Sometimes you just need an America Day

I had an America Day today.  It was kind of accidental, I promise I didn't plan it to be a whole day affair.  The teachers at my school and I had planned to go and eat Chinese for lunch and introduce the newest teacher to the local clams that Qingdao is so famous for.  But when I woke up, there was a motion to go downtown to The Diner and eat lunch there, so I ended up eating a veggie omelette, hash browns, and mini-pancakes complete with a complementary coffee. 

Then I had a nice day outside drinking coffee and working on my Chinese homework.  I also put together my lesson plan for the week. 

I was originally going to meet Derek at The Diner for dinner, but ended up meeting him and some of the WECL teachers at Luigi's.  I was still full from lunch so basically had a bottle of beer and a chocolate sundae from McDonald's for dinner.  Hooray for America Day!  Oh, but there was also a sandstorm in the evening.  Thanks, China.

Project America

Since so many of my students asked me to tell them more about life in America and I decided that I shouldn't be the only one to show them, I decided to ask many of my friends to help me.  The first friend up is my dear Erica Shafer, just because she had the most number of pictures (51, holy crap!) and a pretty long bio about herself.  I'm excited to see what my students think of this little project.  This is going to be a mini-series in my classes that might last until the end of the term.  I typically only spend about 20 minutes on each activity or topic in each class, so this is why it is going to span several weeks. 

So, dear readers, if you would like to send me pictures of your life in America, feel free!  Just think that I am going to make a powerpoint out of it and some sort of commentary and biographical information is good too.  Remember to take pictures of the boring stuff too, especially food, living quarters, and your school and/or job! 

The good and the bad

Follow-up to the Day of Mourning

As usual, the Chinese government always manages to make even the most solemn of days and turn it into a propaganda campaign.

Domestic media coverage has been tightly controlled, with reporters instructed to focus on the heroism of rescue workers and to avoid stories about the thousands of Buddhist monks who dug through debris or handed out food from the trunks of cars. 

(The New York Times' article can be found HERE.)

I'm not shocked that they did this, but I am still embarrassed and saddened that this happens in a country that I am living in and helping to educate.

In an interview on Wednesday, Woeser, an influential Tibetan blogger who is in frequent contact with people in the earthquake zone, said several monks told her that they had been ordered to leave Jiegu in recent days, although such accounts could not be immediately confirmed. 

Whenever the Tea Party "activists" or any other similar protest group in America claims to be suppressed by the government, they should be reminded that in other corners of the world there are more drastic measures taken to suppress any unsavory opinions and viewpoints.  Being in China (both times) has made me really proud to call myself an American and proud to be living in a country of freedoms.

OMG RU 4 REAL?!?! NOWAI

I taught my students slang this week using dialogues that Matt and I co-wrote this weekend.  Here are the dialogues that they had to read:

(calling on the cell phone)
A: What’s up?
B: Not much, you?
A: Nothing really, just hanging out with my friends.
B: Oh that’s cool.
A: Hey wanna meet up after class?
B: No, I can’t. I’m swamped with homework.
A: Bummer. I want to go to the new coffee shop. Catch you later!/ See ya!
B: Alright, later!

(at school after a test)
A: How was the test?
B: Oh my gosh, I think I bombed the writing section.
A: Seriously? You’ve been studying your butt off!
B: Yeah, I totally froze and forgot everything.
A: That sucks.

(after seeing a movie)
A: That movie was awesome!
B: Yeah it was pretty tight. / Yeah, it was really legit.
A: What did you think of the actor?
B: I thought he was really hot.
A: Truth, but the dialogue was pretty lame.

After hearing 55+ students repeat "that sucks!" and "seriously?" I realized that I might be teaching them to sound like valley girls and bros.  I nevertheless found this pretty funny and I think that they had fun learning more informal words rather than stuff from a formal textbook.

I also taught them about IM (they knew we didn't use QQ but thought we used MSN... weird, right?), AIM and Gchat.  I also listed out some nice little words for them to use when IMing me or their friends, such as nm, brb, h/o, ttyl, gtg, thnx, and jk.  Many of the ones that they use online are numbers.  For example, they type 886 because the numbers "ba ba liu" sound like "bye bye le."

What was even better was when I drew an upward arrow to explain the levels of laughter online.  I listed the ones I use most frequently: hehe, haha, HAHA, lol, lmao, and lmfao.  They have all sorts of weird ones here, including "嘻嘻“ (sounds like 'shee shee') which is somewhere between haha and HAHA to them.

One of my students was IMing me tonight and actually typed "ttyl" to me and I was so excited that he (a) remembered what I taught her on Tuesday and (b) put it to good use.  Success!  Being a teacher means finding fulfillment in the little things like this.

Tomorrow I will go see the cherry blossoms downtown with my friend Allie.  Hopefully I'll also get to meet up with Anna, a Polish girl I have met at my Chinese school, and go out.  I love warm spring weekends. 

Identity crisis, the sequel

Today at lunch I met a Chinese English teacher who teaches most of my classes Hotel English.  He was really nice even though his English was spotty and probably worse than my Chinese.  I was glad to meet my Hotel English counterpart and I think he was glad to meet me because my students had been telling him about me.

I asked him what they thought of me, forgetting how blunt the Chinese can be at times, and was told that some of the students think that it is a "pity that [I] am not a blonde eyed, blue haired American girl."

Well, um, gee, thanks for the compliment?  

I understand that the students would ideally like a "blonde eyed, blue haired American girl," but I'd like to think that after my students' initial period of time when they were trying to figure out what exactly an Asian-American was, that they now see me as an American.  At the beginning, it was almost as if I was a lost Chinese girl who was shipwrecked on the far away island of Singapore, was shipped to America in a box by accident, and has finally returned to the motherland, the Middle Country, the Peoples' Republic of China.  Now my students forget I actually speak Chinese and have no questions that I am American.

At first I was asked things like "Why is your hair black?" and "Are your parents Chinese?" which seem pretty obvious to us, but to many Chinese people there is no concept of the hyphenated Asian-American.  I thought most of my students had gotten over this by now.

I guess they haven't. 

I'm giving my students the benefit of the doubt, though, since I do have so much direct contact with them and face-to-face time with me speaking American English and absolutely no Chinese.  The way I walk, dress, hold myself, and even write my number '6' (a constant war between me and my students) is completely different.  Maybe it was just this one teacher who did not expect the 'foreign teacher Alison' to look so Chinese.  Perhaps he himself has more prejudices than my students and would not learn English from me, but rather a white person even if they are an uncaring and overall crappy teacher.

These are the frustrations I have faced almost every day here.  I am an Asian-American.  I am Chinese.  I am a U.S. citizen, have voted in the past two elections, hold a drivers license, and have completed thirteen years in the American educational system.

The thing is that China is so very homogeneous.  There may be fifty-one minority groups, but most (92% according to Wikipedia) of the people you see are Han.    There is no Korean-Chinese or Canadian-Chinese.  Only Chinese.

The plus side is that there is a word in Chinese "华人“ (overseas Chinese) which indicates I am of Chinese decent, but my family settled in Singapore all those decades ago.  Step one, check.  Step two is to explain how I can be both American and Chinese at the same time.

Cue shrill sound of a bomb dropping and exploding.  

And that's where the logic ends.  So here I am, somewhere between fully American and fully Chinese to the, um, real Chinese?  Cool.  Thanks guys.  I appreciate it.  I'm just going to continue to teach you American English with some hopes that you too one day will go to America, and possibly even have your own little Asian-American children yourself.  That will be the day.

It's a trap!

Today I was going to get some dinner and I purchased this winner of a 帽子 (hat):

I also bought this one because it was just too good to pass up:

I purchased both for 31 kuai, or slightly over US $4.  I'm still a little miffed that she wouldn't lower it more, but I was cold and hungry.  And well, really wanted the hats. 

CANADIA FTW

Conversation between me (A) and an elderly foreign teacher from Canada (C)

C: Hi, my name is *********.
A: Nice to meet you, I'm Alison.
C: Your English is really good.
A: Thanks...
C: 为什么? (Why? *also tone-less)
A: 我是美国人。 ( I am an American.)
C: Oh have you lived abroad?
A: I grew up in America.
(Canadian looks really puzzled and then leaves)

Beware the H1N1

This video plays in every single airport in China as well as on the buses, subways, and flights.  It's all really an American conspiracy.  



On an unrelated note, being in America is pretty awesome and I have been hacking down on the food list

To eat:

1. Cupcake (CHECK! 2/5: Sprinkles pumpkin cupcake)
2. Milkshake (CHECK! 2/6: Palo Alto Creamery peanut butter oreo shake)
3. Grilled cheese (CHECK! 2/4: Max's Diner ultimate grilled cheese)
4. Cheese in general (ongoing...)
5. Bread (ongoing...)
6. Ben & Jerry's (CHECK! 2/4: Ben & Jerry's flipped out brownie)

This has ultimately left me with an upset stomach, probably because I need my daily dose of MSG served up with a vat of peanut oil and followed up with floaties in water.  I could really go for some 红烧茄子 or 拔丝地瓜just about now...

旧金山欢迎你！

Chinese people do some funny stuff on planes (and trains too, I guess, but it’s always weirder on a plane). Maybe it’s because the majority of the country does not normally travel by plane nor has ever stepped foot on a plane. Jenna was even once asked if airplane food was any good by a student!

“We’re here!”

On every domestic flight I’ve ever taken in China, at least one person jumps out of their seat immediately after landing and still on the tarmac to reach to the overhead bins and gather their stuff. Then a frantic stewardess has to sprint down the aisle to tell them to sit down until we reach the gate. This sometimes works, but they are always so surprised to hear that it might be dangerous to be walking around when the plane has just landed (I’m talking wheels touching the ground here!).

Free food?!

You don’t get snacks on a train, so it doesn’t surprise me that Chinese people get very excited about plane snacks. I’ve gotten some pretty interesting plane snacks, including

dried jujubes and

a giant package of parsley-flavored(?) crackers.

There’s also the inevitable wiping of the face using the complimentary wet napkin, which always grosses me out. On my last domestic flight between Kunming and Beijing, we got the most random assortment of sacks I’ve ever encountered: a dinner roll with jam, a brown cupcake (I don’t know what flavor it was, just brown), and a packaged soy sauce hard boiled egg. Then I looked over and the man and woman next to me ate the jelly with a fork and wondered why it tasted so sweet.

Lights out!

On my flight to San Francisco, the lights went out after dinner, the normal attempt to try to get everyone to sleep to adjust to the time better. I didn’t sleep much and watched two movies, The Road and The Men Who Stare at Goats. There were also some American movies (and one about the Cultural Revolution… shocking) but they were dubbed over.

Anywho, when the lights went out, the guy sitting diagonal of me yelled “EHH???” and then whistled at the stewardesses before he and his friend figured out that they could simply turn on their own lights from their seat. I laughed silently in my seat.

So I guess typing this on the plane will be my last of the China-tastic experiences for a while. I mean, unless I happen to go to a Chinese grocery store with my mom (very likely) or go to NYC Chinatown (also likely).

On a side note, the Rockband app for the iPhone is insanely awesome.

See ya later, China!

Departing Qingdao at 10:00am, landing in San Francisco at 11:20AM.  It only takes 1 hour and 20 minutes to cross the Pacific!  Actually, I'll be leaving Beijing at 4:00 PM, which means that I am going 5 hours and 40 minutes backwards.  This really is the future!