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Published: September 15th 2005
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From left to right: Lucia, Cat (my fellow teacher from Canada), Jenny and myself. So much has happened since I've last been able to log-in to this. I had a shrimp incident a couple days ago which really upset me in the beginning. I went to a restaurant and asked for some tea and jaod-zi (what the Northerners from the states would call "dumplings") but they gave me shrimp. (In Chinese the word for shrimp is "xia" and the word for tea is "cha", they must have misunderstood my pronunciation.) At first it really made me upset. Everyone in the restaurant was staring at me and pointing and it wasn't the time of day to get dinner, just the time of day for a snack (so it was very strange for me to be having shrimp in the first place). I decided to come back to the school (where I had just left) and eat my food in silence. One of my Chinese friends named Jason was at the school and he laughed after I told him, he said that it was their fault and that I should have said something (which was of course true but I just wasn't comfortable enough to say anything). He and I had been having pronunciation problems in the respective foreign languages (him with his English and I with my Chinese) all day so it was a good laugh for us.
This weekend I had a good bout of classes (which are starting to become very usual to me). I'm having a little bit of an issue with my K8 classes because they really don't want to talk very much in class. They absolutely refuse, I even told them they would get bad marks if they didn't talk and they said "okay, give us bad marks". So next class (this weekend) we're going to talk the whole time or we're not going to do anything.
Everything here runs on gas: my stove, the heater for the water. I have to get used to turning the thing on and off, it's a bit different but I'm getting very used to it.
As for what I eat here: I've had a good number of Skippy peanut butter sandwiches and I have Rice Krispies that I eat every now and again. My fridge is filled with eggs, veggies, bread, tofu, noodles, rice, and some spices (but spices here are a little more complicated to buy than just veggies since you actually need to know the names for them whereas the veggies are just out for you to point at in the market). Ernie (my boss) took all of the foreign teachers out to eat with his girlfriend (our Chinese teacher named Gladys) at a nice Chinese place where they had a HUGE lazy Susan in the middle of the table and we had clams, shrimp soup, cakes of corn and a couple other things. He then took us over to a coffee shop to start an account there (where we get a free coffee every time we go). The coffee shop is a little expensive (as most coffee shops are here) but they have really nice western food for any time we get tired of Chinese food. I've really loved the Chinese food here. They have a lot of different types of barbecue (where you barbecue the meat yourself), baod-zi (a steamed roll with a variety of things inside it), jaod-zi (a steamed northern version of a dumpling), hot pot (a large bowl with broth in it which you put different types of veggies and meat in to cook and then spoon out to eat). But pretty much everything you eat here you have to eat with a spoon or your chopsticks (even chicken wings - try eating chicken wings with your chopsticks and get back to me). They also eat a lot of rice so one tends to get rice with whatever meal you've bought.
Saturday was Teacher's Day here. I got one card from one of my students and a couple "Happy Teacher's Day" comments but in general I think they pretty much ignore the foreign teachers on this day (either that or it just isn't too big of a holiday). We taught the whole day and then in the night they had a huge fashion festival. Cat and I went over to Craig and Russell's place (which is on the 23rd floor of a building right next to the football stadium - so you can see into the stadium) and watched from there. I corrected some of my students' homework while we were there. They had a whole bunch of people dressed up in wild costumes running around making patterns on the field (kind of like watching marching band without the instruments) and a couple of people sang. One very famous person came and sang and he had to have a bunch of bodyguards out on the field with him to keep the crowd away (even then he really got mobbed). They also had a bunch of dancers, acrobats, ballet dancers and they also had a bunch of fireworks. It was a pretty cool night. I decided to celebrate my dad's birthday early this year so I called them the next morning (their evening) and got to finally talk with them. I was so excited to get to talk to them, it was really great.
Sunday evening Craig and I went out to dinner with four Chinese teachers from the school (Rosemary, Wendy, Lisa and Merry) to the place where I had the shrimp incident (a place which is right across the street from the police station - which is on the corner of where we live). We really had a great time talking to them. Craig and I both agree that Chinese women are absolutely beautiful. They're also great people to talk to, they're so nice! We invited Wendy out to dinner and she insisted that we come over to her house and she cook for us the next night. So on Monday I went and bought some groceries in the morning and then worked out in the afternoon and after tutoring I had my first Chinese class with Gladys at Alls Well Coffee. She really worked me a lot on my pronunciation (which is clearly something I need a lot). She said I did a very good job of following her teaching so we were both very happy about the class (I just hope it continues like this). Then Craig met me at Alls Well and we took a taxi over to Wendy's house. Milly (one of the Chinese teachers who was going to Wendy's with us) gave me her cell phone and some directions written in Chinese for the taxi driver as to how to get to Wendy's and he took us there with no problems. We then called her and got Wendy to come out and direct us up to her place. Helen, Milly, and Merry were there and we all sat and played Janitor for a couple hours (first their Chinese version of it and then my version).
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