Look at the FISH in the FISH BOWL!

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"And so on, blah blah blah."

Been working in the fish bowl for the past couple days. Oh, wait, scratch that I wasn't actually at work yesterday. On Tuesday I had my second English corner that actually succeeded very well. I was extremely happy with it! First I introduced some terms that we use in the South, like ain't, gonna, goin, fishin, etc. Then I gave them the song RESPECT by Aretha Franklin and asked them some questions about it. Note do not ask questions about a song to a multi-leveled group of Chinese people. It didn't work very well as it was extremely hard for them to read the song. They couldn't get over the first part "oo" what does "oo" mean? After I played the song for them I decided to give them different topics to talk about putting men against women. For example one of the topics was "Men should do all the physical labor" or "Men work while women stay at home and are housewives". They had a lot of fun talking about these and got really riled up over the issues. Over all I think it was a really great idea as it got them talking so much to each other. At some points I had some people trying to avoid the issues as they were the only male in their table. We went over some of the debates as a whole group but not all of them - as there were a total of 60 people in the room.

I finished my classes at 9pm and went home to watch some TV and call Liz. In the midst of my phone call with Liz Cam called me twice and we ended up going to the massage place together which was interesting because he was pretty drunk. I insisted on having a woman massage me as it's always more comfortable for me to work with them.

The next morning we woke up late in the massage place and after paying we left on a motorbike to the market where we bought some food. Cam's latest project has been to teach me how to cook the proper Chinese way including how to chop up food. Not only the correct way to chop it but also how to chop it properly (how to hold the knife and how to put my hand on the item I am chopping) and how to chop quickly. We made two dishes yesterday which went really well and were really tasty. Although I had to drag him off the couch twice - once to start cooking and once after we ate to leave - we had a lot of fun. When I finally got him off the couch we went to Victory Square to do some shopping. He helped me buy a skirt, a formal shirt and a pair of boots all for pretty cheap. Then I tried on about 20 pairs of pants (pretty much literally) and two skirts. After a while of watching me with different pants on Cam said "are you trying to kill me?" Unfortunately what we learned was that Chinese pants don't work too well on me. I am a very small person - even for my pant size in China. And generally (based on the type of pants that are available in China) small people have no ass. So therefore the pants have no ass which means they have a huge gap between my back and the pants or they fit in the waist and don't fit otherwise. It's a lot of fun. I may need to buy some pants in another country.

At 5pm I went to meet my new student that I will hopefully be teaching starting tomorrow morning. I was supposed to start teaching her this morning but when I got there I started teaching and got a phone call immediately telling me I had class in 10 minutes at work. Apparently there was a misunderstanding because I thought I had English Corner at 7pm tonight and therefore would be working from 1-9pm whereas in actuality the English Corner is tomorrow and I am supposed to teach 9am-7pm today. So I guess that's my one mistake and I don't know if I get another so now I really need to watch myself.

On other notes I have noticed that Chinese people don't tend to cry. Both men and women here were taught from an early age that one is not supposed to cry, at all in public. Instead their eyes do tear up from time to time. But one is not supposed to be concerned if this happens as they are not actually crying. So one is not supposed to ask if the other is "okay" as the other is not crying and obviously okay! I find this kind of strange.

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