The stones get bigger and bigger

A piece of fatherly advice that my uncle offered to one of my cousins at dinner tonight, as initially inscrutable as it was unsolicited, and repeated several times. We were picking on my cousin's "dating history" and had begun to move away from the topic when this gem was placed before us. I think what he was getting at is that by not picking the first stone you see on the beach, you have a chance to examine and choose from the bounty that remains, and that each time you pick up a stone, you will have picked a better stone. This did not come across right away, and we had a good long wtf moment to savor with one another. This was by far the most interactive Christmas dinner in history, maybe because there were fewer people so us kids could line up all along one side of the table. Also, I cooked the majority of it. I started by making cioppino stock last night, then this afternoon put together mashed potatoes, stuffed peppers (a la mrs. L), macaroni and cheese, and completed cioppino. Janice and Arthur got in around 3, rousing me from my nap, and we piled into the kitchen together. Janice made some nice bruschetta for everyone to snack on while waiting for the rest of the family to arrive, and Arthur heated up the ham and made the glaze for it.

So, a note on the peppers. These turned out very well, but I have to put a warning here to my future self: wear gloves next time, for heaven's sake. The peppers themselves looked pretty mild, and having eaten them before, I was under the impression that the heat level was fairly low. Well, it is, but that doesn't actually matter when it comes to using your bare hands to tear out the seeds. After a while, I found myself staring at my hands, wondering why I felt like they were covered in tiny little cuts. Could I have been that careless with the knife? Probably like an hour later (ok, maybe half an hour), I realized that, oh, the acid or capsaicin or whatever was burning invisibly through my flesh. So I dunked them in milk. Then rinsed them with beer. Now, nearly 12 hours, several hand-washings and a long shower later, my right hand is most definitely still on fire. It's like having my fingers on a hot range. Ooooooow.

Ok, speaking of, I just had to go flush my hand under cold water. And now I shall continue. Food was pretty good. Got a little paranoid with the cioppino, so the fish was a bit overcooked maybe. Dinner didn't last long. Afterwards, some of us sat down to watch a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother, while others started going through old medical supplies. Eventually, I ended up downstairs with Arthur, Janice, and Alex, watching the Top Chef Christmas special.

Afterwards, Janice was really into the idea of dessert. I... wasn't hungry, but I did really have a hankering for whipped cream, and you can generally get me on board to cook around midnight as long as someone else will be doing the dishes. Also, this was the first time post- late nite cooking show that I had enough ingredients/eaters on-hand to fulfill any culinary cravings. Janice thought crepes sounded like a good idea (possibly inspired by the sudden death-round offering of one of the remaining chefs), so we ventured back upstairs to search out the recipe and rustle up interest. Turns out one of my uncles had eaten 5 slices of raisin bread because he'd really wanted dessert. So I whipped up a chocolate sauce, very easy, just by heating up some milk, stirring in some cocoa powder, adding half a large bar of dark chocolate, removing from heat, whisking up, and tossing in some cinnamon and powdered sugar. It had a slightly liquid-chalk appearance before serving since some of the stuff was thrown in after the mixture had cooled, but it was still smooth, drizzly, and tasty. Arthur was de facto in charge of crepe batter and, never having made crepes before, did a really good job and keeping them thin, spongy, and moist, though the shapes ended up being rather non-traditional. Janice raided the fridge, peeling and cutting several apples, then threw them in a skillet with some butter, brown sugar (why do I keep wanting to spell that "shugar?"), vanilla, and spices. She then cut up some bananas, and also put them in butter. I added brown sugar, vanilla, and nutmeg to that. We tried mixing up some whipped cream, but the hand mixer doesn't get enough air in to actually make this work. I pulled the whisk from chocolate duty and started on the cream that way, and it was successful. I set Daniel up with the heavy arm-work, and once he got the hang of it, he whipped up some pretty nice cream. When everything finished, we set up an assembly line, and everyone came to get dessert!

Very fun. Afterwards, Arthur and Janice left with the dog, and I went for my shower. On a completely separate note: I LOVE my new hairstyle. I don't know if this can ever be replicated or not, but I hope so! Maybe I can find some reason to take pictures of myself before it starts doing its own thing again... On another separate note: I'm screwed with these apps. Haven't worked on them in earnest in a week or possibly more. Eek!

Ok, fingers still searing hot. I'm assuming I'll be able to sleep with this going on, and that it'll have burned itself out by morning.

Thanks, eh?

I almost don't know how to begin. I haven't had any time in the past week to just sit down by myself and write anything here. I tried sorting out my finances just now and was simply unable to account for any of my activities the past few days. But of course, any good elementary school math student learns how to work backwards...

Tonight I celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving. Well, sort of. I celebrated it in the sense that I went to a place that was celebrating it and proceeded to eat a lot. An expat-run restaurant and bar called Parrot hosts Thanksgiving buffets (2) every year, and I didn't know anything about it until after I walked through the door. Last week Mrs. L introduced me to a woman who was looking to rent out a room. She's nice and her apartment's great, but totally out of my price range. Also she has two cats that are really crafty and like... mind-control you into petting them, regardless of how allergic you are. Anyways, she'd reserved a table at this event and invited me to come along.

I'd like to say that if you're in TEDA and really into Thanksgiving, this restaurant is where you want to be on this day of the year. I thought we would just be sitting in a big group, ordering off the menu, and running up your typical slightly-more-than-chinese-food-but-still-not-gut-wrenching bill. But yeah, actually, all-you-can-eat Thanksgiving buffet. I met her friends, mostly teachers at an international school, and then the owner came by to let us know that we could get our turkeys whenever we wanted. He's a suuuper-nice oldish gent with a southern drawl, and I asked him later where he's originally from. North Carolina! Anyways, I was like wow, turkey, what? But he directed us to the buffet while they brought out the birds. At the buffet: green beans, corn & red peppers, salad, sweet potatoes, cheesy broccoli, aaaaand STUFFING and MASHED POTATOES.

I really hadn't planned on eating any western-style foods for the next few months, for a number of reasons. But MAN I was happy to smell that stuffing. It was real quality stuff, and the potatoes were nice too. Gravy and cranberry sauce were also more than satisfactory. The owner came by and ladled a bunch of it into bowls for us to keep at our tables. At the tables were two honest to goodnest huo ji. I have no idea where they came from.

I really don't know how to stop eating Thanksgiving food. So I had a lot. And then went for pie and chocolate... torte? Should have skipped the chocolate. It was not what I wanted. But there was sweet potato pie and pumpkin pie. And lots of real whipped cream.

How much was it? Y150. Luckily I happened to have that amount in my purse, otherwise I might have been embarrassed. Ok, I would definitely have been embarrassed. I would pretty much venture that I would usually never disburse such an amount for a meal. Oh, and by today's exchange rate, that's about $21.9535... but that's a lot of money kind of.

It was really tasty food though and fun company. Glad I went!

Just remembered: severely apocalyptic dream last night. Like... I'm pretty sure the world was honestly ending. The moon crashed down anyways. And other stuff happened. Scary stuff.

While I'm here...

So, I started an entry the week before last to talk about that eventful weekend, and then just let it rot like carrion because I was to lazy to relive the whole thing. Then last weekend occurred, which was also eventful, as far as my weekends go, and you might notice that I haven't written about that one either. Let me just enumerate, for posterity's sake.

--Friday: Was angry at the cleaning lady for placing my shoes on top of my backpack and getting crap all over it. Got over it. Explored San Francisco near the eastern wall of the Presidio. Wandered the Lucasfilm campus, walked along the coast, found the wave organ. Drank champagne at Alice's and slept over. Developed scratchy throat.

--Saturday: Woke up, went to sports basement, went climbing, went back to sports basement, went back to Alice's, went to the sunset, went into a korean restaurant, escaped said restaurant when we discovered that there were no free side dishes, found San Tung, had noodles, headed towards beach, waylaid by Great Stuff store, did not make it to the beach. Scratchier throat.

--Sunday: Climbing at the Pinnacles (only not really for me cuz I'm physically and mentally weak), dinner at eNoodle: real guotie, vinegar at the tables, but beef noodle soup was really weird. Aaand I'm officially sick.

The week passes.

--Saturday: Met Alice after lunch, got on the bus, arrived at Exploratorium, met Yash and Adam, a day Exploring the wonders of our world, got herded out at closing time, balance beam jousting, driving to dinner, looking for parking, Adam's ipod, B44, got tipsy, perhaps I behaved strangely, Muni to Alice's, got my climbing stuff, went home.

--Sunday: Old Navy and Borders. Yeah.

And it's Friday again! I really meant to flesh out a lot of those experiences, but I know myself well enough to admit that that's probably just not going to happen at this point. It's sad because I don't know how to tag this entry now...

bleeaeaeeaaaargh

oh my god, i just ate a whole personal pizza and the last quarter of that falafel wrap. i'm perfectly aware that it wasn't *that* much, but i was only planning on eating half the pizza and it's almost 10:00. it's just that whoever buys groceries for my grandparents bought like 10 (more?) Celeste single serving pizzas the other day and only 3 of them would fit in the freezer. we ate three of them for my breakfast/their lunch that day, and the rest have been sitting in the refrigerator. so i'm trying to help get rid of them before they become unfit to eat but get fed to me anyway. By the way, I don't know why it is, but Celeste is like the only brand of personal pizzas that they sell at Safeway or something. It's more akin to the pizza you'd get in elementary school or the skating rink than anything anyone the least bit discerning would order of their own volition, but I guess since these people hold a monopoly in the frozen foods aisle, and random people still insist on buying it, that's what we're stuck with over here. Sigh.

The ambrosial mango from across the straits

First off though, I'd like to mention the newest application of my fear of commitment, at its most socially crippling. So, just outside the south gate of my xiaoqu, the gate we most frequently use, is a fruit-seller. We've been buying fruit there on and off since we moved in, but there wasn't ever really any sense of attachment. One reason for this was the eventual rotation of every person who has worked there-- usually it's operated by a single person every day from morning to night until that person mysteriously disappears and is replaced by a new person who does the same. Another reason is that there have been times when the selection of fruit was slightly under the par set by other fruit sellers citywide, or the prices still sounded a little higher in comparison. For these reasons, I've had no problems just taking my business elsewhere, though often I just grew too lazy to buy fruit at all.

Anyways, two days ago I decided to stop and buy a few mangos, when the jolly young male fruit seller decided to strike up a conversation with me. I guess sometimes you can't help but notice the comings and goings of two girls who speak English all the time and who also rendevous with old white men nearly every day right in front of your shop. But since then, I feel somehow beholden to this fruit seller, who, unlike other sellers, makes friendly conversation in lieu of speedy wordless transactions. Because now we have the bare construct of a relationship, I feel like taking the extra steps to go buy fruit elsewhere would be an act of disloyalty, even though probably no one even cares. Also, when I pass the shop now, will I have to make eye contact and small talk? Aaaaargh! These are the concerns that keep my from functioning like a normal person all of the time.

Whaaaaatever, this post is actually supposed to be about mangos. Sweet, succulent Philippine mangos. The Philippine mango is a goldenrod-hued ovoid fruit that is more slender than the mango we are familiar with in the US. There, it's possible to encounter it in the dried fruit section, but here, it's been mango season for a couple months now, and they're everywhere in their fresh golden glory. The first thing you notice, I guess, is the frangrance, and after looking briefly for where that smell is coming from, you'll find the mango. On the street, in a bag on the couch, its tattered peelings in the trash can, wherever, there's that haunting... melodic scent. Instantly recognizable as mango, only it does make you wonder why you've never smelled it this strong before.

These mangos you peel and eat like bananas, and it is a messy endeavor. You'll invariably have to wash your hands afterwards. The skin is pretty tender, and comes away easily, though sometimes you do have to tug a bit. Then you just tear copious amounts of mango flesh off the large pit in the middle, and finish by using your teeth to comb through the remainder of the pulpy fibers, much like whales do, for whatever vestiges of that sugary sweetness are left. If your vigilance wavers, the juice starts dribbling everywhere, and you get neon orange droplets slithering down your wrist, onto your kneecaps or the toes of your socks, and all over your chin. I'm usually pretty careful about this, and had a method that was working pretty well until today, when I just removed the whole mango from its jacket and ate it two-handed. For me, pretty soon the area around my lips and chin starts to burn and itch from the pectin, or whatever it is in fruit that I'm mildly allergic to, and I have to stop.

They've been selling mangos for several weeks now, and I've passed by several mango peels scattered on the streets. For some reason I just didn't want to go for it, under the illusion that these had to be approached like the ones back home: with a knife and a blindfolded sense of disappointment. It seemed like such a small mango would really suck to eat, with more pit than flesh, and a truncated length enjoyment. Also, I had no way of knowing whether they were ripe or not. But anyways, since my first mango a few days ago, I've been hypnotized and can't actually stop thinking about them. The flavor is inspirational. I've cycled through all the cooking possibilities but can't get past the delicious notion of just consuming them raw forever. Now I understand why mango ice creams and candies taste the way they do. This is what mango should taste like! The flavor's so rich and... yellow. These mangos taste like pure nectarine sunshine. Or like a Beach Boys song (a pretty one, about the beach)!

If you ever get the chance, I encourage you to embrace this fruit for a transcendental gastronomic EXPLOSION!

Yes. A bottle.

I am drinking yogurt from a bottle, and it has chunks of coconut floating in it. I wonder if this will make me sick.

Brownies, baby!

My name might as well be Betty MacGyver. I had another baking session cum mad science experiment last week, and the product was a batch of life-giving brownies. I'm actually really proud of myself!

I'd received what some might call a "motherlode" of bake mixes for Christmas (thanks, friends!) and no way to bring them to fruition! Since baking's not really a part of home cooking hereabouts, an extensive search of the department store/grocery turns up about zero baking pans. Ceramic and glass dishes have stickers on them depicting ovens with a big X on top. All salesladies advise against using any other kind of receptacle for baking, no matter how much it looks like Pyrex.

Now, I'm adventurous, but I'm still not about to put just any unknown alloy into my oven and risk ruining a chance to have delicious baked goods. Also, I realized that Man has been baking throughout the ages... uh... possibly since the dawn of time (hey), so if I tried thinking a little "outside the pan," I might be able to solve the problem without shelling out 3000 for a cast-iron skillet.

Not really sure why it didn't come to me sooner, but in the end, I went out and bought a roll of aluminum foil and fashioned my own roughly 8-in cirucular pan while watching a few episodes of Friends. It was awesome fun, and I really can't wait to do it again. And so simple!

Our fridge was still broken and therefore empty, so we had no eggs. I also wasn't willing to buy more than the one egg prescribed on the back of the box, since we had no good way of storing them. Fortunately, Alice's mom rules. She lent me a nice big egg and also took me to the new grocery store for a fresh jug of oil. I got soybean oil, because it seems slightly more novel and cost slightly less money.

The bane of all baking excursions for me is measurement. I am aware that it's mostly my fault for not just buying a measuring cup (there is a 4 cup measuring AND converting cup at the store for a couple hundred). So I wind up spending a lot of time beforehand looking up metric conversion utilities on the internet. Thing is, few companies mark the volume on containers anymore, and for those that do, I'm unsure as to whether it refers to the total volume of the jar/bottle or the actual volume of stuff they had in it. I went ahead and assumed the latter, so that I could rave about it more. There is a Tupperware cup we got for buying too much clothes one day, and that's 470 ml. I didn't really know how to do 1/3 c with that though. I had an idea that my French press might be 8 oz, and that our paper cups might be 4 oz, but after various internet searches failed to confirm either way, I set up a volume lab at the kitchen sink, and did me some interesting mental stoichiometry. I determined that my French press holds 12 c, and then was able to eyeball my liquids and bake some tasty treats.

It was only after everything was in the oven that I realized that my cough medicine came with a cap that measures 1 fluid oz, so I went back to test my hypotheses and discovered that my French press is actually 13 oz and our paper cups are a whopping 6.5 oz or something like that. It really blew my mind how little space an ounce actually takes up.

I know you're probably thinking that I thought about this too much... and I don't have anything to say about that except that you're probably right... but boy did I feel cool.

Then I gained like an inch of fat around my waist from eating too many brownies (although I did share like half the pan with other people, so don't feel too bad for me).

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!

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.

Eee! Eee! Eee! Eee!

Have you ever attempted to cube pork with a [really] dull meat cleaver? I have just done this, and I have advice for anyone who considers this course of action in the future. First of all, it's good to have some way of keeping your imagination occupied. Your mind can only wander so far into unsavory territory before trauma sets in. I'd been peeling and cleaving vegetables in the well-lit comfort of our living room, but for this particular activity, I chose to relocate to the darkened kitchen, and I gotta say that it did me good. Also, be aware that the probability of your face getting splattered with raw pork water increases dramatically.

I mean, I hate raw meat. I hate dealing with it in any capacity, including defrosting, cleaning, and cutting. Anything that takes place before the butchered corpse hits a hot surface and thereby becomes food is wholly unappealing to me. Therefore, the fewer visible muscle striations (+10 life points for the broken light), the better, though it doesn't help that you can still feel them. By the way, not many things are as repulsive as the slippery stubbly skin that comes with some cuts of pork shoulder. Oy. Being able to see the mottled coloring much more clearly than I could would have been worse.

Anyways, this was all part of my attempt to make a filling for mini pork pot empanada-ish thingummies. Tomorrow I tackle the crust and the baking, and I'm really prepared to fail altogether. The stuff I made tonight tastes all right, but it smells really weird. And I don't know where the smell comes from. It's unappetizing and smells a little like... burning. Not the cozy smell of a campfire or burning paper... it's something a bit more... undigestable. It's a common smell, just not a delicious one.

Also, everything somehow ended up coming out a little sweet. Now, I know that I added some brown sugar at the beginning, but like... it's kind of a porky carrot-like sweetness that follows a lot of stews I've experienced. Argh!

Oh, so I'm doing this because tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I wanted to have something a little surprising to present to my adult class tomorrow night. I mean, I don't know if many of them get a chance to have dinner before class (I know I don't, short of mantou with peanut butter some nights, or a partial package of noodle snacks), so it might be a nice gesture if I can produce something tasty for this holiday. Or... the alternative is to have a good story to tell them as we all starve together for two hours (unless they already eat, in which case it'll just be me). It doesn't really resemble the look or flavor of what I originally had in mind, but I'll follow through and see how it ends up. And gee, I had no idea that pork like... expands. The little bits I thought I cut are now much larger and... formidable. I also really don't want to try the meat itself to see how it turned out. You try taking a look at a pile of pork chunks under fluorescent lighting (think autopsy room) and see how eager you are to put any derivative thereof in your mouth. It's like the salmon fiasco revisited in pork.

Oh, that salmon. It still makes me pretty ill.

It's not as though I'm going on any real recipe here. It's sort of an amalgamation of recipes I've found and wild claims by forum members as to what substitutes for what. I shall post results as soon as I have them, though the potatoes taste all right so far!

Meanwhile, I washed my hands a multitude of times during the entire project. Did you know that I am totally paranoid when it comes to raw meat and the pathogens it carries? It's one of my "tendencies." I found myself in an awkward position this evening after water had pooled all over the countertop and floor and I had a wet plate of wet meat and nowhere quite sterile enough to put it down. Actually, that was less awkward than me rinsing the plate and the pork together, unable to turn the water off without contaminating everything and then having to turn the water back on again.

Fortunately, I brought disenfecting wipes!

The diet that will shave years off my life

Or at least you'd expect it would. Saturday night, before my class, I made kimchi fried rice. Sunday morning, before my class, I ate the leftovers. For lunch that day, Alice made more kimchi fried rice. Monday there was no definable breakfast or lunch, but Alice made Korean niangao for dinner (which, to me, resembles a slightly spicy campbell's tomato soup with niangao and cabbage), then yesterday our lunch was, again, kimchi fried rice.

Today, I ended a 3 year moratorium on ramen by indulging in a bowl of Shin Ramyun, which had grown too enticing to resist. Watching Korean shows, seeing commercials, and then seeing the noodles themselves at the store really wore me down over the past couple months... and throw in all those train trips between this year and last summer where the other passengers were all eating ramen, and yeah. What's a girl to do? I do submit, though, that Shin Ramyun is a little different from like the $.15 packages of Maruchuan, which I've never been a fan of. While the spices might be a bit more caustic (like, my stomach hurts a little bit right now), it all just seems more like legitimate food. Maybe it's the dried vegetables or the runny nose that you get while eating it, but yeah... it's just different, and you'll know if you try it. I know Wegman's and Tops sell it, Jungle Jim's must. Do yourself a favor and try some Shin Cup today!

So yeah, I can feel my stomach lining melting away, and also my cells deteriorating from such a non-diverse diet. I'm not really complaining though, cuz it tastes so good.

My life in food and also TV

Food update: So you know, Alice's mom comes around every couple of days to cook lunch for us and that's pretty awesome. Today, my decision to get out of bed was initiated by her arrival here. She brought fresh-baked date cake, zao gao, which actually sounds like the term people use to intone "danger" or "oops." It's pretty awesome, because it tastes pretty much like fruity quickbreads that we'd be making this time of year back home, like zucchini bread (fine, not a fruit, but you get the point). I was glad I woke up when I did, because it was still warm! She insisted that she had to wait in line forever to buy it because everyone else likes it too, and that it's Y6 per jin.

I've gotten a random vacation the past few days because the high schoolers have been taking exams. It's been spent more or less on my ass... pretty relaxing, but I also feel like the ultimate bum. Still, I wish I got more days off! Today, Alice and I went through the shopping center again, only this time we stuck with individual stores (as opposed to the department store) and poked into a few places we've never been in before. Some pretty funky stuff on sale.

I was pretty much at the bottom of my funds, but ended up buying a really nice jacket anyways. Between that and the fee for the residency permit, my salary depleted really fast. Since I'm also saving up to replace my lost camera, I'm basically left with not all that much until next month. Ok. Purse strings of steel. Let's go.

Back home, I made some efforts to read some more and watch last season's Desperate Housewives finale. Around 5, Alice turned to me and said, "Do you want to go out?" I was like... did I say something? But apparently she'd been downloading more Korean shows and wanted to see if one was on sale at... the DVD place. So we went, and we bought. She got like... that show, a Japanese show, and Japanese show we watched already that she wants to delete from her hard drive. I got a Taiwanese adaptation of the catty Japanese manga Peach Girl, which is sort of playing in the background now.

So we saw this Japanese show about two guys who take on this really awkward, introverted girl as a project. They want to make her happier. One guy is like super popular, and the other's just sort of weird. I missed the beginning and most of the ending, but the parts in the middle were fun. It was really strange though, because here's an instance where parts of the spoken language made more sense to me than what I could glean from the subtitles, so my comprehension of what was actually taking place was really messed up. The acting may be the best out of the different regions that have produced drama that we have seen.

Taiwan has produced perhaps the worst, but in a charming way. Alice was watching another show a week or so ago that was made while she was still in undergrad, based on another Japanese comic I think. I think I spent most of the time I that I watched it with her just badmouthing the main character, whom I thought was kind of a stupid girl. Also, time was spent mistaking this guy for a girl, and just marveling at the really bizarre acting style they have. That style's also evident in the current show. I don't really get it, but I love it... but it's like watching the morning announcements in high school, or first-year student films. Or, like, your friends goofing around with a video camera.

The mainland has little to offer in the dramatic teleplay department, alas... Hudie Feifei is pretty much the only one I've been able to view in its entirety, and that one had one of the least satisfying endings of anything I've ever watched. It's on VCD at my house in Ohio if anyone wants to see it, but it's all Chinese language and Chinese subtitles.

The Korean show she got looks promising, as in it already threatens to take up a lot of viewing time, but so far it's hilarious and I want to see them fall in looooove.

But that's it. Honestly I haven't really encountered anything especially interesting beyond these things in the past week, so...

Actually,more than a few... snacks and therapy?

A few things.

Thing the first: it seems I can no longer view blogspot pages, and that includes the Post Secret website as well as my own blog. But apparently I can still post to it. So I'll just continue to do that. Blindly.

I've discovered something I will miss very dearly when the time comes. Well, assuming I don't sicken of it first. I refer to snack noodles. I don't know what else to call them. Basically, you're dealing with a shiny maruchuan-sized package of a baked form of endless cury noodle resembling ramen that either comes pre-seasoned or with roast chicken, fried chicken, or beef flavor packets, however your tastes run. I prefer the chicken varieties myself. But really, could anyone have designed a better food for the snack-minded? Granted, they're really messy (or I'm messy when I eat them). Imagine like centimeter-long noodle crumbles on all surfaces, collecting in your lap, and also in the spaces between the floor tiles. Floors around here really challenge the 5-second rule, so it's gotta be a really big chunk of DRY food on the line before I'll pick it up and consume it. But that's pure digression. So yeah, genius food-- ramen that requires no preparation whatsoever. And I love baked/fried noodles to begin with-- freshman year, that was my favorite salad add-in! I'm positive that they're totally unhealthy, and almost guaranteed to contain high doses of sodium and msg, but... you know, I have time to eat that and not other stuff, so yeah.

So, Billy Joel played on iTunes today, and I was reminded of the same thing I'm always reminded of when I hear that one song (We Didn't Start the Fire): Mrs. Mac's 6th grade world history class. That was, what, the first thing we ever did? Maybe not, because I'm pretty sure it occurred the second day, but I remember going in there feeling so smart, then following along with the lyrics and realizing, hey, I don't get most of this stuff. Were they even real words? Some of them weren't, like, real words. BUT THEY WERE. Thus, that woman, who was so mean at recess, cemented my love of history once and for all, and for 6 years that memory just chilled out, very vaguely, in my brain, until Google and Kazaa showed me the way back to BJ (I had no clue who the hell had written that song and hadn't heard it since that first fateful day). So now I'm pretty sure I can attach some relevance to the majority of the song, with a few of the SE Asia references being the only misses. Maybe some other parts, but I don't remember right now. Anyways, when that came to me today, I felt really happy. Who knew a random thing we did in elementary school back in the day could still stick so strong? Ok, well, maybe I did, cuz there's a lot of other things I remember too, but anyways... thanks, Billy Joel. And thanks, Mrs. Mac (even though you yelled at us during lunch, though I suppose that's unrelated)!

Actually, you know, I got a ton of C's from her and didn't even find out until like the end of the year when she finally divulged that I hadn't been keeping my notebook in the right format. Gee, thanks for correcting me never.

Other things I remember from elementary school:
(ahem)
1. My first day on the bus! I sat with Kristi Lippert and another random girl and together we figured out that we had the same teacher and made fun of her name until I started feeling guilty and stopped. If you're curious, my teacher's name was Mrs. Foxbower, which is actually a really cool name, but admittedly unusual. Really, only 1st graders would make fun of it.

2. Know what games I remember from the playground at Union (1st & 2nd)? Mork & Mindy: the 2-part episode where Mindy gets kidnapped by those space vixens, and polar bears & researchers. No joke.

3. Being incomparably embarassed when... well, I'd better introduce this better. Something I'll remember as one of the most embarassing moments of my entire life (actually, all of them may have occurred in 2nd grade): Mirm & I had spent a whole evening writing up "save the planet" letter addressed to kids in our class. We only completed 4 of them before she had to go home. I had every intention of delivering them though, so I did, during recess the next day. So when we came back, only 4 students had these special little letters in envelopes with their names on them sitting on their desk. They were confused. One of them was Joel, and I think he had a crush on Mirm (which was possibly the only reason I got along with him), so I'm pretty sure that's why his first guess was that it was from her. Nope! Not having opened it, I'm not really sure what he thought it contained, but really everything was suddenly very awkward. I was a shy kid, and eventually the teacher had to come over and find out who passed out the letters and what they were about, and finally Mirm explained that I "really cared about the environment and wanted to get everyone to help." Thanks, Mirm!

4. I once thought that Everybody Counts was a math thing and was really terrified of it even though I didn't suck at math yet. In 2nd grade, Jeffie's mom taught us sign-language for "Happy Birthday" and we got to perform it for the class.

5. Kicking butt at dreidl when we were learning about Hannukah in Mrs. McBee's class.

6. 3rd grade Thanksgiving Feast in the hallway, and clogging the hall so completely that the 5th graders couldn't get through. In the event of a fire, we probably would have had a lawsuit on our hands. Anyways, I had a fringed yellow tunic from Myrtle Beach that I hadn't worn in years, but turned inside out, it made a great Indian stereotype. I wore the outfit (including braids) to Kroger's later because I thought it was so clever.

7. Learning about the mail. I have always addressed letters properly, but hate writing in capital letters so I still don't.

8. Mrs. Atkins' daughter was Miss Teen Ohio? Miss Teen USA? Something like that.

9. We had to pick a country and do a really in-depth presentation of it, and Atkins profiled me to do China. Like, she asked everyone else to pick then literally turned to me and said "Katharine, wouldn't you like to do China?" But I sorta did, so it worked out ok. Then my mother insisted to me that there were two Chinas, thereby really confusing me, and so I did my presentation on two separate Chinas, but created only the Taiwanese flag, which I thought looked nicer. Really funny now that I think of it. But it's not like anyone else in the room knew any better anyways. Some other kid did a country with sugar cane (crap, was that Sean Townsend??), and I've had a craving for sugar cane ever since.

10. Having to recreate a 2-d human body out of paper... it took me many extra months to complete this project. Actually, I forgot about it until my teacher informed my mother about it near the end of the year. I'm pretty sure I put the pancreas in backwards.

11. I was physically blown several feet by a really strong gust of wind on the playground. Into Gary Roberts, I think.

12. During pioneer days in 4th grade, I was so pleased when a certain person's suspenders snapped and he went into, like, rigor mortis (I guess snapped suspenders suck if you're a guy). I was standing a little ways behind him in the turkey line, and he'd just been really obnoxious (a regular thing) to a bunch of people. Basically, it was hands-down the fastest karmic pay-back ever.

13. The lizard who peed on my friend and then dove down the sink drain. "Lizzy go down the hole" was something the guys in our class were fond of saying ever after.

14. When David Singer outclassed Jeff Kovach at the predator-prey game and Jeff rocketed head-first into Brose's desk.

15. When Jeff Kovach and... Singer again?... tore our class mascot ("Noid" the Domino's pizza avatar) in half and little styrofoam balls got all over everything.

16. Being banned from finishing our folktale puppet show when Kristi and I realized we didn't have a horse for the prince (yes, this happened at the very beginning of the show) and I chose to, well, improvize. It was very unwise. Our filmstrip was the best one though, I think. Well, even though it didn't exactly line up with the narration.

17. Tomato juice is the state drink of Ohio. I know this because I had to make a quilt sqare out of it for our Ohio quilt.

18. Mrs. Hammer got REALLY mad at me when I tried to be creative with the way I wrote my answers to her math problems. I was trying to save space and paper. Anyways, she handed it back to me with these words: "If you ever write your answers like this again, you will get an F." And I think her teeth were actually gritted. Scared the crap out of me.

19. Mrs. Hammer also taught us how to hula, and I remember her yelling at Sean Boyd because he was being really funny about it. Anyways, our hula routine was to the first few lines of "Surfer Girl" which I will always remember.

20. Mr. Schaeffer taught us math too. I can't remember what math, but I do remember the Bang Bang Game, which Alice Chang may have been the first to solve.

21. I remember feeling like the universe was going my way when, during our first fungi lesson, I actually had my fingers crossed that the teach would ask us how fungi reproduce, and my wish came true! I got to answer and everything, my hand was up in a FLASH.

22. There was a book in the library that has to rank among my favorite books of all time. Basically it was a massive black volume detailing several hundred poisonous plants. Not humorous. No references to current events. Just basic statement of facts and consequences. I had it on power-renew, and must have read it more than once. Oddly, the only thing I remember is that mango sap has the same qualities as poison ivy.

23. When, having run out of non-fiction reading material for the moment, I turned to a series of thin orange hardbacks that summarized the plot of every old-Hollywood horror film ever made. Therefore, I know the plot of The Werewolf, It Came from the Black Lagoon, The Phantom of the Opera, and others without ever having to have seen the movies themselves, which would probably still scare me, I'm such a sap.

24. I won the best Hawaiian smile contest.

25. Bob Sendelbach won the best Hawaiian hat contest, with my hat, even though it was too small for his head and we couldn't seem to make it any bigger.

26. Eschewing recess for art delivery with Kristi, and eventually Brandy and Natasha. This meant that we could be complete goofballs in the empty hallways and look at everyone else's work. I hit my head on a doorknob on one of these occasions, and yes, I was taller than all doorknobs by then. When I recounted this story to Mr. Heflin a year later, he told me it was impressive.

27. We apparently outgrew Reading Rainbow partway through 4th grade, and so they replaced it with this cracked-out future adventure where Earth was taken over by giant heads called "Wipers" (characters could not say this word without every boy in class laughing his head off). Random kids saved the world by using the Dewey Decimal system. BUT, after 4 years in public school libraries, we all already knew how to use the DD system. So...

28. Kristi used to finish all of our assigned books so much faster than everyone else that they had to advance her a copy of the next book. I was second fastest reader after her, but she could actually speed-read out loud, which I think shocked a lot of people.

29. "Why does Fluffy look so puffy?" Best line from the book Skinny Bones, which the woman had the audacity to REWRITE for who knows what reason, and now this line no longer exists.

30. Brose actually read A Boy in the Girls Bathroom to us. What a gem.

31. I was one of two students who showed up at Brose's wedding. I was actually late because my parents couldn't find the church and had to enter after the bride. I then left immediately after the ceremony, but he did see me there!

32. We had to write stories using our vocab words, and I elected to write eclectic tales about jade shoes (a great story that my parents threw away... don't worry, I threw an honest tantrum about it) and also parodies of Snow White in which the dwarves were given interesting new personalities (one of them was named Superman). I was always up late doing this. And also really pleased with myself.

33. In the 5th grade, I encountered one of the most amazing teaching presences of my life. Get this: Miami U. student teacher Mr. Heflin was so charismatic that on the last test he ever gave us, the last question was phrased like so, "Write everything you know about energy." Kids wrote until he told us to stop, basically, and filled the pages up. When asked afterwards how we felt, the majority of us said something about how our limbs ached.

34. Another Heflin moment: he gave us some assignment to work on silently, and a few minutes in shouted for us to freeze. Then he told us to look around the room and started laughing at us. Apparently, he'd never witnessed so many outlandish sitting positions. And he was right-- some people were really contorted. Legs were bent here and there, people were sitting sideways, some were backwards. As for myself, I was standing, bent over one of the small sides of the desk.

35. One of the proudest quips of my life: we'd just changed the seating arrangement, and Nick G. turned around to ask, "How's the weather back there?" My response: "Um... (thinking) cloudy. With a chance of meatballs." And he laughed! Another one of my favorite books, by the way.

36. Heflin played The Raven for us on Halloween, and The Shadow radio play once too. He then made fun of us because most of us were still oriented towards the stereo, even though there was nothing to look at.

37. One day, in the middle of group work, Heflin told us to stop and revealed that he and another student had been conducting an experiment on us... they'd been playing a song, and when the volume was low, we were quiet. When they turned it up, we started being busting-at-the-seams loud. Lowered again, we quieted down. And so on. It felt a little intrusive, but it was still pretty cool.

38. In a unit designed to teach us about check-writing and budgeting, Heflin attached various urban legends to real towns in Ohio (Waynesville, for example), then told us that we were going on investigative missions to one of the sites. I was in a group with Kara and Bob, and Kara was a very clever girl. In order to save money, she prefaced each catalog purchase option with "Bob, are you tough?" He inevitably answered "yes" each time, and thus she would reply, "Ok, so only 2 sleeping bags... two tents... two... so on." By the time he started taking some initiative, his only real allowance was a unit of malted milk balls. The only flaw in this was the fact that we moved on to the next lesson without any closure as to how our missions went. When we rebelled, he made up some really unsatisfying finale and moved on anyways.

39. We had to write short reports on one of the ancient Central American civilizations, and mine was the... Incans? Whoever it was, there were animal sacrifices but no human sacrifices. Anyways, I colored a really cool stone and grass border around it and thought it was the greatest thing ever.

40. I was injured twice in 5th grade. The first time was during a game of State Tag, I believe the destination was Texas, and I slipped and fell. At the end of the year, I was standing on the US map with some friends as the next class was released from lunch. Suddenly, I was the victim of a damn hit-and-run, when some tall kid pretty much trampled me and I had deep scrapes/bruises on 3 out of 4 limbs. Several people claimed that my assailant was Jermaine, but I still don't know for sure. Again, I'm pretty sure I was standing on or near Texas.

41. Kelly more or less led activities on the playground, and others in the group were Kristi, Sarah, Mirm, Emily, Liz, and Christine already. We played all sorts of tag, loitered around the honeysuckle bushes, and marched around as the "Maiderellas" and we had a chant to go along with it too.

42. I... said that someone looked like he was wearing a diaper, and someone actually repeated that to him. For real, I was just making an observation, no malice involved whatsoever. Sorry, man. Come to think of it, something similar happened in first grade, when, during a music lesson, I alleged that Chris Luebbe sounded like a girl. Pure observation, mind you. I didn't even know that that could be insulting to anyone. For real. This behavior wasn't reined in until 10th grade, when Lauterbach put me in my place while we were helping her grade the finals.

43. When Chen first came to our class, I tried to start a conversation with the assumption that he was from Taiwan. Remember that I'd been extremely unclear about this since the 3rd grade. I just remembered that the encyclopedia cited a really long name for Taiwan, and I got it mixed up with the one for China proper, which is actually longer (ok, also, they seemed longer for a 3rd grader than they do now). Anyways, he denied this. I insisted then, that he was wrong, thereby also insisting that he didn't know where he was from. Oops. Anyways, that was our first contact, I think, and it took place in the art room.

44. Mrs. Strand continued the trend of teachers insisting that they wanted to read my first book, based solely on hyper-imaginitive, stuffed with loose ends, crazy-person stories that I wrote in response to what were perfectly normal assignments. When did this trend begin? In the third grade, during the Daily Oral Language and daily journal part of our english lessons, for which my metaphors were a bit more metaphorical. Also, I illustrated everything. In the case of the story that Mrs. Strand read, the illustrations were largely inspired (and sometimes traced from... shhh!) by the Dark Phoenix Saga. Fo realz.

45. In 6th grade, I became a latchkey kid and accidentally put gum in a girl's hair. I can't remember how it happened, but it was definitely an accident.

46. Other than speed, we spent a lot of time playing a game based on mummies.

47. At some point, during a game of dodgeball, some kid threw a gatorball at my face and split my lip. I'm pretty sure whoever it was didn't take an out either. Mr. Lindsey was an odd one... he really liked making us play Antipasto, which he called "Antipasta". My favorite games though were definitely Capture the Ball and Handball. Also I liked volleyball because I liked serving. I disliked the President's Fitness Challenge because it wasn't a fun game.

48. Took my first ceramics class, the only other student was Zach Forry. Two of the best pots I ever made, though I honestly can't remember the degree to which I was actually working alone.

49. All this time, I'd been taking afterschool classes with one of the coolest women ever. At first it was math club, which I dreaded until I got there and discovered that it was Mr. Wizard math and therefore awesome. This woman could divide really fast. After that one year though, she gave up math and taught cooking classes instead. So 4th-6th, I was learning how to make crepes, haystacks, pudding pies, meatballs, apple fritters, and so on. Where did the recipes go? No clue, and it's too bad.

50. Mrs. Niehaus must have been so thrilled to have two Chinese kids she could use to play the Chinese kids in her Christmas pageant.

51. Mr. T, back at Woodland, was the best at teaching pneumonics (mnemonics? i don't have the energy to verify either spelling right now, it's like 3am) for remembering scales. Also, he had the best trombone story ever. Ok, ok, so he was playing in a band at a wedding when the spit valve caught on a woman's dress and took it back up to 1st position.

52. Being randomly invited to the special social studies class. I was really confused during the whole ordeal as to why I was there and who this woman was that was teaching me, thus beginning the trend of me ending up in advanced classes where I don't belong.

53. One day I was making fun of Bob at the drinking fountain and heard myself laughing at my own joke. He asked me why I always laughed after everything I said. I didn't know and got very self-conscious.

54. Was confused for the first time ever during a science lesson. The whole color of light thing, and that eventually led to a lot of unfounded conjecture as to what color REALLY was, and it was sort of upsetting.

55. Mac also played the full unaltered version of Scarborough Fair, which I have been unable to locate to this day.

56. During gym, I led a bunch of the girls in a chorus of "Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to school we go... with razor blades and hand grenades... and so on." Granted, we were entirely unthreatening, but don't you miss those days when you could sing that and not get arrested? Used to be the funniest thing ever, I swear. Well, next to the Gopher Guts song.

57. We spent all of our underclassmen days looking forward to the day that we could play the Ducktails theme song in the band, and it was as sweet as I'd hoped.

58. Me and Christine were partnered up for the Egyptian mask project, and our mask was hot. Later, Chen would look at it and say, "Whoa, Nefertiti!" and I got mad because I couldn't tell what he meant by that. Was it an insult? Apparently not. Oops.

59. For our solar system project, I baked a cake. Other people did a lot of research and built models and mobiles. I baked a sponge cake, layered it with apricot jam, draped it in fondant, and planted a green fondant alien in the middle next to the big fondant spaceship (not based on any existing NASA design). It was an intense effort, but... now that I think of it... it was a cake. Cheney loved it though, and I think I got an A anyways. I also learned the true meaning of not eating your cake too-- my mom wouldn't let me since it had been on display for so many days.

60. The art teacher may have yelled at me for visiting too often, but then she started giving me Starburst jellybeans, then made bracelets for me and another girl for helping her out. I outgrew it really fast, but it's still really pretty.

61. I hate rule-breakers. The most upsetting rule-breaking experience happened afterschool at latchkey when we were playing mat-tag and Adrian broke like every single rule in the book. I was so furious I cried and actually hyperventilated until my mom got there. Overreaction? I still probably would have attacked him if I weren't sorta better than that.

62. No haunted house gym class was better than Mr. Losh's back at Union.

63. In Davis's class, we had to pick interview partners out of a hat. I picked Mirm and she picked me-- I thought it was crazy!

64. School carnivals were the best. The best of the best? Spin art, cakewalks, face-painting, cotton candy, hay rides, fishing, the lollipop game, and, in 5th grade (I think), the country music seizure room. Wasn't a country fan even then, but Kristi was, and there were black lights. There was a game I was really good at, but I can't remember what it was because I was always afraid to play it.

65. Cheney yelled at me for talking in class one day when I knew for a fact my mouth was shut. She made me go to the back of the line. I wanted to cry!

66. One of the finest feelings? Having your name called on the intercom at the end of the school day.

67. Back in 2nd grade, I was disciplined. We had to sit on the stool next to the behavior chart with our clothespins on it. Being an examiner, the first thing I did was start examining all the details of the chalkboard, the chart, and the clothespins. McBee totally yelled at me for enjoying myself. I wasn't aware that being a good girl and also enjoying myself while being punished was a bad thing. I didn't know what to do.

68. Back to 2nd grade again, I had an imaginary white tiger. It chilled out under my desk during class. I also spent a lot of time staring out the window (they had to move me) and organizing the items in my desk.

69. When did I start turning assignments in on time? 4th grade, mid-year. I never understood the deadline concept. Then there was this terrifying sub, the first, the original, Fishface (subsequent subs were then Fishface 2, 3, 4, and so on. I was not the one who developed this labeling system, rather, it surfaced organically among the boys in the class). During her week as our teacher, I started consistently turning things in on time, and was good about it until senior year of high school when there was a slight mishap. And you know it was downhill from there.

70. As part of spelling in the 1st grade, we had to write every word 3 times in one spot in a different color crayon. Thing is, I was a really good speller, and I hated this assignment. Know why? Because I would drive myself crazy trying to devise unique color combinations for each word. This simple assignment would often keep me up really late. My mom would usually insist that I cheat on the color schemes, but this was something I would never do UNTIL one day I got so fed up that I just picked up any 3 random crayons, no matter how much they didn't go together, and write the word once, holding all three at a time. In 5th grade, we had to do something similar, write each word 3 or 5 times, but separately, and in pencil. The only way I could think to make this go faster was to go one letter at a time vertically, then fill out a line horizontally, then vertically for the next letter, then fill out another horizontal, and so on. It was something I'd developed in Chinese school when I was really young. Heflin caught me doing this one day and publicly chewed me out as an example to the other students. But I could already spell all these words! I aced every spelling test!

71. In 5th grade, Melissa C. recited a lot of, if not all of, the Gettysburg Address. I stopped paying attention almost right away, so I'm not really sure.

72. Back at Woodland, a praying mantis got loose in our class one day and girls actually got on top of their chairs and screamed. I used to hunt earthworms in storm drains, so this was a total shock for me, since I'd only seen that type of behavior in cartoons. Incidentally, my nightcrawler days ended during a school trip to a campsite where I tried to pull a worm out of a heap of dirt clods and grass and inadvertently bisected it.

73. In the third grade, we got a new student, Sean... Hennessy? He was like the 3rd or 4th Sean, I think. Anyways, he was really bad-tempered when first showed up, probably because he'd had to move and everything. I think ultimately everyone sort of understood, but he was pretty nasty. He began his Woodland career by insulting the teacher and sort of... well it's weird cuz I'd never seen anything like it before, but she had to physically remove him from the room and he definitely fought back. I remember practicing cursive Z's one day... we were supposed to grade our own practice sheets, and since no one really checked, we generally gave ourselves A's, or B's if we were feeling more honest than usual. He gave himself an F+ and I've always thought that the + was kind of funny. He finally found his place when Atkins' stapler broke and he fixed it. From then on, he was the stapler expert and thus acclimated to his new environment.

74. Remember how cursive was supposed to be so important? Everything had to be in cursive, but once we got to junior high, the teachers threatened us against ever using cursive.

75. I used to get really bad headaches, and was comfortable enough in the 4th grade to soak paper towels, place them on my forehead, and sit with my head back, water dripping down my neck.

76. We had a substitute teacher one day, I think it was one I was fond of. Maybe this was in 3rd grade. Anyways, she was standing by the door that morning before class had begun, and a girl... Brittany? Lauren? got up and said she needed to go to the bathroom. She'd barely cleared the threshold when the sub grabbed the big trash can and thrust it in front of her, and the girl puked hardcore. The sub was so happy, she spent a few minutes telling us about how good it was to have a rapport with others and be able to look at their faces and read their minds.

77. In 6th grade, Sarah Fredricksen and I resolved to join the drama club when we got to junior high. Actually there was no such thing until 9th grade, and she'd moved away by then.

78. One day in 2nd grade, I zoned out on the bus ride home and thought I'd missed my stop. I started panicking and involved the bus driver before we realized that we were in my neighborhood and we hadn't come to my house yet.

79. On the bus in 4th grade, Kristi and I amused ourselves by dueting "A Whole New World" over and over again, switching parts, for many many many days. No one ever said anything.

80. My first 3 years of elementary school, I always kissed my teachers on the cheek before I left for the bus.



So... maybe that's ok for now. I'm really tired. My arms are also seizing up-- this typing environment here's not the best. It felt really good though, to go through all those. I always say that my memory is crap, but there are a lot of things that really stand out that I might always remember. Of course, my memory might be even more faded now at 4am. How obsessed does one have to be to stay up until 4, typing the highlights of their formative elementary years? I might not be in a place to answer that question objectively. Anyways, it was really therapeutic, and I think I may do more reminiscing soon... if in smaller chunks.

If you actually read all those, you now see much of how I became who I am today. You also know how much of dazed, out-of-touch, know-it-all I was and have always been. It's been fun, though!

Plus more adventures in food

last night, i dreamt that i was driving in mariokart along with a number of friends. it was sort of macabre.

Also included: baking experiment #1.

Ah, so yesterday was my day off! I sat around for part of the morning as Alice configured her new gmail account, then the two of us went out shopping. It was coooold yesterday! Well, just chilly and very windy. The wind totally sabotaged my outfit and I had to run back upstairs to change. Gangtie Lu (a wide road running E-W) was like one big wind tunnel.

We started out at a "spicy soup" place, as Alice has been calling it. It's funny she does this sort of descriptive translation for me, which is nice, but I swear I can handle the actual Chinese words... it'd be more helpful anyways. I think if I needed to find this sort of food on my own and asked someone for spicy soup, they wouldn't know where to begin. Almost every one of this region's specialties I've encountered so far has revolved around this main idea of spicy soup. Anyways, it's called ma la chuan, and it's the Mongolian BBQ of soup. Anything with the word "chuan"in it involves a skewer, by the way. So we ran across the street to this little restaurant that was incredibly crowded. No seats. We went up to what looked like a set of produce shelves at the supermarket, where there were baskets full of skewered mushrooms, tofu, greens, hot dogs, fish balls, squid, tofu skin, etc. You pick up your own basket and fill it with whatever you want. I went with two things of frozen tofu, sweet potato, yellowish brown mushroom slices, and some big leafy greens. Then up to the counter to pay for it... plus some potato starch noodles and a cold green tea, it all came to... Y7.5? Less than 10 anyway. They gave me a number- 6- and I went with Alice to stake out a seat. We managed to sit down at a counter, but it was not build for people to eat around it, and they were sort of using it to store some vegetables. So we snatched a table after some other people left.

You have to wait a while for everything to boil, but after a while, they bring out a bowl lined in a plastic bag filled with a whitish-yellow broth and a thin orange film of oil on top, assuming you asked for hot sauce, which I so did. You know, it was ok. I think I personally had better last week and a place near the Training Ctr. The broth was barely discernable... the entire thing was just the best spiciest soup ever. Dark red! It was great. I was crying, which is a natural reaction to having that much chili at one time. Ooh!

After that, we ran through the chill to an indoor mall selling nothing but clothes. I got a pretty generic navy track jacket from Eruner. Some nice white racing stripes down the side. And I put it on immediately, over my fleece, cuz it was cold outside.

When we finished there, we went back over to Wangfujing. We go there a lot. Just twice last week for the microwave. We went through the supermarket in the basement for.... baking ingredients! And a bunch of random crap. I always feel like an 8 year old who was asked to do the shopping for her family and buys only junk food and snacks. It's not aaaall junk food, but we're always short on snacks around here. The worst was this really heavy sack of flour.

Then back up to the 5th floor for a toaster oven! I bought a hulk of a toaster oven, a big brushed silver Galanz. It has a rotisserie function. Cost me Y638. We begged the saleslady for free gifts since we are clearly regular customers. She managed to find a set of spice jars and another microwaveable dish (we got two free with our microwave). One of the salesmen gave us a Y500 gift card in exchange for 500 in cash, and then carried everything out to the curb for us. I took the oven and all the groceries in a cab so that Alice could return with the bike.

The first thing I did was whip out an oatmeal raisin (that was originally "oatmean raising" for people who are interested in my disintegrating typing skills) cookie recipe I found online (ok, actually the first thing I did was put two pairs of jeans into the wash, but whatever). People here don't ever bake, so first of all, no one could understand why I wanted to buy such a big expensive oven in the first place.

Here's where the tricks game up though. The recipe called for baking soda. We bought two known leavening agents at the store, assuming one was soda and one was powder, but were unable to tell the difference between the two. I remembered a speech my home ec teacher gave in the 8th grade about what horrible things happen when you accidentally use one instead of the other. I realized that after all the baking I've done, I couldn't remember what one looked like compared to the other. I thought I'd be all clever and Mr. Science-y, and do some simple experiments in my kitchen, but... ok, so both contain NaHCO3, sodium bicarbonate, so both will react if you pour vinegar on them. So getting all excited about that didn't help me one bit. It turns out that baking powder is baking soda already mixed with a dry acid and usually corn starch and will react as it gets wet. So I added water and nothing happened to either. So I felt silly.

One did look more like corn starch than the other, but I didn't know if that was good enough. The internet didn't help a whole lot. On various message boards, some people claimed that xiaoshuda, which I had in a green bag, was baking soda, and on other boards, folks claimed that it was baking powder. I conclude that maybe none of these people actually know. The label on the other bag, a pink one bearing a character I don't recognize but am tempted to pronounce as "cheng" plus a character I do know, mian, is unscrutinized on the internet and didn't show up in Alice's translator. Xiaoshuda came up as "saleratus" which I had to dictionary.com to find out meant baking soda. Buuut, then there was all that other contradictory info. Finally Alice called her mom and came back with the answer, " just use the green one... the pink one you should use only if you're cooking something sour." A hint, yet still more contradictory.

This led me to believe that the green bag was actually full of baking powder, since soda needs an acid added in the recipe to do anything. But I decided to just listen to her mom, even though the recipe called for soda. A quick internet check revealed that various recipes call for one, the other, or both, so I just threw up my hands and went for it.

I mixed everything together in a pot. The recipe... basically functioned as a set of guidelines. The actual portioning of ingredients came entirely out of my ass. For one, it called for a cup of butter, but I only had one smaller-than-usual stick, so... Also, I don't have ANY measuring equipment! So I used a paper cup and what I thought was a teaspoon but which I now believe to be nearly two teaspoons. The recipe called for a massive amount of brown sugar, by the way. So I got to the part about raisins. I had a bag of green raisins that I got from the market a while ago, but when I tasted them it turns out... they're not the kind of raisins that would go into a cookie. So I ran to the fridge and got an apple and chopped that up. In baking the first batch, I discovered that 176ºC is so much hotter than the recipe needed. So I turned it down to about 140º. It looked to me like the bottoms were burning, but it was actually the brown sugar playing tricks on my vision.

I added some coffee grounds to the second batch, because I love coffee grounds in baking. Thanks to one of my kayaking instructors who introduced the idea to me and a Bobby Flay BBQ special for cementing that for me.

So... the outcome... Uh. You know, they're good. I'm happy to eat cookies like this. But there were a few brown sugar lumps that I didn't get to, so every once in a while you get this molasses burst that can be a little creepy if you're not prepared. Also, here and there you get a bite that's almost... savory? but not in a bad way. So I dunno. What I've determined is that the oven works. It's just execution that needs to be cleaned up a bit.

Alice's two friends were over by the time I finished, and the four of us went out for hotpot. This meal lasted for way too long. One of her friends met several of his there, and we couldn't leave until they were finished talking. In the meantime, the other three of us chewed gum and I dissected most of the larger floating spices in the soup and composed a portrait out of the leftovers. You know hotpot by now. This place does it pretty well and gives you a choice of two broths-- I thought it was called xiaofeiyang (little fat sheep/goat), but it seems like it's actually called something else. There are two giant statues of adorable goats in mongolian garb pulling noodles outside though, and I really want to climb one some night after I get a new camera. Very busy that night-- one very celebratory party at two large tables directly to our left, so...

Afterwards, they wanted to go to the internet cafe, so I went along. Spent most of my time reading around NYtimes and National Geographic and they played a Mariokart-esque racing game (hence my dream). We were there until 12, when most of the lights were turned off. By then I really had to pee and even my skin smelled like smoke. Alice and I took a cab home, where, unable to really account for anything I wanted to do, I did dishes, showered, and went to bed.

Ta da!

Details, details, me being pissed, and when words become tasty

[In this installment: today, yesterday, food habits, appliances, teaching, going apesh*t, and a colorful restaurant review]

Today I awoke at 6:something from what amounted to a teaching nightmare to find that my abdomen was still inflated like a balloon. I'd been tossing and turning for goodness knows how long, from confrontation after confrontation with confused and irritated students and some righteous gastro-intestinal injury. Basically, I'd eaten an unusually large portion at dinner previously and it appeared that none of it had yet begun the journey to digestion and was just hanging out in my stomach. So actually this morning sucked, because I knew I still had 2ish lessons to plan for today. I sat up straight for a while, consumed an oreo, took some pepto, and tried the sleeping thing again, really uninterested in puking in any way.

After my alarm officially roused me around 9, I managed to pass out again (you know how that goes). This time, I had a really interesting dream about "King's Island" (only not really), getting pizza and candy there with Selina, some holiday, a small child, a bunch of Chinese people who are related to me, and... stuff. Whatever, it was weird, and I woke up during this really emotional part that involved lots of cheesy pizza.

You see, the restfulness of my sleep has not improved.

Anyways, classes today went all right. The training center students now have THREE textbooks! I was like... what?? When I realized a few days ago that they'd all paid for the first two and were already in possession of them, I started building some lessons around those. The first day was boooring, cuz I didn't get the corresponding tapes (yes, cassette tapes!) until 30 min into the lesson, and not everyone brought their books, and also I wasn't 100% sure of the most efficient way to use them. I've since determined that some of the activities are just plain dumb, but have also accepted the usefulness of some of the others to spur discussion. So that ended up warming things up today after the initial blaaaah of the recorded dialogues.

My ideal class would be smaller, with a more consistent level of advancement. But oh well. At least when they're doing activities, I get to move around and check on their degree of understanding. It's actually, like, my favorite part and I'm hopeful that it helps, but really they're the ones who'd know about that-- not me. Sadly. Today we did introductions (almost as done as it sounds, but with a bit of logic behind it, coming from a book) and superstitions, which was fun and COINCIDENTALLY (whoa) appropriate since yesterday was you-know-when.

When I got back, Alice and her mom were home getting dinner started. In case you wonder, I've been subsisting largely on a diet of potatoes and rice, and, uh, losing weight in spite of it. All my clothes started fitting better again almost as soon as the plane landed. It's been pretty sweet. Anyways, tonight there was rice, potatoes and... leeks? with extra soy, and some leftovers from when the Lees cooked lunch here the other day-- the green remains of some di san xian (Alice's mom insists that it's just stir-fried eggplant... i guess since the green peppers and potatoes are more common) and some stir-fried potato slices with green pepper. The leftovers were brought to us by our brand new microwave, which we picked up Thursday morning from the 5th floor of Wangfujing department store. The microwave... was Y400, but interestingly enough has a function that admits the use of metal... I believe it's the "Lightwave." I don't know anything about it, so I'm reluctant to use anything other than nuke hi until I can get details on the instructions from Alice. Also it was big and we had to drag it down all the floors by escalator and then wheel it home on the back of the bike.

I started still another class with high schoolers today, this time only 7 students. There were two English teachers present, moms of two of the boys. They came to the apartment at 8 tonight, and we talked for about an hour before they all left. They were pretty enthusiastic, but most of them have some big exams this weekend (class will be 2 hrs long, starting next week). I felt bad though, cuz one of the girls kept insisting that they had absolutely no free time to watch movies or listen to music since they spend so much time at school and on homework. I was like... damn, 1) I'm glad to be out of high school, 2) I'm glad I went to a US public school.

Viewed 10 Things I Hate About You, courtesy of iTunes, for the 3rd time in perhaps just as many days, but the idea was to show it to Alice since we watched Brokeback Mountain the other day (agreed: it should have won, and crash is a sillier movie than ever) and I wanted her to know that Heath Ledger can enunciate when the script calls for it. As you see, it's been a good week for movies.

Friday marked the end of my first week of real classes at the high school. This second lesson was mostly about getting them in the right mindset for learning English-- first present the potential, then discuss it. Also, I wanted to get an idea of the subjects they usually talk about with their friends (in case I'm more out of touch than I thought). And we listened to/analysed "It's Beginning To Get To Me" by Snow Patrol. I want to equate the first class of the week to a firstborn child. That is, they get the raw unadulterated lesson, which has had no feedback, no correction, and they have to deal with any unrealistic expectations that may exist. The kids are all really charming though. I thought that my first lesson, which involved throwing a ball and sitting around chittering while other kids had the spotlight, would make them think that it was ok to be unruly. But boy, do they listen to you when you speak! By Friday though, I was way bored with my own lesson (and I have to do the same thing for the other classes next week, ick), and changed it a little-- for the better evidently. Instead of my blind quest for a group analysis of the song (which left me explaining most of it), I was like "ok, you figure it out for yourselves." Yay for getting to walk around and talk to everyone!

Meanwhile, and this is something I HAVE to complain about, Russ spent all week screening Fellowship of the Ring. I know he's declared vehemently that he doesn't want to teach high schoolers, but I don't see what the big deal is. In a lot of ways, they're a lot easier to teach than the adults-- they're no less cooperative, and due to the miracle of a 5-7 year (still not sure which) curriculum, they understand more of what you say, sooner. Also, hey, you have slightly more power over them, weird as that sounds. Anyway, the story began on Monday, when Alice asked me and Russ if we had our lesson outlines prepared. He said yes, and I said no. By lesson outline, she meant like a handout that they could photocopy for the students. I was expecting to have until Tuesday morning. At all this extra information, Russ was like "what?" Turns out he had a lesson plan, but had no idea that anyone had ever asked for a handout (which I'm sure has been brought up before). The next morning, I got up bright and early to type everything out and finalize like my song choice and all that, and had the original sheet printed by the time Alice woke up. She left to photocopy and didn't come back for hours.

When she finally got back, I was like... did you really have to wait that long? I was curious because she only needed to make 300 copies of each outline, and having walked various print jobs to the Olin copy center, I figured that no matter what equipment it was, it couldn't have taken that long. She said, with some exasperation, "I was waiting for Russ!" I had heard her call him before she left to make sure that he had something, but he still didn't even by the time she got there. What he wound up giving her was a handwritten sheet with a few random terms from freaking LOTR written on it with colons after them. I looked at this paper and not all of my laughter could be suppressed. Seriously, anyone who had this handed to them would have a big WTF branded hard across their forehead. I was like, you are shitting me, plain and simple. But no. Alice's aunt had bought a computer for Russ to use, so Alice was like, can't you at least type it? Well no. He refused to revise the "outline" (like hell) in any way, saying that he never wanted to teach the high schoolers and that they could fire him if they wanted. What makes this situation more exasperating is that he's leaving in January anyways, when a new teacher is scheduled to arrive, and we really don't want him to leave sooner than that.

So Alice didn't copy that.

We went to the school early to sort out all the technical matters associated with him playing that damn movie, and they almost couldn't get it to play. But since my equipment was controlled by a console I'd never encountered before, I asked Alice and Teacher Ding (who's in charge of the language lab Russ was using) to figure out my stuff while I messed around with the DVD. Proud to say that my experiments bore fruit, and quickly, and I was off.

I had the training center that night, so Alice and I were dropped off within walking distance (well... in campus/city terms, I suppose). She'd sat in on Russ's class and was nice enough to describe it to me. I would probably have been really pissed if I'd been sitting in there. He'd insisted that he would only show about 15 minutes of the film, but actually spent 40 min or something on it. Only... the way he did it... he apparently played it, unsubtitled in any language, then stopped it and repeated all the lines, and wrote them on the board. Alice had told me earlier what Russ had told her that his plan was: 15 minutes of the movie and then October holidays. Fucking holidays! So the first day at the hospital and training center, we'd been surprised by the fact that we had to actually teach a lesson (this was the day after we arrived), so he turned randomly to a page in a book, saw the word "holidays" and insisted that we do holidays. So holidays, to me, says "I don't want to think of anything else to teach." But also he wanted to do just October holidays. Alice said that since we teach the same lesson to two sets of kids for 2 weeks, she was afraid he'd just teach nothing but month-specific holidays all year. Which I think was a valid fear.

So I asked if he managed to teach Halloween ok, since it was the only Oct. holiday I could think of. She said no, he didn't make it to Halloween. I was like, uh? What eclipses Halloween? Well, apparently Columbus Day does. Along with Columbus day, evidently, came a Spanish lesson. Yes. In his ENGLISH class, Russ taught SPANISH. And also a smattering of racial terms, which I saw evidence of the next day.

The next day, we walked into the classroom and I looked at the board and just had to roll my eyes. Remember now, that I'm a huge Fellowship fan, but I'm sure you agree when I assert that the usefulness of the language in those first 15 minutes is... well, these are 9th graders. They have English exams that will determine their candidacy for college. "They were all of them deceived" will probably not help them. "Nine rings were gifted to the race of men" probably won't either. Neither will the word "Mongoloid" which was scribbled in an area of the board with a lot of other "-oid" type words that no one ever uses. So additionally, the language in this movie, apart from being a little ornate and dusty, is very standard British. Russ hasn't got a British accent. As far as I know, he has no intention to teach British English. In my opinion, this makes his lesson hyper-inconsistent.

What else adds to that? Well, the second day, when I asked if there was any more Spanish, Alice reported that Russ showed the movie until there were only 5 min. left in class. That is the time that he decided to say "let's have a 5 minute break!" In my experience all week, the kids are already a little confused when we end at 5:40 as we're told to, because the bell doesn't ring until 5:50 (the time class would be over if we observed the 10 minute break that occurs 40 min into class). So that's like... what?

The next day, Alice spent the period in the hall talking with Mr. Yuan (the man we had dinner with that one night and who's sort of in charge of the fact that we're there) and Mr. Ding. So I end up finding out from Russ himself that the audio didn't work that day. So I was like "maaan, what did you do?" Because Tuesday he'd insisted that he had a back up plan "in his head" when I sorta criticised him for having such a tech-dependent lesson (I was considering the fact that he's technologically inept, to be totally totally frank in my words). I was interested in knowing how he'd pulled it together. Still optimistic, I promise you. Until he said that he'd just showed the movie anyway and did the voices himself. Eh!

Whew. That was long-winded, but you know how I like to get things off my chest. So I know that I have my own short-comings, but here's what I have to say. I don't care if there's something you don't want to do if it needs to be done. It's of absolutely no inconvenience to him to teach these classes and take the effort to do it well. Of the two of us, he's the one who's TEFL certified, so what the fuck is going on? These students are not released from that school until 7:20 or some such, and I think they actually have to go back until like 10, and their only chance to eat before 7:20 is the time they get after our class before their next one starts. So really, can't he just reflect for a moment and then give them something worth learning? They're in our classes voluntarily and are really excited to have us there. I just wish he'd show them some real respect.

And I know that he thinks he's doing well, but I'd have freaking murdered my language teachers by now if that's all we did in class. And who knows-- maybe the students enjoy it? But anyways, as of now, my opinion on this matter is that this sucks and I just wanted to say so.

End rant. Ah. Maybe I've been nastier than usual. Whatever, we took the bus back that night and Alice and I booked to Xiang La Xia ("fragrant spicy shrimp" it means, and they ain't lying) to meet her mom for dinner. It's the 3rd time I've been there-- we had our first Baotou dinner there, and ate with Mr. Yuan there to discuss the high school-- and it really doesn't get old. Tell me if there's any way this can get old: The first plane of eating manifests in a large stainless steel pot/wok. It's brought to your table containing a jumble of shrimp, wings, potatoes, cauliflower, carrots, and bundles of starch noodles dripping in bright spicy oils. You eat and eat and eat, while sipping a really lovely tea that's sometimes lightly sweetened, with dried dates and a guiyuan (described as a cheap lychee/longan type fruit) floating in it. But no matter how much you eat, the meal does not end. There is a second plane of eating. There is another level, another step. There is eating 2.0. Once you've deemed that you're done with phase one, they bring out a second menu. Then they dump a bowl of chilis and spices into the pot, add some broth, and light a gas burner underneath. Then come plates of other delectables: raw lamb, beef, or pork, leafy greens, vermicelli, mushrooms of all varieties, tofus of different makes-- all these can be yours! On this occasion, we ordered some frozen tofu, golden needle mushrooms, and vermicelli. I actually doubt that what we had last night was frozen tofu but really some potato-derived bread-like substance that we'd eated on a previous night. Alice may have misunderstood what I'd asked for. But it was essentially what I was after. Both frozen tofu and this mysterious substance have a sponge-like consistency that is really bizarre at first bite. What I'm saying is that it's like eating a sponge. But it's like eating a DELICIOUS sponge. What happens is that all the little pores lock in the super-spicy soup and it's like an endorphin-explosion in your face. Then we got some noodles on the house-- someone comes by with a plate of dough pieces about 3-4 inches in length, then wh-ptsch! they grab both ends of one, whip it up and down a few times, and you've got a noodle a yard long. If they're the right thickness when they go in the soup, the noodles come out nice and chewy.

Because of the operation on her throat, Alice's mom wasn't in a position to eat spicy food. So all that stuff that I just described... I ate about half of it, and Alice ate the other half. I mean, it's an exaggeration: Mrs. Lee ate many of the chicken wings and we had a lot leftover in the end, but... anyways, that brings me back to the beginning of this entry and the stomach that was full for nearly 12 hours.