Weekend recap

Saturday
Vikey woke me up at 8:30 am to remind me about today’s radio broadcast. I woke up a couple times, at 4 am due to Richard’s loud talking and 9:30 to get ready. I heard lots of people talking in the hallway and then it got quiet so I thought people had left. Nope, at 10:30 am when I went downstairs, the hallway was filled with people, many of whom were wearing suits. Obviously, I had no idea what was going on. There were maybe 100-200 people in my hall just standing and blocking the way out.

I went to a housewarming with Rich, Hugh, Josh and Jenna. I met a lot of new people including Mike and Cindy who grew up in Des Moines. It’s bizarre how many people have ties to Des Moines. They’ve lived in China for 17 years now.

Sunday
I met up with Caroline to go Christmas shopping near the train station. At lunch, we were stared at by a Chinese beggar for the entirety of our lunch, maybe a good 30-45 minutes. After lunch, he started to follow us and so Caroline and I split up with Sharon and Wendy (our Chinese acquaintances) to distract him. It worked and we walked away quickly.

Jenna met me later for dinner and we watched a Korean movie and part of the Simpsons Movie. We also got delicious lamb sticks.

Oh China

A few days ago I was warning Jenna to avoid riding her bike in or near any puddles at my campus. “Why?” she asks.
“Oh because there’s sewage spilled everywhere.”
“And how did that happen?”
“Oh well they couldn’t fit it in the truck, so they spewed it on the ground.” This sounded very logical when I said it. Then I realized how absurd my life really is.

A few nights ago, I went to go get lamb skewers with Jenna at the corner across from my school.
Jenna- “Man, I will never be able to out hard-core the Chinese.”
Me – “Yeah” We watched for a few minutes as the couple set up their corner stand and start their fires for the barbeque pit.
Jenna- “He just walked through the fire.” Exactly.

Other absurd things that now seem normal:
-couches and branches in the middle of the street covering manholes where construction is happening (who’s really going to be stupid and run over a couch, right?)
-cars in the wrong lane…and on the sidewalk…and wherever there is enough space
-walking calmly into said traffic and expecting not to be hit
-foreigners drink free at certain clubs
-everybody is your friend…Hallo!
-Communist party members closing buildings instead of security closing buildings

Things I will miss when leaving China:
-eating family style and the food
-barbeque!!!! (lamb sticks and mantou steamed bread are particular favorites of mine)
-how everyone is always outside doing something
-only working 12-15 hours a week
-bargaining (or arguing in some cases)
-there are no drive thrus in Shijiazhuang!!!
-not understanding what’s going on and claiming ignorance when stuff happens
-working on my Chinese with cab drivers (see above)
-naps!! People will just conk out wherever they are after lunch, for example, at a counter manning a shop or under/on a statue or on a streetcart. It’s fantastic and I don’t know why Americans don’t have scheduled naps
-milk tea with boba

Bob

I have a new roommate, I discovered him yesterday after my shower. I named him Bob. You can’t tell from the picture but he’s tiny, about as long as my middle finger. It was funny because I had just been thinking about how nice the apartment is because I don’t have an infestation of cockroaches or lizards or snakes and then I open my bathroom door and he’s just chillin on the floor near my rug. One would think it would be too cold for lizards to still be around, but no. I still consider myself lucky because so far, he’s the only one I’ve found. And he’s not a snake or a cockroach. I had a harrowing experience trying to kill a mighty cockroach when I first arrived. I also heard that Josh had found a lizard in one of his shoes which would have scarred me for life if that happened to me.

I went to Mazzo cause Rich was making his second debut as DJ there. All the Shizzy folks were there so I went even though I had to teach this morning at 8 am. When I came back from the club, I was greeted by Bob again and this time I was able to shoo him out of my apartment. Now whether he will return to surprise me is another story.

Mystery fruit and politics

I ate part of a gigantic unidentifiable fruit on Tuesday. It was bigger than a coconut and heavy and green. It reminded me of jackfruit. It looked like a pear on steroids. My neighbor/student Lee Jung In brought it over and we attacked it with my puny paring knife. Then he ripped it apart because my knife just wasn’t cutting it. It tasted like a grapefruit. It’s called a Yowsa in Chinese. Not that I know what that is in English. I love the fruit here. I wish we had more of it in the States.

Now for today’s topic: American politics

Oh lord, if you want to see fear, you should have just seen me when I was talking about politics in my 8 am sophomore class today. All of the students became very serious and quiet and no one dared ask a question, until I changed the subject and talked about American society and the TV shows they watch here. One of my students wouldn’t leave me alone until I talked about it in class, so now it’s done and she can’t pester me anymore. Let’s just say that the first hour (or the hour that shall not be named) was intense. The second hour was light hearted and everyone started talking again because we did fun activities and I finally got them to speak mostly in English because I had a “trophy” for the person who spoke the least amount of English and I made them speak at the end of class. I told them they could pass it on to whoever was speaking in Chinese, so it traveled a bit.

Bathroom from hell

On a different note…so far, since I have been living in my apartment, these are the things that have malfunctioned in my bathroom from hell.

When I first got here (two months ago):
-shower drain clogged with several months of pollution and water
-leaky sink in bathroom from hell
-slow, leaky toilet in bathroom from hell
-leaky water heater in bathroom from hell
-doorknob fell off from the inside of the bathroom from hell

In short, everything. Well, no that's not true. The lights work.

So I told the not-so-handyman about these problems and he saw the actual leak in the sink so he fixed that. And nothing else. He did not seem to understand the problems with the toilet and water heater for my shower. The drain did not bother me as much and the doorknob I can jimmy it back onto the door, if I really feel like using it.

So in the past week, these are the things that have broken:
-my fucking toilet (as a result of 5-6 people coming over and drinking lots of beer)
-my fucking water heater for my fucking shower (I don’t like cold showers!)

In conclusion, I hate my bathroom.

The haunted house from hell

We helped with the haunted house around 5:30 and it lasted about 15-20 minutes before a glass door was shattered by the crush of students trying to get into the haunted house. I think there were maybe 200-400 students. It looked like 1000 students from inside the place. It was chaos.

It was fun but then it quickly got out of hand. The students started getting rowdy. Lindsey had a wire around her neck and a pot on her head to look like she was being electrocuted and students were pulling the wire essentially strangling her. Students jumped on Emily’s back and a few students kept threatening me with a lighter. This was among fighting off the students who were trying to take off our masks and costumes. These are middle school students who range in age from 12-18. I felt bad for my Chinese sophomores, Becky and Sunny because they felt guilty for what happened and it was not their fault at all, the kids were just not under control at all. They were not listening to anybody. There were supposed to be 2 times that students could come at 5:30 and at 8:30 but unfortunately, the haunted house was shut down after the first 15-20 minutes. I’m a bit worried about what will happen to the 42 girls.

The Chinese teachers were not happy with what happened. Luckily, nobody was injured with the broken glass. We did see some students limping away because no one seemed to understand the idea that you were supposed to crawl through the tunnel, not just lie down at the entrance and wait for people to pile on top of you. There were many a lost hat and many a lost set of keys.

I guess we should have seen some of this coming because there are no lines in China and people always push in crowds, so why would we have thought any differently about this crowd?

Chengde! Yay

We went to the Summer Mountain Resort in Chengde this past weekend. The highlights of this trip were the dragon boat ride of death, me disappearing on the bumper cars and Michelle shooting Jenna in the ass.

So we saw a carnival inside the resort and decided that the dragon boat would be fun to ride. Jeremy and CJ were on both sides of me and as soon as the ride starts Jeremy says, “What if this ride goes upside down?” Immediately, fear consumes our faces. The ride screeches each time it goes up, and it freaked us out each time. Luckily, there’s tape of it. It was the most terrifying thing ever because it kept going higher and higher and we were hoping that it wouldn’t fall off the structure and plummet us to our early deaths. So that was unforgettable moment number 1.

So we decided to do bumper cars after that because it wasn’t tempting death, so I thought. I was bumped by CJ and Jeremy and flew off my seat. I started laughing uncontrollably so I couldn’t get up back onto my seat and for a few minutes looked like I had disappeared from my car. It was great.

Moment 3 came when Jenna, CJ and Michelle decided to do a carnival game where you shoot pellets at balloons. So Michelle’s first shot was in the air and then she managed to shoot Jenna. “What the hell?!” was Jenna’s response. No prizes were won for that.

Sometime during the day, I think it was Jeremy who said “She was mother fuckin Teresa. She knew God was on her side.” We were discussing whether Mother Teresa was a saint yet or not.

We also witnessed the first snow for us. It was just an inch or so.

Chengde is the place to be, I've decided.