America

I am in America again and I guess I've hit boredom since I've been back. Korea was amazing and beautiful even when it was pouring rain (at least it was clean rain!) and Chicago was a lot of fun. I got to see friends I hadn't seen in 2 years.

So now all the fun has subsided and I am waiting for school to start. I really miss Korea and China but I hope I can go back within the next 5 years. So now the goal is school and a job to pay off my loans and then hopefully save enough to go back.

Memorable moments in ESL teaching...

So this year, teaching has been much smoother because I kind of know what to expect from my students. I've been pretty successful in getting them to talk, even some of the more shy students in my classes. I teach freshmen right now but I've had sophomores in the past as well. Anyway, some of my students have some incredible stories but you'd never hear it from them unless you asked. One question I asked them was to tell me about a time when they were lost. I got the funniest stories most of the time. I told them about all the times I've been lost and it makes some of them not feel so stupid for getting lost.

One story that was really memorable though was from a student who was almost kidnapped at 2 years of age. She was lured away by a woman in a busy market away from her mother and the only reason why she's here today, still with her family is because she saw an aunty she recognized and started crying really loudly. The aunty recognized her voice, talked to the woman and the woman got frightened and ran away. The aunty brought her back to her mother. Isn't that nuts?

Another student told me about a time when they decided to take a shortcut through a field (why does that always seem like a good idea?) to go home with a friend of his after school one day. They got lost in the field for several hours and the owner of the field saw them and directed them to their houses. They were only about 10 years old at the time. You might think that's pretty old to get lost, but in China most students stay on campus from middle school age and up. So they don't get to go home very much. Which also means they don't go outside of campus very much so they don't know the city as well as American students that age.

Another student (one of my Korean students) got lost on a mountain very close to his back yard. He had never climbed it before and decided he would do it one day, so he climbed it to the top and when he got to the top he noticed there weren't any good paths to go back down because it had started raining. So when he went back down the mountain, he was in a different city. So since he didn't know where he was, he had no choice but to go back up the mountain to get back to his home.

Anyway, it's interesting to hear from them and I'm glad their levels are good enough that I can hear stories like this from them.

Learning Chinese and other lovely skills

So living in China for almost two years, I've learned a lot of things I would not have expected to learn before coming here. Language wise, I've learned a lot of phrases because of the crazy things that have happened here. For example:

Earthquake
Tuberculosis
Appendicitis
Help!

Although "help" in Chinese is really long and if you were really dying, you'd so die before you get the entire expression out.

As of April 28th, I've learned the words for:

swine flu (zhu liu gan)
epidemic (wen yi)
flood (hong shui)
mad cow disease (feng niu bing)

Useless skills I've acquired since being here (mostly food related) that will have no purpose in the states:
-Making toast and garlic bread without an oven or toaster
-Making breadcrumbs
-Cooking entire meals using one pan
-Making ice without an ice tray
-Making pseudo-pancakes using only three ingredients
-Getting around in my place without locking myself in/out of rooms/my apt with my broken doorknobs
-Not electrocuting myself with the faulty extension cords, outlets or water heater in my bathroom
-Fixing doors and drawers myself (I never knew I was so handy)
-Making conversation with taxi drivers and shop owners without really knowing what they're talking about
-And of course, how to get around a new city without a map or English, especially in Beijing, city that I love and hate

Favorite Bizarre Moments from Spring Fest...

Hangzhou:

So we walked around the plaza and souvenir market and a girl came up to me. I could tell she was working up the courage to talk to me, so finally she said, “You are beautiful!” I said “Oh! Thank you.” She continued walking with Kim and me. Then I stopped and said to her, “Can I help you?” and she said, “Yes!” and skipped away. Then I watched her for a bit thinking that she was trying to pick our pockets or do something. But nope, she just skipped away to lala land.

Also in Hangzhou:
After eating dinner at Pizza Hut, Kim and I went outside and I noticed a crowd of people across the street. I wanted to see what was going on, so we watched for a few minutes. Then they started to run. I thought maybe there was a celebrity or somebody important coming. Nope. It was the bus. They all ran like there was a famous person on it or something but there wasn’t.

Huangshan (Yellow Mountain):
The showering facilities are hilarious at the hostel we stayed in. You assemble it yourself. When the old grandma took it out of the box, I couldn't help but crack up. Are you serious? The shower hose attaches to the sink and it drains into the toilet. And it leaks from the sink where it attaches to the faucet. Oh I wish I had taken a picture of it.

Back in Hangzhou:
We missed the 1:30 bus to the Pudong airport in Shanghai unfortunately by like mere minutes. So we got on a 2 pm regular bus to some other bus station on Shanghai. We ran to the subway and I definitely ran over some woman’s feet with all of my luggage in the subway. I felt a little bad about that. We ended up getting on the Maglev fast train at 6 something and we actually got to the airport at about the time our plane was leaving. We missed our flight. We bought two tickets for the next morning to Guilin and then Kim asked, “Uh excuse me, do you know where the Burger King is?” Yes, we just missed our flight and yes we just paid an extra 390 kuai to get a flight tomorrow and we have nowhere to sleep tonight but we’re more interested in Burger King, the shining jewel of Shanghai’s Pudong airport. That was an interesting night.

In Shenzhen:
We woke up at like 6 am one morning because of the Thai lady who wouldn’t stop burping and snoring next to us. Oh my goodness. I don’t know what was wrong with her GI tract. She was nice but man…those sounds were just not right. She belched loudly for at least an hour in the morning. Kim said she woke up and stared at her like, "Are you really gonna do that?" Yes, she really did that. I tried to sleep through it but it was impossible. It was like an earthquake coming out of her esophagus.

We had breakfast at noon at the hostel and then we went back to the room and the Thai lady prayed with us. She gave us her business card for Bangkok, Thailand which was quite funny cause we actually ended up going to Thailand.

Hong Kong:
We ended up going out with Dani as a last minute thing to Lan Kwai Fang. It was one of the most memorable nights of my life. It ended late and there was a brawl in the street. Kim and I were running away from the fight but they were like rolling down the street and fighting at the same time cause they kept up with us as we were trying to run away. And an ambulance came and the guy jumped out like a superhero and in a dramatic way asked, "Where was the fight?" And took off in the direction. It was crazy.

This spring festival was more memorable than last year's for sure and I managed to keep all my stuff which is good. It makes me a little sad to think that I'll be going back to America and I won't have these adventures anymore.

Some thoughts...

Last night, I went bowling with a bunch of Koreans that live in my building. Which meant that most of the time, they were speaking Korean and whatnot. I was the only non-Korean person there which didn't bother me. Sometimes I forget these things. I guess if I wasn't used to this sort of situation, it'd bother me. I guess it's just something I do. I don't usually hang out with other people who are Indian, I don't know why. Maybe because I didn't grow up in an area with tons of Indians. Actually, now that I think about it, I never had Indian friends until college. Mostly because I didn't know any other Indians until there was a small population in my university. In middle school and high school, I always hung out with the southeast Asians it seems. Or at least they were my closest friends.

So the trend continues in a different continent. You'd think in China surrounded by 1.3 billion Chinese people, I'd at least be hanging out with a bunch of Chinese people or the other Americans from Drake. Nope.

Tai was right...my life is ridiculous

A few days ago, I went to work out at the gym near my school. I saw a plump, naked woman there which is perfectly normal at gyms here. I had a feeling she'd start a conversation with me so I avoided eye contact and tried to get my stuff to go work out. "Hi," she says timidly. I knew it! Let me say she was more afraid of speaking in English than of being naked in front of me. So we talk for a little bit, she says that she's seen me before at my school. I told her I am a teacher and she told me that she is a student. I awkwardly avoid looking at her. So I got my water bottle and went to work out. I worked out for about an hour or so and went back to the locker room to retrieve my purse. She was still standing there....still naked. At this point, I was like okay whatever and got my things and left.

Then I thought about it for a while. Did I stun her with my "foreignness" so much that she couldn't put on any clothes for the next hour? Was she reliving the moment over and over in her head so much that she forgot she was naked? Does she just hang out at the locker room buck naked for kicks? Anyway, I realized that my life really is ridiculous as a friend once pointed out to me.

The month in review

So a little update on what I’ve been up to since coming back to China:

This past weekend, I went to the Botanical garden about an hour outside of Shijiazhuang with some friends. The place is huge and really pretty, we were there for most of the day. Usually they have an exhibition; I think it must have been roses this time because they were everywhere. It had a butterfly garden, an amusement park, a lake, a waterfall, and the most violent bumper cars I’ve ever driven. We also saw bumper boats which seems a little dangerous.

I went to Shanghai and Suzhou for National holiday (first week of October.) Suzhou is China’s “Venice.” Shanghai is just a cool, modern city. We saw Jinmao Tower (which is now the second highest tower in Shanghai and next to the tallest tower). Yu Yuan garden was nicer this time around because we had time to explore more of it. Tai Kang Artspace is fantastic and I would definitely go there again. It’s an area with lots of galleries and cute, small shops. It’s just fun to hang out there. And we went to Burger King! Twice! Oh onion rings, I heart thee. Erin and I had found the fruit tea that we had been searching for throughout China.

Suzhou is a nice city to walk around in as long as you know where you are going. We did not know where our hostel was exactly, all we had was the address written down on a piece of paper and it took us 3 hours to get there from the train station. The hostel is actually only about 15 minutes away from the train station. But our Chinese failed us as did the hostel’s English. That aside, they have nice markets to shop around in but we didn’t have much time to shop since we were there for only two days. We went to a Silk museum and a performance, although I understood little of the performance, it was still cool to see. It was different. We went to the Lingering Garden and indeed we lingered. We went on a boat ride down the canal next to our hostel which was really pretty at night with all the lanterns lit up alongside the buildings. Erin and I shot our first rifles at balloons. I discovered I have a talent for shooting things. Who knew?