Boredom and rain

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Wow so somehow i've neglected to write for almost a month. So where to begin? Actually not very much has happened. I've fallen into the routine of class > home > Food > sleep so between that there's been basketball and Chinese classes and stuff and that's about it. So anyway, a few weeks ago, near the end of the week we were so gracefully informed that the next week (which was last week) we would only have class on Monday and Tuesday as the students will be having exams from Weds - Fri. So I was excited about that because that means we get to travel and go somewhere exciting. Well, to my dismay Mother Nature had different plans for me. As time for our travel time approach we began planning our trip. It was difficult because we had such short notice so we were scrambling to find interesting things to go to for 5 days since we have a little mini-holiday. And then I check the weather. Rain..........for the whole week. It would have to be the time I get a 5 day holiday that it decides to suddenly start raining for a whole week. Then we check the average weather for this time of year where we are at and low and behold.......this area averages like half an inch of rain for this whole month. And here we are getting like 12 inches in a week. Thanks.

So then was the task of looking around frantically to find somewhere ELSE to go where it wasn't raining. And there was nothing. All of central and south China is raining for the week. Outstanding. So we opted to just stay here the whole time and try to make the most of it. There was no sense traveling and doing the tourist thing while it was raining the whole time which would ruin the experience and make for terrible pictures anyway, so there was just no point in spending money to be miserable in the rain. So what did we do? Well luckily for me I have amazing students because I spent a lot of time with them during the week. Recently I have met a new girl that i've been talking to a bit (Well trying to talk to since she has horrible English) and she invited me to go shopping with her on Tuesday after school. I was like aight sweet. I should note that I did not actually learn what her name was until Tuesday as she is not one of my students, but i've seen her around and I just started calling her "Mei nyu" which means Beautiful Girl and she has always called me "Shuai Ge" which means handsome boy. So anyway I learned her name is like Pu Xiang Ling, which she constantly quizzes me on so I have to remember, but she insists on calling me Zaizai instead of Xi Gua. I guess she feels better having her own personal nickname for me. "Zaizai" btw means Baby in Shaoyang Hua (Shaoyang language). So she calls me baby which is pretty awesome I think. ANYWAY rather than going shopping we went to Cheng Nan Park to walk around and stuff. It was a good day I think, I always love to meet new people and go do random things so there will be much more of this in the future.

During the week I just kinda went around the school and gave my kids some encouragement during exams and helped them relax a bit and this kind of thing. Moral support or cheerleader, whichever you prefer. Then Friday came and they only had one exam. Of course it had to be at 8:30am to make them get up early for it, otherwise it would be like, fair or something. So when I went to my classes to chill with some kids I found a couple of my favorite students in the class when they decided to drag me along with whatever they were doing. Well whatever they were doing turned into be a days worth of activities. We went to eat, which I wasn't hungry so I didn't eat. And to the Chinese let me tell you, if you ever turn down a meal or say "I'm not hungry" they freak out on you like you're dying. So they kept demanding that I was hungry and that I eat so they were like force-feeding me their noodles and this kind of stuff. The noodles were pretty good but I wasn't hungry dangit! So then they say they're going shopping, which ended up being Jiahui supermarket for the purpose of buying me food to force feed me. So they bought me bread and this freaking NASTY peanut milk that I swear had to have been for babies or something. Well I guess I am a big baby so it was proper. Anyway the peanut milk tasted exactly like what it sounds like, and it was gross. I mean, it'd be cool for like a shot of it but omg this can seemed to be bottomless. The bread was great tho. The bread in China is the best ever. It's all sweet and delicious. Anyway after crying in the supermarket like a little girl for awhile and all the people that work there laughing at me being tortured by these girls, my one student (Kitty) decides she wants to go to her Aunts house. So off we went.

We only stayed there for a few minutes, then it was off to KTV. KTV......again......oy. KTV was pretty cool, although their song selection was terrible when it comes to English songs. They had ONE Michael Jackson song which was called Ben. Now i've never even heard of that song, but to the Chinese, if it's in English.........I should know the song. So they play it and are like SING and i'm like WTF i've never even heard of this song before! Then the video starts playing and Michael Jackson is like 14 years old. UGH wtf!? So after an hour or so of that we left and I went home. The day was pretty fun actually, I make it sound horrible but I had a really fun time. My students are so much fun to run around with and just chill with so I like that i'm their teacher and they aren't discriminatory towards me just because I am their teacher or because i'm black.

So later that night we went back to Shaoyang University for English Corner. It was pretty fun. Again they threw us on stage and asked us questions and stuff again which is all cool but it's unfortunate because the students don't get to talk as much. But most of them still haven't met us so they are fascinated still. We ended up there until about 9pm (English Corner ends at 7pm) because we were just talking to students and stuff. I was talking to some dudes about inappropriate things which is really funny to me because they have NEVER talked about inappropriate things before in their lives (they told me so) so they were excited as guys to get to hear about how girls are in America and how "open minded" we are as a society towards inappropriate things. But the guys were really cool and a lot of fun so we'll probably be seeing more of them as we stay here longer.

So Saturday we decided to just run around town and see some cool stuff. We went to Dong Ta park which was under construction but it was still really cool. It's right on the river and there's a cool pagoda at the peak of a cliff there that was fun to go to. So we got some cool pictures of the area. After being there for awhile we set off for Cheng Nan Park. I got us lost. Which is the first time I ever made a mistake about directions here in China. Hey I gotta make one sometime LEAVE ME ALONE! So we ended up going the completely wrong direction. LUCKILY, but some strange miracle in the world, this random guy that said hello to us one day in the street just so happened to be walking by and was like "Hi do you remember me?" i'm like umm noo sorry. Anyway turns out he told us where the park was. Then I remember that he was just this completely random dude that one day stopped us in the street and was like "Are you from America?" I say yes and he says "Welcome to China." and that was it. We seriously walked off after that. How the heck am I supposed to remember what you look like?

So we get to the park and it was great. There was people everywhere, plenty of beautiful girls to chase after and everything. So we walk around for a bit, then sat down and heard an announcement at the front of the park. They do water shows and stuff like that every week I guess so they were gonna start one. Tons of people crowded around and we waited for like 15 minutes. Then another announcement was made saying "Oops....guess we're not gonna do it" and everyone got all mad and left. But we noticed there were 3 different groups of ladies checking us out, giggling and stuff obviously wanting to talk to us. The one group they start walking off, then they stop like 40 yards away and are talking and giggling trying to get the courage to come up and talk to us. Then finally they start towards us and RIGHT as they get to us, the one girl chickens out and they dart by us. So i'm like "Hellooooo!" and they say hi and giggle and run away. They never did come talk to us :*( Oh well. Then there was another group of 3 girls who seemed to be keeping an eye on us and following us. After awhile of getting tired waiting for them we walked back into the park. Eventually we turned around and saw that they were following us!! So we walk down this one area and see they still followed, so we stop.....then they stopped. And we're just standing there talking about what to do about it when finally we're just like.......ok screw it lets just run up to em and start blabbing. So we did. And their English was pretty bad. See now this is why we don't just approach girls here. Chances are they don't speak English, so it just makes for an awkward time. And that's exactly what we got......at first.

So we're standing there. I do the English test of "Hello"........wait for response...hi......(Ok passed that part) "How are you?" .................."I'm fine thanks".........(Ah the generic Chinese trained response to the question. This might not go so well because they didn't say "And you?") So I throw down the real test......."What are you doing?" ...........now I get the giggling and the "I don't understand" responses. Crap. So we seriously stood there for like 2 minutes not saying anything. Eventually, after like trying to talk and failing at finding out where they go to school they said "lets go" in Chinese......well in Shaoyang hua. So i'm like aight later. But they wanted us to walk with them through the park. I'm like wtf we can't even talk to each other! Whatever, fine. So we started walking. I was annoyed because there's no sense wasting our worthless time walking with these random beautiful girls that we can't even talk to while it's cold outside when I could be doing something even more worthless than this. I was cold dangit! So after walking all over the place and sitting with them and accomplishing pretty much nothing they started getting more comfortable with us and practicing some of the little English they do know. All students know English here, it's just that they are way to shy to try to use it on a native speaker. C'mon, you take 2 years of high school Spanish and you know you've never talked to one of the million Mexicans in Florida in their language. Same thing. So we were talking about Chinese, and I was telling them the little Chinese that I do know and all this and they started trying to teach me Chinese which always ends in disaster because they teach you how to say a million things really fast and expect you to remember. Anyway after walking with them for awhile they invite us to go back to their school with them. Hey this is looking promising! So we're like aight. This is about the time we notice that one of their girls is probably the weirdest girls we've ever encountered in China. She would like take off running for no reason. She'd be just doing the weirdest stuff I have no idea. I can't describe it but if you were with us we were just in awe saying "This is the strangest girl i've ever seen here." the other two were great, but this one girl was so weird. Anyway, turns out their school is in like, the hardcore slums of the area. We turned off the main road into this super poor ghetto and walked like a quarter of a mile through it til we hit the school at the end. And the night ended there. We didn't have passes, so we couldn't go in. BOOOO! So we just chilled in the gate building with some people. It was pretty fun. We spent the time just joking around in English and in Chinese. I'm happy because the little Chinese I do know is super great just to joke with people. Funny name calling and this sort of thing of which I did to the weird girl just because she had the funniest reactions. So everyone always laughs when I make fun of people in Chinese, so it's fun. Turns out their school was some crappy Computer school or something. And then when I think about it, it makes no sense at all because none of the girls had e-mail addresses. WTF kind of crappy computer school is that?

So it hit like 10pm and the girls wanted to go to sleep (wut?) so they actually escorted us back to the main road and made sure we got a cab and would get home to the right place which is super nice but unnecessary. So the whole way back again I was just picking on the weird girl. At right as I got in the cab she yelled something at me. So I yelled back MOSHIKA! Which is Japanese and just a really rude way of saying "I don't want to talk to you!" Then I remember I made some girl cry with that same joke earlier.

Dangit, now I have to tell this side story of why saying Moshika is a joke. Ok so in one of my classes I asked this boy what his name was and he just said "MOSHIKA!" so I just started calling him Moshika. Now i'm not an idiot, altho I didn't know what it meant then I knew it wasn't a name and he was just yelling something ridiculous like they always do. So everyone seemed to love that I just called him Moshika because it completely backfired on the student. So I asked my better classes what it means and they told me of course while laughing at the funny scenario of this student yelling it at me in class, and then even more so that I just call him Moshika. Anyway ALL of my classes know this story and they know it's just a big joke like most of the stuff I say is, for instance calling someone a farmer. But anyway this one girl just started balling for some stupid reason about it. What's great is that no one in the class cared, they all thought she was being ridiculous and it was even more sad because she was in the class that EXPLAINED TO ME WHAT IT MEANT IN THE FIRST PLACE. SO THEY KNOW THE JOKE. So anyway, that student forgave me and acknowledged that it was nothing to get upset about. And seriously, don't send me any lectures about this. I know my students and they know me, they all know (even the girl) that it's a joke and there is no reason to get upset.

ANYWAY since this weird girl might not understand i'm kidding right before we left I yell out "Aww JING JING WO AI NI!" Jing Jing was her name and wo ai ni means I love you. So yeah. Then we left. The cab driver was funny. He was telling me to give her a kiss goodbye and stuff. Lol. Then he was asking us where we're from and stuff. Ofc I say America and this leads to him saying something about Obama. I was like........yup. Everyone here knows about the election, I think it's funny. They always ask me what I think about Obama getting elected and i'm just like "I have no idea. I try not to." I'm not against Obama by any means, but i'm not really for him either. Heck i'm not FOR anyone. I'm totally ignorant when it comes to politics and I am much more happy this way. If I really cared I would actually learn about each candidate in depth and make a real decision but that requires work and i'm really lazy. Anyway, Chinese seem to hate black people here which I find hilarious. They say their all ugly because of their dark skin. I always laugh. So that's like it. Today was my basketball day which is always fun. Since it's gonna be sunny this week I can actually play again so yaaaay. Anyway, it's late so i'm gonna go to sleep since I have to get up early (9am) for classes. :X laters!

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Photos

Classroom
One of my classrooms (After class)

Note from a student
A girl from one of my classes wrote me this note after a really bad class. So cute!

Rice Palace
We eat here every day, twice a day. They have the best food and the best prices we've had here. And best of all, they are RIGHT outside the school.

Outside the school
This pic was taken from the entrance to the Rice Palace. Didn't I say it was right outside the school? ;)

Poor city
Most of the city looks kinda like this. Worse in a lot of spots.

River and view of city
Nice view of the river and the other side of the city that we've never been to.

Haircuts
Under a bridge......good place to cut hair.

Tower
Some kind of tower. We'll go there eventually.

Pagoda
Our destination for this walk was this pagoda overlooking the river.

Pimp slapped
These were tiny carvings into the wall in the park we were at. (Dong Ta Park) There were tons of these little pictures.

Fail
These were the stairs to get to the pagoda........awesome.

Pagoda
I made it to the top! w00t!

Tower again
Nice view of the tower

Tower and bay
This was the most interesting thing to see at the pagoda. Everything else was just slums.

Comments

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Yer Blog
I always enjoy the way you describe your adventures. Please keep it going.