Day 82: Bare Sticks and Coffee

Is it true we’ve been here for over 80 days? That just doesn’t seem possible. Thinking about the fact that we will not return to the States until July is a daunting thought but when we think about the fact that we’re already a third of the way through our time here in China and considering how fast these 80 days have flown by, it seems like we’ll be back in Asheville in the blink of an eye (or a click of the red-ruby heels). I’m a little jealous that places all over North Carolina are already getting snow while my locale just South of Mongolia has yet to see a freeze, but I’m sure I’ll be wishing the cold weather away sooner than it will be gone. Besides, once it really gets to be winter, we’re going to organize a trip to Beijing to go snowboarding with Samantha and Johnson and I’m really looking for to that adventure.

Monday was 光棍节/Guānggùn Jie (Single’s Day) here in China (a sixth grade boy of mine let me know). The reason it’s on 11/11 is because they view the ones as single people and the date 11/11 represents all the single people in the world (literally it’s called “bare sticks day”). I asked Samantha if anything interesting happens on that day and she basically just said no, other than single people being sad that they’re single. I did a little research and discovered that 11/11 festivities frequently include getting your friends together and having a KTV (karaoke) party with the hopes of meeting some new people. People who are not single also celebrate 11/11 with a different significance placed on the number “1” – to signify that their loved one is the only one in their heart or the only one for them out of all others. I think it’s sweet in that fabricated Valentine’s Day kind of way and pity-party inducing like on SAD (single’s awareness day) in the US. As with most holidays of this sort, it’s more of an excuse to hang out with friends than to actually lament/celebrate your current relationship status.

Tuesday, my seventh graders were unusually and disconcertingly quiet. Though a welcome change, it made class feel completely different and now that I’m more used to the energy (and number) of my students (I plan my lessons around these two facts), any change is a stark contrast. For my international class I was (for once) feeling very prepared and excited about the day’s lesson, only to learn that the class had been cancelled for this week because the international students had to clean their rooms (apparently they were absolutely disgusting). The Third Plenum is about to meet in Beijing and I was going to discuss with the students what they consider important issues for the Chinese government to discuss. While I am genuinely interested in hearing their opinions on what needs to be addressed within their country (and in comparing it to how Americans think of China), I was also going to use the opportunity to talk about the pollution problem and throw in a PSA about not burning plastic (and that they should tell everyone they know and to pass along the message).
Like Tuesday, my fifth grade classes today were unusually quiet as well. We discovered that something, some kind of event, is either happening or will happen soon, but other than involving some students and not others, we don’t know much else. Two of the big rooms in our building had paper fliers taped to the outside of the doors today saying “entrance” (入口) and“exit” (出口) and seventh grade students were going in and out of the rooms in huge groups all day long. Something, though I also don’t know what, was happening with the fifth graders because in the middle of my classes, one student from another class would come in, talk to the teaching assistant in front of everyone else, and then leave. Selected students would get pulled out of class or return in the middle of my teaching, but I was never given an explanation.

At QLH I’ve inspired Samantha to get better at latte art and now every time I order a latte (拿铁 “na tie”) or a cappuccino (卡布奇诺 “ka bu qi nuo”) I get a different design on top. Most recently, I picked up my cappuccino from the bar only to discover my name was on the top in chocolate! I’m sure I’ve said it once and I’m sure I’ll say it again, but if you ever find yourself in Baoding, China make sure you find your way to QLH on Junxiao Jie (street).

Other than discovering that the school wants to buy a new heater and replace the one we have, it has been an ordinary week. Seeing as I am on week 2 of my two-week class rotations, I have only two seventh grade classes tomorrow afternoon and then I am done teaching until next Monday.
Early Saturday morning we will leave for Pingyao and we will return to Baoding Sunday evening. Fortunately, I managed to plan for classes for the next month and thus will not have to worry about doing any catch up on lesson planning Sunday night.

I realize my pictures in these posts has been sparse as of late so here are some of my favorite pictures from the daily life in Baoding:

My regular noodle dish from our regular noodle restaurant (I don’t know the name of either):

Our regular Sichuan meal from the Sichuan restaurant:

Some first graders to brighten your day:

Lesson planning (of course):

A huge geisha kite from the Military School Park:

New ice cream at QLH – coffee/Oreo mixture in a homemade cone:

My next post will be after our return from Pingyao (hopefully) with more pictures and stories.
I hope you are enjoying my posts and thank you for reading!
Until next time,
Alyssa

 

Day 79: Dogs and Drums

Hello there!

Last night after meeting with Miss May for the last time before she goes to Britain (when she informed us that Chinese people don’t like ice cream, as she ate an ice cream cone in a shop that sells ice cream, on a street with four different ice cream shops, and after she gave us homemade moon cakes and expensive green tea), we went to the grocery store and prepared to make our first cooked meal in the apartment! We finally got a working hot plate and are now able to cook food other than ramen – perfect timing since I keep (half-jokingly) saying I’m not leaving the heated warmth of the apartment come Winter. Our meal last night was not elaborate since it was our test run for cooking in the apartment but it was filling and delicious. We bought some thick naan bread and some sausage links and made a variation of what my mother would call “mother-burgers” (sautéed sausage link slices in a sandwich). Add a semi-decent bottle of red wine and some Netflix and we had a lovely evening in. We ended up taking a quick trip out to get some candied hawthorn berries but otherwise enjoyed having nothing to do.

Candied Hawthorn:

This morning we finished making the travel arrangements for our next weekend trip – this coming weekend we are going to Pingyao in Shanxi Province. I really wanted to go to Cangyanshan and Yujiacun in Hebei Province (where we live) but as we started to look into actually getting there, it looked like making that trip, though closer, would actually be much more stressful than going farther to Pingyao. Cities in Hebei Province, including the provincial capital Shijiazhuang, do not allow foreigners to stay in cheaper hotels and hostels because of the (lame) excuse that they are concerned foreigners will get mixed up in petty crimes (something that could happen anywhere though I have seen none of it).
(Now for a quick tangent:) To be honest, we don’t believe that theft is a problem here. Multiple times Chinese people have told us as we’re standing in line or shopping to make sure we keep our phones and wallets in our front pockets to prevent pick-pocketing. Twice we have accidentally left the keys in our bike while we were inside QLH or our friend’s apartment and no one stole the bike. The past three days we have been trying to get rid of two juice boxes we were given after eating at our regular Sichuan restaurant by leaving them in the basket of our bike and hoping someone would take them. After two days of the juice boxes sitting invitingly in our bike basket, only one was taken while we were parked overnight in the school bike garage (probably some kid of ours took it). The fact that people are so eager to let us know that they see our stuff could be taken if a thief wanted to take it, kind of confirms for us that it is unlikely to happen. (As much as they stare at us and are amazed by our presence here, people really do try to take care of us in ways they think might be helpful).
I share all of this to demonstrate how ridiculous it is to us that we can’t stay in a hostel anywhere in Hebei Province under the “fear” that we, as foreigners, will get mixed up in some kind of petty theft. This law (conveniently) makes it so that foreigners can only stay in four or five star hotels in Hebei Province, thus ensuring that we spend more money than we already would. As we looked into planning a trip to Cangyanshan and Yujiacun we quickly realized that we could not visit both places in one trip without an overnight stay and the cheapest room we could find was 800 Yuan a night! We considered making a day trip to Cangyanshan instead but discovered that, even though relatively near to us, since the location is relatively small and unknown, there is no direct route. We would have to take two trains, several buses, and maybe even a taxi or two all within one day just to get there and back without getting stuck without a place to sleep. As cool as it would be to go to either of those places, it’s probably going to be one of those things that just won’t happen this year.
As for today, it seems to be another normal Sunday here in Baoding. We’ve already seen the dog show on the side of the road I mentioned a couple of weekends ago with some of the biggest dogs I’ve ever seen. Now that we’ve seen it a couple of times we’re pretty sure it’s a dog show of sorts where people come and buy the dogs as pets. Once bought, though, I’m not sure where they go because, outside of the Sunday street show, I have not seen any more gigantic dogs. (This week, we saw the biggest dog I have ever seen just hanging out under a tree. It looked sort of like a wolf from the back but had a different snout. It was so big I think it might have been a horse/dog mix.)
We also saw the usual caravan of old ladies playing drums go down the street outside of QLH. We saw it once before about a month ago but figured it was a fluke until we realized every Saturday and Sunday in the early afternoon, a big truck, like is used to haul dirt to construction sites, filled with maybe twelve older women all playing the drums goes down the street and around the block creating quite a joyful racket. Since they all wear red hats and clothes, I thought it was similar to the Red Hat Society in the US until I learned today that the sign on the side of the truck is advertising a new shopping center and they are hired as a mobile (auditory) advertisement. Some women do it as an extra job once they no longer work their regular jobs but other women, according to Samantha, just do it for fun with their friends. I think I might retire here when I’m older – being an older person here seems like so much more fun that being an older person in the US.

Advertising Drum Truck:

We’ve spent a couple of hours in QLH sitting in the sun in the window attracting the usual stares. Samantha joked today that the boss should pay us to sit in the window here since we attract so much more attention for the shop. I, not so jokingly, suggested we get coffee for free since all of our money goes here anyway. As for the rest of the day, we’re going to prepare for another week of classes and continue on with our normal routine.

To join in with the November tradition of daily gratitude, today (and everyday in China) I am grateful for the Internet. Our time here would not be the same without our easy access to the Internet and I am so glad that we have it for communicative and entertainment purposes. As much as I don’t really want to admit any kind of dependency on the Internet, I cannot imagine our life here without it. It has made communicating with friends and family easy, immediate, and relatively hassle free and has provided us much appreciated entertainment in a city that seems to close at 9pm.
I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your weekend! Thank you, as always, for reading!
Until next time,
Alyssa

 

Day 67: Ghouls and Food

Nihao wo du pengyoumen (Hello friends!)

Today was really good day – to be honest, it might have been one of my best days of teaching! All of my seventh grade classes were wonderful and I had my most successful international class yet. When I asked my kids today what costume they would like to wear for Halloween if they could, they misunderstood me and thought I wanted them to act it out. So, invariably, in each of my seventh grade classes today I had one kid grab a broom and run around the room with it in between their legs pretending to be a witch; a kid pretending to bite all of their friends on the wrists or neck like a vampire, or a whole gaggle of boys run to the front of the classroom just to walk slowly and moaning to demonstrate zombies. I wish I had taken pictures or videos – it was awesome! We talked all about Halloween and related American customs (such as trick or treating and costume parties) and I taught the international class “Thriller” by Michael Jackson. I even taught my seventh graders, in a completely non-English way, how to make a mask with their hands.

According to Johnson, there was a post today about us when he searched “QLH” on the Chinese Twitter. Some guy had posted that the other day he was minding his own business in QLH when an American couple walked in and started talking to the people behind the counter in fluent English. The guy commented that he wanted to talk to us but seeing the people behind the counter talking to us so fluently made him nervous and as a result, he has made it his new life goal to learn how to speak English fluently. I have no idea who this mysterious person is but I hope that by the end of the year, he does come try to talk to us while we’re in QLH.

Sunday afternoon after my last post, we went shopping at a huge foreign imports mall in the hopes of finding me some winter clothing. On the way to the shopping mall we passed what must have been hundreds of dogs, mostly huge German shepherds, with their owners all lining up on the street off of an empty field. The crowd of dogs and people was so large that even though they were all in the bike lane, traffic was affected. We have no clue what was going on but I would like to assume it was a dog show of sorts rather than something more malicious.
Outside of the shopping mall was a fashion show set up on a “basketball court” playing a song by Club des Belugas that I did a Tim dance to one summer with TBTS. It turns out that the impromptu fashion show was the entertainment during the breaks of a basketball game. Keep in mind, this was on the sidewalk outside of the mall and there wasn’t actually a court, it was just a sectioned off space with a mobile basketball hoop. No one but us seemed to find this in the least bit unusual and after observing for a bit, we decided to continue on to our shopping expedition.
My hopes for finding any winter clothing in this mall were quickly dashed as we realized that this is one of the most expensive shopping centers in Baoding. Clearly, only the richest of the rich can afford to shop in this center and though we are paid considerably more than average teachers, some clothes we saw cost as much as several months’ pay checks for the two of us. In one boutique we found a men’s leather jacket with a ticket price of 9000 Yuan (almost a $1,500 leather jacket)! We left pretty quickly after we realized we would be unable and unwilling to buy anything in there and headed to another brand new shopping mall (a Wal-Mart is soon to open up there!) where I ended up buying my first pair of wool socks (much needed) and a sweater dress that is appropriate for teaching in and will keep me warm and comfy.

Sunday evening, we went out to eat with Enkui and his wife and niece (an English major at a local university). It was, as usual, amazing! They picked us up from the school and took us to a fancy restaurant usually reserved for weddings not too far from the school. I swear, every place we eat with them gets fancier and the food gets more delicious! We had a lovely dinner and ate a sample of food that they described as local cuisine.
While in China I’ve tried Shanghai food, Beijing food, Chinese minority food, and some Sichuan style food (though of course not in Sichuan – yet) and after all of this, I really do think that the Sichuan food is my favorite. Chinese food, as a whole, is delicious and unlike anything you can get in the States but Sichuan style food, with its flavorful spiciness and lack of sweetness really suites my palette quite well I think.
Back from a recent trip to Taiwan, Enkui and his wife brought us back some special Taiwanese food and they brought me back some beautiful red stone bead bracelets (it seems I’m slowly amassing a collection of Chinese jewelry that always comes with a story).

While I’m thinking about unique Chinese food, we went to a Sichuan-style restaurant we frequent with some friends earlier in the weekend. When we are by ourselves we get chicken kabobs, stir-fried green beans (with evil peppercorns that will numb your entire mouth) and rice. But with friends (and as is traditional for groups) we got a larger variety of dishes. Traditionally, if you go to a restaurant with a group of friends, you order enough food for everyone and share the dishes family style. If you are with a group of people you are not as close to, you order one or two more dishes than the number of people, and if you are with a more formal group of people, more food than could possibly be eaten is ordered. (There were eight dishes for the five people at dinner with Enkui the other night, the fewest there has been so far – we can measure our growing friendship in the number of dishes.) With our friends at the Sichuan-style restaurant, we got, among many other dishes, sweet potato “fries” that were covered in sugar and sprinkles and then dipped in sugar-water. It was ridiculous!

Speaking of sweet things, the other day we tried these hawthorn berry things on a stick that seem to be everywhere. I thought that they were roasted tomatoes on a kabob but it turns out it’s a winter treat in Baoding – hawthorn berries stuffed with sweet filling and covered in literal sheets of sugar. The Chinese do not put a lot of sugar in their food but it seems like when they do add sugar, they go all out!

Yesterday was a normal Monday (as I described in the last post) including the lunchtime visit to QLH and an evening visit out on the town. All lessons (as will be all week) were Halloween-inspired and we both had a lot of fun teaching our kids all about monsters, vampires, and zombies (complete with drawings, acting out, and some strange noises on my part). The kids were all a little rowdier than usual because of the relaxed lesson but we all had a lot of fun. Duncan had his younger kids draw their own monsters at the end of the class – giving them a rare opportunity to use their creative brain. In one class, all of the kids were drawing cute monsters but one kid drew a monster with mouths for eyes and faces for hands. To be honest, it sounds like this kid’s monster was scarier than anything I could have come up with on my own.
Duncan said it was a little disconcerting to see this first grader’s drawing of a bloody monster when his neighbor drew an angel for her monster.
In another of Duncan’s classes, the kids turned their monster drawings into masks without any prompting from him. He turned around at one point and saw that all of the students had cut the eyes out of their monster drawings and some of them were in the process of attempting to tape them to their faces. (I had two seventh graders make their own masks in the middle of class today too.) I wish I could have had arts and crafts time with my kids but I think they enjoyed playing hangman well enough.
Duncan’s Kindergarteners learned the concept of “monster” through his English Halloween lesson. They didn’t even know the word for monster in Chinese –that’s how young these kids are. Some of them are only two years old , and no matter how adorable they might be, it seems a little ridiculous that they are 1) at a boarding school and 2) expected to learn English and their own language at such a young age.

Every monster in this picture represents a classmate or Duncan:

Note this monster’s one big foot and one little foot (very deliberately designed by a second grader):

The only thing that was not normal about Monday was that we found yet another rich Chinese lady that wants to take us out to eat. I don’t know how we keep finding these rich Baodingites but we do keep stumbling into their graciousness. This lady wants us to teach her and her friend English at QLH twice a week and she wants to teach me Chinese (and maybe how to cook) in return. This lady, Mei Li Xin, is wonderful and super nice but she is also very Chinese. And, she never stops talking! I can talk a lot and pretty fast, especially when I’m excited, but seriously this woman talked so much and so fast the entire three and half hours we were with her that our ears were ringing after we said our goodbyes. We met her in QLH to talk and make plans but then she insisted on taking us out to eat with her niece, a university tongxue (classmate) of Johnson’s, (everyone seems to have a niece that speaks English) to a ritzy hotel restaurant. The food, again a sampling of local style cuisine, was delicious.
When I say she is very Chinese I can only explain what I mean through examples. For one, she makes very literal statements as if they are not obvious but says them in a way that makes it sound like they are urgent and very important. For example, she told Duncan that he looks like he eats hamburgers but he isn’t fat because he has muscles. She told me that most Americans are fat but I’m not fat and that’s why I’m a ballerina. According to her (and she is right), Duncan’s Chinese is much better than mine and my skin is white (I didn’t know that!).
At the beginning of dinner, before we’d even started eating, she insisted on teaching me that I cheered my teacup to her wrong and that because she is older than me, my cup should be lower than hers. All throughout dinner she kept putting food on my plate and saying, “Eat! Eat!”
It became clear after talking to her that she wants to learn how to speak English better so that she can go to other countries around the world and insist that China does everything better or the “right” way. She was extremely proud (and braggadocios) about her son and was extremely enthusiastic (and repetitive) with her English. She insisted that I go to the bathroom with her before eating (as seems to be customary here among women that are buddies) and was concerned that I ate too little when I told her I was chengsi (full to death). Don’t get me wrong – I am not complaining. I am just trying to explain her unforgettable character to those of you who will probably never get a chance to meet her.
We had a really great evening with her and we are looking forward to getting to know her (and her friend who we have yet to meet) more in the future. We see them again on Saturday.

I am so glad that this week has been so much fun so far. Even though the classes are going a lot slower than they usual feel, it’s nice to have a week of teaching that’s even more laid back than usual. I know the kids are enjoying it (especially when I jokingly kick one out of class and tell them they have to knock and say “Trick or Treat” to get back in). I don’t teach this Friday (the middle school students get to go home) so I’m officially half way done with my teaching week! We’re planning on staying in Baoding this weekend again to save some money and to relax with local friends. Hopefully, we’ll find something unique to do on Halloween night!

Ganbei (cheers!) to good health, more smog-less days, and good food!
Talk to you again soon,

Alyssa

 

Day 65: A Day in the Life…

你好 (Hello)!

I’m sorry for my posting absence – it has been a fairly quiet week of teaching with nothing unusual happening here at the Shuang Yu Xue Xiao (Baoding Eastern Bilingual School).
The week went by fast as the daily routine ushered along the hours and classes each day. The most notable change from our life here in China is the fact that we had an entire smog-free week. Though very cold (winter is definitely here and I actually need to buy more winter clothes), the sky was blue and cloudless every day – a welcome relief from the never-ending smog mixed with the rancid smell of burning plastic.
So I’ve decided that this post will give you a look into our daily routine on a normal teaching day along with some observations about the uniqueness of living in China.

Tomorrow, Monday, my day will go a little something like this:

6:30 – The alarm goes off and I hit snooze until about 7 when I actually get up.
7:00-7:40 – I wake up, check Facebook and email, drink a cup of coffee in the room, get dressed, and make sure I’m prepared for the day’s classes.
7:50-8:30 – Teaching class (Monday’s I have all sixth grade)
8:40-9:20 – Teaching class (During the ten minute breaks in between classes I typically stand in the hallway and read from my Kindle, play Candy Crush, or talk to students.
9:20-10:15 – An absurdly long break in the primary school (grades K-6) schedule. On days when I am teaching in the middle school (grades J1, aka seventh grade, and above) the classes are 45 minutes long and the mid-morning break is shorter. During this break I usually return to the room and read. Some days we use this time to get a water jug for our water cooler, talk to administration, start the laundry, clean the room, and do any other odd tasks (like receive packages from the mail vans) that might be necessary and/or convenient.
10:15-10:55 – Teaching class.
11:05-11:35 – Teaching class. This class is the shortest class period in either of our schedules. Some days, such as on “jaozi day” (a day when the cafeteria serves a special kind of dumpling), the class is even shorter. Several times, Duncan’s class during this period just hasn’t shown up because they were playing on the playground or had decided to head to lunch even earlier. On Mondays when I teach sixth grade, the class I teach during this period is one of my more advanced classes, which is unfortunate because they have to get a shortened lesson.
11:35-2:30 – Our lunch break. Every day we sign out of the school, head to our favorite alley (most days) to get street food for lunch, and head on over to QLH. We eat our “jampiguozi” (homemade naan bread filled with eggs and sausage, cooked with spices and special sauce, and wrapped up like a burrito) at one of the tables outside of QLH before heading inside. We typically spend about an hour in QLH reading, drinking coffee, and doing whatever lesson planning is necessary. Around 1:00 we will get back on Kuai Long and head back to the school. Some days I take a nap and other days I read, do Rosetta Stone, practice the violin, or watch TV on the internet.
2:30-3:10 – Teaching class.
3:20- 4:00 – Teaching my last sixth grade class of the week. Classes continue until 6 in the evening but I never teach in the primary school past four. Some days, I teach middle school classes until 6 but never later than that.
4:00-10:00 – Once both of us are finished with classes we will typically head to dinner around 5:00 or 5:30 (most restaurants don’t actually start serving dinner until 5:30). There is one Sichuan style restaurant right next to the street food alley and right around the corner from QLH that we frequent. Rarely do we go to the other “newer” side of town during the week. Though certainly easy to get to, now that the weather is getting colder and colder, long trips on Kuai Long just don’t seem worth it. If we do go to the other side of town for dinner, it’s probably to get Pizza Hut over by the foreign imports mall.
After dinner we typically head to QLH for our evening coffee and the free Wi-Fi that enables us both to use the Internet at the same time (we only have one Ethernet cable in the apartment). I will typically finish lesson planning for the week if I haven’t already done so over the weekend and we both read.
Around 7 or 8 we typically head back to the school (we have a 10pm curfew) and we spend the rest of the evening exercising, practicing the violin, studying Chinese, talking to friends or family via Gmail or Facebook, and prepare for the next day until we decided it’s time for bed.

Pretty much every day follows a routine like this with variations in what classes we have and when we are teaching them. Every day we go out for lunch and dinner because we cannot cook in the room (the hot plate we were provided is broken and, when plugged in, sends sparks around the room). Though we are busy with something to do pretty much all day everyday we also have a ton of free time. Sometimes I wish that we didn’t have such a long lunch break and that we could squish all of our classes into the morning and early afternoon and then just be done teaching sooner. We’re grateful for the break but it makes going anywhere or doing anything unlikely because we have to make sure we are ready and back on time for afternoon classes.
Fridays, Duncan is done teaching at noon because all of the primary school students go home for the weekend and every other week I have no classes on Friday because the middle school students go home for a long weekend (Friday-Monday) after eleven days of classes.

We’ve considered going to Beijing for an afternoon or for an evening considering the ease in getting there but then we remember it would cost us each 130 kuai just to get there (not counting any within-Beijing transportation costs and whatever we actually did in Beijing) and have decided against such a trip. We are quite content, though sometimes a little bored, to stay in Baoding during the week.

The only plans we have for today include shopping for winter clothes (wish us luck) and getting dinner with Enkui and his family later this evening. This week, in honor of my favorite American holiday, I will teach all of my classes about Halloween with a lesson plan filled with zombies, vampires, and the “This is Halloween” song from “Nightmare Before Christmas”. I might even throw some Michael Jackson “Thriller” in there for my older kids since they always name him as one of their favorite music artists.
With this on the agenda, I’m sure this week will provide more stories and excitement than last.

I hope everyone has a good Halloween week!

感谢您阅读 (Thanks for reading),
Alyssa