Thanksgiving and its preparation

Woosh. So. Thanksgiving. We put it off for a week to give ourselves more time to prepare (we're in China; no one noticed). We invited scads of English teachers and also Mr. Ren and Gao-laoshi and Mr. Wang the tai chi instructor. We (where by "we" I mostly mean Katrina and Julie) spent most of the day in the kitchen making wild rice chicken casserole (the only turkeys available were a two-hour bus ride away, cost three hundred kuai, weighed twelve pounds, and probably wouldn't've fit in our oven anyway), broccoli, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, clover-leaf rolls, fruit salad, pumpkin pie, little cupcake-sized apple pies, and stuffing (the pumpkin pie was actually made a couple days earlier). I went out and bought a whole bunch of forks 'cause we only had three or four (we also had to buy about a dozen new plates); when I got to the grocery store that sold forks (kept in a special glass case with the Western-style spoons and the pliers), I couldn't remember how to say "fork" and ended up asking if they had those American things that weren't chopsticks (they didn't quite understand what I meant (I can't imagine why) until I drew a picture). We used every serving dish and every serving utensil and every plate and every fork that we own.

The meal itself was good. The slightly scary teacher who's the head of the English department came and smiled a lot and was completely non-scary (also, Katrina just miraculously made friends with the second year teachers and managed to get Mr. Ren convinced that it would be a good idea to teach them something other than Gao Kao articles, and I am ecstatic). Everyone smiled a lot, and most of them seemed to like the food. Mr. Ren and Gao-laoshi both described it as being very special, which we've decided was probably meant positively. And… yeah. I don't know. It was a nice night. Not quite just like home, but still pretty nice.

More Generosity

So, more generosity.

Often when we're eating at restaurants, other diners talk about us. At Er You Fan Dian, one of the places we go pretty often, there was a guy who came in for dinner when we were eating. He was there with another man - they were business people, and the first man took a phone call before coming back to sit down. He asked the waitress if we could speak Chinese, and then he asked us how much we would charge to help teach English for his company. We said we couldn't (it's in our contract), and he said something about how ah, we must be helping China to improve her language abilities. We sort of shrugged (we didn't really understand exactly what he was talking about) and he went back to eating. Periodically as he ate, though, he would talk to us - he said that if we ever had any trouble, we should call him - he gave us his phone number and email address and QQ number (QQ is a mostly-Chinese instant messaging service). He said he had a company in Guangzhou (I think; I could be completely wrong). He finished eating and paid the waitress. Then he paid the waitress for our dinner, too. Then he gave each of us a mobile phone card worth 100 kuai. We were… speechless, we were overwhelmed, we were unable to effectively decline (we don't even know how to use the cards). We didn't know how to respond, except to fall in love with everything in China for a while.

Generosity and wushu update

Soooo when last I wrote, I think I mentioned that I had talked to the nice folks at the sporting goods store, and they were going to help me find a place to learn wushu. So. They did! It was the first in a series of interactions with people where they were so, so generous and welcoming that I sort of fell in love with all of China for a while.

I went back to the store the next day, and Lei Xiao Ming tried to take me to meet the instructor at the school, but unfortunately, he turned out to be in Taiyuan that day. We did visit the school, though - it's not what I was expecting; it's a real school. A primary school, I think, and they study math and English and Chinese and all those subjects, but also wushu and tae kwon do and tai chi. Anyway, he asked where we've been around Fenyang, and I said we've gone to Pingyao and Taiyuan, but also to Lao Ye Shan. He asked if we'd been to Wen Feng Ta, and when I said we hadn't, he offered to take us right then. I was excited and happy and a little bit dumb, and I accepted without remembering that probably we had to teach one more middle school kid that afternoon (but Julie is awfully nice and she covered for me), and he took Katrina and me to Wen Feng Ta, the tallest pagoda in... well, in the area, at least. Mr. Ren said once that it was the tallest in China, but we are skeptical. It was... I dunno. It was excellent. It was fun. It was a really good experience, but I don't think I can really narrate it interestingly. The tower was dark dark dark (no electricity) and on every floor, he used his cell phone to take a photo of us standing next to a statue of a zodiac animal/god.

The next night, we did make it to the actual school. We were... mmm, when we read other Carleton people's descriptions of coming to Fenyang, they talked about feeling like movie stars, and we've kind of felt some of that, but not to the extent that other people have described. At the Yu Ying Xue Xiao, we felt that. The students stood in crowds on the balconies to look at us, and we could hear people everywhere whispering, "waiguoren!" Song Bing, who might or might not be in charge of the school, met us and introduced us to the English teachers, and also he started to teach us more tai chi. Every morning at 6:00, we wake up, and he picks us up at the gates of the school at 6:30. He teaches tai chi for an hour (it's not just us, though there are only a few others who are just starting; part way through class we split into two groups and the others work on the sword form), and shows us videos of someone who is probably the fifth-generation head of the Yang branch of tai chi (or something like that), who has a school now in Seattle and has instructional videos in English, and they feed us breakfast and take us home to start work. They are welcoming and smiling and kind, and they are so willing to teach us that we almost feel awkward because we don't know how to respond without feeling like we're taking advantage of them. When I wanted to find a school, I thought maybe I would find someplace that would have classes in the evening, but probably I wouldn't be able to make it all the time, so maybe I'd only get to go once or twice a week. Here, they say we should come whenever we have free time - someone will be available to teach us. When we leave in the morning, they ask if we'll come back in the afternoon (sometime, I'll have to make time to actually do that; we really only practice tai chi in the morning, and as much as I love it, I also want to learn something about wushu).

I really love being able to go to the tai chi school. I like our tai chi instructor here, but he doesn't do a lot of instructing in the classes (he doesn't correct our forms or explain what we're doing) so it's nice to have someone who can take time to show us what we really should be doing. The class at the other school is more satisfying and also... it's something outside of FenZhong. It's maybe a chance to become part of a community. The teachers we meet are friendly - I don't even just mean welcoming and smiling this time, I mean they seem like they want to be our friends. They're closer to our age (at least some of them are) than many of the teachers at FenZhong, and at least some of them don't have babies. So… I'm hopeful. I know that probably we'll still be outsiders for a long time, but maybe not entirely.

list

Sooo there's a whole list of things I've been meaning to post about.

1. letters to Eastwood:
A couple weeks ago, the unit the sixth-graders were working on was about sending letters to penpals, so we had them write letters that (someday when I've stopped being irresponsible) I'll send home and they'll go to some kids at Eastwood, who will hopefully sometime have time to write some responses. Some letter-writers were more successful than others, but there were some pretty cute ones, and sometime soon maybe I'll post some highlights.

2. weather:
I'm not actually sure what I really wanted to say about the weather. It's been pretty nice lately, though smoggy like crazy. Some days, we can stare straight at the sun (* cough * not that we ever would, of course, but we could) and it's just a reddish circle in the clouds - it feels less bright that staring at the lightbulbs in our apartment. It's been getting colder lately, too. A couple days ago it was probably actually freezing, which was unfortunate because that was the day of

3. 7 hour power outage:
Not my favorite event, and the fact that it was so cold that day made it worse, since heat is maybe dependent on electricity? Running water certainly is, at least, as we noticed that afternoon when we could no longer wash our hands (on the bright side, though, the lack of running water meant that the leak in the bathroom stopped and the floor was dry for a while). Also, we have no non-electric means of heating food, so we went out for lunch. Luckily, lunch is often cooked on makeshift gas stoves on the street, and the fact that there was no electricity wasn't really a problem.

4. Japanese pigs:
This week, classes were all weird 'cause the students had a huge test (apparently a huge disheartening test; everyone I've talked with says it was really bad this time). The only classes we had to teach at the high school this week were a couple days of third-year writing, so we team taught it and played a game with collaborative story-writing. We gave them half of a first sentence and told them to finish it, then had them pass their stories on so the next person could write the next sentence (and so on). Many stories were pretty good, and most of the kids seemed to be having some fun, but one story got stamped with a great big "REJECTED!" It went something like this: "I love English. I hate Japanese. They are pigs." which was probably the first really unfriendly unabashedly racist sentiment we've encountered so far.

5. Man on bicycle with grandson:
An old man was riding his bicycle down one of the muddy, narrow back streets in our neighborhood. It was pretty busy, so he had to weave around pedestrians and other bikers. He, like many people, was carrying a passenger on his bicycle. Unlike most people, his passenger was about two years old, sitting on top of an old, well-loved soccer ball in a basket attached to the back of the bicycle.

6. Oh! Bicycles!
Speaking of, Mr. Mi, the first person from Fenyang we met in China, took us out this morning to buy bicycles, and now we are the proud owners of some lovely bikes. It was kind of funny - we were maybe a little self-conscious since none of us really know much about how to choose a good bicycle, but then it seemed like the only criterion we were really expected to be using was whether or not we liked the color. We remembered our experiences pushing bikes up a mountain, though, and we bemused them all by picking up just about every bicycle in the store to find the relatively lightweight ones (we made sure they're all pretty attractive colors, too).

7. Wushu!
Basically since we got here, I've been interested in trying to go to some sort of wushu (martial arts) class. We have taiji classes during the week, and those are great, but I really loved Tang Soo Do in high school and aikido at Carleton, and I want to try to find the same sort of community and camaraderie that existed in those groups. Also, I want to have the chance to get to know people outside of the context of Miss Lee the foreign teacher. Anyway, this is something I'd mentioned to Mr. Ren a little bit once, but sort of let fizzle afterwards. For the last couple weeks, I've been eyeing the sporting goods store we've gone to a few times, gathering my courage to ask them if they know a place I can go. I like the store a lot - we went there for badminton rackets and birdies, a soccer ball, and a basketball, and the people there are friendly, which is nice, but even more refreshingly, they speak slowly and smile and use easy words. Tonight, Katrina and I went in looking for little five pound dumbbells (which you apparently buy by the pound here). Afterwards, I (finally) asked if there was someplace I could study wushu, and the guy said he knows a very good teacher and tomorrow if I go back, he'll show me the school and introduce me to him. I am super excited! Also super proud! Yessssssss, successful communication!

8. Cat, and visiting the doctor in China
Actually, this story's not really mine to tell. Rabies vaccine in China is super-cheap (under $25 for the whole series), and visiting the doctor can be done with no paperwork whatsoever (or arranging for the doctor to come visit you)

Sooooo now I'll just post this, and maybe sometime later I'll post some pictures.

Explosions!

How do you say "exploding radiator" in Chinese? OH! That's right, you say "my classroom on Sunday."

(There were no children sitting next to the radiator in question, so no one was hurt at all and no one even got wet except maybe their shoes when they were trying to climb out of the rapidly flooding room, so it was just funny and startling and y'all shouldn't be worried)

"Exploding" is too much, really; it didn't exactly explode. There was a pop and a bang and something came flying off and water came rushing out and we evacuated the room to finish class sitting on the steps in front of the school (this was Sunday middle school class, not regular high school). Coming back 20 minutes later to look at the room, steam was pouring out the windows and water was pouring out the door. It was misty and warm and really was like a sauna; we couldn't see more than a few feet.

Sunday classes are somewhat divided by ability and somewhat by age - the Book 11 kids are mostly sixth graders, and the middle school kids are mostly middle schoolers, but there are some younger kids in both those classes. Bart is in the middle school class, and it took a while before I realized how young he actually is. He's just barely tall enough to reach the blackboard. I think he comes up to my elbow. All the kids think he's adorable (or at least it seems that way), and it turns out he's only six or seven. His English is pretty much excellent, but he's definitely not a teenager (or even a preteen) in the way some of the others are. A couple weeks ago, he ran up to my desk, gave me a corn-flavored candy (it really did taste just like corn), and ran away to hide. This week during break, he kept writing "CLASS" on the board, erasing the C, giggling, erasing the L, giggling, and starting over again.

Birthdays in China are celebrated with fireworks at noon, something we noticed earlier when our 4th period classes were always interrupted at the end by the sound of firecrackers. Weddings are also celebrated with explosions. There's a car that drives through town sometimes with large rockets on its back end (they're probably each about four feet long and maybe six inches across or something). When the rockets go off, there is flame shooting out the end and the sound is like thunder when the storm has maybe gotten a little too close and really you ought to go back inside now, only much more terrifying because it is unexpected and accompanied by fire and explosion. We've never managed to get a picture of this car because whenever it's around we tend to want to drop to the ground and cover our heads (or at least dash into the closest store to hide), but I'm including a picture I found on the internet that is kind of similar.

(really the car is much smaller and not military-looking, and although the rockets are probably about the same size as in that picture, they just shoot flames and are terrifying; the rockets don't actually go anywhere)

Lots of text, no pictures.

We decided to be adventurous and try new things during dinner one day and found ourselves eating a meal that consisted of some moderately unpleasant fishy greens and a plate of steaming hot pork fat, after which we decided to try only one new dish at every meal. That may have been the same week that we were served liver-and-stomach-lining soup at lunch after teaching elementary school.
Mr. Ren invited us to borrow some bicycles and he would take us to a temple that was very very close; prior to departure, we said that gee, we hoped it wasn’t on top of a mountain, but hey, Mr. Ren didn’t seem like a really serious bicyclist anyway and we couldn’t imagine him riding up a mountain. We were sort of half right; he still doesn’t seem like a serious bicyclist, but he does own a motorcycle, so while we huffed and puffed and panted and eventually pushed our bicycles up the tallest mountain in the area, he cruised along on our motorcycle. The temple itself was interesting; we met the caretaker and he invited us into his home for water and fruit. He house is built into the mountain; it has rounded walls and is very warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Coming down the mountain was exciting, too, as we discovered that the brakes on the bike that Julie rode only worked when you didn’t really need them (she made it down all in one piece and without falling off and is now perfectly safe, but we have decided that when we buy bikes, we’d like the kind with brakes).
Other than that – things are going all right. My friends who are not lazy bums like me spend an awful lot of time working and not as much time relaxing, and I spend not quite enough time working and a little too much time lollygagging, but I imagine sometime we’ll work out a balance. I’m a little frustrated lately with lesson planning. We had a meeting last week with students to discuss their ideas about how to improve classes for grades 1 and 2, and most of the advice for me boiled down to “Please talk slower and louder, and pleeeeeeaaaaase don’t give us any more boring articles,” which all made pretty good sense. Shortly afterwards we had a meeting with our boss in which he suggested that I should try to teach more articles straight from the Gao Kao (the college entrance exam). The kids aren’t learning English because they’re interested; they’re learning it because of the test pressure, so I should concentrate more on preparing them for the test (I’m oversimplifying his suggestion, but that’s basically it). It feels like pretty much the opposite of what the kids asked for, and I’m not sure what to do with that combination of suggestions. It’s not a super urgent problem, though, since starting next week we’ll be rotating grades every week, so I won’t see my kids again for three weeks.
Oh! Other exciting news items – one, we all got packages from home in the last week, so it’s been a week filled with chocolate and books and prunes and thinly sliced salami and parently love, which has made us all very happy. The other thing is that we have a friend! We’ve been calling him Baozi Man for a while, and last week he invited himself over for dinner (we went to his shop for dinner and he sat down with us and said, “Hey, don’t you think it’d be a good idea if you had me over for some American food? How’s Monday for you? You can just cook whatever you would eat at home,”) so last night we made pizza (by “we” I mean mostly “Julie and Katrina”) and he came over and ate our pizza and said we forgot to put something in it that may have been iodine or may have been alkaline or probably was something else altogether; we never did quite manage to understand each other. He bullied us into eating more than any of us wanted and when Katrina refused to eat that last piece of pizza, he said something to her that I translated as “You’re… something,” forgetting that even when we speak our secret language (English), other people can sometimes understand a little, and for the rest of the evening he told us that we either were or were not “something” based on whether or not we did what he said.

General update

We're super-busy these days. Last week we had our first days of TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) prep classes and activity classes (I'm teaching folk tales, Katrina's teaching poetry, and Julie's teaching journalism) and we started taking tai chi classes in the morning's, so now we're spending lots of time trying to prepare lots of lessons every week and do research on what the third-year kids should be doing to try to get into an American college if they want to try that, and Mr. Ren wants us each to write some sort of research paper about our teaching. Oh, and there are some students forming English clubs that they want us to advise (one of them might have up to 400 students in it; I have no idea what we could possibly do with 400 students), and we're maybe adding another two hour middle school lesson on Sunday afternoons (we did this week, actually, but there was only one student who came, so it was pretty informal this time).
On Saturday Marilyn, one of Katrina's regular students and my TOEFL student, invited us to go look around the city with her for a while. She took us to a church that was built by some Americans who may have been from Carleton, and she had us try a local snack ("Not food," she told Katrina, "snacks!"), stinky tofu. Stinky tofu is... stinky. We ate it with a moderately delicious sauce, which is good, because, as Julie observed, stinky tofu tastes like horses smell. After that, Marilyn invited us to her home for a fruit smoothie. The smoothie was.... amazing. It was perhaps a distant cousin of what you might think of when you hear "fruit smoothie." She chopped up some fruit - apples and pears and little oranges - and some jello, then she microwaved a bar of chocolate with some yogurt and poured the mixture over the fruit chunks. As a final touch, she added some little gummy candies. It was tasty, but unexpected.