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.

Deep breaths

I was told today that the kids did enjoy class last Sunday, and some exceptional child even went as far as to ask his/her parents whether or not there was a class they could attend every day. Uh… I can’t even imagine which one that could be. But anyways, it was quite an exhilarating afternoon… long, and insanely tiring. I’d meant to go over it much sooner after, but pretty much needed to go straight to bed. The next afternoon I started my half-life in Beijing, and since then have just really had a hard time to revisit this thing. Which is bad, because I was reminded tonight of a sporting event happening early tomorrow that I should go to, which is bad because I was planning on doing all this work then. Why put it off so long? Well, I didn’t want to open up that can of stress when what happened for like two weeks prior to the first session was me staring at my books for hours and then writing out my schedule and handouts just a few days before anyways. That was a small part. The other was that after dinner in Beijing, I pretty much just needed to unwind and immediately start getting ready for bed. I’m committed to getting up by 6:30 every day so that I can get into the office by 8. But more on that later.

Saturday, I headed towards the office before 1:30. I needed to drop my things off there and then run to the supermarket to snap up some last-minute snacks and bottles of water. I thought there were some last-minute prep things I might want to take care of, and I did somehow manage to busy myself with… something. Cutting up pieces of paper, putting colored numbers on them, replacing them with paper clips (which I will not do again), taking things out of one bag and putting them in another bag, then taking them out again for some purpose, then putting them back again. All the things I wound up dragging over to the library and up to the 5^th floor wound up being, um, really heavy.

This was around 2:30. Some of the volunteers were already popping up. Like I said, I'd picked 5 main helpers and corralled all the other names into a back-up list for emergencies. I wasn't really clear, I guess, in my e-mail to the teacher about this, and so she told all the students to show up at the library during the time I'd scheduled to meet with my 5 ONLY. She had some other activity lined up for the rest of them, but I ended feeling pretty terrible because they all showed up thinking that they'd be doing something for me. One of my former students falls under that category. She was one of the first to show, and when I didn't have a handout for her, it was awkward.

I tried to give them as thorough a rundown as possible of my expectations, which were sort of ambiguous at the time, given that I didn't know how much English these kids would be capable of. We didn't have quite enough time to run through the activities, but it seemed like they understood. Well...

When the doors opened, we went in to rearrange the classroom. The desks in there are unnaturally heavy. The kids showed up and there was great confusion as they all took seats and we tried to get everyone registered and paid up. I decided that I might as well get delegating, so I snagged one of my volunteers, handed her the sheet, and sent her around to check the names off for me. She did a great job, and turned out to be extremely competent. She's also much more confident in speaking out than the other girls, so I ended up going to her a lot for various tasks for the rest of the afternoon. We were running a bit late because of all this stuff and I was confused about how to proceed language-wise for the first class. All of the students had English names, and I could hear some of them using English as they saw one another come in. But then there was at least one girl at the front who I knew couldn't understand anything. She's kind of a special case though.

I wanted to get introductions out of the way as soon as possible, especially with the delay. Just wanted to get my name and the volunteers' names out really quick and then get started. Uuuuh, what happened was, though, that when I asked them each to give their names, they took the chance to give a little speech, all running along the lines of, "Nice to meet you, I hope we can be friends, I am here to help you and I hope that if you ever need help, you will come to me. I am also here to help Katharine, etc etc," and well-intentioned and sweet as they were, they ran kind of long. So that's something you don't encounter in volunteers back home. But it was nice, it showed their enthusiasm.

My icebreaker was a game we played as OLs my sophomore year. I sort of remember it dragging, but I pictured this group as being much smaller than my OL group and it was also kinda engaging. It's the one where everyone stands in a circle and you say your name and an activity you enjoy, then pair it with a physical action. Then each successive person very quickly goes around and says all the names and repeats all the actions again (a la the picnic game). I demonstrated this in the cheesiest, most obvious ways possible. I also thought I'd trained my assts in this beforehand, so I started in the back of the room with them. A couple of mistakes. If I'd wanted to get them into this, I would have marched everyone out into the hallway and actually gotten them into a circle. Because I'd wanted to keep them in the room, and because with the addition of a couple students (and a freaking LOT of parents) we ended up not having as much open space in the back, I decided to ask the kids whether or not they'd rather just stay at the desks. And they did. And, well, I'm not really sure what happened with my assts, but I ended up having to spend like 10 minutes re-teaching them the game while the kids sat around and waited. I was hoping they'd get the ball rolling and help me by setting an example, but either they didn't do the action or they didn't tell us about the other person, or they told us about the other person and not themselves, and it was awkward, and at this point I lost my cool for about the next hour.

What really didn't help me was that every parent was sitting in this tribunal ring around the back of the room like they were at an outdoor concert. It took me a while before I could truly ignore them, but before that I found myself getting profoundly disturbed by how inscrutable their facial expressions were. Also, every time one mother leaned over to whisper to another, I had the real/imagined sense that they were passing some sort of negative judgement on my organizational skills.

This was mostly a problem during the first half of the game. I say first half because I'm counting the number of people we got to during this period of time. In reality, it took an eon compared to the second half. Some of the girls at the front were having a completely unexpected stress attack about having to produce information on every child behind them, and were trying to write everything down. But it was iiiinnnnteeerrmiiinnaaablllle. And I was really feeling the effects of my poor decision making when I realized just how much of that time was going back over our volunteers' hobbies. Sigh. So about 9 kids in, when I was sick of the chatter arising from left half of the room, who must have been bored out of their minds (it's grammatical if you're british, I think), I told them that they could just do themselves and the one person who went before them. Then immediately realized that that idea sucked because it takes away any incentive to pay attention the rest of the time. Fortunately, the kids were all still a bit stunned, so it made it pretty easy for me to jump in and change things up again. After asking one girl her info and then really making her act it out, I randomly selected someone from the recent past and had her do them. The rest of the game went quickly and was much more interesting for all involved. I learned that on the spot, basketball, dancing, and playing PSP can all be represented by a generic shaking motion accompanied by laser sound effects.

That little (crap the word i'm looking for is somewhere between "incentive" and "innuendo" but I just can't think of it... also my internet's currently down so i can't thesaurus it) left us nearly at the hour mark. We were supposed to have accomplished so much more by then. So I just went ahead and completely forgot to hand out schedules and talk rules and expectations. HA. When I realized this in my meeting with the volunteers at the end of class, as a result of wondering why I still had a full folder of schedules in my possession, I could have kicked myself. But I guess that's ok. We'll have more time next time. Famous last words. Other things I forgot... juice at snack time, and water. So at least we have water this week. And also juice.

What was really good about the game was that it told me a lot about each kid's personality and started familiarizing me with their language abilities. For example, and this was such a shoot-me moment at first, the first actual child to say anything in the game claimed that he didn't like anything today. "My name is John and I don't like anything today." Oddly enough it was pretty easy to roll with it and it ended up being a good talking point with this kid (who I'm sorry I totally thought was a girl for... a while... he just had such nice eyelashes). The volunteers clearly bonded with him. He's not REALLY a misanthrope (though kinda), but I imagine there was just someplace else he'd rather have been on a Saturday afternoon.

Then... passed out paper tents, markers, crayons, and colored pencils so they could make name cards. When I asked the volunteers to start collecting the drawing materials so that we could move on, they ended up collecting the name cards too, and so then we had to pass them out again, but then they got collected again by volunteers who didn't get the memo the first time. So then we passed them out again.

I decided I wanted to get out from under the parents' noses and that there was no way that snack was going to go the way I'd planned in this room in the remaining time. So I threw the volunteers into the fire. I started passing out paper clips and had kids with the same color go out into the hall with this or that volunteer. UNFORTUNATELY, my quick thinking was SO quick that I didn't think about the fact that there were too many of too many colors of paper clips for this to work out mathematically in any situation short of an actual miracle of probability. I did some freestyling, and planned to just send remaining kids out to join the other groups, but this did not sit well with them, since they did not identify with any paperclip colors other than their own.

Snack activity was supposed to be... describe, using every sense, the mini-banana in your hand. Originally, every kid would randomly be assigned a sense, at which point they say whatever came to mind, and once that had happened for everyone, they could eat. I'd explained the concept to my volunteers, and when I realized that I'd have to give this task to them to perform in groups, I immediately called one of them over (vivian, the one with the initiative), and told her to pass that along to the other girls. I dunno if they got it, but I guess it doesn't matter. I went to each of the 3 groups and gave them the assignment again before walking away. When I got to the last group, Vivians, I realized that it was just better if I led them with some questions. After that worked out well, I went back to the other two and did the same thing. I have no idea what they were doing while I was gone. Then I called them all back to the room. When I went over to get Vivian's group, the kids were everywhere and I was told that one or more of the kids had thrown their tissues over the balcony... into the study area on the 1st floor. I would have lost it if I'd had my wits about me, and actually disciplined someone, but then again, I didn't so I didn't. I planned on saying something back in the room about how we needed to be respectful of the library so they'd let us keep using the room for free and not ban us from the hallways, but then I forgot that too.

The second half was better-structured, and went more or less according to plan. I turned out half of the lights (because I didn't know where the other half of the light switches were), and gathered everyone on the floor in the back of the room (totally making all of this blocking up in my head, btw) for the book. Oh, fyi, these kids are all 9-13. As far as I know. Then I remembered the vocab sheets. Then I remembered to pass out pens. Vocab time was fun. They all pretty much knew a lot of the words... of which there were only 9 or 12... some multiple of 3 that fits in a grid on A4 paper... and the drawing aspect was a stroke of genius on my part. One of the girls, who sort of wound up being one of my favorites purely on the basis of her tendency to overanalyze and take everything I said seriously and at face value (reminded me a little of me, minus the crazy part, which, oddly was embodied in a totally separate girl who ran completely amok on me and had to go to the bathroom SO many times).... anyways, that girl got really worked up over the somewhat conceptual ones like "experiment" and was like "do we have to DRAW that?" I told her no, she could just write the definition, but most of the others were cool with digging into odd references that they probably wouldn't have gotten later.

The book was The Dot, which I fell in love with at the bookstore. It's about art. When I asked the kids how they felt about art, they were all pretty eh about it. I was like... hm. That's a major component of this class. My wrist hurts and is making some pretty ridiculous noises.

After the reading and a short discussion,we moved on to the painting part. It was like... insanity given physical form. I have some watercolors that I was hoping to maintain for the entirety of the 12-class cycle, but... do kids this age not understand the concept of water colors? How a little goes a long way? I think one problem was the sponge brushes that came with the brush assortments I bought... those are coming out next time. So it was like a nightmare you have after reading Oliver Twist. "More green please! We need more red! Blue! More blue, please!" Then, when I'd obliged them, a great swarm of brushes would descend, and leave the palette bleach-white yet again. So the chorus was constant and my volunteers looked a bit harassed. I don't think we ever stopped moving during this activity. I had about 4 "last calls" on paint, and finally ended up speeding the "get out of here" process by passing out markers and having the kids sign their works of art.

I know I use some negative imagery here, but overall I thought the kids were great and we all ended up having a pretty good whirlwind of a time.

Some of the boys made a holy mess of the desks and all I could think of was "thank GOD this is water color." Cleanup took ages, and then I had to chat with one of the parents about something. Finally I got to meet with my assts and get their input... it was also just a really helpful way for me to get thinking out loud. What we decided to do was divide the kids into 3 permanent groups, though fluidity of membership was ok to allow for naughty/nice transfers and other movements. The idea was that one set of students is really an English-speaking class. Most of these kids go to an international school, and it turned out that at least one of the girls didn't really understand one of my vols when she spoke to her in Chinese. Also, this particular volunteer got really uncomfortable with her English, which is decent, but gets worse when she's nervous. Another set of students is ok with English, but still need slightly more assistance. The last set is kids whose English really is not at the same level as the rest. The volunteers were key in helping me to make this list right then and there (SO glad I didn't decide to "do it later" on my own... because I'd be doing it now, and struggling to remember which kid was which). They requested their assignments too, which, fortunately, were exactly what I was hoping for-- I had pictured one of them with the lower-level group, looking after the girl who spoke no English, and doing a lot of Chinese language guidance, since that's something she's pretty good at. I also wanted Vivian alone with the high-level kids because I think she can handle them on her own as I make my rounds (the others were all grouped in twos... the mid-level kids also include some high-level kids who are disciplinary concerns), though in time I'd like to be spending more time with these students too. It's only partially favoritism, and I know that's true because I like all of the kids (except the really quiet ones I can't quite remember... and I like that they're quiet).

So... what now? Now I need to decide what's going down on Saturday. I can only print this stuff in the office tomorrow afternoon, so what would be great is if I have something started before then. I'm not concerned about anything for the kids. I'm actually thinking about writing out the directions for any activity or permutation of activity that we might end up doing on Saturday so that they can be prepared for the unexpected. I'm really really tired now though.

Though I am thinking about Do you like your friends, the Mirror game, and using the 5 W's as a theme. BTW, a lot of my ideas/inspiration are coming from a book called Kids Take The Stage, and it's too far away for me to feel like getting up to see who the authors are, but I figured I should credit it anyways. It's a really nice little resource, a quick read, and an activity goldmine.

The book scheduled for tomorrow is Ish. I meant to accompany it with a drawing activity. Or series of drawing activities. I guess we can still do that. No need for a snack activity. We can have a civilized, hydrated, snack at the desks. I'm thinking half of an apple and some crackers for everyone? I feel so unqualified to be giving kids snack. I remember in my daycare we'd get a lot of graham crackers and peanut butter... cheese... i think even sometimes graham crackers and frosting... ants on a log... but yeah, something starchy and something fruity. It might be too late for tangerines. Yeah, apple slices will just have to do. I wish peanut butter was more widely available. Maybe it is? I'll check on the way home tomorrow. I know they sell it, but is it in my budget? Well, I guess since we now have more kids=more money, it could be...

It turns out now that I will NEED all 5 volunteers every week. So now I wish I had a runner that I could like, send out to cut apples and then pass out papers etc. I'm sure I can get someone who will do that. Maybe a parent?

Ok, made my vocab sheet... so easy. No more than 12 words each time if I can help it. Hopefully none of these are too conceptual because I don't like explaining those sometimes.

Remember: SERIES of drawing activities. NO free-for-all this time, just some quick impressionist art and a follow up group activity. Gah I have to sleep. We have to be at this thing at 8 am :(

I went into this season ready to be dead tired though, so yeah, you can bring it.

Where are we going with this

Having difficulty working this out through other mediums, so I figured I might as well try blogging about it. Haha. Blogging.

Anyways, my first little activities camp session is this Saturday. I screened through potential volunteers yesterday at the Polytech school. When they told me there would be "many" students who'd be interested in helping me, I thought "ok... like... 7?" But I ended up talking to 25 students yesterday, which wasn't everyone who showed up, since we had a few drift away as the interviews went on. Then were was like... a reserve classroom of another 40 standing by in case I didn't find anyone I liked in the first group.

I didn't have many questions for them, but just really tried to coax them into English monologues about anything. I need assistants who would be able to react to things in English and really encourage the students to be using English during our sessions. There weren't very many of those in the group, actually, which was sad, because a lot of these girls (and one guy) would be great for programs like this. They were all so willing to give up 12 consecutive Saturday afternoons (not that I've been able to determine that there's much to do out where the school is, but still... Saturdays were always precious) that I didn't want to turn them down.

Mostly I was impressed by the ones who kind of... were very convincing despite not having the level of English I was looking for. The girls who were like... "I may not be perfect for this, but if you give me the opportunity, I'd really try my best." Or, "No, I don't have any volunteer experience, or experience with anything like this, but this would be my chance to start."

Anyways, there were 3 sophomores that I picked out for their English ability and general demeanor, before some of my old students came in and blew me away. First, there was one girl who I'd forgotten pretty much played the assistant role in my class anyway-- translating back and forth and pumping everyone up for like skits and stuff. Then there was the girl who made me sing back in December (uuuugh) who blew me away by reading my mind during the interview. So that's a total of 5 ladies I'd like to take on, for 3 positions that I had in mind.

Then, what did I do? I thought, well that's too bad. I'd love to let as many of these kids help out as possible. Maybe we can just add more students! So I made a call and said that we could increase the class size... but since then I've sort of been thinking about it and... I kinda wish I hadn't done that. Haha. We'll see how many we're at at this point, but I think I'll cut it off this afternoon at whatever number it's at. I'll take all 5 volunteers and just... figure out a use for them.

I guess if this weren't starting THIS SATURDAY, I'd be a lot less anxious.

Anyways, the volunteers aren't a huge deal. I am having a hard time picturing everyone sitting comfortably in this classroom anymore. What I'm having issues with right now is the agenda for the first session, as well as like... the vocabulary worksheet that I'm not even really able to visualize right now. And the eternal question: Introductions first? Or icebreaker first?

Currently I'm thinking... sound-off names for me and the volunteers, and then play some introductions/name-game kinda icebreaker. Reconvene to go over rules and expectations and make little name plates. Then break up again and do rotating groups of name-centric games. At half-time, we'll all get together for snack and pass out vocab sheets for the book we're reading. Do any pre-reading activities. Then all gather on the floor to read this book out loud. Follow it up with Q&A and then move into the arts & crafts segment. Ah. At this point, would it be ok to break for skits again? There might not be a ton of time for that. It might be better to just play a big round of "Do you like your friends?" and save thematic skits for the next session. So we can review the story that way too.

That seeeeems like a plan, but there's that big hole in the first half where I say "name-centric games." What the freak are those supposed to be?

I guess I have until Saturday afternoon to figure that out. Before that though, I need to get this worksheet or whatever it's going to be banged out, since I actually need to get it printed... and probably a volunteer info sheet would be good to have.

Ok. I decided that instead of just defining all these vocab words, most of them can be illustrated. So we shall be illustrating them in-class.

Word.

As for lunch today...

The first task... ok, wait, the second task that was ever assigned to me here was to assist the TEDA Public Library with their English website. What that currently means is that I'm translating the Recent News section of it, which is a lot like pouring acid onto my brain. Directly. It's certainly cool, and it's great for my Chinese, but after about 2 arduous translations I'm pretty much unable to continue. But that's just setting the stage.

Today was my second day at the library, and I had to leave about an hour and a half after I got there. As I learned, a hot pot (actually more like shabu shabu) restaurant had invited the folks from the nursing home for lunch at 11. We were invited too. I feel a little weird taking part in events with the nursing home because they typically involve my getting fed somehow despite not having actually ever volunteered for them. Yeah right, I feel really weird. But I went this time determined to be really nice. The restaurant was at the Shimin Guangchang, which is... well I wanna say it's usually a term given to a public square. In TEDA it refers to a mall, which was more or less deserted at this time of day. When the seniors arrived, I went down with Sunny to collect them. I didn't really know what I was supposed to be doing, but in the end wound up having to chase some of the speedier old men into the building and show them up the escalator. The man I specifically had to follow started the walk with a cigarette and tried to throw it into a trashcan. Fortunately he couldn't get it open. I told him that we could wait until we got up to the restaurant and they would probably have ash trays there. But by the time we got on the escalator, the cigarette was gone. I looked around but saw no trace of it. Turns out we were in a non-smoking establishment anyways.

The hot pot was all right. Lots of veggies. I really can't eat lamb at all anymore though I realize now. The man I was sitting next to kept taking my dipping sauces. Which was fine, obviously, since they weren't MY dipping sauces, but I just thought it was really funny. The seniors took up most of the restaurant, all in their matching long-sleeved polos. It was really nice to see them enjoying their lunch!

Afterwards, well... after an obligatory photo-session that I again questioned my part in, we all got up and walked around the mall. During much of this time I was trying to remove a chopstick splinter from my hand. Speaking of, I noticed that one of the men had torn one of his chopsticks into bits to fashion a toothpick. I eventually ended up by one of the more lively and much older men, who was being helped along by a really sweet volunteer. She attempted to indicate to him that I'm an American. I'm not really sure what she said, but since she said it in English it set him off. He turned to me and was very excited about speaking to me. I'm not 100% sure of everything that was said and what I agreed to or not, but he was awesome and made me laugh. While waiting for the elevator, he sought me out again and proceeded to give the cutest old man rant of all time. He insisted that the China Construction Bank had done everyone a disservice by translating its own name wrong. He felt that it should be Construction Bank of China. Which... makes sense. He set down a number of other examples and rationale, but alas, I had no idea what he was saying to me. Mostly I just nodded and the other girls laughed at me.

We saw them off then rode back in a sweet rickety van. Then I went to finish the translation from hell and when I did I was happy.

I need to say something about Shine home and probably last week, but... I'm starting to feel unbalanced in my typing again and it's making me really anxious and uncomfortable. I don't think I'll ever be able to type in peace again actually. That's kinda sad...

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.

Don't tread on me

I heard this story after dinner today. A better version, obviously, and in Chinese, so forgive me. I'm a little unclear as to how the scene was set up, but let's say it takes place at Tiantan (the temple of heaven).

At the Temple of Heaven, the grass was full of ducks, and it was very difficult to navigate around them. God declared that anyone who stepped on one would be sorry. There were three women in the park, and the first started to walk through the grass. However, she accidentally stepped on a duck. God then paired her with an ugly husband. The second woman started walking through the grass and tried to be as careful as possible to avoid stepping on a duck. Unfortunately she also accidentally stepped on one and was paired with an even uglier husband than the first woman. The third woman was terrified, and started walking through the grass. She managed to make it through without stepping on a single duck! She was paired with a strong, tall, handsome husband. A catch, if you will. She couldn't believe her luck! Wondering how she could ever have been so fortunate, she turned to him and said, "Wow, what did I ever do to deserve a man as wonderful as you?" He replied, "I don't know, but I stepped on one of those ducks back there."

Nomenclature

This is what my name means.

Before we were born, my grandfather drew up a list of names for our parents to snatch up on our behalf on a first-come-first-served basis. As the story has it, by being the second-born girl in our generation, I managed to get the second-best name on the list, beating out Selina by two years and also slightly annoying her parents.

Here it is in traditional characters: 潘絢愷 (pan1 xuan4 kai3)


Today as we went from office to office meeting various managers and higher-up sorts, I ended up in front of a man who asked what the last character in my name means. Now that you know where this is headed, I'm going to veer off a bit.

The first character, of course, is Pan, the family name. That's what's engraved on the giant headstone in the graveyard in Springdale where we all have plots.

Once, back in either junior high or high school, Selina brought up the topic of Chinese dictionaries during a phone conversation. At that point I'd already dropped out of Chinese school and was mostly uninterested in the topic, but when we started wondering what our names meant, I asked my mom to pull one out and show me how to use it. This was, of course, before the internet and looong before zhongwen.com or any of those other fancy online dictionaries. Dictionaries for the traditional system are really fascinating things, and definitions are itemized by radical and stroke count. So you really kind of have to know what you're doing in order to navigate one. Anyways, we looked up the character pan, and discovered that it refers to the water in which one washes rice. It's not one of those words that ever comes up in conversation, at least not as far as I can tell, having been relegated to the status of a popular surname instead.

Xuan is the generational name for girls in our family, so Christine, Selina, and I all have 2 out of 3 characters in common. I looked this up with my mom too, and she returned that it meant "bright." After I got into college and was regularly looking up words on the internet, I double-checked all of these, and got basically the same definitions. The MDBG dictionary corroborates the meaning as "brilliant," but also adds "adorned," "swift," "gorgeous," and, uh, "variegated." Whenever I hear Chinese people describing my name to other Chinese people, they describe this word by using the phrase "xuan li," which means gorgeous or magnificent. But usually people can guess which one of the various xuans we're dealing with, and I'm guessing that it's common enough in girls' names. For example, no one's ever mistaken the xuan in my name for the one which apparently means "lathe/thread in screw."

I remember back when I first started attending Chinese school, we were in a dark ornate part of the church, seated around a big table, and since we were most of us too young to have any clue how to go about writing our names on our papers (in traditional, no less), the teachers were doing it for us. It went swiftly for the most part, but then they got to me and the process stalled. There was some confusion as to which kai served as the last third of my name. They discussed briefly, then wrote down two characters, showing them to me and asking if either seemed familiar. I didn't even really know what I was looking at. After some more deliberation, they decided it was more likely to be one than the other, and wrote it down and moved on. It was SO COOL to have my name written down on my stuff, right? When class ended, I went to show my mom right away and she was nonplussed. She told me that that... wasn't my name. I was stricken. We went up to the teachers and they said that they had been confused and showed her the other option that they'd come up with. She said, "oh no, it's not that one either." Eh? said the teachers.

So, this is the character that everyone invariably assumes it to be. 凱, as in 凱旋 (kai xuan). It means triumphant, and the phrase means to return triumphant (according to MDBG).

When I started Chinese 109 my freshman year at Cornell, there was one morning that the teacher went around the room and commented on everyone's name. I was told that my name was a boy's name.

While hanging around the copy shop in Baotou waiting for one thing or another, the owner and his daughter(?) asked me if I had a Chinese name. I gladly told them, and the girl-- who I'd liked pretty well up until that point-- turned to the owner and said that it didn't sound good.

When I told the fruit seller what my name was, he said he liked it. I had to write it out so that he could see the character. He said it was unusual, but that it made more sense once knowing the character, and that it was fitting.

In Muping, they just called me 小潘 (xiao pan) which means, literally, Little Pan. It's a common enough nickname though, since according to my host here, that's what they used to call my dad in college.

In Baotou, no one would call me by my Chinese name. Instead I was Kai se lin, to go with the official name on my documents, or, for some reason, Cathy/kai xi/combination of both. The one time in my life I've ever let the name Cathy happen to me, and I still shudder a bit.

I understand the necessity of going with a Chinese version of the name on my passport since the name by which I've been known in my family all my life is devoid of any officiality, existing nowhere outside of my family, our friends, certain classrooms, and my Chinese homework. How weird is that?

So, today, I was sitting with my host at the desk of one of the important people with whom I ought to be acquainted and he asked me what my name was. After hearing it, and saying it, he asked me about the meaning. What does the "kai" mean? From our dictionary, my mom had come up with "victory," and that's the meaning I've held to throughout the years. Mrs. L didn't know, so I told her what I thought it might be, and she translated for me. They discussed it a bit more and she decided to have one of the girls in her office look it up when we got back.

In the office, the Chinese Literature major was assigned the task of checking online for the definitive answer. I expected her to eventually just come up with a few synonyms and phrases and have that be the end of it. Instead, she very sweetly gave me a great explanation.

Back to the character: 愷. It's made up of two parts. The first, the line and two dots on the left, is the radical and it's actually a variant of 心, which means heart. The other part means happiness or joy. According to zhongwen.com, it also means celebrate. So one meaning is happiness or joyfulness. She went further to say that it describes someone who is good and can bring that joy to others. Another dictionary definition is "kind." There's a second meaning, which basically translates as "easy-going." I was surprised to not hear the meaning that I believed it to have all this time. Then she found one more. It also refers to the type of song played by a party, I picture an army of some sort, after a victory. Her favorite was the second, easy-going.

Ok sorry, this ended up being far longer and more involved than what I'd initially intended, which was a paragraph-- maybe two-- just about today's encounters. But anyways, this morning I loved my name, but I had no idea that it was so... cool. It's funny to me a lot of times that I was given an English name that people appear destined to be misspell for eternity, and a Chinese name that's so easily misunderstood.

I felt really happy while she was explaining it to me, like a shade was being lifted or like a massive spit-shine was taking place. Aside from actually being able to share this information with others from now on, I discovered that my name is something that's really worth living up to. I remember when I cornered Prof. Zimbardo after his lecture at the WAC and asked him to write one of his favorite inspirational quotes in my book, he sort of misunderstood and instead wrote an inspirational message directed at me. Basically, it's the hope that whoever I meet, I manage to make them feel special and glad to have known me. That's what popped into my head during this conversation today.

Hopefully I'll be able to do justice to these three words that are such a special part of who I am. I've got my fingers crossed, anyways. Remember: be optimistic and kind, joyful and at ease, and smile until people start smiling back.

Twice Shy

Last night I went to bed at some point after 12:30.

I dreamt, possibly of momentous things, but then in my dream I started feeling itchy. Oh crap I remember now. I was dreaming about Sarah Palin... I was watching her on TV and was convinced that she was somehow making me itch. Then I started waking up, and was in a semi-delirious state, scratching at various parts of my arms and trying to get back to sleep. Then I realized that I was honestly very itchy and scratching at swollen bumps and freaked out. I thought it must be like 6 or 7 in the morning, but when I turned the light on, I discovered it was only 2:50. I decided to go to the bathroom mirror to check myself out, and there I found 4 large fresh white-hot welts on my arms and index finger. I continued cussing in amazement. I was still pretty out of it and my mind raced to explain the situation. Usually I'm very sensitive to the sound of mosquitos, so I wasn't sure if that was it. But they didn't look like spider bites, and I ruled out hives and other allergies. For a fleeting moment I feared bedbugs (OK, I always fear bedbugs), but having thrown the sheets around in search of any insectoid culprit and come up clean, it seemed like it had to have been a mosquito after all. Still couldn't find any sign of one in the room though, and I thought that any single mosquito only bit like once or something before going off to lay eggs... or something.

Anyways, in the course of 2 hours, I acquired my 2nd-5th mosquito bites all year. There's another reason San Francisco rules. They have since swollen pink to the standard size of an inch or two in diameter. I'm lucky though... even if I somehow drew my attacker in with my smooth skin and comely ways, it seems my exposed face wasn't quite attractive enough to be ravished the way the rest of me was. It came away unscathed.

I have arrived

Turns out that my flight from Newark was only 13 hours.

The embraer, though small, was comfortable enough for me, and I liked not having to sit next to anyone. It wasn't a very full plane though, and the other passengers were mostly jovial suited men. I slept, obviously, and upon arrival at Newark was so dazed that I could barely follow the trail, which bent oddly, that they had set up on the tarmac. There was a man with a few pieces of paper stapled together and so I thought I had better see if he had an opinion about where I should be heading, considering I had no idea. He directed me to a small shuttle bus sitting off to the side. In it, there was a fellow passenger also on the trek to my terminal, so I decided that I must follow her wherever she went, because she was alert and I was not. I assumed she was alert because she was able to ask questions of the driver. The bus took us to another bus, which I also boarded, ever behind this other woman. That bus did arrive at terminal C.

Terminal C at Newark has to have some of the worst airport bathrooms I've encountered. Concourse C at Dayton wasn't that great either, by the way. Earlier this month I had planned on writing an entry exclusively rating the airport bathrooms I've visited recently, but never got around to it. It's on the table though.

Somehow managed to pass 3 hours there. I think a lot of it happened when I leaned over my backpack for a moment and then promptly fell asleep. I woke up just in time for them to announce that everyone needed to form a single-file line to check in again-- so that they could examine our passports.

I'd thought I'd be seated in 40E (smack center of the plane), but somehow last night I guess I managed to change my seat to 24D, which is an aisle seat in the center row. It was bizarre because when choosing seats after booking, nearly all seats were shown as occupied except for a few non-window-non-aisle seats in the back of the plane. When I unsuccessfully attempted online check-in, though, nearly all of the seats at the front of the plane were available, so I tried to switch. After my attempt failed though (they need to check your passport in person, I guess) I went to view my itinerary again and my seat hadn't changed. And then when I went to look at the seating chart again, I got the original mostly-booked chart with my original seat. So I just ignored it and moved on.

Anyways, it wasn't a very full flight so while boarding, some people got spread out a bit so that people could have more room. The center seat in my row was unoccupied, so not only did I get a second blanket, but I also got to take advantage of the tray table. This excited me.

The 777 had personal TVs on all of the seats, and while they were a pain to navigate, there were some interesting things going on. I watched two movies during the flight: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, and How to Eat Fried Worms. The first one was all right... I probably would have enjoyed it a lot less if Lee Pace hadn't been in it. However, I would like to recommend right now that everyone go watch How to Eat Fried Worms. I very very vaguely remember this book from either the 3rd or 4th grade... I think it was well-recieved. The movie though is adorably funny. A lot of those "pffffft" laughter (originally typed lafter... hm) moments, and a lot of those snorkly back of the throat chuckles too.

Did a ton of sleeping. Well, not a ton, but I tried to spend most of my time in a sleeping position with the though that it wouldn't hurt to actually fall asleep. I also spent a lot of time staring at the flight show, at the little airplane making its way along our route and all the info about tail wind speeds, altitudes, and outside temperatures.

A few hours in, we started hitting a lot of turbulence. It's probably not something I would have thought too hard about before this past January, but since the wind-shear/Fresno experience, I've become really paranoid about rocking turbulence. I was wondering what on earth was bouncing such a big plane around so much, and, seeing that we were off the northeastern coast of Canada, concluded that it must have something to do with Kyle, maybe. Maybe that was not the case, but it's all I really had in terms of an explanation. Eventually it subsided, but no one else really seemed that bothered. I was getting rolled around in my seat and folks were still standing up for a leisurely stroll to the bathroom, and only one of them got reprimanded at all.

Yes we were off the northeastern coast of Canada. Our route did not take us over North America and the Pacific like I had for some reason envisioned, nor did we go by way of the Atlantic and Europe as a friend had guessed. Instead, we went straight up over the Artctic and came down through Siberia. Somewhere between 6 and 7 hours in, I got up for a bathroom break and took some pictures of the north pole (or somewhere near it) through the window in the emergency exit. Surprisingly, no one had their windows open. A few of us gawked out for a couple minutes, commenting on the sunlight, then I did my business and went to sit down again.

Meals were eh. I don't think I'll be having the salmon again, though it's partly because of a bad cilantro experience. Dinner came with Milanos though, which I saved, as well as a salad topped with smoked salmon that tasted all right. Later there was a beef and swiss sandwich (more like an oblong sparse swiss burger or LaRosas style hoagie) and a little thing of vanilla haagen daaz. Not bad (kind of a weird combination and if you're lactose intolerant you're screwed), butI don't think I will be eating a whole little thing of ice cream in the future either, because I definitely got like heartburn or something from one or both of those things. Dairy? Lastly came breakfast, which was eggs or "dim sum" and caused a lot of confusion among a lot of passengers. Eventually the attendants started asking "eggs or noodles" by way of clarification. I didn't really know which way to go this time, but ended up going with the thing less likely to make me sick later, meaning not-eggs. The noodles did in fact come with some dim sum items: a pork bun that might have been a bbq pork bun though the filling was odd, a piece of shiu mai that had a large chunk of inedible animal part within, and a leaf of baby bok choi. The accompanying fruit tasted kinda like dish detergent. I haven't had sub-par airline melon in years though, so that was a surprise.

Anyways, that was the obligatory critique of the food, though I should probably follow it by stating that I still appreciate having had the opportunity to enjoy it or not during this flight. I love being served food on the airplane.

Landed in Beijing, just as I remembered it. Entry forms are currently the most straightforward and simple iteration that I've experienced and I wasn't made to fret over an irrelevant customs form this time either.

Got my things and came to the realization that not only could anyone there have just picked them up and walked off with them, but that there's even less safeguard against that in domestic baggage claims in the US. In fact, in Dayton or CVG, anyone could really wander in through the front doors, stand by baggage claim, take however much they wanted, and walk back out through the door. Awesome, right?

Found the driver no problem. Initially I thought I'd have the task of getting on a bus to get on another bus to get on a train to get to where I was going. But my host was really cool and sent a driver to collect me. He took my suitcase and my bag and we made our way into the garage, which is also how I remembered it. I got really nostalgic in there actually. Then we sped through a pedestrian walkway and then nearly ended the life of a sprinting child. He really wasn't paying any attention, though perhaps he wasn't planning on actually running into the path of oncoming traffic in the garage. Even though he stopped in time (he was trying to get some people's attention) he gave me, the driver, and probably his whole family a good pump of adrenaline.

We chatted for a bit and then I was told to get some rest. I tried to say something along the lines of how I'd been resting for the past 13 hours, and I think it worked, but lapsed into silence anyway. I watched traffic patterns and roadside foliage and read the street signs. But then I inevitably fell asleep. I woke up once I think while we were going through Tianjin (or did we go straight to TEDA?) and thought that I should remain conscious to see the city, but fell asleep again until right at the end. The area looks nothing like I expected it might, and the place I'm staying is way nicer than I expected it to be. Mrs. L came down to get me and the two of us moved my things into her apartment.

I got a tour of the rooms and then set up my computer to let my parents know that I'd made it. And there's wireless internet. I also took the opportunity to brush my teeth. My dad was really excited that I'd get to eat his friend's food, so obviously I was excited to. Mrs. L boiled up some squash and chicken dumplings for dinner and they were delicious. Doubly delicious because there was also vinegar involved. God I was so happy when I saw that.

Afterwards, Mrs. L insisted on taking me out to get my feet massaged so that I'd be able to sleep tonight. I'm pretty sure that sleep was always on the docket, but I'll admit that I was enticed by this prospect. Well, enticed and extremely wary because I have a very low tolerance for tickling and that's all I hear when someone says "foot massage."

We walked TEDA's long blocks and she pointed out the landmarks to me. I'd forgotten how positively terrifying it is to cross multi-lane roads here. Maybe I was still in a daze, but there were a couple times that I was confident that the way was clear to walk when a car would advance from the least obvious direction with no intention of sparing anyone in its path. Fortunately Mrs. L saw them all coming.

The massage parlor I guess is run by a friend of hers? We sat down in a room in two comfy chairs and took our shoes and socks off. Two girls came in with buckets of very very hot water that I splashed around in until it was cool enough to just submerge my feet. That felt pretty good. Then the girls came back in and gave us hand and arm massages. Not being a massage person really, I liked this part a lot. My arms have been all out of sorts for months and while this probably didn't do anything to help, it did feel good. Um, it was a bit awkward though because at this point I could look my masseuse in the face and just couldn't think of anything to say to her. So I looked at the ceiling or watched the floor and a little cockroach that was traversing it. At intervals, I'd look up and see it on the wall or on the flat screen TV and wasn't as repulsed as I could have been.

Next I was moved onto a stool so that she could do my back. Ah, ok, I did not like this part. Some of it was appealing, yes, but a lot of it was just pain and her beating the crap out of my lower back. I have no doubt that most of my other friends would have enjoyed this segment of the massage, but it wasn't really for me. At one point the other girl turned around and saw me making the gritted-teeth-wide-eyed cringe and I had to turn it into a smile real fast. She asked me if I was ticklish and so I said yes. I didn't want them to know that I'm a wimp.

Last up came the feet. At first I didn't know if I could make it through without an outburst, but it actually went pretty well. For the feet-- not too ticklish though she kept hitting like a pressure point or something on my instep that was uncomfortable. Also included was a leg massage up to the thigh. I'd closed my eyes at some point and it's possible that I dozed off for a while or something.

And then it was over and we caught a taxi back. I showered, checked the blogs, and then wrote this. Sure, not a masterpiece or anything (unfortunately it looks like it's not entertaining enough to double as an e-mail), but at least now I have all the details accrued thus far.