Fake weekend

Why am I working on Saturday and Sunday?  Because next Wednesday is the Dragon Boat Festival, a national holiday for which all businesses are closed.

Since this year the holiday falls on a Wednesday, most businesses have decided to close Monday and Tuesday, instead shifting these workdays to the weekend before.  This has resulted in a massive 7-day workweek for us, followed by three days off, a two-day workweek, and another regular weekend.

I'm just annoyed by it and would really appreciate a bit of a break from teaching.  I even have to work on Monday because the classes I teach on Saturdays at Joe's have been rescheduled.  Essentially I have gone from Friday, to Monday and Tuesday, then to Saturday.  Then I guess Saturday again?

Dragon Boat Festival Traditions

As the name indicates, there are boats that look like dragons that are raced on bodies of water.  I have no idea if this is actually happening in Qingdao, but I do know that my friend Max is going to be racing a boat with his office in Shanghai.

Chinese people also eat 粽子 (zong2 zi) basically boiled rice with fillings wrapped in a bamboo leaf.  It smells really good and there are many flavors of zongzi available, including peanut and red bean.  

They are also made into pyramid shapes and wrapped with string or a rubber band.  These little guys are being sold on pretty much every block and shopping establishment this week.  They have a very strong and delicious aroma, so it's kind of nice to be smelling them instead of sewage, body odor, or sausages.

This is the reason why I am working on a weekend and am unable to go see the England v. US match tonight... don't even get me started about how irritated I am about this whole thing.  This is my fake weekend and I will continue to complain about it until I have my massive break that will be next week.

It's exam season, kiddos.  Just when you thought I was getting soft on you, I'm going to pull the sudden death final exam.  Only the strong will survive!

FMCL and MCLIG at the same time

Today was a great day for the following reasons:

1- I got paid.
2- I watched movies with my students all day.
3- I got not one, but TWO care packages!
4- I also received Matt's graduation announcement.

Mail crazy funtimes!

I have to say, I was just thinking last week about how much I missed Cheetos and actually screamed when I opened Kendra's box to find a bag of Cheetos Puffs and a huge box of Cheerios!  She also packed me some peanut butter, clif bars, and some nail polish.  The best part, though, is the magazines that I received from her and Sarah!  English magazines are hard to find here and once you get them, they tend to be really outdated and very expensive.

So thanks, ladies, for being some of my best friends and for staying closer than ever across the world from me! 

Goodbye, Tian Laoshi

Fifteen minutes before the end of my Chinese lesson on Friday, Tian laoshi asked me how long I had been his student.  I was pretty taken back by this question and answered, since November, so I guess about five or six months.  Then he told me he was leaving the school. 

That's right.  Leaving.  

I was in so much shock that I didn't believe him for a while and thought I had misheard him (which I didn't) or he actually meant he was going on vacation (he's not).  He's actually getting a job at a trade firm in downtown Qingdao because he's only 25 and still has time to pursue a career.  I don't blame him.  I mean, I'm not a teacher by training either, but enjoy it at the moment.  God bless those who teach as a career, though! 

I asked him when his last day was and he said it was this Thursday to do some paperwork, but I was actually his last student.  Now that was the real kicker.  We agreed that we'd be friends but he also joked that if he saw me in the future, my Chinese better be improving or else he'll be angry. 

So that's the end of Tian laoshi.  I guess I'll just be referring to him as Tian Jian from now on.

There is such a special bond between language teacher and student, partially because there needs to be a certain level of friendship in order for the language to be learned well and in a fun manner (bad relationship = miserable class, we've all been there).  The other half is that with a language teacher, you can talk about anything and it still counts as learning so the teacher learns all sorts of crazy stuff about the student and vice versa. 

I'll definitely miss him as my teacher and I know that my next instructor will have some metaphorically big shoes to fill (because I'm almost as tall as Tian). 

Labor Day Weekend... China style

I went out for pizza with Derek and Wes and drank my sorrows at losing yet another Chinese teacher.  Then we went to New York Bar, listened to a Filipino band play Beatles and Lady Gaga covers in Alice in Wonderland costumes and called it a night. 

I spent my Saturday and Sunday teaching my younger students at Joe's and tutored Helen at my place.  I lead an exciting life. 

Monday I headed out to Fu Shan (浮山) with Brian, Derek, and Wes to enjoy the first summery day of the season.  The hike was pretty nice and the view would have been great had it the city and sea not been covered with a thick layer of smog. 

We failed at finding the hidden tunnels underneath the mountain, but did have a pretty great time outside. 

This old guy BAMF was scaling rockwalls with only a wooden stick.  Seriously.

Then towards the end, the hacking began and I was unable to fully inhale without coughing up a storm.  When I got back to my apartment, I saw that the Air Pollution Index (API) for Qingdao was around 108... meaning that the air was "slightly polluted" but not really measuring exactly which cases were making it polluted that day. 

So thanks again China, for shortening my life.  Also for a memorable ending to my attempt at enjoying a seemingly wonderful summer day outside.  FMChinaL... My China life is great.

I promised myself I wouldn't, but I'm afraid I've fallen in love with a little dog here in China.  She lives on my campus and is owned by a grounds keeper woman who has a little hut on the school grounds.  Jenna and I met her as a puppy last term when she was just a little thing with a gimp leg and now she has grown into a full grown 15-lb dog with a gimp leg.

I really love animals and it's always such a comfort to me to play with one.  I've refused to give her an English name in my head but have all sorts of nicknames for her (1st Violation).  She waits for me when I'm walking past her home and runs to greet me to quickly roll over so I can give her a belly rub.  If I try to walk away, she gets up on her hind legs and asks me to carry her (2nd Violation).

I've been trying to resist, but I actually looked up how to bring a dog back to America last night (3rd Violation).  I know that I couldn't do it because firstly, she kind of has an owner and secondly, my mom would throw both of us out.

Chinese people have a very different view of keeping a pet than we do in the West.  Dog's aren't revered as "man's best friend" and most people are actually kind of scared of dogs, even the tiniest "punt" ones.  The woman that owns this dog has another huge German Shepherd who is actually kept in a cage all day and it breaks my heart.  I also think I might be the only one to love on this little dog!

Well, I walked to class this morning to play with her (4th Violation) and found her tied to a fence behind the house with a 6 foot long chain.  She just looked so sad that I want to buy a wire cutter and hide her in my apartment until I go back to America.  This really breaks my heart and I don't know if i I can talk to her owner!  So this is my latest dilemma and it's really been bothering me all day.  I miss my dog at home, Albert, and can't wait until I can actually get a dog of my own.

TIC = This is China

Today when I was walking back from the gym I saw a man on the street just strolling along with two dead turtles hanging on a string.  Their necks were all stretched out and swinging as he casually walked down the road.  I felt slightly better when I realized that the Chinese people were also staring at him and another man even jumped out of the way and said something like "Oh crap!"

My big China moment for the week though has to do with the fact that I thought I had some sort of respiratory infection.  I started coughing up some nasty stuff on Thursday and had a pretty terrible throat-ache and uncomfortable feeling in my nasal passages.  I woke up on Friday feeling no better and complained about it to my coworkers and even my Chinese teacher, who all said they were experiencing the same thing and we all blamed it on the change in weather, since this week it has gone from below freezing to about 50 during the day. 

Then today I woke up and I thought I was in Beijing. 

The sky was pretty much orange and I could barely see the road that is about 200 yards in front of my building.  I went outside and it was super windy and at points I had to walk backward against the wind because there was too much dust in my face to actually see where I was going.  I should have worn my face mask.

So there you go, my second sand storm in China and my first in Shandong.  Today there was a sand storm in Beijing and apparently it has also reached down here in Qingdao and even as far as Shanghai.  Apparently this is the first sandstorm in Shandong in a long time and possibly ever. 

And if you're not grossed out enough by China, apparently one tenth of all cooking oil in China is actually drainage oil.  Why am I here again? 

On the plus side, this allows expats to start our own FML site: http://www.fmychinalife.com/

Exam week sucks for teachers too

This is the point of the semester where I salute all my college professors that had to read final papers a foot or more high.  Thank you, dear professors, for reading all of those pages and still managing to like me enough to let me pass your course.  I take back any frustrated thoughts and expletives that came through my mouth as a result of waiting for final grades. 

I have eight classes of about 52-56 students, one class of 30, and one class of 25.  This leaves me with a lot of finals to grade before I leave on vacation.  Here's what I had them do:

Part One: Listening Comprehension

I asked them ten questions that they then had to write the answers to.  Spelling didn't count and I basically wanted to make sure they understand what the hell I've been saying the past few months.  I asked questions like:

- What is the weather like during the winter in Qingdao?
- Do you like spicy food? (the most commonly misunderstood -- many thought I said 'seafood')
- What are you planning to do for Spring Festival Vacation?

Part Two: Oral Dialogue

I had my students pull topics out of a box which they then had to create an oral dialogue with their language partner(s).  These dialogues had to be at least 5 lines per person, greetings and simple answers excluded and they were not allowed to read from notes.  Topics include:

- A is meeting B for the first time and they will be roommates in college
- Something really bad happened to person A
- What are you planning to do after graduation?

The first part took half the class last week and then I helped them prepare their dialogues.  This week I've been listening to oral dialogues in the freezing hallway.  It's taking a surprisingly long time to grade all of these. 

Now I am going back to merge their individual grades with their group grades and weighing attendance and the final exam.  It really sucks.  I also was overly generous with the first few classes I graded so I then have had to go back and deflate those grades. 

I've failed two kids already.  I've processed seven out of ten classes and I have to have this in before I leave on vacation on Sunday.  My bosses originally wanted it in this evening but we all told them ther was no !@%^@ way that we could have it all done yet, especially considering we were still doing exams this morning and afternoon.  So yeah, that is my life right now.  This is going to be a fun weekend. 

This is what happened when I left my students in the classroom when I was doing oral dialogues in the hallway.  I wrote "Chill out, guys!" because they were getting really antsy and rowdy!

Creating more Twilighters

I am declaring a war on dust bunnies in my apartment.  I don't even know where they come from, really.  It's not that dusty here, I take my shoes off when I come into the room, and wear my ugly slippers inside.  If I sweep, there will be more dust bunnies like a day later.  So I mop the entire apartment, only to see them start collecting in piles a few days later.   It's not even that I don't clean this place.  I end up cleaning twice a week because these dust bunnies drive me crazy!  Grrr...

This past week I gave my students a test.  It would be pretty easy if they were paying attention during class, but if they weren't, it really showed.  I also didn't care about spelling, so also got some really funny misspellings.  I even got a test where the student meant to write 'good' but flipped the character and wrote 'dood.'  Apparently, I am also teaching Liz Lemon because someone wrote "I want to go to there."

After the test I showed them the first hour of Twilight and they really enjoyed it.  Turning the movie off after an hour was like taking candy from a baby and the students would yell 'Nooooo!!!' when I stopped it after the bell rang.  They are also big on making dramatic noises such as "ayoh!" (when Edward stops the van), "wah!" (when he speeds away in the car), and "ayah!" (when he speeds up the mountain.  They're also not quite sure if Edward is handsome or not and seem to be more creeped out by the fact that he is a vampire and is disturbingly pale.  If only I -- and other American women and girls -- had the same logic.

The word for vampire 吸血鬼 (xi1 xue4 gui3) literally means "suck blood spirit" and the students seem to enjoy the vampire-in-love-with-human thing.  They really like love stories here.  Even the boys were calling out "kiss her! kiss her!" in the meadow.

I wanted to show them the other half of the movie this upcoming week but am having problems moving my classes to rooms with computers and projectors, so I will feed the addition in a few weeks.  I now have a 1.2 GB copy of Twilight on my flash drive, any takers?

China vs America

I am sick of being asked the question “Do you like America or China more?”

I swear, every other Chinese person I meet that is not a student or teacher asks me this. I’ve been asked by bus drivers, fruit stand sellers, jian bing guo zi makers, cab drivers… the list goes on. Call it a cultural difference, but it’s just annoying right now. I don’t think anyone in America would ever ask a foreigner a question like this.

Which leads me to think – why am I getting defensive in the first place? Granted, I do like China, but more in a sarcastic ‘oh-hey-I-got-dust-in-my-face-and-I’m-kind-of-sick-but-I-still-think-this-is-fun’ kind of way. I’ve discussed this with my fellow Sinophiles and we actually have concluded that none of us actually likes China. We’re not quite sure why we’re back here either. It’s not like you can actually be excited about squatty potties, getting shoved onto buses, and children wearing assless pants. Anyone saying that they actually love China is either completely out of their minds or has just convinced themselves that they love China so that they don’t run around screaming in the streets about how crazy their lives are.

Also, when you gather a bunch of China kids in a room the first thing we talk about is how sick we got. I mean, besides the ‘oh hey where were you? Did you like it’ sorts of questions. This always devolves into pretty horrific stories about how sick we got in China. For me, I tell my Shanxi province 4- day bus trip sickness story… oh man, it was bad. Ethan and Andrew were worse off, actually.

Anywho…

I began to appreciate America a lot more when I was here in 2007 and have no problem saying I am an American now. Nevertheless, I always tell the Chinese people that I like both countries so that I don’t get (a) ripped off, (b) dropped on the side of the road, or (c) lectured in rapid-fire Chinese.

But YES I do like America more. The country where I can drink water without boiling it (debatable in DC, actually), find toilet paper in the stalls, and have uncensored internet. End of story. Stop asking me, Chinese people.

PS: Sorry about the lack of posting. My proxy and internet (and gmail!) was on the fritz this last week. Happy belated Thanksgiving!

I am not a Chinese

I’m starting to get annoyed by the fact that I don’t look American enough and that I also look too Chinese. The guards at the gate always stop me asking for my student ID and then don’t really believe me when I say I’m a foreign teacher. This only happens when I am not with the other American teachers. Other professors here also don’t believe me when I say I’m a teacher because I kind of blend in with the students.

At the same time, when they see me on the street they know I’m not Chinese. I look so obviously Singaporean, or hua ren, overseas Chinese. I also don’t dress like a Chinese person and act pretty differently, even when not speaking.

I guess I should start using the big ‘c’ Chinese and little ‘c’ chinese.

I also got asked by students in both of my Friday classes why my hair wasn’t blonde. They don’t really understand the concept of being Chinese-American. It’s either you’re Chinese or you’re American. They honestly think I should have blonde hair and don’t understand why I don’t live in China or Singapore.

So on the whole, I’m having a good time here but this was just something that has become a daily struggle for me. I don’t look American enough to fully warrant myself as an English teacher but at the same time, am not Chinese enough to be one of them, obviously.

This reminds me of a quote I read when I was in high school and it said:

“For it is us, the hyphenated ones [Asian-Americans] living in the middle and getting the best of both worlds.”