"Christmas" Party

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We kind of had a "Christmas" party last night. It was fun, although I had to come late since I worked till 8:30pm last night. By the time I came Craig was already drunk and only an hour after I came everyone left. I felt a little bad because I'd invited Camillo to come and he came with two of the boys from the Salon but he came in the middle of us doing gift exchange (I got a chocolate Santa bar) so he was kind of out of the loop. The three of them just ended up chilling in a corner for about an hour speaking Hunan dialect. Camillo asked me to come sit with them but I couldn't understand much of what they were saying so I kept getting up and moving around. Fortunately after an hour I convinced Michael, Cat, Russell and Craig to come and sit with them and we had an interesting mixed conversation of Michael and I translating everything Russell and Craig were talking about. Camillo said Michael was really funny (a pretty big compliment coming from him). Michael asked Yenson about how my Chinese was coming and they both agreed that it was getting a lot better. I told them that I felt like it was staying in the same place and not getting much better now but the boys (including Camillo) basically told me to shut up because it wasn't true (which was kind of nice). Michael said he was jealous of how much Chinese I am learning so quickly. I don't know if I told you about Michael. He's from Ohio but he's been living in Dalian for a year and a couple months now so his Chinese is obviously much better than mine is. He started working for our school in early November. He's a really cool guy and has a Chinese girlfriend who is also really nice (although a little shy).

I finally figured out what the deal with their languages is. I've been saying "stop with the Cantonese already" to which they respond "we're not speaking Cantonese". Which has really confused me because half the time Camillo tells me he is speaking Cantonese. Basically what the deal is is that many people at the Salon can speak some Cantonese but others can't. Alex, Eason and Camillo can speak Cantonese. But when they're all together they speak Hunan dialect. Now the whole thing is that the majority of Chinese people speak Mandarin but every place in China changes that Mandarin to a different dialect. Just like everyone all over the North of India speaks Hindi but the dialects of each individual place changes ever so slightly. I remember traveling with a Banarasi friend of mine to Rajasthan. By the time we got out to Rajasthan he was looking at me every time someone would talk to him because they were speaking the Rajasthani dialect to him and he couldn't understand it at all. That's how it is here. So even though there are only 2 essential national languages in China and 17 national ones in India there seem to be essentially the same amount of languages in the two countries if you include all of the different dialects.

Anyways, otherwise my classes are coming along. I just added three new students - two adults and a little Korean boy who's six. So now I teach a LOT on the weekends. I teach 4.5 hours on Friday and have an hour Chinese class. Saturday I teach 8 hours. Sunday I teach 8 hours as well. This was my first weekend teaching that much so last night I just decided not to set my alarm and let myself get up whenever I wanted. Fortunately I only teach two hours on Monday now so it's a nice day to relax after a long weekend. 8 hours may not seem like a lot but when you're teaching it's very tiring.

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Photos

The Two Santas
This is Camillo and Yenson wearing the two Santa hats we had at the party.

The blinker and the hot
This is Rudy (blinking as usual), Yenson (messing around as usual), myself and Camillo (looking his best).

The assistant and the teacher
A great "Christmas" picture of Lucy and I (she is the assistant teacher for one of my K5 classes).

The random one
I have NO idea what this box and soccer ball are doing in the middle of Olympic Square but they were put up around now and are still up.