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Published: November 3rd 2013
Doughnut on a String
This is my new favorite picture!Happy Halloween everyone! We had a great time celebrating here, I hope you all had fun, too! On the Saturday before Halloween, we went to a small Halloween party at the Donohoe’s apartment. He is the president of our branch and we have become great friends with them while being here. Every Saturday they teach English to a small group of kids so they did a Halloween party for their lesson. We played the “doughnut on a string” game, bobbed for apples, and Jarek taught the kids a Halloween song! It was great fun.
The day before Halloween, Jarek and I taught our English class dressed as zombies, something they had never before experienced in any other class ever. It was a Halloween lesson so we just had to dress up! They thought it was awesome and were a little scared of us, I think. We also watched a little bit of Hocus Pocus, the Halloween classic featuring Bette Midler. Win! I don’t think they got it… but we did :P On Halloween night we had to teach Snow, the little 5 year old Chinese girl that we tutor every Wednesday and Thursday. For that, we also showed up at
Just bite it!
It seems so easy, right? her house as zombies. She was wearing an adorable little feather mask! We played Halloween Bingo that I made with lots of pictures of Halloween things (witch, spider, cat, etc.) and ate candy with Snow and her mom. We then taught her how to trick-or-treat and how awesome it is because you get FREE candy! Every little child’s dream no matter which country you are in. Later that night we went to a party at a friend’s house and almost our whole church branch was there. One of the best things about it was that we got to eat actual chili! Mmmm! I knew we were there for about two hours so I crammed down as much of that delicious food as I could in that time! Tiffany, one girl close to our age, did a great job painting her face as the monkey from the Beijing Opera. Her husband was a vampire – he is Iranian so his accent was great – and our friend from Argentina, Joel, had us paint his face as the Joker. I love holidays so much! Also, before we went to the party, we had to go grocery shopping as zombies… the Chinese people
Zombies!
The top left is our dear friends the Donahoe's. Then it is us looking really scary and below are the Balentine's and one of Tiffany's friends, Julia. were extremely confused. They whispered “Is it Halloween?” Yes! It is! And we are not ashamed.
Now I will switch gears and tell you about our great adventure attending a high school of 5,000 kids, which is much bigger than BYUH by the way. Remember the post about going to the Ming Dynasty Museum with our friend Sean? Well, when we were there a man who is the principal of a very prestigious high school invited us to come for a day and meet the students. We could have been a couple of crazies out to cause a ruckus, but we are white and American so it didn’t matter. Last week we made it out to the high school which is about an hour and a half away from the city. Sean was kind enough to drive us all the way out there and stay there all day with us. We did not really know exactly what we were going to do, but what the heck. Sean set it all up for us so we couldn’t say no. When we arrived, we met with all the important people in an office and took pictures (of course) with all of
Friends
Tiffany and Javad are on the left and Joel is the bottom right. We love these people! them. More and more people kept showing up to take pictures with the Americans. It was rather comical. They gave us tea and water and made sure we were comfortable. Just a heads up, we expect this kind of special treatment when we return home to the states. Don’t forget it! Haha 😉 They took us on a mini tour of the campus, which was huge, and then told us to take a rest before we teach and English class. While we were waiting, we took a trip to the bathroom. The campus was built in the 50’s so there wasn’t any plumbing. Well, there still isn’t any plumbing. Why waste the time or money when all you need is a hole, right?... It was the most awful bathroom I have seen in my entire life and I don’t believe any bathroom will top that one. Those poor souls who have to clean out the holes. And it was hard not to fall in! Squatting is already tricky… now take away the security of the ground and replace it with a skinny platform for your feet surrounded by waste on all sides. Bleh!
Moving on! We decided the best
Doughnuts
Guess which one was for Snow? :) The one in the bottom right is still a mystery to us... it is fuzzy red stuff called "Fire Floss" in English... thing to do with the class was to play a game. Because all Chinese classes are the same, reciting from a book, only standing and speaking when called on, etc., Chinese kids love when we play games with them in class. When we walked in the room, everyone clapped and cheered. (Again, remember this for when we return home.) Most of them had never seen a foreigner in their lives before. I can’t imagine how strange that would be. We told them about us and opened it up for questions. Here are some of my favorites:
“Can I see an American dollar?” I passed around three dollar bills and made sure they knew I needed them back. Those three dollars will have a lot of value to us in a year!
“Jarek Teacher, who is your favorite sports star?” Because Jarek said he likes to play basketball, they automatically think that means he follows basketball. He was asked this in every class.
“Kaylee Teacher, will you sing a song? A Chinese song?” I sang Molihua so many times that day.
“What is the difference between school in China and school in America?” This is a topic
Liquan High School
They love getting their picture taken. much too large to put into one sentence, so we left it at, “In America, usually we get to choose what classes we take and what we study. There is a lot of choice.”
“Do you think Taiwan is part of China?” Jarek answered that perfectly: “I told you I study politics, so that means I know that I can choose not to answer a question.” I was so proud of my husband. There were two of us and thousands of them who all disagree with us…
“What is your favorite thing about America?” I loved this question because there are SO many things!
“Kaylee Teacher, can I have a hug?” She was so nervous! She had never seen a foreigner before, so hopefully she won’t be scared of them anymore...but I am pretty scary...
“Do you like hamburgers?” I thought this was so stereotypical, but then when they asked what kind of American food we like, I thought about what I would give for a nice juicy hamburger! That stereotype is true! It also applies to pizza and French fries, which they think is all we like to eat.
“Can you use chopsticks?” To
Fish Restaurant
This is the entrance to the restaurant where we ate lunch with the high school principal and company. Look at the sky! And there is water in the distance! which Jarek always responds, “If we couldn’t use chopsticks in China, we would starve!”
“Can we be friends?” After we said of course we can be friends, they proceeded to introduce themselves fully, as if it is completely necessary to state your name and that you are happy to be friends before you can be official friends. In America, all it takes is a friend request on Facebook.
That was so much fun. After about 20 minutes of questions, we had them grab their stools and go outside to play Do You Love Your Neighbor. (Thank you mom for teaching me great games that are so useful in theatre and in teaching English!) The kids ran outside and immediately sat down on their stools in perfect lines with girls in front and boys in back. I have never seen a group of Chinese people so organized. It blew my mind. But, we ruined it. I took the girls and Jarek took the boys (each class had around 80 kids…can you imagine a high school class that big??) and we played the game. They loved it! Other students at recess or P.E. gathered around to watch the foreigners play
Branch Picture
Here is our great branch! this game with the class. Jarek said the boys got extremely aggressive! But they all had a lot of fun! One boy broke his metal stool! The girls, of course, were much more shy and calm. I appreciated that. Once class was up, we took them back, took pictures with some of them, and said goodbye. The people in charge were so pleased with how well the students liked us that they asked us to teach 4 more classes that day! We were so tired by the end.
During the two hour lunch break, the principal took us out to eat. There were a bunch of other important people there along with some government officials, so it wasn’t the most relaxing lunch. For me it was hard because, aside from me, there was only one other woman in the whole restaurant. That might give you a glimpse of the chauvinism that goes on here. If it is hard for me sometimes, I can’t imagine how hard it is for Chinese women. They just like men more. The food was great, though! The restaurant was in this village next to a big lake. It was so great to see water
Caption
"Artful Daughter in law pill balls"?? I don't want to know. again!! I was so happy. The specialty was fish, so we ate lots of fish. The first dish they brought out was a big bowl filled with sauce and lots of smaller fish. You have to suck the meat off the bones (the fish aren’t cut or anything), but it was delicious! Sometimes it’s scary because those tiny bones are so sharp so swallowing them is awful and you feel like you are going to choke and die in front of every important person in China who is already judging you on your chopstick skills. But don’t worry, we made it out alive and even received compliments on our chopstick skills.
After we finished teaching, someone else took us out to dinner. This meal was also delicious! (And much less stressful because most of the important men were not in attendance.) We did, however, eat pigs feet for the first – and last – time during this meal. Sean insisted that we try them so we agreed. They chopped them up into smaller, yet still massive, chunks and brought out the gloves. Something scary always follows when they bring out the gloves. Last time I was wearing gloves to
SUSHI!!
Our great friend Sherry took us out for lunch and we ate at this delicious sushi restaurant. Man oh man was it great. I can't even explain. eat, I was eating only the heads of a kind of rodent I wasn’t familiar with. Now, it was pigs feet. There isn’t much meat on there… mostly just gelatin. They are Sean’s favorite food so he was going to town. At one point, he looked up with foot in hand at us nibbling our pigs feet and exclaimed, “Pigs feet very good for beauty!” Ha! Right! Like any beautiful girl is ever going to be caught eating this! We just about died of laughter.
Dinner came to an end and we headed home. They want us to return again and teach more English classes. We will probably do that once more, but not anytime soon. We have our own classes to catch up on!
One more story before we post. It really helps you to understand what it is like to live in China. One cold, rainy morning Jarek and I awoke in our cement-walled room. The cement almost makes it colder inside than it is outside so it was very difficult to get out of bed. Jarek got up to check his email only to find out there was absolutely no internet, a fact that is
Art District
The next few pictures are from this art area in the city wall where they sell lots of art stuff.
This man drew the smallest characters ever and he didn't even have a hand. So amazing. all too common here in China. We got ready and headed to class. When we got to the elevator, it displayed a broken message so we had to take the stairs from the 7
th floor. Most people don’t have elevators, so I wasn’t complaining; plus, I really need the exercise. Jarek prophesied on the way down, “Watch, when we get to our classroom building, there won’t be any electricity.” We went to class, sat down, recited every vocab word we’ve ever learned while joking around to try and make class fun when, 30 minutes in, the electricity buzzed and went out. The entire campus was out of electricity. Turns out, construction workers were working on the entire block’s electricity, so nobody on the whole block had electricity or internet (blocks here are really huge). Nobody informed anyone of this beforehand, however, so if we had anything important to do that required internet or electricity, we were out of luck. They informed us that everything would be back on at 6pm.
5:30 came around and we were both sitting by the window doing our homework. It was very difficult to see all the characters in the hazy blue lighting, but
Smile
I love this pretty yellow bird! only 30 more minutes and it would be okay! 5:55 came around and I could hardly see anything – my mom would be so disappointed I wasn’t working with a light on! Okay. 6:00. Any minute now. I used the flashlight of my phone to do my work as efficiently as possible. 6:15. Nothing. Now Jarek was using the chargeable flashlight we have (thank you, Alan). 6:30 still nothing so we decided to go down and ask the “guard” who sits at the front desk and does nothing all day. That was a scary walk down the pitch black hallway and down the stairs! And we were just talking about zombies! It fit perfectly; dust was everywhere, doors were creaky, everything echoed, a zombie could be lurking around any corner! And when we got downstairs, the guard was sitting there with only a creepy candle! Ah! Jarek asked when the electricity was supposed to be on and the guy said after 9pm. Of course, that actually means nobody really knows so don’t be disappointed if you don’t get any electricity today. We gloomily went back upstairs and sat on our hard bed cold, hungry, and with no means of solving
any of those problems. Thankfully, we belong to a wonderful church where people are always willing to help! We called our lovely friends, the Donohoe’s, and they said they had beef stew, bread and brownies at their place. Hooray! Warmth, dinner, and best of all, dessert! It turned out to be a great night. We returned home around 11 and found out the electricity had only turned on about 25 minutes before we got home. Good thing we left! Those things just happen here and nobody warns anybody about it so being prepared is a must!
This week we might not have much going on, so if you read this, please post any questions you have about life here or really anything! That will spice up the next post a little 😉
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G'ma Osburn
non-member comment
Love your posts!
It's so fun to read about the things you are doing! And it never ceases to amaze me the wonderful people who "just happen to be in Your path"! I truly believe that there are NO coincidences! I can see the hand of the Lord in your every step! You are so blessed! You are much braver than i would be......NO chance of me eating pickled pigs feet, although G'ma J loves them. At least she used to.......she's kind of forgotten a lot of things, like what she likes and doesn't! I was wondering about the weather there......it is definitely fall here. Does it get really cold? Guess I could google China and find out but thought I'd just ask you! Love and (((HUGS))) to you both! G'ma O