Rain and sleep

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Three hours. That was all the sleep I was running on. Five hours. Teaching from nine in the morning on. The first day starting at nine for one week. Ten minutes. Into the sixth hour of teaching. "So, they just changed the rules. The kids aren't allowed outside any more. We have to watch them for ten minutes during the break and then we get the first ten minutes of the second hour off." My brain exploded as she told me. The wonderful images of the kids playing soccer outside just three days before. The sight out the window of a beautiful courtyard with people of all ages constantly playing in it. "Why?" I was tired but I barely had time to question this before I was jolted back to the realization that my kids were waiting for me. Some having finished the short writign assignment I had given them, others having stopped at the frustration in my voice as my teacher assistantand I talked about it. "Who's finished?" I snapped back. As time went on I could feel my body wearing like a tire being rubbed dry. The faintness kind of like having not eaten but in such a different way. I struggled to figure out what we had to do next and then simply snapped back into it. But at the break the anger of having been interrupted, of not giving the kids the tiny energy release of those ten minutes that they, as Chinese kids, barely ever experience, my tired feeling turned quickly into rage and I went to question the sources of this sudden change of school policies in the middle of class with no warning. Unfortunately they were completely justified and my rage was turned into normal class discipline - for what is for me one of my hardest classes to discipline. Later my teacher assistant, Lucy, replied "I knew something was up, you never question things like that" as I explained my level of tiredness to her. Don't do that. Not a good idea. Don't change the policy in the middle of my teaching the last class of the day. The results aren't pretty. Not only did it interrupt my class but it interrupted my train of thought and my planning.

Watering the plants. I woke up at 8:20 this morning and walked to work with my umbrella up - for it was finally raining slightly harder than a northern Chinese rain (which isn't saying much still). There he was. A cleaner of the streets and buildings of Dalian. Out with a hose. Watering the plants. In the rain. It rained off and on all day after that.

Purple. His shirt is purple. No one else in the entire Salon is wearing purple. It's all wrong. He's holding the comb strangely. He has the hair clips in his watch. Not his hair, his watch! He's holding the hair too far up and cutting at a strange angle. He can't speak Hunan dialect. Why is he here? Why are they letting him cut hair as if he were Yenson back from Hunan. None of them know his name. No training. None at all. I haven't - in the three days he's been working at L-Salon - seen him attend one of Camillo's classes. He has never stayed till the Salon closes. I feel almost threatened. I don't trust him, yet Camillo seems to not have a problem and I feel somewhat obliged to accept him. He has never once said hello or even acknowledged me. I don't know his name. No, change that, Camillo doesn't even know his name! He's from somewhere in Shandong but Camillo doesn't even know how they know him or anything about him. Yet he's living in Eason's bed right now. Sharing Camillo's house and, more than likely, his food! I told Camillo, in English this time, it's like everyone there is red and he's blue. He's the odd one out. By far. Ollie, the one at the Salon who I can understand pretty much all of the time, can't speak Hunan dialect either but he can understand it. Hence the reason why I understand him the most, he's the only one who speaks Mandarin all the time. Yet this guy? There's something wrong.

I asked Camillo about Eason today because I haven't seen him at the Salon for a couple of days. What's up? What happened? His girlfriend is here and he's staying, in the hotel, with her. That's pretty huge. He's staying in the hotel. In China one definitely doesn't leave one's home in one's own city to stay in a hotel with someone unless that person has a possibility of marriage in the future. She's pretty cute. I didn't say a word to her tonight but when we went to Sky's party we met her and she seems pretty nice.

Afterwards Akun, Xiao Zhang, Camillo and I went to the Guangdong place to eat midnight brunch, as we've been doing ever since Akun got here. There was a man sitting behind me speaking something besides Mandarin. I didn't actually pay attention to him until Camillo went up to get some food and came back and started talking about him in Cantonese. For whatever reason, maybe due to my level of tiredness, I realized I was understanding what Camillo was saying. "Hey, is that guy speaking Cantonese?" "Who. Oh, him. No, he's not speaking Cantonese. He's from Taiwan." "He sure sounds like he's speaking Cantonese. Listen to him." Then Camillo mimicked what the guy was saying that sounded like Cantonese and they both laughed, mostly at Camillo's mimicking. Later Camillo must have figured out that I was listening in and asked me, in Cantonese still, if I understood. I replied in Mandarin as my Cantonese is about the same level of my Mandarin the day I got to China. "Can you understand us?" "Actually I'm starting to understand a lot more Cantonese now." Then Akun chimed in "What did we say?" I told them what I heard. "Man, she really is starting to understand." "She may understand but she can't speak it." "You never know, she may be able to pretty soon." "Here, speaking Mandarin, teaching English and learning Cantonese. Sheesh!" "She can already speak Spanish." "Really?" I finally chimed in "Yeah, and some Hindi." It was a pretty interesting conversation. Cantonese and Mandarin are not exactly similar in spoken languages, at ALL. As I may have mentioned before Cantonese has eight tones while Mandarin only has four. Thus making Cantonese much more complicated. While walking home just now I thought about this conversation. I could understand the Cantonese just as I could after I had been here studying Mandarin for two months. It's kind of as if I'm telepathic or something strange to that affect. Not that I can read what they're thinking but I can read what they are saying. Because that's more like what it is. Reading. Not understanding. It has to do a lot with body language, tone, pauses, the way the language itself flows, not the words. Two months after I got here to China my vocabulary still wasn't very large but I could understand if other people were talking. Now one has to understand that I'm not understanding the language from the words themselves so if someone talks directly to me I don't normally understand them, although there are times when I can. But if other people are talking it works a lot better. It's definitely a strange way to "understand" a language and with every language I'm around it's coming to me faster and faster.

While I was at the gym the other day Julia came and met me there. I tried to teach her how to use the treadmill, although she didn't really have the drive to actually use it. She kept putting her feet on the sides to speed it up and then trying to get back on. I told her at the speed I was running at if I tried to do that I would seriously hurt myself. That one had to keep one's feet on the belt while it got faster and faster. She started running with me for a little. After two minutes, literally, she stopped and told me she was going to go look at the class and would see me later. When I finished my part on the treadmill I looked over and she had joined the class. Almost at that instant it finally dawned on me why most Chinese women do nothing but classes and running when they come to the gym. It has to do with self-restraint and self-control. It all leads back to the robot syndrome. Chinese need people to tell them what to do - especially the women. They're brought up to obey the men no matter what and in the classes they have someone to tell them what to do. Order them around. Otherwise they can't, pretty much literally, do it for themselves.

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