It's just that I had no intention of taking a bath and was really only prepared to find the dining room, which was the meeting place.
Oh, so the bath house phenomenon... it seems pretty straightforward. When I first heard about it, I assumed it was just a public bath situation. But if you ask anyone "what's the bath house like?" you get answers like "well, you can watch movies," "there are lots of games," "you can eat 3 meals there." No one really talks much about actually bathing, which, while I guess it's assumed that you'd just take a bath, just confused me a lot more.
So then, after a confusing few moments with the ladies in the changing room, one of the hospital students walked by and I latched onto her. She helped me straighted things out and I was presented with "pajamas" (shui yi) and a key to a locker. I got changed while the student just stood there chatting with me, which was ok I guess, and then the two of us made our way to the dining room. The dining room was an all you can eat buffet, and some of the foot was pretty good. I had a good time with the meatballs. The students were divided in two tables kind of far away from each other based on what class they were in, which was just silly. I don't see why Russ allowed them to do that, but whatever. So there was a lot of running back and forth, taking pictures with one or the other group, eating bread at one place, and meatballs at another, and finally I was just like "let's go meet them." And things were easier after that.
We sat around a little while, and at last there was a group decision to go play some games. So we went to the... game room? It had a pool table and two ping pong tables. Yes! Two games I love, but unfortunately am untalented at. So I got myself into a pool game against Russ and one of the hospital students, with another hospital student on my team. We got killed, really, but it was fun. Not only was the other team more skilled, but... actually, maybe they were just more skilled. I know my teammate was just playing for the fun of it anyways, and every turn I had, I was lined up with shots that I simply couldn't figure out. Well, and also, seeing as how my conception of physics is sincerely warped, there was just no contest. After that though, I ended up in yet another game... and then another! I got a little better, but never quite won. Then I went into ping pong volleys with one of my students and actually worked up a sweat. It wasn't the ping pong so much as the heat. The bath house is hot and humid throughout, which I guess is what necessitates the pajamas... loose-fitting short sleeved v-neck shirts and matching... bermuda shorts? I enjoyed myself though. At the end, one of my students looked up at me and said "you are funny." Was I being a kid again? Maybe, but it felt good!
After that, I had to take off because I told Alice I'd be back around 3 to decorate the apartment for my Saturday night class with the #9ers. When I got back though, she was asleep, so I ended up watching most of Step Up and attempted to decorate on my own. Turns out that the string lights could only go in one place-- along the back of the couch-- because of the way the outlets are set up. I tried to make my own garland of ornaments using dental floss, but... what I got was the most hopeless knot I've ever encountered. I ended up untangling part of it, which is hanging on the cabinet thing next to the tv, but cut mercilessly through the rest of it. Those ornaments I hung from the string lights. So things didn't get much more festive around here, but you could at least sense that there was an attempt. I set out a bunch of junk food I bought the day before and hoped that the kids wouldn't count on me to entertain them.
Perhaps they did? So I taught them how to play hold-em, using my vast amount of candy leftover from Halloween as chips. I'm not sure if they really caught on... one boy was making infuriatingly poor choices when it came to betting, but it was all right. We also did Secret Santa and then played Psychiatrist, which is always a good game for bonding and whiling away time, even if it is at the expense of a single person. He was a good sport about it though.
I decided early on that the elementary schoolers would be coloring Christmas cards or Christmas posters. And that's just what they did-- their pictures are hanging prominently on one of our doors. I doubt I'll be taking them down anytime soon... same with the lights. Just carrying on that Pan family tradition of eternal Christmas. Unfortunately, I had to pull the jack-o-lantern face off the tupperware for my Thanksgiving cooking experiment, so there are no Halloween decorations to complete the effect.
That afternoon, I did another class party with the other high schoolers at Russ's apartment. We did Secret Santa again, which was a little less interesting than the night before, but ok. Then Psychiatrist again. What's funny is that the student who was psychiatrist the night before also came to this other party and got to play on the other side. He enjoyed it better, I think. The kid I was hoping to get short straw this time did, but he didn't take the role as well as I thought he would. It seemed like he was having like... an internal battle when Russ came back with more food, so I had Russ join him. They figured it out together, but it took almost 2 hours, which is insane.
After the kids took off, we watched LoTR for a while before going out to meet Linda, the mother of one of the students in the Saturday class who organized everything and shows up to pretty much every class. She's a cool lady. Anyways, she'd invited us out for dinner with some of the students and their parents. The restaurant was amazing, and it served some of the best Chinese food I'd ever had. It was described to me as "farm food," but... something doesn't click. Diana and Sean (students) were already there when we arrived, and Diana came down with us to pick the dishes. You walk through what looks almost like a cafeteria... maze... of liang cai (cold dishes akin to salads), soups, breads, meat dishes, steamed veggies, and so on, and we ordered a ton. We waited a while for everyone to show up, then dug in. One of my favorite things was this salad made of what appeared to be the leaves of a jade plant. It was actually some succulent herb that's good for sore throats, but it tasted great. And the fact that it was a succulent made it very refreshing. Also notable were the mushroom dishes. I took many pictures. The company was excellent too. These students obviously work hard at school and still manage to put plenty of effort into our class. But they're also really easy to get along with, and I had a good time chatting with the girls throughout. Russ got really annoying as the alcohol flowed, but all I could really do about it was to edge as far away on my seat as possible to avoid his flailing arm gestures. Oh well. Dinner ended up lasting almost 4 hours with all the conversation. Very memorable!
Next day Alice and I went over to Russ's for a party he was having for the hospital students and, oddly, one of the TC students. I had a fun time? It was weird. Turns out that Connie still seriously believed my name to be Christine. I left early with Alice so that she could go home and change for...
That night we had to go to a... function hosted by the Baotou Municipal Government for the foreigners in town. I was given my invitation as we walked in and was stunned to find that I had been renamed "Kathavice Pan." Why wouldn't you question that? I mean, they got the "a" right, but really... They hand out gifts at this thing every year, I guess, and last year Tevie got a plastic jar that I actually think looks pretty cool (she gave it to Alice). This year we got what was generally agreed upon as "really ugly" pig figurines. Mine is a pig hoarding a large bag of money, I think. I haven't looked at it a second time. When I visited Alice's apartment a few days later, her mom sat down next to me, pointed to Alice's pig, now poised on top of their TV, and exclaimed how ugly it was. I wound up seated next to two 22 year old girls from Chicago and was very excited. One of them reminded me a lot of Deb from home, actually. But at the time there wasn't a ton to talk about, so who knows. Turns out that one of them is friends with one of my sometimes students though, which is cool. The whole dinner was just... odd. They had cool performances, including these girls who were like hula hooping geniuses, and also this crazy British man who insisted on singing Frosty the Snowman and made us all feel a little awkward.
And that was the holidays. I audited my last English class at #1 on Monday morning, actually... I hit an 8am class, which was really hard, actually. Two of my Saturday students were in that class and I love how enthusiastic they were about it. One of them forgot to bring his gift for the class though, which sort of screwed up their system and I was slightly disappointed. But he managed to remember both his gifts for the weekend, so I figured he deserved whatever slack it took. Turns out the lesson was sort of dependent on my presence. I mean, the teacher could have done it without me, but anyways... first she had them do ping-pong to spoon relay races, then had me shout out random 3-digit numbers for them to formulate in teams with cards with the digits 1-9 written on them... that was a little funny when they came up and the numbers were backwards, and the students were like screaming for my attention (cuz sometimes it's just who you see first). Then she had me make random sentences for them to do competitive Telephone. I couldn't come up with anything particularly clever, so I just went with "I can't seem to find my keys," and "My favorite band has a concert on Friday." For the first one, one of the teams came up with a sentence so discombobulated that I couldn't believe that they could have believed that I actually said that. They both did pretty well with the second though.
Seems that people here are told that Christmas is a mega-holiday that ranks in importance with the Spring Festival. "Is Christmas the most important American holiday?" is a question I was asked a lot. I didn't want to be the spokesperson for the American people, but... Probably "yes" if you're just considering the whole agglomerated holiday season, but for obvious reasons, but I tried to convey "no" in the fairest way possible.
As for New Years, I was in the shower. That is exactly where I was when midnight hit. Oops. But with the rearranging of schedules to accomodate the holiday (which doesn't seem like it should be one, but whatever, people deserve it), I had 2 classes on Monday, so I really justed wanted to be lazy and homey.
Uuuum, so wrapping up classes now, and preparing for a mid-Jan departure and some highly anticipated vacation time and travel. I know I don't work nearly as hard as some of my friends stateside, but I could use a break nonetheless. Meanwhile, Liz has wandered into my clutches. She flew into Beijing and then into Baotou today, and hopefully she'll enjoy her mundane everyday taste of this somewhat remote city. Nah, it's a pretty interesting place to me, and maybe she'll think so too!
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Ok, ok, I've got one.
So I saw this on an ESL teacher forum last month, or like, 2 months ago. Or something.
What do you call a deer with no eyes?
Think about it.
Anyways, I've been listening to songs from Evita (the movie) and am toootally enamored of Antonio Banderas. Mostly his voice. Though now I'm really confused, because I went to imdb to figure out what movies he's been in, and it seems like I've only seen Evita and The Mask of Zorro. So like... how did I know who he was? Because I did. Something's not connecting here...
So, since my last entry, I've gotten rid of most of my anxiety. My Sunday class brightened up for two fun participatory lessons, but is now back to its slack, inattentive roots. It's so draining to teach them. The last lesson I had with them was like having blood taken for 2 hours. I won't deny that I'm fond of these kids, but do you know what would make me fonder? If they learned something from my classes, which I don't think they do. Anyways, the two classes we had that went well involved planning a 2 week vacation on a budget and movie creation where they had to come up with short scripts and premises. The group of 3 guys got into it and ended up portraying the murder of Jay Chou by one of their female classmates. It seemed a little mean at first because the idea is that she worships him and is excited to finally meet him in Milan. He says she's ugly, so she poisons him. But the girl didn't seem very offended, and the boy had an interesting falsetto. So... The other group did a heist story... only not really. A guy's brother was wrongly thrown into prison, so he robbed a bank with the intention of getting thrown into prison too so that they two of them could break out together. I think. Anyways, I could think of a lot of ways to go about getting someone out of prison that don't involve commencing your own criminal record, but whatevs. It seemed like it'd be a good movie anyway.
What movies did the other class come up with? Well, one of them, in which the girls dominated, did what was essentially a condensed Korean teledrama. Childhood friends go to college together, and the girl loves the guy but the guy doesn't love her and then he mysteriously disappears from the plot so that a new guy can win her heart by having wine spilled on him during a blackout at a party. Obviously the second relationship blossoms out of the ensuing animosity they feel for each other. The other group was less convicted, but they did come up with some interesting ideas. At first they were going to start with a commercial for glasses. Which is not what the assignment called for. Then it came down to a pair of magic glasses that let you see ghosts or magic creatures or something. Then it morphed into a fairytale-ish thing where a boy goes to live with his grandmother and gets into all sorts of accidents. Turns out there's an elf following him around and changing out his class speeches for girlie magazines and so on until he finds a pair of glasses that let him catch the elf. But the elf sneaks out again, steals the glasses, and continues his "sabotage." I think it's a good idea!
Did you get the answer yet?
What do you call a deer with no eyes?
No idear!
Now, what do you call a deer with no eyes and no legs?
I've settled into a kind of pattern for the Training Center classes... we go out of a book called Speak Naturally, a conversation guide from the 80s (very apparent in yesterday's class when the characters in the book started discussing the inflation, the reckless spending of Democrats, and the failing auto industry). The first half of class is pretty boring repeat after me stuff, but it's weird... I actually feel like it's important to do it. But then the 2nd half they go through the cued dialogues, which are pretty much the best part of the book, which is pretty sparse in itself, and I go around troubleshooting and stuff. I dunno, I think it's pretty fun. Attendance has dwindled to about half of the original number, with some people randomly coming and going. And it's like "whoa, I didn't know you were still coming." It's nice to have the smaller class though.
The current lesson for the high school is a pick-me-up. The last set of lessons was REALLY boring for me. I sort of lost my way with them, I think. I felt soooo unfun, which isn't cool. It's like, I try to give them lots of interesting new vocab to practice with, but they don't wanna... A lot of them don't take notes either.
My "boss" back in the US has given me something of an assignment. I'm supposed to do a report on teaching high schoolers? Something along those lines, and it's very exciting. I like assignments. Now, I realize that after all of my past tantrums and breakdowns, it's a little unconvincing, but I love writing papers! I imagine it's a lot like what doing drugs is like. Maybe... the opposite of what doing drugs is like. But the result is the same.
So partially because of that, and partially because it only seems right, I've asked to attend the students' English classes just to see what they're like. Mr. Yuan set me up with 3 classes, and I went to the first two last week. The 3rd years were nearing 2000 completed multiple choice questions in preparation for the entrance exams and the 1st years were reading newspaper-like things very similar to the ones we had in elementary school that taught us about Earth Day and stuff. It's like... their knowledge appears fairly advanced. It was really helpful for me in trying to structure my classes. Not that we have many more before the break, but you know. I think I'll be back next semester. The experience also sort of told me that Russ's class is a biiig step down the ladder for the kids. I mean, I had that idea to begin with, but... anyways, we're almost done.
It's not winter yet. Not officially for 2 days, right? It's real cold here though. It's interesting-- the ice here is like, 3-dimensional. It looks like gak, like someone threw water down and if froze immediately. It's pretty cool. The black ice on the street isn't as slippery as you'd think either. Mostly it's covered with dust and dirt so it's just like walking on the ground. People still really like to dump their water outside though, especially at the roots of trees. So there are layers of ice several inches thick between the edge of the sidewalk and the dirt holding each tree in place. It seems like it wouldn't be good for the trees, but they're standing their ground.
Last Friday we couldn't get a taxi and so my toes were frozen and unresponsive by the time we got on the bus. It was annoying, so I suggested that we have dinner at Pizza Hut. Oh! Which reminds me. I have something that I'm pretty sure none of you have: A Pizza Hut planner/calendar with a leather cover (fake? real? who knows?) with the Pizza Hut logo stamped into it, and the logo on every page (the waitress showed us that specifically). The back has coupons and the front has all the dialing codes for major cities and a listing of the holidays. All for Y6 with our meal! I dunno, I thought it was an all right deal.
What do you call a deer with no eyes and no legs?
Still no idear!
Ok, well... I think I will go now and possibly continue reading Jurassic Park, which is still pretty good and actually a bit more comprehensible after all these years. Seems much shorter. You know, I can actually remember where I was when I read all these parts? I was with my parents at Virginia Beach, and we'd been seated in a restaurant when I got to the part about the aviary, which I remembered being way more exciting than it was this time through.
What do you call a deer with no eyes?
Think about it.
Anyways, I've been listening to songs from Evita (the movie) and am toootally enamored of Antonio Banderas. Mostly his voice. Though now I'm really confused, because I went to imdb to figure out what movies he's been in, and it seems like I've only seen Evita and The Mask of Zorro. So like... how did I know who he was? Because I did. Something's not connecting here...
So, since my last entry, I've gotten rid of most of my anxiety. My Sunday class brightened up for two fun participatory lessons, but is now back to its slack, inattentive roots. It's so draining to teach them. The last lesson I had with them was like having blood taken for 2 hours. I won't deny that I'm fond of these kids, but do you know what would make me fonder? If they learned something from my classes, which I don't think they do. Anyways, the two classes we had that went well involved planning a 2 week vacation on a budget and movie creation where they had to come up with short scripts and premises. The group of 3 guys got into it and ended up portraying the murder of Jay Chou by one of their female classmates. It seemed a little mean at first because the idea is that she worships him and is excited to finally meet him in Milan. He says she's ugly, so she poisons him. But the girl didn't seem very offended, and the boy had an interesting falsetto. So... The other group did a heist story... only not really. A guy's brother was wrongly thrown into prison, so he robbed a bank with the intention of getting thrown into prison too so that they two of them could break out together. I think. Anyways, I could think of a lot of ways to go about getting someone out of prison that don't involve commencing your own criminal record, but whatevs. It seemed like it'd be a good movie anyway.
What movies did the other class come up with? Well, one of them, in which the girls dominated, did what was essentially a condensed Korean teledrama. Childhood friends go to college together, and the girl loves the guy but the guy doesn't love her and then he mysteriously disappears from the plot so that a new guy can win her heart by having wine spilled on him during a blackout at a party. Obviously the second relationship blossoms out of the ensuing animosity they feel for each other. The other group was less convicted, but they did come up with some interesting ideas. At first they were going to start with a commercial for glasses. Which is not what the assignment called for. Then it came down to a pair of magic glasses that let you see ghosts or magic creatures or something. Then it morphed into a fairytale-ish thing where a boy goes to live with his grandmother and gets into all sorts of accidents. Turns out there's an elf following him around and changing out his class speeches for girlie magazines and so on until he finds a pair of glasses that let him catch the elf. But the elf sneaks out again, steals the glasses, and continues his "sabotage." I think it's a good idea!
Did you get the answer yet?
What do you call a deer with no eyes?
No idear!
Now, what do you call a deer with no eyes and no legs?
I've settled into a kind of pattern for the Training Center classes... we go out of a book called Speak Naturally, a conversation guide from the 80s (very apparent in yesterday's class when the characters in the book started discussing the inflation, the reckless spending of Democrats, and the failing auto industry). The first half of class is pretty boring repeat after me stuff, but it's weird... I actually feel like it's important to do it. But then the 2nd half they go through the cued dialogues, which are pretty much the best part of the book, which is pretty sparse in itself, and I go around troubleshooting and stuff. I dunno, I think it's pretty fun. Attendance has dwindled to about half of the original number, with some people randomly coming and going. And it's like "whoa, I didn't know you were still coming." It's nice to have the smaller class though.
The current lesson for the high school is a pick-me-up. The last set of lessons was REALLY boring for me. I sort of lost my way with them, I think. I felt soooo unfun, which isn't cool. It's like, I try to give them lots of interesting new vocab to practice with, but they don't wanna... A lot of them don't take notes either.
My "boss" back in the US has given me something of an assignment. I'm supposed to do a report on teaching high schoolers? Something along those lines, and it's very exciting. I like assignments. Now, I realize that after all of my past tantrums and breakdowns, it's a little unconvincing, but I love writing papers! I imagine it's a lot like what doing drugs is like. Maybe... the opposite of what doing drugs is like. But the result is the same.
So partially because of that, and partially because it only seems right, I've asked to attend the students' English classes just to see what they're like. Mr. Yuan set me up with 3 classes, and I went to the first two last week. The 3rd years were nearing 2000 completed multiple choice questions in preparation for the entrance exams and the 1st years were reading newspaper-like things very similar to the ones we had in elementary school that taught us about Earth Day and stuff. It's like... their knowledge appears fairly advanced. It was really helpful for me in trying to structure my classes. Not that we have many more before the break, but you know. I think I'll be back next semester. The experience also sort of told me that Russ's class is a biiig step down the ladder for the kids. I mean, I had that idea to begin with, but... anyways, we're almost done.
It's not winter yet. Not officially for 2 days, right? It's real cold here though. It's interesting-- the ice here is like, 3-dimensional. It looks like gak, like someone threw water down and if froze immediately. It's pretty cool. The black ice on the street isn't as slippery as you'd think either. Mostly it's covered with dust and dirt so it's just like walking on the ground. People still really like to dump their water outside though, especially at the roots of trees. So there are layers of ice several inches thick between the edge of the sidewalk and the dirt holding each tree in place. It seems like it wouldn't be good for the trees, but they're standing their ground.
Last Friday we couldn't get a taxi and so my toes were frozen and unresponsive by the time we got on the bus. It was annoying, so I suggested that we have dinner at Pizza Hut. Oh! Which reminds me. I have something that I'm pretty sure none of you have: A Pizza Hut planner/calendar with a leather cover (fake? real? who knows?) with the Pizza Hut logo stamped into it, and the logo on every page (the waitress showed us that specifically). The back has coupons and the front has all the dialing codes for major cities and a listing of the holidays. All for Y6 with our meal! I dunno, I thought it was an all right deal.
What do you call a deer with no eyes and no legs?
Still no idear!
Ok, well... I think I will go now and possibly continue reading Jurassic Park, which is still pretty good and actually a bit more comprehensible after all these years. Seems much shorter. You know, I can actually remember where I was when I read all these parts? I was with my parents at Virginia Beach, and we'd been seated in a restaurant when I got to the part about the aviary, which I remembered being way more exciting than it was this time through.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Yay day
I look forward to Saturdays, despite knowing that I'll actually have to get up early on Saturdays. Saturday is not my day off: at 10, a little girl named Betsy comes over for a one-on-one class that, originally, was supposed to last no more than 1.5 hours. Now it's 2 or a little over. At 7:30, I have a 2-hour private class with what is now 8 high schoolers (previously 6) and one of their mothers, who is a cool lady who sits by and helps some of the less advanced students WITHOUT INTERFERING (which therefore means she's cool).
These two classes are not only a pleasure to teach, but they're soooo easy! Betsy's class was sort of a surprise when it started, you know, I wasn't expecting her to start coming over so soon. But that was 2 weeks ago, and she is such an enthusiastic student that just about everything goes over well. Her lessons are easy to plan because she's very good at learning. As for my evening class, the students are amazing. Some of them pick up real quick, and most of them have the guts to stop me and ask questions. Also, their curiosity comes out better than that of my other students, so we always have something interesting to talk about. And we get along well and have laughs. Most importantly though, I can always expect them to do what I asked the week before as "homework" (since it's fundamentally optional), and also to follow along and complete each section of the actual class. So planning for them is a breeze-- I'm already ahead like 3 weeks. Well, two now I guess.
Anyways, I was just short of breathing fire when I woke up this morning... I'd had some dream where some activity wasn't being accomplished efficiently, and so every time it was attempted wrong, I'd try to rearrange myself in bed. But like, I sleep in a sleeping bag, and so all night I had this sensation that I was trapped, and like, so on. I opened my eyes just before my alarm went off at 7:45 and was like "holy shit, I'm tired." Just then, my alarm rang, and I actually wanted to cry. Got up though, and had class. Betsy is really cute, and has pretty good manners during class, so it like, wasn't a strain or anything. We read stories online, pick up some vocab, and then make Go Fish cards. It's an interesting challenge for me when she decides that she wants to make a card out of a verb or adjective. "Spy" as a verb was hard today, but I ended up just making it "spyglass" cuz you can still get the point.
Afterwards, she and her mom invited Alice and I to Haide Hanbao for lunch. Hanbao means "hamburger," so yeah, it's the closest thing to McDonald's. They also serve Chinese fast food there, a la Mark Pi's, Hong Kong, and Peace. For the parents, I guess, cuz the kids love hamburgers. By the way, "hamburger," as a term, is more distorted here than it is in the States, because it can also refer to chicken sandwiches. Basically, anything on a hamburger bun is a hamburger. For your reference. I ordered a beef hamburger, and got the equivalent of a Big Mac. The meat patties here are... thin. And uniform. Spam-ish in appearance. But taste ok. You'd probably need at least 3 patties to equal one quarter-pounder, so I guess the double-decker burger I got wasn't all that much more food. But you know, I can eat a hamburger and be done-- throw in an extra layer of bun, and I'm very done. Add fries, and you'll have to slow down. There was once a time when I would have sat down to an x-treme junior bacon cheeseburger showdown or two, but those days are past, for now at least. I can pig out, but usually to the note of an extenuating circumstance or two. What I'm getting at is that the mother (one of Alice's... high school (?) teachers) tried to order me a bowl of rice, essentially a food-court Chinese restaurant combo, and when I said no, ordered an extra chicken sandwich just in case. I didn't even manage to finish the first thing, and when they saw it, they asked me if I was afraid of getting fat.
It was a really fun morning. I mean, the weather was dismal, cold, and snowy (at last!), but that doesn't really matter to someone like me, whose essential functions take place indoors. In the cab on the way there, Betsy was trying to explain something about a speaking competition she wanted to enter, but got stuck on the words. Even the driver chimed in and told her to think about it slowly. We had two female cab drivers today, and both of them were quite willing to chat it up with Betsy's mom. Pleasant! With her mom or her cousins (who I taught once at the beginning of my stay here), she's like an anime character. And she is so clever, to the point where Alice and I spent a lot of time laughing at her comments or antics. I think her mom's trying to convince her to come stay Friday nights with us, and I'm not sure what I think about that, but at least it's an excuse to avoid having to accept unwanted dinner invitations.
I then caught up on sleep this afternoon.
My evening class now comprises 8 students. There's a boy who was in my Sunday class, but couldn't attend it anymore because it conflicts with a math class his parents are making him take. So, I invited him to come on Saturday instead. Frankly, any student from that class would do better for themselves in this one. But anyway, when he found out about this second class, he seemed really excited. Like... more excited than I was expecting. I understand that the students are tired from all their excessive learning (SO excessive in this country), but he really did seem to prefer napping and being otherwise distracted while I'm teaching over actually paying attention. I liked him though because when he did work, he did good work. But anyways, apparently he's a big fan of my class, and sort of shocked me with that information. The other Saturday students all seem to know each other very well, and there are only two other kids from his school (who are probably younger than him), but he came in with confidence today, and gave an awesome presentation about foreign cars, and I'm pretty sure that once he gets a hang of the... well, borderline cult-ish stuff we do on Saturdays, he'll be all good.
Another student from my Sunday class, the only other one who's got the initiative to actually e-mail me, has taken to telling me how much she enjoys my class. This girl is one of my favorite students, but I can't help but wonder where this is coming from. The Sunday class really just amounts to a big cracker barrel, where the students come and gossip and make fun of each other the whole entire time, in Chinese. If I could take each of them and shake them, sometimes I think I would. I like them. But daaaaaaamn. I'm not their English teacher, I'm their Chinese-American babysitter. They dynamic is way different from the one on Saturday. I often feel like we don't accomplish much in that class and it drives me nuts! Still, it does feel nice to know that she at least appreciates me. She says that they think of me, as a friend as well as a teacher, though this Thanksgiving, she also added "sister" to that list of relationships. And I was like... "oh." So I'm that older sister that nobody listens to *although they should.* I think knowing that actually makes it more frustrating.
Friday night, it was raining. Because of that one experience when we couldn't find a taxi in the rain, Russ and I accepted a ride from Mr. Ding. Mr. Ding, for his part, just sort of walked out of his office with the keys and had us follow him, so... it just sort of happened that way. On the road, though, he asked us where we wanted to go. I think it probably still would have been impolite to ask to go home, and maybe Russ felt that too. So he suggested dinner, though neither of us had really planned on it, and I wasn't all that hungry (and had to pee), and neither of us knew where to go. So we went back to the Dings, where I met Mrs. Ding for the first time. We eventually settled on cheap chao cai, or like... food that comes in dishes rather than in a bowl with noodles. Cheap, cuz I'm way poor. On the way to the restaurant, I got to talk to Mrs. Ding, and she is a really nice lady. Sort of pretty too. I wondered briefly how this marriage had come about, but then stopped when I realized how mean that sort of was. Dinner was pretty good. Russ only knows how to say gong-bao-ji-ding (kung pao chicken), so we ordered that. They also ordered some... beef? And some potatoes. And glutinous rice cakes with red bean paste filling. It's too bad English doesn't have the words to make that sound more attractive. Also there was sweet potatoes soaked in carmelized sugar (which I actually spelled shuger just now, if you can believe it) that was starting to harden. So when you took a piece, it would trail these long sugary threads. Good, but having sweet things for 2/5 of the meal was maybe a bit much for me.
As we headed downstairs, Mr. Ding asked who was going to treat this time. I'd half expected this to happen, since Russ was the one who suggested it, but then it was sort of like... would we be treating the whole family? Sticky, because I think his wife was preparing to cook before we got to their apartment, but also the three of them outnumbered the two of us, and also Russ payed about $300 for the 3 of us the week before. Another issue was the fact that I only had my last 20 that I was willing to spend for the month, so... But Mrs. Ding let him have it, and told him that of course he shouldn't make us pay. I dunno, friendship with Mr. Ding is not the easiest thing for me because it always comes down to money for him. He always brings up money. He also has kind of a frustrating personality, but anyway. His wife is cool.
So that lands me here, at the cusp of Sunday, which is definitely not yay day. I passed a lot of the last couple days watching Youtube clips of male figure skating competitions, and have pretty much exhausted that entertainment venue, so... I guess feel free to send me your online Christmas shopping. I'll find that perfect jacket or pair of shoes that your loved one would be thrilled to own. Or maybe I'll just try. In any case, I know a lot of places with quirky gift ideas, so bring it.
These two classes are not only a pleasure to teach, but they're soooo easy! Betsy's class was sort of a surprise when it started, you know, I wasn't expecting her to start coming over so soon. But that was 2 weeks ago, and she is such an enthusiastic student that just about everything goes over well. Her lessons are easy to plan because she's very good at learning. As for my evening class, the students are amazing. Some of them pick up real quick, and most of them have the guts to stop me and ask questions. Also, their curiosity comes out better than that of my other students, so we always have something interesting to talk about. And we get along well and have laughs. Most importantly though, I can always expect them to do what I asked the week before as "homework" (since it's fundamentally optional), and also to follow along and complete each section of the actual class. So planning for them is a breeze-- I'm already ahead like 3 weeks. Well, two now I guess.
Anyways, I was just short of breathing fire when I woke up this morning... I'd had some dream where some activity wasn't being accomplished efficiently, and so every time it was attempted wrong, I'd try to rearrange myself in bed. But like, I sleep in a sleeping bag, and so all night I had this sensation that I was trapped, and like, so on. I opened my eyes just before my alarm went off at 7:45 and was like "holy shit, I'm tired." Just then, my alarm rang, and I actually wanted to cry. Got up though, and had class. Betsy is really cute, and has pretty good manners during class, so it like, wasn't a strain or anything. We read stories online, pick up some vocab, and then make Go Fish cards. It's an interesting challenge for me when she decides that she wants to make a card out of a verb or adjective. "Spy" as a verb was hard today, but I ended up just making it "spyglass" cuz you can still get the point.
Afterwards, she and her mom invited Alice and I to Haide Hanbao for lunch. Hanbao means "hamburger," so yeah, it's the closest thing to McDonald's. They also serve Chinese fast food there, a la Mark Pi's, Hong Kong, and Peace. For the parents, I guess, cuz the kids love hamburgers. By the way, "hamburger," as a term, is more distorted here than it is in the States, because it can also refer to chicken sandwiches. Basically, anything on a hamburger bun is a hamburger. For your reference. I ordered a beef hamburger, and got the equivalent of a Big Mac. The meat patties here are... thin. And uniform. Spam-ish in appearance. But taste ok. You'd probably need at least 3 patties to equal one quarter-pounder, so I guess the double-decker burger I got wasn't all that much more food. But you know, I can eat a hamburger and be done-- throw in an extra layer of bun, and I'm very done. Add fries, and you'll have to slow down. There was once a time when I would have sat down to an x-treme junior bacon cheeseburger showdown or two, but those days are past, for now at least. I can pig out, but usually to the note of an extenuating circumstance or two. What I'm getting at is that the mother (one of Alice's... high school (?) teachers) tried to order me a bowl of rice, essentially a food-court Chinese restaurant combo, and when I said no, ordered an extra chicken sandwich just in case. I didn't even manage to finish the first thing, and when they saw it, they asked me if I was afraid of getting fat.
It was a really fun morning. I mean, the weather was dismal, cold, and snowy (at last!), but that doesn't really matter to someone like me, whose essential functions take place indoors. In the cab on the way there, Betsy was trying to explain something about a speaking competition she wanted to enter, but got stuck on the words. Even the driver chimed in and told her to think about it slowly. We had two female cab drivers today, and both of them were quite willing to chat it up with Betsy's mom. Pleasant! With her mom or her cousins (who I taught once at the beginning of my stay here), she's like an anime character. And she is so clever, to the point where Alice and I spent a lot of time laughing at her comments or antics. I think her mom's trying to convince her to come stay Friday nights with us, and I'm not sure what I think about that, but at least it's an excuse to avoid having to accept unwanted dinner invitations.
I then caught up on sleep this afternoon.
My evening class now comprises 8 students. There's a boy who was in my Sunday class, but couldn't attend it anymore because it conflicts with a math class his parents are making him take. So, I invited him to come on Saturday instead. Frankly, any student from that class would do better for themselves in this one. But anyway, when he found out about this second class, he seemed really excited. Like... more excited than I was expecting. I understand that the students are tired from all their excessive learning (SO excessive in this country), but he really did seem to prefer napping and being otherwise distracted while I'm teaching over actually paying attention. I liked him though because when he did work, he did good work. But anyways, apparently he's a big fan of my class, and sort of shocked me with that information. The other Saturday students all seem to know each other very well, and there are only two other kids from his school (who are probably younger than him), but he came in with confidence today, and gave an awesome presentation about foreign cars, and I'm pretty sure that once he gets a hang of the... well, borderline cult-ish stuff we do on Saturdays, he'll be all good.
Another student from my Sunday class, the only other one who's got the initiative to actually e-mail me, has taken to telling me how much she enjoys my class. This girl is one of my favorite students, but I can't help but wonder where this is coming from. The Sunday class really just amounts to a big cracker barrel, where the students come and gossip and make fun of each other the whole entire time, in Chinese. If I could take each of them and shake them, sometimes I think I would. I like them. But daaaaaaamn. I'm not their English teacher, I'm their Chinese-American babysitter. They dynamic is way different from the one on Saturday. I often feel like we don't accomplish much in that class and it drives me nuts! Still, it does feel nice to know that she at least appreciates me. She says that they think of me, as a friend as well as a teacher, though this Thanksgiving, she also added "sister" to that list of relationships. And I was like... "oh." So I'm that older sister that nobody listens to *although they should.* I think knowing that actually makes it more frustrating.
Friday night, it was raining. Because of that one experience when we couldn't find a taxi in the rain, Russ and I accepted a ride from Mr. Ding. Mr. Ding, for his part, just sort of walked out of his office with the keys and had us follow him, so... it just sort of happened that way. On the road, though, he asked us where we wanted to go. I think it probably still would have been impolite to ask to go home, and maybe Russ felt that too. So he suggested dinner, though neither of us had really planned on it, and I wasn't all that hungry (and had to pee), and neither of us knew where to go. So we went back to the Dings, where I met Mrs. Ding for the first time. We eventually settled on cheap chao cai, or like... food that comes in dishes rather than in a bowl with noodles. Cheap, cuz I'm way poor. On the way to the restaurant, I got to talk to Mrs. Ding, and she is a really nice lady. Sort of pretty too. I wondered briefly how this marriage had come about, but then stopped when I realized how mean that sort of was. Dinner was pretty good. Russ only knows how to say gong-bao-ji-ding (kung pao chicken), so we ordered that. They also ordered some... beef? And some potatoes. And glutinous rice cakes with red bean paste filling. It's too bad English doesn't have the words to make that sound more attractive. Also there was sweet potatoes soaked in carmelized sugar (which I actually spelled shuger just now, if you can believe it) that was starting to harden. So when you took a piece, it would trail these long sugary threads. Good, but having sweet things for 2/5 of the meal was maybe a bit much for me.
As we headed downstairs, Mr. Ding asked who was going to treat this time. I'd half expected this to happen, since Russ was the one who suggested it, but then it was sort of like... would we be treating the whole family? Sticky, because I think his wife was preparing to cook before we got to their apartment, but also the three of them outnumbered the two of us, and also Russ payed about $300 for the 3 of us the week before. Another issue was the fact that I only had my last 20 that I was willing to spend for the month, so... But Mrs. Ding let him have it, and told him that of course he shouldn't make us pay. I dunno, friendship with Mr. Ding is not the easiest thing for me because it always comes down to money for him. He always brings up money. He also has kind of a frustrating personality, but anyway. His wife is cool.
So that lands me here, at the cusp of Sunday, which is definitely not yay day. I passed a lot of the last couple days watching Youtube clips of male figure skating competitions, and have pretty much exhausted that entertainment venue, so... I guess feel free to send me your online Christmas shopping. I'll find that perfect jacket or pair of shoes that your loved one would be thrilled to own. Or maybe I'll just try. In any case, I know a lot of places with quirky gift ideas, so bring it.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
It's some kind of animal
Our apartment, thankfully, doesn't have the type of infestation you would expect. We have no ants, spiders, flies, fruit flies, mosquitoes, or even cockroaches.
HOWEVER, what we do have are silverfish-esque multi-legged creepy crawlers of a particularly juicy denomination, and I've had the distinct pleasure of killing two of them recently.
[oct. 14 addendum: i wrote this entry ages ago, but apparently it never published... until now! probably not worth the wait]
HOWEVER, what we do have are silverfish-esque multi-legged creepy crawlers of a particularly juicy denomination, and I've had the distinct pleasure of killing two of them recently.
[oct. 14 addendum: i wrote this entry ages ago, but apparently it never published... until now! probably not worth the wait]
Friday, October 06, 2006
Uptown Girl + Lesson angst
Waiting for my hair to dry so I can pass out for many many hours.
I got back a little while ago from a little KTV excursion with Alice & her friends. KTV? That means karaoke actually. Something I discovered about myself: I can't sing Uptown Girl without a serious serious twang. I was like, whoa, all of a sudden from Kentucky. The place didn't have a wide selection of English songs (and no one else really knew any anyways), though I was able to jump in for part of a Jay Chou song I've heard before. I bet some of you have encountered it at bubble tea at one time or another. Alice put on "When I Fall in Love" for me, but another thing I discovere was that I know about 9 words of that song. Had some "black beer" that had a really nice toffeeish accent to it. Funny cuz I was just thinking earlier how much I missed darker beers.
It may be hard to imagine, but just try for a moment... I am soooo tired here. With more sleep and less work, I'm more exhausted on a daily basis in this country than I ever was at Cornell. I've been trying to figure out why. I mean... yes there was the Hohhot extravaganza, but that's not wholly unusual in essentials. Yesterday I had 5 hours worth of class, more or less back to back, and today I had 3 hrs... that doesn't seem to equate to any large amount of duress. So I dunno. Diet change? Also, my pseudo-ADD isn't really being fed, so maybe I'm just boring easily. Easily bored. Easy to be bored. Uh.
------
Anyways, about that 3 hr class this morning. Yesterday I taught 3-6 at the hospital, then 7-9 at the training center. My lesson really depended on the students interacting and taking off on vibrant flights of fancy and just making shit up. For a game. I like activities since they give me a chance to move around the room and not just lecture which is stupid. Well, activities/discussions have been working fine at the training center, but yesterday was my first day back in the hospital in ages. And there were 7 people in attendance. And perhaps the game was too complicated.
You see, these people are adults. We can do simple activities, if I want my classes to be inane. But, and I feel failure in this, I could NOT, no matter how many different words I used how many times, get them to understand the point of the activity. The idea was to make a prediction, trade it with someone else, assume that a period time has passed and the prediction has come true, and answer questions based on that. So like "you will be a successful mother," for a question like "what do you do in your free time," begets an answer like "oh, I read to my children and help them with their homework." Even if you are childless. Like myself (some of the students made me answer several questions according to this one).
The training center made it through the interview because I physically enacted the process a few times. The hospital did not make it through the trade. So I moved on and ended up with a ton of extra time. And an ice cream bar. Which makes teaching at a white board difficult.
So not the most successful lesson, I'll be making that note. Then I learned that my next class would be 9-12 today. So I got a bit nervous that I would be unable to plan a good lesson in time, and be stuck with two strike-outs in a row. And last night I was nigh incoherent. My last act before bed was to make a skeleton of a few of the related concepts I've been wanting to address but for which I've been unable to gather the right resources. I basically decided that since I have the ability to motor in the morning (waking up is the tough part, but I've done some good work at 5am), I'd just get all the lyrics, reviews, poems, videos, and so on in the morning.
This morning I got up at 6 and managed it all by 8:30. I had printouts and everything. A series of websites open on my laptop full of news and pictures and so on. Cuz this was a fucking 3 hour class. Who even does that?
I opened with the poems. First one by Robert Frost. The idea is that poetry from that era, with ample examples from Frost, have a definite rhyme scheme, so you can always be sure that certain words are always going to sound alike. This was a good check for my kids last year (not to be underestimated for being 8th graders) for pronunciation for some words that looked different. More importantly, poems like Stopping By Woods have lines with very specific syllable allowances and predictable, consistent stress patterns. This is not a luxury that speakers often get, right? And Chinese speakers especially add random syllables here and there and get confused about multisyllable stress. So I just wanted to show them a way to practice.
That was sort of to harken back to the last class. Then I followed up with a modern poem that I found. Full of nice descriptors, idioms, and metaphor. Also an easy concept to grasp. Here I wanted to show what poetry has become-- you know, a vehicle for expression and so on. And you know, a ton of our language, things we say all the time, take cues from devices that you find everywhere in poetry. No one learns figurative language straight off in an esl class, and I noticed when we did song lyrics that the whole metaphor/symbol/allusion thing wasn't getting across. I suspected that they were taking things too literally, so I just wanted to give them an introduction to that.
Then a Guster song. One, trying to pinpoint what type of music they're willing to listen to. Would have discussed the lyrics if we had time (when we actually did, I'd forgotten that I hadn't done that, so that was my flub). But mainly I wanted them to talk to me about the song. As an example I added a clip of a music snob review of the album it came from. No expectations of them understanding this piece, because music reviews can be pretty dizzying (this one was a bit kinder though). But I wanted to show them what loaded words are like, and why we use them, and that we use them all the time. Adjectives that we commonly use, and adjectives that the dude made up on the spot. Different ways that we use words that have certain technical meanings ("bipolar" for example). I was hoping for some discussion of the song. But, silence.
By that time, I wanted to change the pace a bit, so I broke out some movie trailers for The Lake House, The Guardian, and Stranger than Fiction. Little discussion arose, so I finished with a short National Geographic video of salt mines and desert crossings. I will admit now that iTunes has been a nice resource for free stuff. This was the point that Connie came back in.
I may have mentioned her before, but she is in charge of this class, and when she's in the room, she dominates it. You know... I like her. I like most people. But ooh. I'll get to that later. Anyway, she was called out at the very beginning of class to identify some dead birds, so she basically missed everything before the salt mine video.
Then, because yesterday she'd said something about American food being simple (to the effect of hamburgers and hot dogs), I had some menu examples and photos of restaurant food. Unfortunately, she and her son were the only ones from yesterday's class to realize that this was a response to something.
After that, she was called out again. So I decided that for the last 30 min we could go back to the review and define some words so they could read it later. No one asked me any questions! So I just went through and defined a lot of things I thought they might not be able to interpret on their own (right every time). Connie came back in and looked at the review. With 10 minutes left she gave me a criticism of my lesson. She said that I jumped from topic to topic so much in one lesson that it wasn't good.
So criticism. Whatever. I need that. But actually she wasn't in class. Additionally, she did this during class time in both Chinese and English. She said it nicely, but I was still like... thanks? For nothing! I don't know, but I just feel inherently that I would have done it differently. The thing was, she asked the other students if they agreed, and none of them said anything! It would have been more helpful if someone had agreed. Or if someone had said that the lesson was helpful. Any response. As it is, I have yet another opinion from Connie about how class should be.
Now, I have my own criticisms about the class. Having gone through it point by point, I see where maybe I could have expanded on something. It's just something I didn't see until now. But also, it's clear that for the hospital class, I'm having a lot of trouble facilitating discussion. The training center has great discussions-- it's a blast. I can ask them all the questions I want and lead them whatever direction, and they're responsive (except for yesterday, when they thought I was crazy). This troubles me because I can't yet figure out why this is happening. I'm going to e-mail their last teacher, Tevie, who's been great about answering my Baotou questions thus far. Apparently Connie loved her class. I've checked out Tevie's formula though, and it's like... nothing out of the ordinary. So she was a theatre major. And like 50. But still. I'm youthful and exuberant. Talk to me, dammit!
I mean, please don't get me wrong. The students are really awesome people. But they're not the best students. And by students, I mean, the role of the student. Like, you can be a good student by working hard, and they do. But I mean, when I am a student, no matter what my other classes have been like, when I place myself in a class, I understand that I am placing myself at the mercy of my teacher. If they want me to speak, I will speak. If they say that this is the way to learn something, I will try it. You know? They take the initiative to take this class. It's voluntary and it cost money. Why wouldn't they take the initiative to ask me questions when they don't understand something? Or to simply follow me when I try to lead them somewhere? I have never been in a class where the teacher was unable to get this same reaction. So I'm troubled. I can keep trying new techniques, but I really can't do anything particulary exciting or fun unless I know that they're with me. Or until they give me some response to tell me what they think is exciting or fun. I expected to have figured this out by now. I mean, whatever the problem is, it's mine-- not theirs. So I'm not blaming them. I'm just referencing their behavior to indicate that there is some failing in the way I approach them.
But I was still really steamed about the way Connie made her comment. I described the whole thing to Alice later, and she told me not to pay attention to it. You know, after our first full lesson there, she complained about the structure while another student told us how much she enjoyed it. Since then it's been really crappy trying to find a balance for them. Of course I'm going to consider it though. But it's like... I may have been jumping topic to topic, but those were just tools for me to teach a theme. I wanted to demonstrate the flexibility English has in describing things as subjective as music or feelings, and I wanted to show them common resources like poems and reviews-- places where we've picked up words and speaking skills. But I should have explained that more clearly at the beginning.
Also, and this shocked me back to reality, it turns out that Connie was partially basing this on the fact that the review didn't make any sense. As in, she thought that the review of the music was a review of the lesson. I forgot that a noun like that could be misinterpreted. Again, my fault. It's just not the easiest thing to assess just what words they know and what words they don't. I mean, they're doctors. They know "tuberculosis." Then again, she also missed that part of the lesson.
The worst is just the silence. I try to give them opportunities to emote and practice speaking, but they either just stare straight at me or anywhere else. During the poetry thing, I did get a lot of head nodding though. I didn't move on until I saw heads nodding-- since they were giving me that, I latched onto it.
It's not that I think they're being withholding for one reason or another. But in any case, I haven't been able to get what I want out of them yet, so it's back to the drawing board for Saturday.
I got back a little while ago from a little KTV excursion with Alice & her friends. KTV? That means karaoke actually. Something I discovered about myself: I can't sing Uptown Girl without a serious serious twang. I was like, whoa, all of a sudden from Kentucky. The place didn't have a wide selection of English songs (and no one else really knew any anyways), though I was able to jump in for part of a Jay Chou song I've heard before. I bet some of you have encountered it at bubble tea at one time or another. Alice put on "When I Fall in Love" for me, but another thing I discovere was that I know about 9 words of that song. Had some "black beer" that had a really nice toffeeish accent to it. Funny cuz I was just thinking earlier how much I missed darker beers.
It may be hard to imagine, but just try for a moment... I am soooo tired here. With more sleep and less work, I'm more exhausted on a daily basis in this country than I ever was at Cornell. I've been trying to figure out why. I mean... yes there was the Hohhot extravaganza, but that's not wholly unusual in essentials. Yesterday I had 5 hours worth of class, more or less back to back, and today I had 3 hrs... that doesn't seem to equate to any large amount of duress. So I dunno. Diet change? Also, my pseudo-ADD isn't really being fed, so maybe I'm just boring easily. Easily bored. Easy to be bored. Uh.
------
Anyways, about that 3 hr class this morning. Yesterday I taught 3-6 at the hospital, then 7-9 at the training center. My lesson really depended on the students interacting and taking off on vibrant flights of fancy and just making shit up. For a game. I like activities since they give me a chance to move around the room and not just lecture which is stupid. Well, activities/discussions have been working fine at the training center, but yesterday was my first day back in the hospital in ages. And there were 7 people in attendance. And perhaps the game was too complicated.
You see, these people are adults. We can do simple activities, if I want my classes to be inane. But, and I feel failure in this, I could NOT, no matter how many different words I used how many times, get them to understand the point of the activity. The idea was to make a prediction, trade it with someone else, assume that a period time has passed and the prediction has come true, and answer questions based on that. So like "you will be a successful mother," for a question like "what do you do in your free time," begets an answer like "oh, I read to my children and help them with their homework." Even if you are childless. Like myself (some of the students made me answer several questions according to this one).
The training center made it through the interview because I physically enacted the process a few times. The hospital did not make it through the trade. So I moved on and ended up with a ton of extra time. And an ice cream bar. Which makes teaching at a white board difficult.
So not the most successful lesson, I'll be making that note. Then I learned that my next class would be 9-12 today. So I got a bit nervous that I would be unable to plan a good lesson in time, and be stuck with two strike-outs in a row. And last night I was nigh incoherent. My last act before bed was to make a skeleton of a few of the related concepts I've been wanting to address but for which I've been unable to gather the right resources. I basically decided that since I have the ability to motor in the morning (waking up is the tough part, but I've done some good work at 5am), I'd just get all the lyrics, reviews, poems, videos, and so on in the morning.
This morning I got up at 6 and managed it all by 8:30. I had printouts and everything. A series of websites open on my laptop full of news and pictures and so on. Cuz this was a fucking 3 hour class. Who even does that?
I opened with the poems. First one by Robert Frost. The idea is that poetry from that era, with ample examples from Frost, have a definite rhyme scheme, so you can always be sure that certain words are always going to sound alike. This was a good check for my kids last year (not to be underestimated for being 8th graders) for pronunciation for some words that looked different. More importantly, poems like Stopping By Woods have lines with very specific syllable allowances and predictable, consistent stress patterns. This is not a luxury that speakers often get, right? And Chinese speakers especially add random syllables here and there and get confused about multisyllable stress. So I just wanted to show them a way to practice.
That was sort of to harken back to the last class. Then I followed up with a modern poem that I found. Full of nice descriptors, idioms, and metaphor. Also an easy concept to grasp. Here I wanted to show what poetry has become-- you know, a vehicle for expression and so on. And you know, a ton of our language, things we say all the time, take cues from devices that you find everywhere in poetry. No one learns figurative language straight off in an esl class, and I noticed when we did song lyrics that the whole metaphor/symbol/allusion thing wasn't getting across. I suspected that they were taking things too literally, so I just wanted to give them an introduction to that.
Then a Guster song. One, trying to pinpoint what type of music they're willing to listen to. Would have discussed the lyrics if we had time (when we actually did, I'd forgotten that I hadn't done that, so that was my flub). But mainly I wanted them to talk to me about the song. As an example I added a clip of a music snob review of the album it came from. No expectations of them understanding this piece, because music reviews can be pretty dizzying (this one was a bit kinder though). But I wanted to show them what loaded words are like, and why we use them, and that we use them all the time. Adjectives that we commonly use, and adjectives that the dude made up on the spot. Different ways that we use words that have certain technical meanings ("bipolar" for example). I was hoping for some discussion of the song. But, silence.
By that time, I wanted to change the pace a bit, so I broke out some movie trailers for The Lake House, The Guardian, and Stranger than Fiction. Little discussion arose, so I finished with a short National Geographic video of salt mines and desert crossings. I will admit now that iTunes has been a nice resource for free stuff. This was the point that Connie came back in.
I may have mentioned her before, but she is in charge of this class, and when she's in the room, she dominates it. You know... I like her. I like most people. But ooh. I'll get to that later. Anyway, she was called out at the very beginning of class to identify some dead birds, so she basically missed everything before the salt mine video.
Then, because yesterday she'd said something about American food being simple (to the effect of hamburgers and hot dogs), I had some menu examples and photos of restaurant food. Unfortunately, she and her son were the only ones from yesterday's class to realize that this was a response to something.
After that, she was called out again. So I decided that for the last 30 min we could go back to the review and define some words so they could read it later. No one asked me any questions! So I just went through and defined a lot of things I thought they might not be able to interpret on their own (right every time). Connie came back in and looked at the review. With 10 minutes left she gave me a criticism of my lesson. She said that I jumped from topic to topic so much in one lesson that it wasn't good.
So criticism. Whatever. I need that. But actually she wasn't in class. Additionally, she did this during class time in both Chinese and English. She said it nicely, but I was still like... thanks? For nothing! I don't know, but I just feel inherently that I would have done it differently. The thing was, she asked the other students if they agreed, and none of them said anything! It would have been more helpful if someone had agreed. Or if someone had said that the lesson was helpful. Any response. As it is, I have yet another opinion from Connie about how class should be.
Now, I have my own criticisms about the class. Having gone through it point by point, I see where maybe I could have expanded on something. It's just something I didn't see until now. But also, it's clear that for the hospital class, I'm having a lot of trouble facilitating discussion. The training center has great discussions-- it's a blast. I can ask them all the questions I want and lead them whatever direction, and they're responsive (except for yesterday, when they thought I was crazy). This troubles me because I can't yet figure out why this is happening. I'm going to e-mail their last teacher, Tevie, who's been great about answering my Baotou questions thus far. Apparently Connie loved her class. I've checked out Tevie's formula though, and it's like... nothing out of the ordinary. So she was a theatre major. And like 50. But still. I'm youthful and exuberant. Talk to me, dammit!
I mean, please don't get me wrong. The students are really awesome people. But they're not the best students. And by students, I mean, the role of the student. Like, you can be a good student by working hard, and they do. But I mean, when I am a student, no matter what my other classes have been like, when I place myself in a class, I understand that I am placing myself at the mercy of my teacher. If they want me to speak, I will speak. If they say that this is the way to learn something, I will try it. You know? They take the initiative to take this class. It's voluntary and it cost money. Why wouldn't they take the initiative to ask me questions when they don't understand something? Or to simply follow me when I try to lead them somewhere? I have never been in a class where the teacher was unable to get this same reaction. So I'm troubled. I can keep trying new techniques, but I really can't do anything particulary exciting or fun unless I know that they're with me. Or until they give me some response to tell me what they think is exciting or fun. I expected to have figured this out by now. I mean, whatever the problem is, it's mine-- not theirs. So I'm not blaming them. I'm just referencing their behavior to indicate that there is some failing in the way I approach them.
But I was still really steamed about the way Connie made her comment. I described the whole thing to Alice later, and she told me not to pay attention to it. You know, after our first full lesson there, she complained about the structure while another student told us how much she enjoyed it. Since then it's been really crappy trying to find a balance for them. Of course I'm going to consider it though. But it's like... I may have been jumping topic to topic, but those were just tools for me to teach a theme. I wanted to demonstrate the flexibility English has in describing things as subjective as music or feelings, and I wanted to show them common resources like poems and reviews-- places where we've picked up words and speaking skills. But I should have explained that more clearly at the beginning.
Also, and this shocked me back to reality, it turns out that Connie was partially basing this on the fact that the review didn't make any sense. As in, she thought that the review of the music was a review of the lesson. I forgot that a noun like that could be misinterpreted. Again, my fault. It's just not the easiest thing to assess just what words they know and what words they don't. I mean, they're doctors. They know "tuberculosis." Then again, she also missed that part of the lesson.
The worst is just the silence. I try to give them opportunities to emote and practice speaking, but they either just stare straight at me or anywhere else. During the poetry thing, I did get a lot of head nodding though. I didn't move on until I saw heads nodding-- since they were giving me that, I latched onto it.
It's not that I think they're being withholding for one reason or another. But in any case, I haven't been able to get what I want out of them yet, so it's back to the drawing board for Saturday.
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Some more on the bird flu
As it is my greatest fear (or maybe greatest plausible fear), I checked around for the news.
Here's what Xinhua news service and the China Daily reported: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-10/02/content_5165748.htm
Nearly 1,000 chickens dropped dead from the flu and a crazy number were culled after them. The rest of the birds in the district are being innoculated, as I gather.
Additionally, it turns out that some of the doctors in my class have been busy throughout the holiday monitoring all fever patients for any connection to the outbreak. Connie, the doctor in charge of the class, said there's nothing to worry about. It was really weird to have the news confirmed by an actual doctor.
For anyone actually interested in flu news, another outbreak was reported in Yinchuan, the capital of neighboring Ningxia autonomous region.
Mmm, that's all. I'm way sleepy, man.
Here's what Xinhua news service and the China Daily reported: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-10/02/content_5165748.htm
Nearly 1,000 chickens dropped dead from the flu and a crazy number were culled after them. The rest of the birds in the district are being innoculated, as I gather.
Additionally, it turns out that some of the doctors in my class have been busy throughout the holiday monitoring all fever patients for any connection to the outbreak. Connie, the doctor in charge of the class, said there's nothing to worry about. It was really weird to have the news confirmed by an actual doctor.
For anyone actually interested in flu news, another outbreak was reported in Yinchuan, the capital of neighboring Ningxia autonomous region.
Mmm, that's all. I'm way sleepy, man.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
FREAKY news (5 stories to chill my bones)
Like the title says...
This morning, I got up early (these days, 8:45 is early) so that we could go to the park on our last day off. I was expecting a day of relaxation, maybe some drawing, some reading, some lesson planning, and maybe shopping. I was checking my e-mail and sorta eavesdropping on Alice's phone conversation, but couldn't really figure out what was going on cuz I was only sort of paying attention.
Apparently, Russ's apartment was broken into last night. The thief came in through his bedroom window, on the 4th floor no less, and took his laptop, cell phone, and wallet, though his credit cards were left behind. Holy shit, right? I mean, he was asleep right there, next to the desk where everything was. He didn't notice anything until this morning.
By the time we got over there at 9:30, he had already reported it all to the police. Also, he had decided that he's leaving the country ASAP. And I was like... "wha..?" I mean, I'd sort of stated to myself on the way there that if my laptop goes, that's it and I'm coming home. But also... my laptop is maybe worth 100 times more to me. To be fair, he sort of doesn't know how to use a computer, and apparently it was only $400. The phone was about Y500, and he only had about Y600 in his wallet. In Alice's estimation, my initial loss was much heavier, so she and her family don't really understand why he wants to leave.
Ok, well, someone broke into his apartment and walked around his room while he was in it-- probably armed also. That, I understand, would shake anyone up. I mean, what exactly would he have done if he'd woken up? His assessment was that this country is too dangerous and he won't stay here any longer than he has to.
But. On the other hand. Robberies occur everywhere. He feels like he's being targeted, and I sort of understand that feeling-- after having shit stolen, I've been REALLY aware of how everyone around me might be about to take the rest of my stuff, but some of that is irrational too. Because you can take precautions, and the truth is that he left himself open by leaving his bedroom window visibly open.
Granted, it may never have occurred to him (as it never occurred to me) and anyone would scale 4 stories to commit a theft. I looked out his window today and the wall is perfectly smooth and completely inaccessible. Except, the apartment below had grating on the windows, like what we have here, and the one down and to the left of that did also, and so on-- so the dude(tte) leap-frogged from grating to grating to get up there. Which is still a feat, but now comprehensible.
So I dunno. We think it might be the shock speaking. I personally think it's not worth leaving the country for after we've just gone through all this trouble and Liu finally got our foreign experts certification. I mean... I'm a lot younger too and getting along a little better I think. I can see how maybe little things might have been doing it slowly-- like, he often doesn't understand me when I speak to him, I can't imagine what communicating with everyone else is like. Sometimes he just doesn't even try. So yeah I dunno. We'll see what he decides.
Meanwhile, we're a bit worried because if he goes, so probably will the high school classes. Which is not what I want. I've only gotten to see them once and I adored them. I will be way sad if I can't work with them more (which, hi, is sort of why I came here). And then all the hospital and training center classes will also be bequeathed to me.
The second freaky thing. I don't think anyone told Russ this, but I overheard them talking about it. Basically, if he weren't a foreigner, the police probably wouldn't have had any time for this case today. This is because somewhere in this district (I think) a family was murdered last night and they're all tied up with that.
The third freaky thing. On our way back from lunch, we passed an intersection and I heard the taxi driver point out something very very disturbing. Well, I was disturbed because this is my ultimate paranoia that was addressed. Apparently somewhere nearby they found chickens with the flu and had to kill them all. There were more details and some numbers, but the essence is here I think. Some of you maybe have heard me predict my own death from this illness, and I still believe that it's a likelihood. I asked Alice to make sure I heard correctly, and I had, but she seemed totally unconcerned. She assured me that the only cases of people with the illness have been in Southern China... the way that in the US we say that the only cases of people with the illness have been in Asia. So I'm not comforted a whole lot. I dunno if the windiness of this area is a good or bad thing in this case. But whatever. I'm still a little bugged out, but since no one else cares, I'll just... calm myself.
The fourth freaky thing. I need to plan two lessons for tomorrow, 5 hours in all, not anywhere yet in that, thanks, but anyways. I was looking for some good news articles that might present well, and decided to try The Week for some nice short summaries. So what does the internet do but flip shit at me. I got a page I've never in my life seen before. Some very high contrast colors and a no-nonsense box in the center basically stating something like "this is not your browser at fault. we did in fact understand where you wanted to go but we don't want you to go there. don't you dare try that again." So... I didn't. Which is why I can't tell you the exact text of that page. But yeah, for whatever reason it is not ok to try going to that website here.
The fifth freaky thing. Nothing that has happened to me personally. But I did find some articles on National Geographic about resurgent illnesses, specifically measles and polio. How they're going crazy in some developing countries in Asia, Central Asia, and Africa because of poor immunization coverage there. What really irritated me though is the idea that there are people who would declare immunization unsafe and convince others to decline immunization for themselves and their children. Some of the claims about vaccines being laced with HIV or sterilizers are out of the scope of my belief. I mean, don't people want to live? I'm just glad that philosophies or whatever have developed in the US that allow the science of immunization to be widespread and accepted. That's one thing I'm proud of, and I really do think that's a better way of life. I guess what I feel is that it wouldn't be a bad thing if that particular value were to spread worldwide.
Woo, I have an opinion.
As for the non-freaky parts of the day, there were a few. The park was really nice. I managed to do some artsy stuff there, but it sucks. I partially blame myself-- I wasn't feeling very detail oriented. But I also blame the paper, which was the only art-like paper I could find. Also, I sort of blame the pastels. But the pastels are weird. I got them for really cheap at the department store. There are 57 colors in the box, which is monumental. But then again, the box says "Happy Junior Artist" on it. And I thought, "youth?" If you flip the box over, there's a photo of a baby's hand. I mean this hand most likely belongs to someone under the age of 3. Also, they're "beyond non-toxic" and "environment friendly" and I'm thinking... art supplies that are non-toxic are sort of not worth it. I mean... sure, food dyes or like... fruit derivatives... but... not usually. So these OIL pastels are looking a lot like crayons. But the COLORS. I mean, the colors have names like "vermillon" (sic), "viridian," "oxide green," "cobalt blue," "ultramarine," "prussian blue," and like "dark carmine." Also, there's a "rose hadder," which I don't think I'd ever heard of until I looked at the back of this box, although now that Stephen King title makes more sense. But it was a pleasant way to spend the morning. Lots of mothers kept bringing their kids over to watch me draw... and people kept commenting when they walked by. It was... weird. But cool.
Then we ate at Yellow River a restaurant that serves western food that has gotten thumbs up from previous teachers, cuz I was craving pizza like mad (Phoebe and Joey were talking about it on Friends). Russ got the Chicago pizza... which ended up being a pizza with chili instead of tomato sauce. Really good though. I got tomato cheese, which was exactly that... also no sauce. But good. Alice went with the spicy chicken sandwich which was actually a cajun chicken sandwich that was really good (I tried some). The only other people there was a party of businessmen who ended with a Y600 tab. Whoa.
I have no idea how I spent the rest of the afternoon. I did take a 3 hr nap, I suppose, which has become the standard measure of time for me over the years.
And now I'm in a crunch preparing for two classes. I don't mind admitting that I get really nervous every time I have to do one of these. I understand this sort of makes me a mess a few times a week, but eh.
Watched the first of my Hohhot DVDs last night-- Top Gun. My first time ever watching that movie. I remember running in and out of the room with my cousins on various adventures while our parents had it on, but I absolutely never paid attention. I dedicated the viewing to Liz and Aki, the only two people to ever mention it to me, and am happy to say that I totally loved it. The theme was always my favorite song to play on the recorder in elementary school, but I was annoyed that they kept playing "Take My Breath Away," cuz it was almost camp (probably the nature of the song as it's evolved today, but still). Also Tom Cruise used to be real hot stuff and I never realized. I mean, I was in elementary school, but that hasn't stopped everyone, apparently. Ahem. And I've been a Val Kilmer fan since The Saint. Just sharing that. But the best was the fact that the DVD had all the extras on it. And there are a lot, though I was too tired to check them out so I don't know if they were really there or not. So that's crazy cuz that never happens.
Ok. Back to lessons, goddammit.
This morning, I got up early (these days, 8:45 is early) so that we could go to the park on our last day off. I was expecting a day of relaxation, maybe some drawing, some reading, some lesson planning, and maybe shopping. I was checking my e-mail and sorta eavesdropping on Alice's phone conversation, but couldn't really figure out what was going on cuz I was only sort of paying attention.
Apparently, Russ's apartment was broken into last night. The thief came in through his bedroom window, on the 4th floor no less, and took his laptop, cell phone, and wallet, though his credit cards were left behind. Holy shit, right? I mean, he was asleep right there, next to the desk where everything was. He didn't notice anything until this morning.
By the time we got over there at 9:30, he had already reported it all to the police. Also, he had decided that he's leaving the country ASAP. And I was like... "wha..?" I mean, I'd sort of stated to myself on the way there that if my laptop goes, that's it and I'm coming home. But also... my laptop is maybe worth 100 times more to me. To be fair, he sort of doesn't know how to use a computer, and apparently it was only $400. The phone was about Y500, and he only had about Y600 in his wallet. In Alice's estimation, my initial loss was much heavier, so she and her family don't really understand why he wants to leave.
Ok, well, someone broke into his apartment and walked around his room while he was in it-- probably armed also. That, I understand, would shake anyone up. I mean, what exactly would he have done if he'd woken up? His assessment was that this country is too dangerous and he won't stay here any longer than he has to.
But. On the other hand. Robberies occur everywhere. He feels like he's being targeted, and I sort of understand that feeling-- after having shit stolen, I've been REALLY aware of how everyone around me might be about to take the rest of my stuff, but some of that is irrational too. Because you can take precautions, and the truth is that he left himself open by leaving his bedroom window visibly open.
Granted, it may never have occurred to him (as it never occurred to me) and anyone would scale 4 stories to commit a theft. I looked out his window today and the wall is perfectly smooth and completely inaccessible. Except, the apartment below had grating on the windows, like what we have here, and the one down and to the left of that did also, and so on-- so the dude(tte) leap-frogged from grating to grating to get up there. Which is still a feat, but now comprehensible.
So I dunno. We think it might be the shock speaking. I personally think it's not worth leaving the country for after we've just gone through all this trouble and Liu finally got our foreign experts certification. I mean... I'm a lot younger too and getting along a little better I think. I can see how maybe little things might have been doing it slowly-- like, he often doesn't understand me when I speak to him, I can't imagine what communicating with everyone else is like. Sometimes he just doesn't even try. So yeah I dunno. We'll see what he decides.
Meanwhile, we're a bit worried because if he goes, so probably will the high school classes. Which is not what I want. I've only gotten to see them once and I adored them. I will be way sad if I can't work with them more (which, hi, is sort of why I came here). And then all the hospital and training center classes will also be bequeathed to me.
The second freaky thing. I don't think anyone told Russ this, but I overheard them talking about it. Basically, if he weren't a foreigner, the police probably wouldn't have had any time for this case today. This is because somewhere in this district (I think) a family was murdered last night and they're all tied up with that.
The third freaky thing. On our way back from lunch, we passed an intersection and I heard the taxi driver point out something very very disturbing. Well, I was disturbed because this is my ultimate paranoia that was addressed. Apparently somewhere nearby they found chickens with the flu and had to kill them all. There were more details and some numbers, but the essence is here I think. Some of you maybe have heard me predict my own death from this illness, and I still believe that it's a likelihood. I asked Alice to make sure I heard correctly, and I had, but she seemed totally unconcerned. She assured me that the only cases of people with the illness have been in Southern China... the way that in the US we say that the only cases of people with the illness have been in Asia. So I'm not comforted a whole lot. I dunno if the windiness of this area is a good or bad thing in this case. But whatever. I'm still a little bugged out, but since no one else cares, I'll just... calm myself.
The fourth freaky thing. I need to plan two lessons for tomorrow, 5 hours in all, not anywhere yet in that, thanks, but anyways. I was looking for some good news articles that might present well, and decided to try The Week for some nice short summaries. So what does the internet do but flip shit at me. I got a page I've never in my life seen before. Some very high contrast colors and a no-nonsense box in the center basically stating something like "this is not your browser at fault. we did in fact understand where you wanted to go but we don't want you to go there. don't you dare try that again." So... I didn't. Which is why I can't tell you the exact text of that page. But yeah, for whatever reason it is not ok to try going to that website here.
The fifth freaky thing. Nothing that has happened to me personally. But I did find some articles on National Geographic about resurgent illnesses, specifically measles and polio. How they're going crazy in some developing countries in Asia, Central Asia, and Africa because of poor immunization coverage there. What really irritated me though is the idea that there are people who would declare immunization unsafe and convince others to decline immunization for themselves and their children. Some of the claims about vaccines being laced with HIV or sterilizers are out of the scope of my belief. I mean, don't people want to live? I'm just glad that philosophies or whatever have developed in the US that allow the science of immunization to be widespread and accepted. That's one thing I'm proud of, and I really do think that's a better way of life. I guess what I feel is that it wouldn't be a bad thing if that particular value were to spread worldwide.
Woo, I have an opinion.
As for the non-freaky parts of the day, there were a few. The park was really nice. I managed to do some artsy stuff there, but it sucks. I partially blame myself-- I wasn't feeling very detail oriented. But I also blame the paper, which was the only art-like paper I could find. Also, I sort of blame the pastels. But the pastels are weird. I got them for really cheap at the department store. There are 57 colors in the box, which is monumental. But then again, the box says "Happy Junior Artist" on it. And I thought, "youth?" If you flip the box over, there's a photo of a baby's hand. I mean this hand most likely belongs to someone under the age of 3. Also, they're "beyond non-toxic" and "environment friendly" and I'm thinking... art supplies that are non-toxic are sort of not worth it. I mean... sure, food dyes or like... fruit derivatives... but... not usually. So these OIL pastels are looking a lot like crayons. But the COLORS. I mean, the colors have names like "vermillon" (sic), "viridian," "oxide green," "cobalt blue," "ultramarine," "prussian blue," and like "dark carmine." Also, there's a "rose hadder," which I don't think I'd ever heard of until I looked at the back of this box, although now that Stephen King title makes more sense. But it was a pleasant way to spend the morning. Lots of mothers kept bringing their kids over to watch me draw... and people kept commenting when they walked by. It was... weird. But cool.
Then we ate at Yellow River a restaurant that serves western food that has gotten thumbs up from previous teachers, cuz I was craving pizza like mad (Phoebe and Joey were talking about it on Friends). Russ got the Chicago pizza... which ended up being a pizza with chili instead of tomato sauce. Really good though. I got tomato cheese, which was exactly that... also no sauce. But good. Alice went with the spicy chicken sandwich which was actually a cajun chicken sandwich that was really good (I tried some). The only other people there was a party of businessmen who ended with a Y600 tab. Whoa.
I have no idea how I spent the rest of the afternoon. I did take a 3 hr nap, I suppose, which has become the standard measure of time for me over the years.
And now I'm in a crunch preparing for two classes. I don't mind admitting that I get really nervous every time I have to do one of these. I understand this sort of makes me a mess a few times a week, but eh.
Watched the first of my Hohhot DVDs last night-- Top Gun. My first time ever watching that movie. I remember running in and out of the room with my cousins on various adventures while our parents had it on, but I absolutely never paid attention. I dedicated the viewing to Liz and Aki, the only two people to ever mention it to me, and am happy to say that I totally loved it. The theme was always my favorite song to play on the recorder in elementary school, but I was annoyed that they kept playing "Take My Breath Away," cuz it was almost camp (probably the nature of the song as it's evolved today, but still). Also Tom Cruise used to be real hot stuff and I never realized. I mean, I was in elementary school, but that hasn't stopped everyone, apparently. Ahem. And I've been a Val Kilmer fan since The Saint. Just sharing that. But the best was the fact that the DVD had all the extras on it. And there are a lot, though I was too tired to check them out so I don't know if they were really there or not. So that's crazy cuz that never happens.
Ok. Back to lessons, goddammit.
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