From the International Women's Day sports thingy I went to yesterday morning:































So, as you can see, I did not end up "just sitting around cheering," like originally planned.
Instead, they gave me a vest and I participated in the figure-8 jump-roping race, which was terrifying, the happy home-maker relay (think martial arts flower arranging, just lamer), and tug-o-war. When I say that the jump-rope was terrifying... I loved jumping rope when I was a kid. We used to get huge groups going in the playground at recess, doing double rope, double dutch, and all those random precognitive games that predict something like upwards of 20 children for each jumper. And the most fun was when you jumped into the rope, so I used to be pretty good at that too. I really should have made a video of the other teams doing this, but I was mesmerized by them and just stared. In a limited amount of time, you have to get as many people in and out of the rope as possible, everyone jumping once, then running off to the other side to start over again. They had judges counting. To give you an idea of just how much we don't play this game outside of China, some teams managed over 200 jumps, and my team had 44. Also, they looked like they'd practiced, and our team certainly had not. Even the other half of the team, which was all Chinese, got fewer jumps than us, I'm thinking cuz they didn't practice. But it was really fun and I'd like to get the hang of it.

The relay was one of the least gender-neutral events they could have come up with. When I saw them pulling out the aprons and handkerchiefs for this relay I started getting all self-righteous about it and was glad that I didn't have to do it. The costume accents were completely extraneous to anything that had to be done, but everyone had to wear them anyway. The actual race involved one person setting up 6 baskets, the next person filling the baskets with bouquets, the third person removing the bouquets, and the last person cleaning up the baskets. If anything fell over you had to run back and fix it, and everyone had to start by skipping through a set of rings. We were doing pretty well, but our last teammate forgot to jump through the rings, had a lot of trouble with the baskets (honestly, the baskets sucked), and even wound up bleeding profusely at the end of it all. Also a fun game. Just demeaning. International Men's Day would have looked nothing like this.

Then for some reason I was put on the tug-o-war team. This was fun, actually, and we did win our first match handily. But it was tournament style, and the next team was a bit more hardcore. It felt good to use those muscles, but now they're all sore. Also, I learned that one of my automatic reactions in a tug-o-war situation is to randomly emit high-pitched screams. Even at the time I could hear myself doing it, and wondered why. And then I'd do it again and wonder why again.

At the end, I got a scarf.

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.

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...

May Day!

So, I had a post started that talked all about class schedules and stuuuuff, but I don't want to deal with it, so I'm starting a new one.

At the tail end of my "vacation" now. We had a whole slew of makeup classes last weekend (and a few more this weekend), and then starting Tuesday and going until tomorrow, we've had days off. Not gonna bother checking back over the grammar of that one, so whatever. Currently doing laundry, which is taking predictably forever.

It's been a pleasant enough week. Tuesday, May 1, was a big deal, but one which thankfully didn't produce any fireworks. We'd been planning on hitting "the mountains" but were at kind of a loss as to which/where/how the hell to get there. Dave and I grilled some of the high school students about Meiligeng, which he'd somehow heard about, but most students said just not to go there. We didn't really know of any alternatives (weren't even really sure what Meiligeng itself even entailed), so Russ ended up asking one of his students, Ann, who ended up taking us to Meiligeng anyways, which ended up being gorgeous.

Tuesday morning, we met up at the walking street at 8am, and piled into a car. It was a taxi-ish car, but slightly bigger, nicer, and black. That ride cost us Y150, which I thought was pretty steep. We split it 3 ways to treat Ann, which honestly was unexpected... I don't mind saying that I thought we were gonna do 4 ways. Whatever though, not a huge loss (except then I might have considered taking a cheaper car... I can be an assy skinflint when I want). Apparently when locals go, they take a bus or even just their bikes. So yes, we were just basking in luxury in that car. It was the first time I'd gone to the east side of the city... I remember asking Alice during Chinese New Year if she wanted to walk that way, and she adamantly declined, saying pretty much that it's disgusting cuz the only thing there is Baogang. Well, she was sort of right. The sky turned outright gray, and the streets were crowded with coal trucks and other trucks, and so on. We had to drive a ways before the sky cleared up again. I started taking photos at that point, where you could just barely make out the outlines of the Qingshan range in the smog, and photographed the progression from that out to the countryside. There, garbage lessened, civilization was spread a lot thinner, and the sky turned an amazing crystal blue. You could see the mountains pretty clearly after that.

The drive wasn't even an hour, so I guess that means we were ripped off a bit on the ride. But you know, we got there fast, comfortably, and relatively safe, so... yeah I'm not really sure how much that's worth to me exactly, so I'll just leave the whole topic of money cuz I sound stupid when I talk about it.

Since most people take May 1st off, we were expecting a good number of people to be at the mountain, one of the few (but proud) places of interest around these parts. Alice had to go to the monastery again with her company, and reported that it was crowded there also. But since we got there early, the population was still pretty manageable. We really lucked out on the weather, which was absolutely perfect: few clouds, bright sun, slight breeze, warm, not hot.

Not sure what I was expecting when I heard "mountains," but for some reason it didn't occur to me that there'd be admission. It was only Y20 though, which is less than half the price of the monastery, and really for triple the chance for enlightenment. Alice told me that back in the day, it was a dangerous place to go, and people died in ways ranging from falling to drowning. She didn't say that this happened regularly, but that's the image I got in my head. Anyways, since then, it's been "cultivated" into a tourist-friendly sort of trek, through the addition of steps and railings, and a few well-placed "no-climbing" officers with walkie-talkies. Once you start up the path though, you're given a choice every now and then of the safer, easier route, or the "more dangerous and more exciting" one. Of course we took the latter, which consisted of railings plugged next to footprints carved into the rockface, some set for strides much wider than my own. To its credit, the "wilder" paths really did make things much more interesting than, say, Taishan, which is just stair after stair after stair. There was a surprisingly slim margin for error in some places, and people stumbled fairly often.

For the number of people at the mountain that day-- there were some bare areas where folks literally looked like they were meandering through an ant farm (I have photographic evidence!)-- there was still quite a bit of unobscured view. In all I took about 250 pictures of... well, more or less the same thing. Blue sky, gnarled pines, scrubby bushes, and rock. Mountains of beautiful frictive rock. It's the kind of landscape you really just want to clamber all over.

The attractions of Meiligeng are usually listed as the following... "green" and "water." People were in various states of denial over whether or not there'd be either at this time of year. Fortunately, there were both. The waterfalls and creekbeds were already flowing, in a very benign and non-lethal sort of way. The trek up the mountain passes a lot of smaller waterfalls, all unique and interesting in their own rights, to a tall gusher at the top. The volume of water was much less than, say, Taughannock-- people were skipping across the pool to stand on a rock just in front of it without getting so much as sprinkled-- but it was still pretty impressive. If you hold out your right hand in front of your face and turn it 45 degrees counter-clockwise, you have the rock formation that the waterfall's nestled in. It's called the "hand of Buddha" or some such, and the water flows down the crook between the thumb and index finger. The resemblance really is there too. I have a semi-detailed record of all the waterfalls, having been inspired by the h2o pictures on Drew's website. I could really sit around and take close-ups at the same stream of water for like... an hour or something. Of course, the outcome is different every click!

All around the "summit" as it were, are the people who got there before you, staking out rocks and other hard places for their families and friends. You see things like picnic blankets draped over boulders, heated card games, and cans of beer cooling in shallow pools (cuz that water was freeeezing!). People of all ages start at the foot of the waterfall and scramble downwards on the rocks to find a place to settle down. Uniformed guards stand here and there saying goodness knows what into kschhhhking radios while also taking photos for various groups of people and occasionally yelling at others to quit climbing stuff.

I ran into two students up there, which was vaguely awkward, but we took some photos and said "seeya" and moved on. I sat around a while, a ways from Russ and Ann (some interesting, but ultimately confused observations there) and ate a quick snack. Dave had marched on ahead of us long before and spent 30 min or so at the waterfall before heading back and bumping into us along the way. I took more photos. Eventually the three of us started picking our way down the rocks to go back.

Actually, going down was the hard part. It was only about 11, but more people had arrived by this time and were making their way up. Meanwhile, a lot of folks who had already been sitting around were making their way down. Here and there, both groups must use the same narrow path/bridge/stairs/footprints. Then there are the people who think they can take shortcuts but going off the path (I participated at times), and while that does get you there faster, it's still sort of at the expense of others. I have the utmost admiration for the parents who carried their babies/small children both ways.

We met up with Dave and headed back to the front to get some food. There's one restaurant there, and I guess it's part of the Meiligeng resort. Yeah, there's a whole litter of villas where dwell large parties of vacationers. Actually, I think the restaurant was booked mostly full of them. We may have been the only ones there who didn't live on-site. That food was expensiiiiive, but I have no complaints about flavor or any of that. I mean, service was slow, but it's cuz they were also taking care of 3 full tables next to us, and it ended up giving us time to just unwind. The most interesting dish was the last one... chicken and mushrooms, where the mushrooms were like... big honking mushroom caps and stems. Very chewy and, uh, resilient, but I got a kick out of them. They held the sauce pretty well.

Afterwards, we started the long walk back. Meiligeng is actually at the end of a long road along which there is nothing. It's apparently around 8km long, but we figured what the heck, we like walking, and just went ahead. We were like the only people walking at the time, even though I know we saw a whole bunch of people coming the other way that morning. It was maybe 2:30 at that point. We walked a real long time, but it wasn't the least bit tiring or anything. The sun felt good, but my right hand and wrist were turning gray and totally mummifying. I couldn't really wiggle my fingers so well because of how dry my skin was getting. Also my fingers had swollen quite a bit. When I finally looked down I was all like "holy crap!" On either side you could see piles of scree, some last trickling vestige of the waterfalls and streams, scrubland, boulders, and weird animal tracks. Every now and then a vehicle would come literally screaming by. There was a temple on the side of the road, but it was gated and quiet. Also there was a small colony of abandoned tourist yurts, which intrigued me.

The end of the road fed into the road home, and the mouth was clogged with people waiting for the bus. Ann had planned for us to take the train back, so we walked a ways further away from town to a totally deserted train station. I didn't even realize there was a train station there. Anyways, the first thing I thought when we got there was how much like a computer game it felt to be on a totally empty platform and to be staring at signs but at no people. Very Myst-like, or at least Syberia-esque. Despite that, we went inside to inquire about tickets and the employees informed us that the schedule had been changed and the train now comes at 3 instead of 4 or 5 or whatever we thought it was. Aaaand it was 3:30. So we turned around and decided to hail a cab. But the road wasn't really a happening place either, and most vehicles coming by were 3-wheeled cars and cargo trucks. Otherwise you'd see cabs that already had fares or which the owners were using to take their families out for the day.

We walked back past a mian jing restaurant (how much business could they possibly get out there?), where a woman standing outside started asking us if we were looking for a taxi. She said she could get us a car. We took her up on the offer of a van for Y80 and went inside while she called whoever it was. He wouldn't do it for Y80, but Y100 was about what we expected, so we offered that instead. Then we waited around for the van. The woman looked sort of like how you'd expect Natalie Portman to look if she were Chinese.

We went back in a nice white van along the very bumpy terrain of Liuyuan district (or something to that effect). Suspension on these vehicles is really, uh, springy (I don't even know if suspension is what i'm talking about), so a lot of bumps sent me bouncing off the rear seat to the degree that all body parts lost contact with all car parts. Getting air that way was pretty fun. Got some more pictures of the drive back. I kept dozing off and smacking my head against the window.

He dropped us off at the far end of the walking street, so I walked back home via the north gate of our xiaoqu (uh... small district/living district/apartment complex/subdivision/what have you), and took pictures! So now you can see what my neighborhood is like.

I got home at about 4:30 maybe, and fiddled with pictures until almost dinner time. Alice and I took the bike back over to her place and I took pictures along the street too. We posed with the bike a bit, and her mom took pictures of us. Then we had a nice fairly light meal. I ate mostly xiancai (pickes) and this tofu rind(?... i'm just calling it that)-cucumber salad cuz it was goood. We made fun of the tv for a bit, and came home to watch It's a Boy/Girl Thing.

I don't know why I've never heard of this movie, but actually it was... cute. Parts of it were really dead-on in the humor department... others, not so much. It's weird that after all these years since Freaks & Geeks and The OC, Samaire Armstrong is still playing a teenager. Anyways, it wasn't the best movie experience cuz Alice was QQing with some pilot the whole time, but whatevs. I then decided to sleep, and I did.

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).

Sassy Girls

Anyways, that's why no updates this week... I was borrowing Alice's laptop for e-mail and stuff, but actually a lot of stuff automatically comes up Chinese and I couldn't figure out how to change it (and also figured it would be more polite not to). And also I didn't want to always be on her computer, so my lessons this week were really boring (but I only had to teach twice!)

So after being so pissed off last weekend, I just wanted to sleep in. But Monday was my introduction to... dun dun dun... the kindergarten! Yes, I will most likely be starting at a kindergarten soon. I promise you, only about 5 of those students will hear a single word I say (I counted) but they're cute? I was also informed sorta last minuted that I'd have to teach a short lesson, which annoyed me because I had sort of expressed an interest in not having classes sprung on me last-minute anymore. Sort of explicitly, actually. But I see that this time it really couldn't have been helped because they needed to see how I'd behave in front of so many kindergarteners. They had a book they were using though, so I just did some reviewing out of it. The teacher there said I did well, but I dunno if she saw what I saw... a lot of ADD in that room. There was just one loud little boy who shouted the answers to my questions in repeat mode until I gave the answer so it *seemed* like more kids were paying attention. But anyway. That was really early Monday morning.

Then Tuesday morning they cancelled my class at the high school because the students in my class were taking part in some other activity. Russ's class was still on, but I got the afternoon off which was totally awesome.

So what have I been doing with my free time?

If you've been spending [too] much time on facebook the past few days, it's possible you'd have noticed that I've developed a serious affinity for Korean melodrama. My mom spent half of last year trying to get me to watch some Korean show that she and my aunt were really into, but I was mostly uninterested in even approaching that. First of all, do I even speak Korean? No. Korean is perhaps the EA language that mystifies me the most. The words look like really hard math and even after watching My Sassy Girl (widely beloved Korean romantic comedy) to the degree that I have, I'm still unable to even repeat the names of the main characters.

But the Korean TV, it's really popular here. Why is that? Because they know drama. They know comedy. Also it's generally accepted that Korean people are very nice to look at. No joke. A question we posed in classes early on was, "If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?" Some folks said things like Germany for the economy, Switzerland for the watches, and so on, but there were also some women who were all about Korea for the good food and beautiful people. And it's not like I disagree. So there's one very important point about Korean TV-- the casting directors know what they're doing.

One day at dinner, Connie told us that she'd been losing sleep recently (this was a while ago when I was still teaching at the hospital). When I asked why, she admitted that she'd been staying up late watching Korean drama on TV. So yeah. And now I totally understand that.

Alice is a huge fan of Korean drama. When we were in Hohhot together, she bought a few series on DVD, one being Palace, of which I'd seen the first episode at home. I tried watching it with my mom because I was in the market for some fruity cutesy Asian love show, and I really think it would have fit the bill if I could have understood any of it. We tried it in every combination of Korean language, Chinese dubbing, Chinese subtitle, and English subtitle, and I just barely figured out what was going on. So I started it with Alice again, but left after a while to fall asleep and she ended up finishing the rest of it that week. I can't wait to get home though, I'll probably give it another try, even though she said it went very slowly.

She then started another show... and when she described the premise to me I was like... "what the?" So there's this girl at beauty school who lives with her grandmother and aunt. Turns out her mother married her father against the grandmother's wishes, and when he died, the mother had to leave. But the grandmother had been more or less caring. The girl had been flirting with this guy when "whoa" it turns out she's pregnant with his kid! I only got this far, but Alice told me the rest. He dies almost immediately after they get married, and she gives birth to what appears to be a 4 yr. old. And then the rest of the show... I dunno, she has to get along with the family in law, donate some organs to her birth mother, and fall in love all over again. Wasn't a fan, but Alice likes it.

So by the time this weekend came around, I was only paying a marginal amount of attention to the shows Alice was watching. There was one she was watching on TV that was almost over, and though I'd try to figure out what was going on from time to time, I was like "eh."

Then she went to Hohhot again and came back with many more shows, including the one she'd been watching on TV. And I walked in one day about the time the main character, enraged, throws a cake into the face of the guy who'd eventually become her boss and love interest. I was intrigued, and signed on for the majority of it, though ended up not being able to catch the end (fortunately, it's more or less predictable). The show's called My Lovely Samsoon, and I'm totally bringing it home with me in June. It's about a slightly overweight girl with an embarassing name who studied baking in Paris and shows amazing prowess as a pastry chef. She's fairly untalented in most other aspects of life except that she's pretty good-natured and very honest/opinionated. She needs to borrow some money from her young attractive boss for some reason, and as part of the deal has to pretend to be his girlfriend so his mother will stop trying to arrange marriages for him. Meanwhile, he's been pining for 3 years after his ex-girlfriend, who whisked off to America for reasons unknown and left no forwarding address. The ex is a very pretty girl, who, it turns out, had advanced gastric cancer and went to the US for treatment and school. She didn't want to tell the guy... dunno why. In America, she met a really hot Korean American doctor named Henry who also happened to be a very sensitive, mellow type of guy. He fell in love with her, but she was still all about going home hale and healthy to start again with her guy (for whatever reason, she didn't consider him an ex). So Samsoon and the boss are finally having some breakthroughs when the ex re-enters the country. Compounding this, Henry gets a 6 month sabbatical and decides to use it to visit Korea, though he respects that the girl he likes likes someone else. You can imagine what ensues.

This particular set of DVDs was dubbed completely in Chinese except the parts where characters sing or speak English. This is how I know that the guy who plays Henry and the Korean actress who does the ex are pretty good actors in English. Also it's how I know that Chinese dubs will arbitrarily change out voice actors in the middle of a season, and also how much of a shock it is to find out Samsoon's real voice is a few registers lower than the Chinese girl's who dubbed her. This show has an oddly familiar soundtrack. There was one episode in particular that had some good songs in it, but the only moment I really remember from it was when "My Strongest Suit" from Aida, the Broadway musical, signalled the sassy start of the day. At the restaurant. Thereby having nothing to do with clothes, but it fit anyway.

My Lovely Samsoon is very funny and makes you very hungry. Best moments: when the bus driver hits the brakes and Samsoon has to run to the front to avoid falling over and a random techno dance-off sequence between a member of the waitstaff and a sous-chef.

Ok, but that was the preliminaries. The ULTIMATE in Korean drama that I've experience thus far: Sassy Girl, Chun-hyang. I walked in Tuesday night after my training center class and Alice had already started the series. Being too tired to attempt anything else, I sat down on the couch next to her and stared at the screen until I just had to know what was going on. When I saw the main characters' faces, I recognized them from the show they were playing on TV in Alice's dorm. How? The guy struck me as having very big eyes. So yeah, same show.

This show came in the original Korean with simplified Chinese subtitles. So what did I do? I watched it. Whoever said you can't learn a language you don't know through subtitles in another language you can barely read might still be right-- but I still feel pretty empowered for having been able to catch as much as I did. Just wait, by the end of my term here, I'll be a simplified-reading powerhouse who can sound off a number of random words in Korean like "agreed," "cell phone," "thank you," "older sis," and "ice cream." Admission: cell phone and ice cream are borrowings from English, but yo, I picked that out, so I feel cool.

Anyways, I have never in my entire young life expended so much energy in watching any show. The first night, I was in tears for like an hour feeling sorry for this girl. By the end of the next day, I had nothing but sympathy for the guy. It's kind of an emotional spin cycle. Also, it was like sending my brain through the wringer trying to read all the subtitles in time, and I ended up having to ask Alice a lot of time just to make sure I got the gist of statements that were clearly important, or which made her laugh and didn't make me laugh, or which were simply spoken too quickly. Therefore, we also had a lot of dialogue going on, which escalated into yelled commands and remonstrations directed at the characters, predictions, loud declarations of grief or frustration, and so on. It was a highly interactive experience.

Also, our DVD player is on its last legs over here. After about an hour or two of playback it has a seizure. I started the evening watching Pretty Woman, but am writing now because it started skipping and freaking out as Richard Gere takes Julia Roberts to the opera. So I still don't know how the movie ends. So some episodes took an eternity to finish since ever 2-3 seconds of action would be punctuated by about 5 more seconds of torture and cursing.

Bedtime this week was about 2 am.

The plot... uh. Cute flaky boy (Lee Mong-ryong) meets pretty intellectual girl (Chun-hyang) their senior year of high school, and after some bizarre mishap that I missed that resulted in his naked body being discovered in her bedroom one morning, they've been forced into an engagement and are more or less married. She moves in with him and his parents to finish high school. His dad is an awesome sword-swinging police chief and his mom is a kind of annoying lady who lunches. The kids get along really well though, usually, and she helps him raise his grades and then stands up for him when he's accused of cheating. Meanwhile... well, I guess he really doesn't do much for her at this point. Before they marry though, he has a chance to hang out with the girl he actually likes, some older girl he went to high school with before he moved. She told him though that she'd always just think of him as a younger brother, and that's why he consents to the wedding (he and Chun-hyang spent the first few episodes trying to thwart the whole thing but finally give up). The second he marries CH, the girl decides she wants him after all, and then tries to sabotage the relationship, hence, drama. The dumb git then is sort of dating the both of them, and at this stage CH actually falls for him for real but lets him hang out with the other girl because of it. MR has no idea that he's being an insensitive jerk.

While he's off doing whatever, CH meets an entertainment mogul, we'll call him the exec, who is god knows how much older than she is. As a cute, compassionate high schooler, she unwittingly catches his fancy, and he sets about to woo her.

So the show is 17 hours of gut-wrenching melodramatics as wires consistently get crossed and continuously more tangled until, by episode 17, at least 7-8 years later, it's a totally different show. There are a lot of real serious laugh-out loud parts, a few moments where it's truly appropriate to shout "shake her like a baby!" in loving memory of Steph Glass, some excellent achievements in the slow-motion dramatic wrist-grip-to-hug transition tradition, and flattering light treatment. And much more! More? For example, that old trick where the guy enters an up elevator just as the gal exits the down elevator and they actually miss each other? Damn that.

Also they make Lee Mong-Ryung run here and there a whole lot, and he has a really admirable running posture. Also... he's cute like whoa. Meh.

Anyways, we managed to finish the show last night AT LONG LAST (I know, it's been about 3 days), and all of my dreams last night were fixated entirely on it. I think I dreamed up a whole new 17 episodes and dwelled a really long time near the end, obsessed that there had to be a happy ending. I was so disoriented when I woke up I didn't know what to do. Then after a nap later today, I woke up cycling through the soundtrack.

It has to stop.

But what is the thing about the titular "sassy girl?" There are other shows with that term in the title, and of course, the aforementioned movie. Sassiness must be a quality that they value? Anyways, it's clear that we should all aspire to at least some sassiness, because what does sassiness get you?

We should all search for our own rewards.

Uptown Girl + Lesson angst

Waiting for my hair to dry so I can pass out for many many hours.

I got back a little while ago from a little KTV excursion with Alice & her friends. KTV? That means karaoke actually. Something I discovered about myself: I can't sing Uptown Girl without a serious serious twang. I was like, whoa, all of a sudden from Kentucky. The place didn't have a wide selection of English songs (and no one else really knew any anyways), though I was able to jump in for part of a Jay Chou song I've heard before. I bet some of you have encountered it at bubble tea at one time or another. Alice put on "When I Fall in Love" for me, but another thing I discovere was that I know about 9 words of that song. Had some "black beer" that had a really nice toffeeish accent to it. Funny cuz I was just thinking earlier how much I missed darker beers.

It may be hard to imagine, but just try for a moment... I am soooo tired here. With more sleep and less work, I'm more exhausted on a daily basis in this country than I ever was at Cornell. I've been trying to figure out why. I mean... yes there was the Hohhot extravaganza, but that's not wholly unusual in essentials. Yesterday I had 5 hours worth of class, more or less back to back, and today I had 3 hrs... that doesn't seem to equate to any large amount of duress. So I dunno. Diet change? Also, my pseudo-ADD isn't really being fed, so maybe I'm just boring easily. Easily bored. Easy to be bored. Uh.

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Anyways, about that 3 hr class this morning. Yesterday I taught 3-6 at the hospital, then 7-9 at the training center. My lesson really depended on the students interacting and taking off on vibrant flights of fancy and just making shit up. For a game. I like activities since they give me a chance to move around the room and not just lecture which is stupid. Well, activities/discussions have been working fine at the training center, but yesterday was my first day back in the hospital in ages. And there were 7 people in attendance. And perhaps the game was too complicated.

You see, these people are adults. We can do simple activities, if I want my classes to be inane. But, and I feel failure in this, I could NOT, no matter how many different words I used how many times, get them to understand the point of the activity. The idea was to make a prediction, trade it with someone else, assume that a period time has passed and the prediction has come true, and answer questions based on that. So like "you will be a successful mother," for a question like "what do you do in your free time," begets an answer like "oh, I read to my children and help them with their homework." Even if you are childless. Like myself (some of the students made me answer several questions according to this one).

The training center made it through the interview because I physically enacted the process a few times. The hospital did not make it through the trade. So I moved on and ended up with a ton of extra time. And an ice cream bar. Which makes teaching at a white board difficult.

So not the most successful lesson, I'll be making that note. Then I learned that my next class would be 9-12 today. So I got a bit nervous that I would be unable to plan a good lesson in time, and be stuck with two strike-outs in a row. And last night I was nigh incoherent. My last act before bed was to make a skeleton of a few of the related concepts I've been wanting to address but for which I've been unable to gather the right resources. I basically decided that since I have the ability to motor in the morning (waking up is the tough part, but I've done some good work at 5am), I'd just get all the lyrics, reviews, poems, videos, and so on in the morning.

This morning I got up at 6 and managed it all by 8:30. I had printouts and everything. A series of websites open on my laptop full of news and pictures and so on. Cuz this was a fucking 3 hour class. Who even does that?

I opened with the poems. First one by Robert Frost. The idea is that poetry from that era, with ample examples from Frost, have a definite rhyme scheme, so you can always be sure that certain words are always going to sound alike. This was a good check for my kids last year (not to be underestimated for being 8th graders) for pronunciation for some words that looked different. More importantly, poems like Stopping By Woods have lines with very specific syllable allowances and predictable, consistent stress patterns. This is not a luxury that speakers often get, right? And Chinese speakers especially add random syllables here and there and get confused about multisyllable stress. So I just wanted to show them a way to practice.

That was sort of to harken back to the last class. Then I followed up with a modern poem that I found. Full of nice descriptors, idioms, and metaphor. Also an easy concept to grasp. Here I wanted to show what poetry has become-- you know, a vehicle for expression and so on. And you know, a ton of our language, things we say all the time, take cues from devices that you find everywhere in poetry. No one learns figurative language straight off in an esl class, and I noticed when we did song lyrics that the whole metaphor/symbol/allusion thing wasn't getting across. I suspected that they were taking things too literally, so I just wanted to give them an introduction to that.

Then a Guster song. One, trying to pinpoint what type of music they're willing to listen to. Would have discussed the lyrics if we had time (when we actually did, I'd forgotten that I hadn't done that, so that was my flub). But mainly I wanted them to talk to me about the song. As an example I added a clip of a music snob review of the album it came from. No expectations of them understanding this piece, because music reviews can be pretty dizzying (this one was a bit kinder though). But I wanted to show them what loaded words are like, and why we use them, and that we use them all the time. Adjectives that we commonly use, and adjectives that the dude made up on the spot. Different ways that we use words that have certain technical meanings ("bipolar" for example). I was hoping for some discussion of the song. But, silence.

By that time, I wanted to change the pace a bit, so I broke out some movie trailers for The Lake House, The Guardian, and Stranger than Fiction. Little discussion arose, so I finished with a short National Geographic video of salt mines and desert crossings. I will admit now that iTunes has been a nice resource for free stuff. This was the point that Connie came back in.

I may have mentioned her before, but she is in charge of this class, and when she's in the room, she dominates it. You know... I like her. I like most people. But ooh. I'll get to that later. Anyway, she was called out at the very beginning of class to identify some dead birds, so she basically missed everything before the salt mine video.

Then, because yesterday she'd said something about American food being simple (to the effect of hamburgers and hot dogs), I had some menu examples and photos of restaurant food. Unfortunately, she and her son were the only ones from yesterday's class to realize that this was a response to something.

After that, she was called out again. So I decided that for the last 30 min we could go back to the review and define some words so they could read it later. No one asked me any questions! So I just went through and defined a lot of things I thought they might not be able to interpret on their own (right every time). Connie came back in and looked at the review. With 10 minutes left she gave me a criticism of my lesson. She said that I jumped from topic to topic so much in one lesson that it wasn't good.

So criticism. Whatever. I need that. But actually she wasn't in class. Additionally, she did this during class time in both Chinese and English. She said it nicely, but I was still like... thanks? For nothing! I don't know, but I just feel inherently that I would have done it differently. The thing was, she asked the other students if they agreed, and none of them said anything! It would have been more helpful if someone had agreed. Or if someone had said that the lesson was helpful. Any response. As it is, I have yet another opinion from Connie about how class should be.

Now, I have my own criticisms about the class. Having gone through it point by point, I see where maybe I could have expanded on something. It's just something I didn't see until now. But also, it's clear that for the hospital class, I'm having a lot of trouble facilitating discussion. The training center has great discussions-- it's a blast. I can ask them all the questions I want and lead them whatever direction, and they're responsive (except for yesterday, when they thought I was crazy). This troubles me because I can't yet figure out why this is happening. I'm going to e-mail their last teacher, Tevie, who's been great about answering my Baotou questions thus far. Apparently Connie loved her class. I've checked out Tevie's formula though, and it's like... nothing out of the ordinary. So she was a theatre major. And like 50. But still. I'm youthful and exuberant. Talk to me, dammit!

I mean, please don't get me wrong. The students are really awesome people. But they're not the best students. And by students, I mean, the role of the student. Like, you can be a good student by working hard, and they do. But I mean, when I am a student, no matter what my other classes have been like, when I place myself in a class, I understand that I am placing myself at the mercy of my teacher. If they want me to speak, I will speak. If they say that this is the way to learn something, I will try it. You know? They take the initiative to take this class. It's voluntary and it cost money. Why wouldn't they take the initiative to ask me questions when they don't understand something? Or to simply follow me when I try to lead them somewhere? I have never been in a class where the teacher was unable to get this same reaction. So I'm troubled. I can keep trying new techniques, but I really can't do anything particulary exciting or fun unless I know that they're with me. Or until they give me some response to tell me what they think is exciting or fun. I expected to have figured this out by now. I mean, whatever the problem is, it's mine-- not theirs. So I'm not blaming them. I'm just referencing their behavior to indicate that there is some failing in the way I approach them.

But I was still really steamed about the way Connie made her comment. I described the whole thing to Alice later, and she told me not to pay attention to it. You know, after our first full lesson there, she complained about the structure while another student told us how much she enjoyed it. Since then it's been really crappy trying to find a balance for them. Of course I'm going to consider it though. But it's like... I may have been jumping topic to topic, but those were just tools for me to teach a theme. I wanted to demonstrate the flexibility English has in describing things as subjective as music or feelings, and I wanted to show them common resources like poems and reviews-- places where we've picked up words and speaking skills. But I should have explained that more clearly at the beginning.

Also, and this shocked me back to reality, it turns out that Connie was partially basing this on the fact that the review didn't make any sense. As in, she thought that the review of the music was a review of the lesson. I forgot that a noun like that could be misinterpreted. Again, my fault. It's just not the easiest thing to assess just what words they know and what words they don't. I mean, they're doctors. They know "tuberculosis." Then again, she also missed that part of the lesson.

The worst is just the silence. I try to give them opportunities to emote and practice speaking, but they either just stare straight at me or anywhere else. During the poetry thing, I did get a lot of head nodding though. I didn't move on until I saw heads nodding-- since they were giving me that, I latched onto it.

It's not that I think they're being withholding for one reason or another. But in any case, I haven't been able to get what I want out of them yet, so it's back to the drawing board for Saturday.