"Here, you are a crane amongst chickens."

Ready to run, not really....

2007-04-25T06:11:00.000-07:00

So here is the uniform that was given to me by the incredible Mr. Fish. He is my liaison here at the school and never seems to surprise me when he shows up at my door at 7am with an English grammar question, or tells me that there are a group of police officers that want to take me to lunch, or when I asked to fill the gapping whole that is my living room window he simply said " maybe in a month, maybe."

He truly is a great guy, who is sort of reminiscent of a Chinese monopoly man. So I recently told "Fish" that I would be running the Great Wall Marathon in Beijing. He was thrilled and actually didn't believe me for a good week or so. Lately whenever I see Fish he likes to smile and then dash past me and yell "first one to the top of the stairs is the winner," as he puffs on his 18th cigarette of the day. Yeah it's real funny after the tenth time when you are lugging around poster boards of Old McDonald's farm. So today I was on the bus headed into town and Fish called me on my cell phone. He told me he had something to give me and that i should come to his office as soon as possible.

He was very excited to present me with my very own Wulingyuan #1 Middle School track suit that I can wear on race day atop the Great Wall. This is what the students wear almost everyday so I plan to just come to class wearing it some time and see how much they freak out. I think it's pretty spiffy, now I'm really ready to roll.

Spainaird At The Door

2007-04-23T06:03:00.000-07:00

Today, while I was mid "salute the sun" during my yoga video in the living room, I heard a knock at the door. I was surprised because the knock by no means was a China knock, which usually consists of a harsh banging, an attempt to open the very locked door and repeated yelling all within a matter of seconds. No, this was a faint and perhaps even foreign knock. I opened the door and a woman about mid-thirty was standing there with one of the senior English teachers at her side. She had a mid sized back pack on and was drenched from the rain.

She came in after telling the teacher thank you for taking her from the main gate of the school to my apartment and proceeded to put her stuff on the floor. Now you can imagine my surprise at this point, as I have never known a western foreigner to come to Wulingyuan the entire 8 months that I have been here. She explained that she was walking around town and someone came up to her and with a brief exchange of words gave her my phone number. I later managed to figure out that this random Chinese solicitor was in fact my friend Mr. Zhong, who naturally thought he should send this wandering European looking soul my way, but still at the time struck me as all very odd. So this lone traveler landed on my door step and was somply looking for some advice and a dry place to put down her pack on this rainy evening.

She explained that her name is Kristina, she's Spanish and she has managed to hitch hike from Spain to Hunan China. She started in Spain, traveling to Russia, Mongolia, northern China, Shanghai and then cut across to Hunan. She managed to go this whole distance without paying for a single train or plane ticket and only a handful of bus tickets. Her goal is to hitch hike from Spain to India. She was very friendly, a little loopy but had lots to share with me about her travels, including an impressive dvd of pictures. Her pictures from her Mongolian winter were incredible! She hitch hiked through the Gobi desert alone in the middle of winter! She stayed in yurt houses with local Mongolian families and lived off of rice, yak meat and grain alcohol for nearly a month.

She said that her travels only became really excited when she entered into China. She claims that the way she gets around hitch hiking in China is to stand on the pay toll islands and wait for people to stop and drill her with a barrage of questions. She has been picked up by the police several times in China and taken to police stations where she has to claim that she actually wants to hitch hike and that she doesn't need to be driven to the nearest big city. I can see this being a bit of a common problem for the average white faced foreigner as Hunan is not exactly the Disneyland or Golden Gate bridge of China. It's more like the Arkansas of China with some counties just south of me that are so underdeveloped that foreigners aren't allowed step foot in within the county lines. If you happen to find yourself in such counties you can be picked up by the local police and put on the next train bound for the capital city of Changsha. Additionally, Kristin doesn't speak any Chinese so I can't really imagine how any of these conversations and explanations happen. I have a hard enough time flagging down mini vans with door missing and trying to convince them that I actually do know where I'm going and that I intentionally want to go to some random town in the next county over.

The Chinese bumpkins who she hitches these rides from must think she has absolutely lost it, as the Chinese refuse to see why western travelers voluntarily like to "rough it," ala lonely planet style. People even have a hard time watching me take off for the weekend with my backpack on or even head out to the fields and go running for an hour or so. For people who have spent their lives doing back breaking labor and riding on the hard bed of a truck to and from work, they can't imagine why a person from a developed country would willingly submit themselves to this "real life" experience.

So Kristin asked to leave her things in my apartment and headed out of the school with only a raincoat on and a few yuan in her pocket. She refused to stay in my apartment as she knew that i wasn't expecting her and really didn't want to impose. I have no idea where she is planning to stay but I guess I will hear more about her travels tomorrow when she comes to pick up her things. I thought I was living a random China life but she seems to take the notion of unpredictable and boundless adventure to another level.

LEAVE ME ALONE CHINA!!!!

2007-04-16T05:37:00.000-07:00

There are days when I can handle China just fine and then there are the days when all the little things add up and just make me want to put a hole through my cardboard excuse for a bathroom window. Here are a list of the annoyances as they happened today. You can be the judge are these things extremely annoying and would drive any sane person batty, or did i just wake up on the wrong side of a my hard mattress-less China bed?

1. Construction starts at 6:45am which consisted of loud banging and shouting/ hawking worker bumpkins creating enough noise to force me out of my bedroom.
2. The internet doesn't work, again. (I know i should be grateful to have it here since most people don't, but still it's nice to wake up to an email from a friend or family member especially when you can't sleep at 6:45am.)
3. The mound of laundry I have to get through just so I can have clean socks has to be washed item by item in my bathroom sink.
4. I hurt my hip running and have been icing it everyday but since ice packs don't exist in China I have been resorting to putting Beer cans in my shorts.
5. I can't plug in the refrigerator unless all other appliances are turned off due to a lack of electrical outlets so I have to wait 3 hours to freeze my beer can ice packs so I can ice my sore hip.
6. I dropped a beer can and it burst all over the kitchen and myself.
7. I went to the post office to mail my entry form for the Great Wall marathon and the woman at the counter assumed without asking that I wanted an envelope for mail being sent to foreign countries. When I returned the envelope with Beijing written on it she yelled at me and told me that I did it all wrong and made a huge scene so that the entire post office could see that I was a total idiot for writing on the wrong envelope. She then charged me for a new envelope after overcharging me for the fancy flowered foreign envelopes.
8. I went to the atm machine and two dirty little boys stood at my feet asking me what my pin number was and when i told them to go away they tried to snatch my receipt when it came out of slot. I grabbed it and stormed out of the bank as everyone around laughed.
9. As I got some corn to eat from a vendor on the street I looked next to me on the sidewalk and woman was squatting and holding her pantsless daughter between her legs helping her make a poop on the sidewalk. I really wanted to enjoy that corn too.
10. Throughout this whole venture into town I was assaulted with the normal "hellos" which I should mention aren't "hi, nice to see you" hellos they are drive by assault "HA-LOW!!!"'s that are always followed by laughing and pointing amongst a group of friends.
11. Went to the grocery store and a seemingly nice worker grabbed me by the hand and in the local language started shooting questions at me, and all I could make of it was, "what do you think, ok???" So she dragged me to the back and tried to force a huge partially rotten watermelon into my hands and when I told her I didn't want it she was like, "gosh why not, what's your problem I'm even giving it to you for 3 kuai." I told her I didn't feel like being fooled into buying her day old fruit so she wouldn't get in trouble by her boss.
12. Getting cut 3 times in line at the check out by men smoking inside the grocery store who just shove me aside and place their food on the counter. AND THE CLERKS WHO DO NOTHING ABOUT IT!!!!!!
13. Thinking I was nearly going to die on the van ride home because the driver liked to play chicken on the narrow roads with oncoming dump trucks, three wheeled carts, buses, cows, motorcycles and tractors, all without using his headlights!!!!

Ok so that's about it you can be the judge, complainer or no??? You think I would be used to all this by now......

All that junk!

2007-04-11T01:03:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting on the grass outside my apartment reading my book and relishing in the fact that I don't have class and have five hours until I have to be anywhere. Spring in Wulingyuan on its good days can be spectacular- flowers, a running river, kids playing outside and eating pineapple. I'm leaning against a tree and smiling across the lawn to my neighbor who is an old woman who likes to spend her warm afternoons outside bundled up in a padded jacket, long dark polyester pants, and little black shoes sitting on small wooden chair with her hands clasped in her lap. For myself, a moment of reflection, writing about the quaint nature of this place while running my toes through the grass.
Mid sentence and mid thought that was probably orbiting around the ideas of culture, expression, communication I'm stopped by the abrupt blast and following crackle of a dated radio. The song that continues to play from the tiny tape player sitting at the side of the old woman comes to me from a far away memory of sweaty frat parties and general debauchery. "My Hump" is the song of choice for this woman taking her afternoon rest in the sun of the Chinese countryside. "What ya gonna do with all that junk, all that junk up in that trunk?" "My hump my hump mu lovely lady hump." My own mother would have a hard time identifying these words and phrases as her native tongue. The beauty of the whole expose was watching this woman just lean against the back of her chair close her eyes and let the lyrics of "My hump," fill the air.
Who knows who told her this was a song worth listening to or if anyone informed her that the topic of the song happened to be about the pride a woman has for her curvy figure and because she is so abnoxiously proud of it she chooses to refer to it as her "junk." These are the moments that I really love China when you realize that so many things are lost in translation and the intersection of culture is nothing short of utterly hilarious and ridiculous.

Monkeying around!

2007-04-09T20:07:00.000-07:00

A little less than half an hour into our hike up Tianzi mountain which happens to be one of the beautiful scenic areas in my extended backyard, I came upon something a little too wild and rare to make me just continue on. I stopped with a sudden "oh my god" and made Rick stand perfectly still fearing that his towering stature might jolt the little creature into a spring board attack. I was imagining armies of monkeys swinging down from the trees and popping out from the hillside to defend their territory from these odd looking creatures.

The little monkey just stared at us and Rick was able to get some great photos and videos while I had a little moment of panic that I shared with a fellow monkey friend who decided to follow me down the path and take a monkey squat at my feet. We continued on and to our surprise on our way back down we came across what seemed to be a national convention of monkeys. I was nervous at this point and got a little squeaky trying to express to Rick that we really needed to get out of here quickly and quietly, as they really had us beat in shear numbers. At this point I had lost him because Rick was like a little kid at the zoo who stands in front of the don't fee the animals sign and still manages to find that piece of popcorn in his pocket to throw to the monkeys. So he bent down to have a national geographic moment with the monkeys as I proceeded on down the path trying not to make eye contact with the barrage of little Buddhas holding court.

Suddenly I hear a screeching and hissing sound come from behind and turn around to see a 6'2'' man running down the hill with camera in hand trying to escape a pack of ten or more raging monkeys. Teeth were barred, they were ready to go down with a scrappy fight and tackle the intruding giant hairless, poll like monkey who simply got to close to a precious baby and mother. Rick's risk taking, adventurer photography actually did pay off and we now have a great picture of momma and baby monkey to prove it. However, in the future I would like to proceed with relaxing hikes in nature without flashing images of rabbies shots and helicopter rescues to Hong Kong hospitals due to severe monkey afflictions.

A Dose of China Reality......Yet Again.

2007-04-08T17:40:00.000-07:00

I will let this letter that I received under my door at 10:30pm last night basically speak for itself. The context being that student Kelly slipped this letter under my door after school last night. She is trying to help a fellow classmate who unfortunately recently failed his county wide oral English exam. All students must past this basic proficiency exam if they wish to go to college and major in something pertaining to social science or humanities. Kelly is a very perceptive and generous seventeen year old and has immense drive to help others, often me included. Saturday evening she came to me again at 10:30pm after her classes were over for the day and explained her friend's situation and asked me if on Sunday I would be willing to tutor him. Oh course I was willing and the next day spent my Easter Sunday sitting under a tree outside my apartment waiting for this student to arrive. I waited for about three hours and he never showed. This is the letter of explanation that Kelly slipped under my door that she was too embarrassed to deliver in person.

Natalie,
Hello!
I'm sorry about today. Because there is something with the boy-my friend. Today he went back home to get the money which is to give to the school. Because his family is too poor that he need to make parts of money by himself. He often work for other farmers to get a few money. In order to collect more money, so he worked for others the whole afternoon. He asked someone to take a message to me to let me say sorry to you. We really feel sorry about this thing and we didn't want to waste your time on purpose. I hope you can understand us.
About my friend the boy GuoDong. I really want to help him and indirectly give some money to him, but he didn't accept. He thought that he is able to run his life well and he should try his best to complete his study. He is very great I think. I can learn many life knowledge from him!
- Kelly

Two remarks, first I have to note that the school schedule for this student's grade consist of school Monday- Saturday 6:00am- 10:30pm and Sundays 7:00am-12:00 and then resumes at 5:40pm and finishes at 10:30pm. So this student was tilling the fields in order to pay the school fee from 12:30-5:30pm on his one free Sunday afternoon.
My second remark, just pertains to the observation that the dean of the school waxes his new white Honda complete with MaoZeDong dashboard ornament every weekend, and his wife seems to enjoy a new fur lined jacket every time I see her. China?????????

No Crybabies!

2007-04-07T19:54:00.000-07:00

I don't know if it's something in the rice porridge that they feed these children, or the lack of incessant Tyco toy stimulation, or the constant attention from a grandparent, aunt, cousin, sibling or neighbor but these Chinese babies really never cry. They always seems so passifyed like little opium doused Buddhas, that make their way through the day on motorbikes, crowded buses, and congested trains.

One thing I have noticed though, when the children are of an immobile age they are rarely put down in contraptions such as strollers, car seats, or play pens . Since these plastic commodities come from the world of privledged child rearing, these babies are simply held or hoisted on a back and taken out for a day with grandma. They seem to generally be pretty content watching the world go by and rarely do you see them kicking and struggling against the confines of their little carrier contraptions. They also are tossed around like they have about twelve lives, as I noticed yesterday when I was sitting in my apartment listening to the sounds of two year old YuanYuan playing outside my door. He generally runs around the entire campus looking for adventure until you hear his grandma screaming out the window for him to come back about a half an hour after he's been gone.
The other day as I was sitting at my computer and listening to YuanYuan play at the top of the stairs when I heard the inevitable thud, thud, thud, thud, thud, thud as he had toppled down the entire length of the concrete stairs. There was the silence before the storm, where I sat and cringed at my computer imagining the purple hue swelling his face and the gasping, soundless scream gaining strength. I walked outside and he began to cry and wail so I picked him up and the crying stopped after about a thirty second catharsis. His grandma came out and said, "oh, he's ok, maybe next time he will learn." That was all the time they were going to spend on that trauma, and rightfully so because YuanYuan needed to get back to important sessions of playing Automan at the top of the concrete stairwell.

Inspiration please?

2007-04-05T23:41:00.000-07:00

"Character is what we are in the dark."-Dwight L Moody

I thought this was appropriate for how I was currently trying to navigate through my battles in China.
Dark as of now would be the relentless day to day struggles of teaching and living in China. Though I also have been thinking about this dark as the situations we find ourselves in where we have to act on our strongest beliefs when they fall outside of the realm of approval, glory or incentives.

13 year olds- Cages? or Clothes Lines?

2007-04-05T23:16:00.000-07:00

Today was probably my lowest day of teaching for the following reasons. I had to teach 4 Junior 2 classes which are the 12- 13 year olds(really enough said there,) I ran out of construction paper and the closest store to sell it is an hour by bus, and by the end of the day I lost my voice and my mind.

When i was 13 and knee deep in a pre-teen tantrums my grandmother always used to tell me that I wouldn't understand how frustrating and heart breaking it is to watch your teenagers turn on you and see you as the object of their struggle until you yourself were a parent, who is just trying to do what's right. She was right on, not that teaching and parenting are exactly the same, as I get to pack up my stuff when that bell rings and head home to pop in a dvd and forget the chaos with the help of some canned laughter eventually leading me into a two hour cat nap on the couch. I do however, see now that the problem with teenagers is that they need someone to blame because their lives are so out of control so they choose the first person who tries to lay any ounce of authority on them, introduce foreign English teacher Natalie. Not only am I trying to lay down some expectations and create some tangible results in the form of oral English skills, but at the same time these students see me as an extremely easy target.

I walk into the classroom and the students are already bouncing off the walls with boiling angst from the last ten classes of the day where they have been scolded, embarrassed, hit, doubted, ridiculed and driven into the ground with monotonous Chinese drilling. So, you can expect that the moment the bell rings for my class to begin these hormone raging, over worked, under exercised teenage students are ready to have a field day with the one authority figure who in their minds can't really cause them too much trouble. I obviously refuse to hit, scold, or ridicule a student when they act out (not saying that I wouldn't love to pull a chair out from under a student every now and then.) So I am left with more subtle forms of punishments to be used when there is a behavior porblem, which often times doesn't land with the impact I had intended especially when you are dealing with a group of eighty.

Today was just like any other day except for the fact that I knew I had a lesson plan that was going to hit on all the necessary criteria that makes for a great class ie, reviewing previous chapters which boost their confidence, using colorful visuals (handmade), giving clear examples of the grammar points in the beginning of the activity so no one was lost, role play involving a student led activity, and a collaborative project where the students get to make their own class UFO! What I have come to learn that no matter how hard you try or how much effort you put into something you really can't make a hormonal, insecure and frustrated teenager cooperate if they have already decided that its just not in the cards for that day.

I hope that I am painting a clear enough picture when I describe my Junior 2 students, because they in no way resemble that really smart and quiet Chinese kid who was in your Science class in sixth grade and always worked two chapters ahead of the rest of the class. That notion of a Chinese student is one that is born out of an specific cultural experience namely rooted in the pressures of being an immigrant and trying to work within a system that doesn't make allowances for non-native speaking, first generation students. Within the Chinese school system you have the full spectrum of students just like any typical American public middle school, the only difference being they're all Chinese and they're all extremely overworked. You have your nerds, suck ups, model students and then you have your too cool for middle school, latest trend wearing, mouthing off know it alls, followed by your angry, hyperactive, possibly ADD troublemakers. So in each class you have a good mix of each of these personality types and with a class size of about eighty students you can have multiple behavior problems all exploding at the same time.

The lesson was called "What were you doing when the UFO arrived?" The main grammar point was to talk about the past tense and work on using the pattern "what were you doing_________" and "I was________." Simple enough I thought as they had just been tested on this chapter the previous week. So we reviewed the words UFO, alien and reporter and then I asked two students to volunteer to be the reporters. These student took a series of questions outside to review for ten minutes. I had the same set of questions and I told the class they had just seen a UFO and they would have to describe it to me so I could draw it on the board. As they described the UFO and the alien I drew it on the board and then we reviewed it together before i erased the picture. Then i called the reporter students to come back inside and interview the students about the UFO they saw, while the reporters had to recreate the student's UFO with a drawing on the board. The lesson went pretty well but somehow every class got off course and led me to kick some students out, stop the entire activity and in one class just pack up and leave.

In one class I started by telling the students to get out their English books and turn to the chapter we would be reviewing and one of the students cursed like a little Chinese sailor-something pertaining to my mother when I came around to his desk and asked him where his book was. Another student told me not to call on him because he just wanted to sleep. Amidst all this there was the usual comic book reading, math homework desperately being copied, tape player being listen to, fire being lit in the back and general cocauphony of sound, it was a normal day in the Junior 2 classroom.

The thing that gets me the most is when the students talk about me in Chinese and think that I don't understand. In one class I made all the boys who were late from the soccer field stand outside in a line and say "Teacher Natalie, may I come in?" before they entered. After telling them to repeat it over and over because they wouldn't look me in the eyes or tried to get by with mumbling, finally nine out of ten of them came in and took their seats. The last student was the most difficult student though also very bright and knew exactly what he was supposed to say. He stood in the doorway and mumbled 'mayicomein?" I told him to repeat and he laughed straight at me and said "mayiNOcomein," and then looked at his buddy in the front row and in Chinese said "haha-but I don't want to come in!!" So I simply slammed the door at that moment and said, OK no problem!!! I tried to continue on with the class but was rudely distracted by a student who decided to hawk the biggest loggie so the whole class could hear not once but three times right onto the classroom floor. I then asked him to stand up and answer a question pertaining to the lesson and her merely shrugged his shoulders wound up again and hawk a big one right on the floor in front of me. "Out!!" he was out of there and went to join his buddies in the hall.

I then told the students (in Chinese so that I could be understood by everyone) that I felt that they didn't respect me or my class and that I could go to any other school in the county that wanted a foreign teacher. I told them that I really wanted to teach them English and that I left my family and came all the way from America to teach them and that I didn't feel like wasting my time if they didn't want to learn. Yet again one of the smart-ass students in the front row turned to his friend next to him and in Chinese said "Oh, do you miss your Mommy??" I turned to him and said "yes, I do, now OUT of the classroom!!!" So the class proceeded from there, as I had to take a deep breadth turn towards the black board and swallow the lump in my throat that was gaining strength and about ready to make me lose it in front my pre-teen army.

The hardest part about teaching this age group is that amongst all the trouble makers and kids who are constantly trying to find something to fight against or a way to prove themselves are the students who go unnoticed because they are getting by with good behavior. Most of the girls in my classes are fairly well behaved and are at least respectful to me even if they don't have the slightest idea of what's going on in English class. These girls though too often have to take the back seat to the negative attention that is given to the boys. I try to focus on the good that is accomplished in my classes whenever a students is brave enough to answer a question or volunteer but it gets tiring when you feel like the nagging considerably outweighs the encouraging.

I haven't lost faith in my ability to be a good teacher as I still teach seven classes of Junior 1(11 year olds), five classes of Senior 1(16 year olds) and one class of Senior 2 (17 year olds,) which are for the most part gratifying, fun, and effective. In other classes I have been able to teach grammar, songs, games, conduct interviews, write class poems, put on skits, play jokes all while using English and helping the students to build confidence in their speaking skills. I have my rough days with some of these classes too but at the end of the day I don't feel like the Wicked Witch of the West coming to enact punishments, shush until i'm blue in face and be on the other end of a chaotic 80 vs. 1 tug of war.

Government worker's English training class!

2007-03-24T19:17:00.000-07:00

Here is our first class, with the banner hanging across the front wall that they asked me to translate so that while everyone was laboring over A is for Apple, they could be reminded how important they really are. The banner reads "Wulingyuan worker's division English training class." There is nothing simple about Chinese and their official titles for everything. The sign couldn't have just read, "Welcome to English class!"

So the class somehow grew from the initial 20 members that they told me had signed up to a palm sweating 125 that had managed to make it on to the list the day before the first class.
Another thing that they kindly landed in my lap at the eleventh hour was the fact that after the Mayor of the town made a speech about the importance of learning English for the inevitable economic take over of the world by China, I had two full hours of materials to prepare for my 125 pupils.

The class went fine actually, and after the first twenty minutes I realized that it wasn't that all different from teaching my Senior 1 students. The women giggled a lot even though most of the time they were the one's following closely, while the men either bellowed out their English trying for their "HELLO, MY NAME IS OFFICER DU" to be heard from the 23rd row, or where totally lost and opted to chew beetlnut tabbacco and text on their cell phones.

By the end we had accomplished a fair amount of beginner material and I was totally exhausted from the two hour on my feet class that had just proceeded my five hours of middle school classes. The best part of the evening came when I was saying my farewells and thanking them for being such a good class when a younger girl raised her hand. She asked me "Ms. Natalie, next class can you teach us an American pop song? Everyone wants to learn an American love song that is very famous in your country like 'My Heart Will Go On." Everyone perked up at the mention of the American hallmark and in unison cheered and clapped in approval. Well, that makes my job easy, next's lesson is counting, greetings and "My Heart Will Go On," for 125 of China's bravest and boldest commi government leaders.

The birthday collection......

2007-03-22T01:52:00.000-07:00

So my apartment is beginning to pile up with all kinds of birthday goodies. So far I have received tons of cards, an entire cake the size of a China bus steering wheel from the city government office, a box of imported tea from a police officer, a side of smoked pork from my neighbor, an orange sport coat from a junior 3 student, a music box from another junior three student and a knife. Well actually the knife was more of a confiscated gift but i thought I would include it because it is currently sitting in my gift collection pile. The other day I had to confiscate a knife from a student who during break pulled it out of his desk, tucked it into his pocket and mad a mad dash out of the classroom to jump on the back of another student. Need less to say, the student was freaked out when I grabbed him by the hood of his sweatshirt and turned him around and reamed him out in front of his classmates. As of now the knife incident is a little secret between class 123 and me but I plan to take this issue up with a head teacher and hope someone will care. Violence in schools is a huge problem in China as teachers hit students, parents hit students, students hit each other so there is no distinction between play fighting and actually harming one another. I mean who am I to really speak on the issue of violence in schools considering I come from a country where we don't hit students but yet we account for the most cases of school shootings and student rage.

Hunan Incident: You decide......

2007-03-14T08:15:00.000-07:00

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-03/14/content_827144.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-China-Village-Protest.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/03/12/china.riots.ap/index.html

Could My China Life Get Any Stranger??

2007-03-14T06:03:00.000-07:00

So I just finished having a meeting with one of the secretaries of Wulingyuan. I had previously agreed to teach one English class a week to the government leaders of Wulingyuan, since every fifty year old countryside man really needs to use English in his everyday life. So I asked the secretary exactly how many students would be in this class tomorrow evening. She hesistated for a good while and then finally told me that the sign up list was around 120 people. Not just 120 people but 120 commi government leaders who would be attending my class tomorrow evening. Then she proceeded to inform me that there would also be a news crew present that would tape the whole thing and show it on the local TV channel.

So I will either lesson plan tonight, stare at the wall, watch countless episodes of Scrubs, eat peanuts or all of the above and just hope that i can make it through to see my 23rd birthday (which is this Saturday.)

When Roughing It Is No Longer a "Cool" Thing To Do....

2007-03-14T00:17:00.000-07:00

"Excuse me, do you have any hard sleeper tickets going to Changsha tonight?"
"No tickets!"
"Um, no tickets at all? Soft seat?"
"No tickets!"
"hard seat? How about ZhuZhou? We can go to ZhuZhou."
"No tickets, tomorrow night 11:53 next train, 100 kuai a ticket, standing room only."
"Ok, we will take three of those." shit. This was the beginning of the longest and most stimulating travel experiences of my life.

Amy, Rick and I had taken the bus from the border of Vietnam to the city of Nanning, attempting to make our way back to Hunan from Vietnam without having to buy a plane ticket. The Vietnamese bus was surprisingly nice and customs were amazingly easy, minus all the bells and whistles that told you were entering back in the People's Republic of China. The Vietnam side merely had a one room building with a man to check your passport, after which you took a 2 minute walk down a small road at which point you had crossed the border. The China side however had a large mental hospital like stone structure that awkwardly stuck out of the grassy hillside with big brass letters letters welcoming you home. The very first thing awaiting you on the Chinese side of the border, before you even handed in your health form, or go through immigration was a large and fully stocked cigarette and alcohol shop. All the brands sported shiny red and gold labels and about every third person who crossed over onto the China side stopped at this shop to stock up before attempting to do anything else.

After eight hours on the bus, we arrived in Nanning, the capital of Gaunxi province. As we made our way to the train station we began to notice that it didn't look like there were any people actually getting on the trains. There were tents set up outside the run down train station and people sleeping everywhere. Children were sleep on top of their parents on benches and men squatted in huddles holding their head in their hands. We made our way into the station where the "lines" extended out from every window opening, but often in threes, four or whatever configuration would squeeze you to the front fastest. We joined what we thought to be the "foreigners line," which really had zero significance especially during peak Chinese New Year travel season. We had to put the foreigner blinders on for the moment, and forget about the hundreds of people trying to elbow and shove their way to the front all while starring at us. I got in line and prepared myself to bark and throw punches with the best of the grizzly country bumpkins who were planning to push aside someone who they figured was unarmed in the games of groveling and sneering. I managed to hold my own, left Rick and Amy and weaseled through(backpack and all) to the ticket window. I was bracing myself against the ticket counter in the fear that if I relaxed my stance I would go flying face first into the ticket lady's window with the burden of 100 Chinese men coming down on top of me. The conversation was short, conducted in a yell, and all while two other transactions were going on from either side and under my armpit. So we ended up with standing room tickets for a night train that would leave in about twenty eight hours.

We ended up in the same frustrating situtaion that 500 million Chinese people found themselves in that same week, as the entire country started work again on the same day and had essentially one way to return home, the train. So we were able to make ourselves busy in Nanning for twenty eight hours, with frequent trips to the McDonalds for a "clean" bathroom with toilet paper, failed attempts trying to waste time at the smokey internet bars, and the repeated pattern of roaming and napping.

We arrived back at the train station a good hour before our train was scheduled to leave. That didn't seem to matter much though, as we entered the waiting room and became one of the tired cranky masses of people carrying half their body weight in "luggage" in the form of buckets, sacs, baskets, crates and boxes. We stood at the very back of the waitinng room and couldn't even see across to the other side that was supposed to open up and flood onto the platform in a matter of minutes. People stood up with their tickets in hand and everyone began to push and fidget whenever one of the station workers got on their bull horn and tried to scream orders. We knew at this point that we weren't in a favorable position considering we didn't have seats and we were now standing in the back of the waiting area with hundreds of people ahead of us, a half an hour before boarding.

A woman in a station worker's uniform marched up to me and tapped me on the shoulder gesturing that we follow her to another area. At that time they were allowing families with small children, and elderly people to board but we hadn't realized that naive foreigners qualified for this upgrade as well. We had five minutes to go until the gates would be let open and the fastest most aggressive Chinese people would have a chance for an open seat. It turned out that our head-start of five minutes wasn't actually going to help three foreigners who had never experienced the brutal New Year's train race and, that it was merely a gesture made by the station workers before throwing us to the wolves.

We looked at our tickets and couldn't figure out our car number, in fact there was no car number it just merely said "jia yi." Our tickets were assigned for a car that didn't even have a number but was labeled the "add one" car, that had been attatched as the spill over car due to the enormous number of passengers. We ran around trying to figure out where in the order of 1-16 our "jia yi" car had been added onto the rest of the train. I finally found it but then realized that in all the running and frantic screaming with conductors we had lost Rick. Amy and I decided that I would get onto the train and try to fight for some amount of space, while she went to go retrieve Rick.

I made my way onto the car and the ripe smell of over heated bodies was suddenly right in my face. The temperature was a good twenty degrees warmer in the car than it was outside, the windows were completely fogged and people all around me were pushed up against one another, dripping. The floors were sticky and already covered with spit, as people were getting out their frustrations and marking their territory. At this point I had a ticket that merely said "wu zuo" or no seat, so I wasn't really heading in any particular direction, but just being pushed towards the center of the car. There were people already breaking out into screaming matches,oversized sacs being passed overhead, people climbing over seats, and luggage falling from racks onto those sitting, squatting, and standing below. I was trying to figure out where to go or if I even had a choice in the matter when I got pushed out of the aisle by a man attempting to run through the car with a bucket held up over his head screaming "boiling water." Turns out the bucket was merely filled newspapers, fruit and cigarettes. You can come to guarantee that for every person traveling on a train in China, they carry with them about five days supply of food, water, instant noodles, cigarettes and other junk that they couldn't possibly consume in the given amount of time. I tried to resume my position in the aisle as a man stood on the seat next to me, trying to open his luggage that was filled entirely with fruit, because I'm sure it's impossible to buy apples and pears in the town that he's heading to.

Since we were the first stop on the line starting in Nanning and ending up in Shanghai, not all the reserved seats were taken but this didn't mean that there weren't already masses of people with standing tickets trying to fight for those seats until they were occupied a few stops later. There wasn't anyone checking tickets as that would have been a mess too large for any train personel, not to mention a huge communication problem. This train was going clear across China from the border of Vietnam to the far east coast of Shanghai and one of the first things that I noticed when i stepped on the train was that no one spoke the same Chinese. People were now left up to their own devices to try and figure out how to lie, push, fight, or guilt their fellow passengers into getting a space to rest on the train.

I watched as peasants squatted on the seats trying to catch their breath and stake claim on one of the seats for their family of four. I thought about doing the same but there were absolutely no seats available in the entire car, and at this point the standing room was closing in on me too. I was shoved a little further forward and saw a man pretending to be asleep on the window, and sitting next to him was a large plastic sac taking up the entire seat. I ask him "you ren ma?" wondering does this seat have a person? He just grunted and in one motion shoved his sac on the floor and said "mei you," no people. The woman across from us who I was now rubbing knees with thought this was pretty amusing since the man was certain that his trick of sleeping on the window with a big sac next to him would really save him from being smothered by another desperate passenger. The man continued to sigh and squirm, trying to demonstrate his discontent with the new situation, and finally turned to me and exclaimed "this seat is actually my friends, this is not yours and your lucky I am letting you sit here, but I will sell it to you." I laughed and just ignored him playing the useful foreigner confusion card, it worked and he just mumbled something to himself and continued to try and sleep against the window.

The train was starting to pull away from the station and I had managed to grab one seat for the three of us and Rick and Amy were still no where to be found. The loudspeaker came on and they started to rattle off the list of stops and their estimated times of arrival. There was no way that I was going to be able to hear what time we got in to Zhuzhou but I was pretty certain it was about twelve hours from now. The lady across from me was a large woman who wouldn't stop squirming and sighing and I think she was particularly annoyed by the fact that my knees were now in her lap, considering I had a standing room ticket. I was trying to be polite and make the experience a little tense than it currently was so I asked her where she was getting off. "Zhuzhou," she growled back, "Really, me too" I said. "How long is it until we arrive in Zhuzhou, twelve, thirteen hours?" "Twenty four hours." She replied with the tiniest glimpse of a grin on her face. She knew that I had no idea what I had just gotten myself into.

Nearly an hour had passed and Rick and Amy still hadn't made their way to the "jia yi" car. I was dreading having to tell them the news that we wouldn't arrive until nearly midnight the next day. I was still sweating and didn't even make an effort to try and entertain myself with a book or music, because the idea of moving and disrupting the human jigsaw puzzle that surrounded me keep me sitting still and staring straight ahead. Finally, after an hour of waiting, I saw Rick at the back of the car with his arms overhead trying to swim through the mass of people all standing as tall as his armpit and filling up every inch of the door way and aisle. I stood on my seat and called out to him "Hey, over here" and was then able to get a good look and see that Amy was trailing right behind using Rick as the massive foreign aisle parter. Not only did I have the whole car's attention by jumping on my seat and yelling jibber jabber, but as Rick and Amy made their way down the aisle they were the victims of every scoff, cuss word, shove and patronizing stare.

"This is all I was able to get.....sorry," was the first thing that came out of my mouth when they looked around and realized that I had one seat to share amongst the three of us with people sleeping at our feet and sitting on top of the seat back. There was nothing we could do and luckily they were still under the impression that our trip was a mere twelve hours and not twenty four. We let the chaos we had just caused settle for a bit and tried to make friendly gestures to the people around us who's space we were now invading, including the cranky woman whom I was knocking knees with, the man next to me pretending to sleep, and the various people squatting in the aisle with their head in their hands. I knew at this point I had to tell them what we were in for, "the train ride to Zhuzhou is twenty four hours.....of this."

We all agreed that it was time to admit that sometimes roughing it is just not cool anymore and that if there was something we could do to upgrade our situation, we would do it. At this point Amy and I were sharing ten inches of seat with our backpacks in between our knees while Rick stood and luckily was able to brace himself with the overhead luggage rack, since his feet were lodged somewhere not exactly in line with his body. Everywhere we looked there were the faces of people who were completely miserable. They had all enjoyed the yearly tradition of returning to their home villages to see their parents, siblings, grandparents, friends and in many cases their own spouses and children whom they were only able to visit during the New Years holiday. This was the price the average Chinese peasant had to pay once a year in order to merely travel home to see their loved ones. For most Chinese people, flights are too few and extremely expensive and most roads aren't built to handle charter buses traveling to every small village, so at this time of year the vast majority of Chinese people are forced to endure the conditions of unbearable and unsafe trains.

I had to stand up every hour or so to try and rearrange my legs that had been shoved in all kinds of strange directions by the people occupying the floor below me, also not to mention the guy who was sitting on the top of my seat back and managed to slide down every now and then and rest his butt on my head. Rick was still standing some four hours later and didn't seem to be fading as much as I thought he would be. Standing on top of my backpack actually seemed to be the best idea because this way you were able to elevate yourself above everyone else and actually get some oxygen. From here I got a good view of the entire car and the three hundred plus people who occupied it. There were women sleeping in the aisle with their shirts open and babies half asleep and half nursing, while other families slept three to a seat with the father first, then the mother on his lap and a young child curled up in her arms. At that point all people could do was sleep, and it seemed that even with all the lights on at 3:00am due to the threat of theft, Chinese people had an amazing ability to adapt and sleep wherever they needed to. Some children hadn't experienced this arduous experience before and slept naked in their parents arms, while they squirmed from the oppressive heat.

Every generation was represented on this train from the new born babies who were being coveted by the guard of their young parents, college students returning to school, middle aged men possibly traveling alone back to their jobs and elderly who were forced to sit on the ground. At the back of the car near the bathroom was a crowd of young men who decided that the best way to avoid the heat and gain some personal space was to take off their shirts and sit on top of the seat backs. Amy commented that it was just their own version of MTV's Spring break China 2K7. They carried on for hours smoking, laughing and playing cards much to the annoyance of everyone else on the train. Smoking was one of the most unbearable things about the train. Not only was the train unsafe in countless other ways considering you had no way to get off or get to a bathroom if ever there were an emergency but nearly every man at some point decided to light up a cigarette and pollute the 2 inches of air space each person had to themselves. We finally asked the man across the aisle from us (who was about two feet away) to not smoke, and he simply waited until we turned our backs and enjoyed his one moment of pleasure.

Three hours in, we decided to try and leave this car and ask a conductor if we could upgrade our tickets to a hard sleeper. It was known to happen in China that if you waited long enough people would get off and you could pay a disproportionate price to upgrade your ticket to a sleeper car. The hard part was finding anyone official on the train amidst the piles of people we had to crawl over. Amy and I decided that we would go and leave Rick with our bags. I led the way as my white face tends to scare most Chinese people into moving aside if they have an inch to spare. When you try to make your way from one car to another on a China train you spend most of your time either waking people up so you don't step on them or being pushed through the crowd by people swearing at you hoping they can shove you through as quickly as possible. At some points I had to turn around to Amy and tell her "I really can't move anymore, there is no where to go!" Amy's response tends to usually be "just push!!" That's what you have to end of doing and hope that these poor people who have been standing for six hours aren't hurt in any way by your elbows digging in to their stomachs, or your feet crunching their toes. The worst point in trying to get through a crowded train in China is when you have to pass through a series of mothers holding babies and you don't have the heart to push through anymore but then someone comes from behind and does it for you.

Amy and I thought that if we made it to the dinning car there was sure to be a whole group of male conductors being waited on while they laughed and enjoyed their beers and cigarettes. We had about three more cars to go and then a female train worker with a beer, peanut and cigarette cart decided to try and make her way through the aisle. This site totally amazed me it was like trying to get a a toy car out of a balloon. The woman pushing the cart filled with unnecessary items, just yelled to people to help lift up her cart over the passengers asleep on the floor. Of course she had some customers who were willing to hold up any flow of traffic and purchase cartons of cigarettes and bottles of warm beer( which are forbidden on the train anyway.)

We managed to reach the dining car which was only about five cars ahead of us, a good forty five minutes later. The dining car was completely empty except for a dozen men in pristine uniforms enjoying their late night cocktail hour in between stations. They all turned around when we entered the food car, knowing full well that passengers were not allowed to occupy this area unless it was meal time and they were willing to purchase overpriced food. They stared and carried on with the usual comments upon seeing a foreigner on a train in the middle of China "wow, foreigner, where are they going?" With desperation and a little bit of authority in my voice I proceeded to ask them if we could upgrade our tickets. Before my question was even addressed they had to gawk and carrying on about how a foreigner could speak even the slightest bit of Chinese and rattle off all the standard questions, "How do you know how to speak Chinese? Where are you from? What are you doing in China? How much do you get paid a month? Why do you except such little pay?" After the Chinese inquisition was over we got back to the original question and the answer was, "No, not until we get to Guilin, that's at 8:30am." It was now 3am and we were crushed.

So, we put our names on a list and hoped that come 8:30am they would still remember us and we would have three hard bed to crash on for the entire next day. We gathered our strength as we were promptly kicked out of the dining car and managed to endure another forty five minute crawl back to our "jia-yi" car. This time on the way back the people in the aisle weren't so thrilled about seeing us return and waking up again with a foot in their lap or an elbow to their ribs. One old man wasn't too pleased when I accidently knicked his 3 foot bong that he was crouched over and enjoying as he leaned against the bathroom door. As I made it through to our car I was bombarded by a group of men who were particularly not pleased to see me and in their dialect started yelling "Wai guo nu ren, Tai Da Le!!" This group of men were trying to inform me that "Foreign women were just too big!" I turned around and told them "xie xie," thank you, and proceeded to push them out of the way as they marinated in the notion that their frustrations were received loud and clear.

We got back to Rick and told him that we had another five hours until we could possibly upgrade our tickets. The next five hours was a delirious period of rotating between the one seat we had, sitting on the floor, standing and leaning against each other. I was able to sleep for about forty five minutes with my head on my knees and actually missed seeing the sun come up. Amy and I got the most sleep, as we were small enough to try and share the seat or take up a little bit of space on the floor. Rick however, stood for nearly eight hours- he wasn't so sane by the time 8am rolled around and we were ready to venture to the front of the train to hopefully upgrade our tickets.

We finally did make it to the sleeper car with our new tickets in hand and were able to sleep off the entire next day. The sad thing was having to witness the masses of people who were left to sit on the floor for yet another twelve plus hours because they didn't have the money or authority to try and get a better ticket. The difference between the standing room car and the sleeper cars was like going from a third world country to an amtrack train on the New England line. The sleeper car was filled with families who were lounging on their beds with magazines and take out trays of freshly cooked food from the dining cars. There were children playing with hand held video games and men conducting business on their cellphones and blackberries. We all knew what we had seen in the hours past was wrong and unfair in so many ways and because we too had felt the same discomfort of the passenger's who were treated like animals it made it that much harder to take this one tiny hard bed bunk bed for granted. At the same time we were exhausted and without much hesitation passed out on our three bunks one on top of another for the remainder of the trip.

We arrived in Rick's town 14 hours later and bolted off the train, never before being so excited to see the industrial skyline of Zhuzhou city. As we made our way down the platform the station workers asked to see our tickets, just to make sure that these three foreigners we knew they had just gotten off the train in Zhuzhou, Hunan. We assured the woman that we really did want to get off in Zhuzhou and that it wasn't a mistake. As we walked away from the train I looked back to see the standing room car slowly pass by. The same people sat in the same positions, some of them alseep and some of them starring back at me. I wondered how many of them had another whole day to go until they arrived in their town. I walked away from the train and told myself I would never do that again, never over Chinese New Year. Then I thought of all those people packed into that car and wondered if I only had one chance a year to see my family maybe would I do it all over again?

Semester I: All my old posts transfered!

2007-03-11T18:24:00.000-07:00

Jan. 23rd, 2007

11:44 am - A China "BE-IN"

Last week marked the 40th anniversary of the San Francisco "Be-In." A time when people were told to "tune in, turn on and drop out." It was a revolution taking place in San Francisco that was inspiring young people with the help of Ferlinghetti, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, Phish, The Dead to "just be," take the moment seize it and enjoy the good things in life- freedom, love, sharing, peace yadahyadah. So after reading an article in the San Francisco Chronicle on this special holiday, i emailed my mom to ask her about what she remembered of this event. She was about 16 at the time and claims to have joined in on the fun that took place at Golden Gate Park, but only buying a mere button, or patch here and there to decorate her girl's school uniform....sure. I left it at that and didn't press the issue of whether or not "button" was code from the other b word, brownie. That was besides the point, the point was that i found this whole notion of a "be-in" to be quite interesting and applicable to my life now in China.

In an age where you can "be" working in rural China, an hour from any city and living in a small apartment perched between a mountain range and river and yet still have access to online video chatting, the latest episodes of FOX's hit shows, the GAP, amazon, the stock market, virtual networking, online poker, majong, even live Chinese lessons, you have to wonder if we still do in fact know how to just "be" in our given environments. It seems that what we are being told from every angle is to "be" anywhere than where we actually are. With the help of this tiny little 5 lb computer i am able to transport myself to any other world i want, for hours on end and not even take the time to notice I am actually sitting in a UNESCO world heritage site in the in a minority village in the mountains of Hunan China. In the dead of winter with no heat having just gotten over the flu without the help of western medicine, let me tell you sometimes the idea of being somewhere else sounds pretty attractive. I have been planning for my Chinese New Year vacation now for about a month and couldn't be more excited. I am going to some warm places including Yunnan, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam. Every day i just imagine myself drinking a cold beer on the beach with a book, basking in the hot tropical sun while getting by on $2 a day. All of this does sound incredible and I can't wait but walking out of my apartment today to go find some dinner made me stop and think about what i am already starting to take for granted in my own China life and write off as ordinary on a daily basis. I realized that it has become more and more of a struggle just "being" in China and having to remind myself to notice all the different aspects of Chinese life that I came out here specifically to experience.

I took special notice on my walk to dinner today of what little things make my daily experiences here so unique. It's 7pm, 35-40 degrees and pitch black outside and normally, I cook for myself but lately i have been feeling the winter woes and like to get out to some of the little family owned restaurants down the road to have a nice evening chat and plastic dixie cup of tea. I walk through the campus courtyard with the junior and senior buildings on either side of me, all the lights on and 2,000 students in class, 4 more periods to go until they get out at 10:30. It's the middle of winter but as I walk through the courtyard I can hear the voices of about 25 teachers preaching to classes of 90 students because there are are windows missing in nearly all of the classrooms. The students have been sitting there in those 35 degree classroom for about 12 hours today, trying to keep warm with the blankets, slippers, cups of tea and hot water bottles that they keep at their desks.

I stop and have my daily chat with the gate man "WangBo." He is a nice man in his fifties maybe early 60s who I have never seen leave the little gate house once in the 6 months that i have been here. He works seven days a week and is on duty 24 hours a day, equipped with a little bed and bunson burner to cook all his food with. He ask what i will be eating tonight and laughs, namely cause i think he assumes that all foreigners keep a stock pile of hamburgers in their bathtub and couldn't possibly be happy getting by on Chinese food. So i head out of the school and onto the pitch black dirt path that drops down to the river i can hear rushing on my right. This muddy path is covered in potholes and isn't lit, only the faint lights coming from a single bulb in the houses that sit across the river on the opposite bank dimly outline the night landscape. I walk for about three minutes peering in the two houses that sit on the path. In both houses the front door is open(Chinese people are very conscious about fresh air no matter what season and keep windows and doors open) and inside people are sitting on little wooden stools huddled around a pit fire on the floor watching TV. In both cases directly above the TV is a huge red poster of Mao, confidently peering down to his fellow Hunan comrades as they watch the latest of episode of "China's Next Millionaire!"

The last lady i pass before the path ends and the main street begins runs a little fried foods shop out of her own living room. She sits on a stool with the door open facing the river as I walk by. She is wearing her signiture orange woolly hat and fingerless gloves as she works on the trays of dough balls that she will dunk into the wok deep fryer bubbling with oil that sits in between her knees. Her money making hour is around 10:30pm when all of the students get out of class and are allowed 20 minutes to find food, use the bathroom or make a phone call before they are to report back to their dorms. In the next three hours she will sit on her stool with her little dog at her feet making about 500 fried dough balls before she can turn in for the night. She always waves me over and offers me either a fried dough ball or a fried piece of some kind of meat on a stick but i have only accepted a few times as a grateful gestures as everyday I also watch her pull water up from the river in a bucket and fill her frying wok with it. I'm up for new experiences and living the local life, but my body has also seen its fair share of parasites in it's young life.

I walked to the end of the path, above and to my right was the stone bridge which crosses over the river to a small intersection of fruit stands, shops and motor bikers, and just sitting behind the bridge is the sillouette of the mountain in the dark jutting straight up from the river bank. I took a left onto a larger road that had an occasional car or motorbike driving by with it's high beams on. I stopped at the local corner store and bought my usual bag of sunflower seeds and bottled tea just so I could say 'hi' to the owners. They are parents of one of my junior 2 students and always great me with a nice series of questions, always curious about how I manage to walk around at night without a flash light. They are also usually huddled around a fire watching the TV that's mounted on the wall blaring the same glitzy game show that their neighbors were watching just moments before down the road. They asked me to sit with them by the fire, but this is also a convention of the Chinese and you never really know when to take them up on their offer and when to keep walking. I had some take out to get this evening so i told them that i had to be on my way and to enjoy their show and the rest of their evening.

The restaurant where i often get my take out is a little family run operation that is literally called "Happy Family" restaurant. The doors consist of flaps of hanging rubber that don't really help in keeping out the cold. I like this place because it's one of the only places that the area that doesn't seem to make a big deal about the foreigner coming to their restuarant. They were all sitting around a table eating seeds and smoking cigarettes when i come in. A man in purple and pink rain boots, a bright red wool hat and black sport coat asks me to sit down and offers me a cigarette and cup of tea. The three male cooks and one female waitress ask me how I am and what i feel like eating tonight. I tell them that i am getting over the flu so something with lots of vitamins and not a lot of oil. The man in the pink and purple rain boots leads me back into the kitchen and tells me to pick out what looks good. The meat hangs from hooks on the ceiling and vegetables cover an entire counter top in various baskets, and there are buckets of tofu in rows on the floor. I ask him if i can have tofu, boiled pumpkin and some kind of cabbage. He let's me pick out my exact head of cabbage that i want while he goes to the back to get more charcoaled bricks to put under the wok.

As I wait for my food with the other cooks, we watch a kung fu movie on tiny wooden chairs that look like those in a kindergarten classroom, with even my short knees up to my chin. The standard Hunan past time is to view anything while hynotically chewing on sunflower seeds then spiting the shells on the floor. The TV that we are watching looks like the one that we owned in my family when i was about eight years old with manual channel changers and large antennas coming out of the top. The waitress came out from the kitchen and handed me a plastic bag filled with food. It wasn't my take out quite yet but a bag full of interesting preserved meats. There were two sausages smoked with a tough brown texture, and three large charcoaled balls of what honestly looked like blackened cow dung. I asked her what these were and she told me that they were a new years treat of the local Tujia culture and were smoked ground meat and tofu balls. She explained how to prepare them and that they should keep for many weeks, I could imagine since they really did just looked like petrified poop.

So my actual food came and I headed out after handing over 14kuai, about $1.5usd for three dishes. I returned home, enjoyed my food with a cup of tea, some rice and a whole laundry list of things from this one outing to get down on paper before I wrote it off as just another boring night taking a walk to get takeout in Wulingyuan. So in an effort to have my own "be-in" here in China while I still can, I hope that more awareness to my own awesome experience serves me well in really appreciating what's around me. It's easy to continually want to be somewhere else as I spend some of my evenings exhausted from teaching, freezing and watching Sex and the City thinking wow, they look like they have had a hot shower, and is that the third date she has gone on this week? A real American singles life will have to wait but for now I am working on "being" in China, not easy but definitely rewarding and when i really think about it, everyday is still kinda crazy.

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Jan. 16th, 2007

09:50 am - 10 hours of black and a morning of white!

So last night at around 8pm, all the power went out. No big deal, it happens maybe every other week for some amount of time. I sat in my bed with all the essentials, 3 candles, my journal, my book, tea, sunflower seeds, and 18 layers of clothing. I normally crank up the electric blanket before i go to sleep and crawl in to my warm cave of a bed while my room starts at a lovely 35 degrees and continues to drop throughout the night. But tonight the blanket just lay under my padded 3 pairs of pants butt, lifeless and of no use to me. So outfitted with hat, 3 shirts, sweatshirt, fleece, tights, leggings, sweatpants, running socks, wool socks and gloves I attempted to remain a warm blooded human through the course of the night.

I tucked my whole head under the 5 blankets and realized that breathing was going to be an issues. So i angled my mouth out of the blankets with just enough of an opening to take in sufficient breaths of the 30 degree fresh air. It's really something to be in bed and feel your lips go numb while your whole face is pushed up against layers of fleece blankets. i think if you took a picture of this sight all you would see are blankets with a padded lump curled up in the middle of a king sized bed, with a little blue hat poking out and a small frozen mouth breathing out visible puffs of air from a tiny air hole.

So at 5:00am all the lights went on in the entire apartment, of course. So I had to get out of bed and run around swearing in a sleepy stupor and turn off all the lights. The back rooms of the apartment consist of the bathroom and what I call the "junk room" which contains old woks, broken chairs, and hedge clippers collected from previous teachers. These rooms face the river with a thin sliding glass window that separates the air from the mountains and my little corner designated for bucket baths. The sliding window doesn't actually close all the way which is really fun when you are bathing and a gust of cold air comes sweeping off the river or from the mountains and whistles through the crack in the window piercing you in all the places that are exposed to the raw elements when squatting over a bucket and trying to use every bit of hot water.

So i ran into that room and turned off the lights and did in fact curse the darkness because it made my freezer seem like a vacation to Palm Beach.

I hoped back in bead, cranked up the electric blanket and enjoyed the last few hours of sleep before the bells would begin to ring at 6:30. So I managed to sleep through until 9am which is huge for me. I waddled to the kitchen, hat askew, sweat pants sagging down to my knees exposing the array of multi colored long underwear i was sporting. I filled the kettle for coffee, placed it on the stove and took a look out the window. SNOW!!!!!! 3 inches of SNOW! It was incredible, all over the mountains, the Chinese scalloped roofs, covering the rocks poking out of the river. The women that religiously wash their clothes in the river and hold morning chatting sessions assumed their normal positions squating on snow covered rocks, with their bright pink rubber gloves on and beating their clothes with their large wooden mallets like this morning was no different form any other. I couldn't even bare to wash a dish in my sink due to the lack of hot water, let alone do a load of wash in the river for a family of 3 with high water boots on.

So today i think my lesson will be about snow, snowmen, snowwomen, snowball fights, snow angels. Got to go prepare that and also get out there with my camera before it all melts!

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Jan. 11th, 2007

07:28 pm - What makes you unique?

So last week the assignment was as such.....

"What makes you unique?"

I gave personal examples to my senior 1 class such as, I have one square earlobe, I once slept-walked up a flight of stairs and fell done the entire thing and didn't wake up, i have never had a cavity, and I walked and said my first real phrase at the same time (standing up walking across the room and telling my dad I had "new shoes.")

Here are some of the most creative responses I got from a grand total 350 students. Enjoy!

*For comical value and efforts to maintain authenticity none of these were edited.

What makes you unique?

I'm very thin, I have a very funny face, everyone who near me can't help something. I'm very smart, too, nothing can stop me.

I'm a naughty boy! I'm very cool and very lazy!

I hate dogs very much I think dogs are very ugly.

I have ten cousins in my family. And I had been skating for a whole day and didn't stop. I could take the bus or train for a very long time but never feel sick.

Though I am a girl, I like ping-pong.

I often play with myself.

I am short and thin but some people said to me "you are a person of strength."

I can watch TV for a whole day and not move to go to the bathroom.

I took part in a speech competition in 2003, but the MaiKeFeng (microphone) broken five times, my face soon turned red. So i dare not to take part in it again.

I am the first student to study at Wulingyuan #1 middle school in my village, so i am very unique.

"this year i only go home twice the latter half of the year, beacuse the school is very feudalism. I protest/"

I killed a cat when i was 5.

when i was born just moment i was be sicked by pheumonia then i was inhaled my mother's oxygen water

many student need many many many many many money and many time

In addition to having rice as much as I can when i am very hungry. I will forget to do everything that I need to do when i draw attention things that i like.

I am the first child to see Tibetan antelope in my family, they are very beautiful.

I am a miser.

I went to fish while i dropped water.

Today in PE test. I want to run faster and faster but when i run faster I down to the ground.

I ate 10 eggs and a cup of milk and 2 cakes and four hot dogs for my breakfast.

I stayed alone under the tree by the lake for five hours and five minutes and fiftyfive seconds at night.

In one year i ate western medicine and chinese medicine for 240 days in one year.

I can keep gesture.

I don't like playing computer games. But i like watching TV Because I know many students like playing computer games except me. What's more I have to say: I DON"T LIKE PLAYING COMPUTER, but it doesn't mean that i have never played!

I am very crazy and i have no father.

I am the first child to go to high school in my family.

I'm very unique because when i was a baby my father rided the horse with me to buy milk for me. And when i was a little child my family lived in Tianzi mountain, there are many monkeys and I could make friends with the monkeys.

My unique is that i don't know my unique. Maybe you know what is unique about me?

Because i was three years old the hospital was my second home, i was sick all the time.

I ate an apple and it took me 2 hours.

I am a girl but sometimes people think that i am a boy by mistake.

I swam in the river at the first day of the year.

I like to eat ice cream especially in winter.

I am unique because i don't write about it when teacher Natalie tells me to.

I got burned 2 times in one year, i am very fat and crazy.

I watched TV for 175 hours in 10 days.

I tried to wear Korean clothes. It was out of this world.

I am unique because i wrote this on toilet paper.

I like Tracy McGrady very much, in class 52 I am his best fan.

I am the first person in my garden who ever burnt her bedroom.

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Dec. 19th, 2006

08:57 pm - HEY MACARENA and HOHOHO!

So in lue of David skipping town and me having to hold down the Wulingyuan middle school fort as the lone English entertainer, I decided to plan a Christmas party. The entire student body, teachers, various members of the community, school staff and all World Teach teachers were invited. The RSVP list included roughly 600 students, 50 faculty and many of their children, 100 community members ranging from restuarant owners to fruit sellers, 8 foriegn teachers and a partridge in a pear tree. So with very very little funds we had a huge sing-along, dane-a-thon, series of skits and any other activities that only perpetuated the notion that Teacher Natalie is officially the singing dancing English monkey for Wulingyuan middle school.

The best part of the entire party had to be the fact that I was able to get a Christmas tree that was about 13ft tall delivered to the school and placed on a stand all for about 50RMB(roughly 6 dollars.) When i asked one of the teachers where i could find a tree, specifically a tree that resembled a pine he told me that he would find a farmer to "go into the mountains where the pines trees are, steal it and bring it back the next morning." That was all that needed to be said about that cause at 11am the next day a 13ft Christmas tree was being hauled through the school gates by the smallest 60 year old farmer and his wife. They seriously went in to the national park in the middle of the night in their 3 wheeled hitched moto-truck and cut down this enormous pine tree and personally carried it here. So I payed the man and told him that he and his wife should come and join the party later. To my surprise he did!

So we covered the tree in tinsle and ribbons, with kids hanging out of windows and on eachothers shoulders trying to cover every last bit of green space.

In the last hour I scrambled to gather all the sheet music(1,000 copies,) figure out how to work the school's intercome system so i could blast carrols from every inch of the cement compound, and organize the nearly 1,000 guests who began to flood in the school gates. I had taught all my students, all 1,400 of them "We wish you a Merry Christmas" and "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." That was the opening of the party and the students all seemed very excited to show off their newly learned carrols.

The World Teach teachers were the celebrities that saved the day! I don't think that Wulingyuan has seen so many foriegners in it's entire history. We performed skits, where Teacher Natalie got to be "naughty student #1" who talked in class, lit things on fire, beat other students up and then have to explain it all to Santa when he suddenly arrived on the scene. Yes, we actually had a real white-man Santa in costume and all, that really made the kids ooohhhh and ahhhhhhh.

So while running around playing naughty student #1, mc, translator, and carrol conductor I also got the idea to break out the dance moves. What a better way to share the love of the holiday season than to teach the MACARENA to 1,000 rural Chinese students and confused onlookers and try to pass it off as a western holiday tradition. Luckily I had the "Macarena" on my mp3 that was at the moment blasting "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." So i ran up to the broadcast room and turned the beat around so to speak to the head bopping sounds of "La Macarena!" The other World Teach teachers were into it and we together taught the entire assembly of kids and teachers how to Macarena in the main entry foryer of the school. So I couldn't really have receieved a better Xmas present than 1,000 awkward Chinese who normally hate to dance, participating in the longest rendition of the Macarena, all under a 13ft Wulingyuan Christmas Tree.

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Dec. 3rd, 2006

08:31 pm - Dysfunction Junction What's your Function (In my life?)

As if i didn't have enough drama this week already with my co-teacher deciding to pack up and move back to the US. Yeup, so I am holding down the fort here all on my own with the closest foreigner I know being a good 5 hours away. So this week there was a lot of shuffling around with the school's schedule, to accommodate for David's departure.

Before my last class on friday, at the end of a really long week my laison came to find me in the Junior 1 office. He stammered in waving the new schedule in my face, excited that he had found a resolution for this disasterous puzzle. I looked at the schedule and noticed that i was assigned only 11 classes. I was confused as to why I had less classes since David leaving would normally mean I would have to teach my own classes plus his. But as the new schedule showed I had a whole grade of classes taken away and none of his classes added. I asked my laison, and in a hurried response, adverting his eyes he told me that I need more free time in my schedule because I would be holding a class in town for the local police and government officials. My reaction, "no actually I won't." I was surprised but not really that surprised that they would try to pull this.

My laison look a little frantic with my response and told me that I really had to do this because the school was given handouts from the local police if they maintained a good relationship. My response, was that i didn't come to China to teach local police, especially at the expense of young students who are under great pressure to learn English for their national standardized test. What bothered me the most was that the principal who was aware of this arrangement was not bothered by the fact that 450 of his students would be missing out on having an oral English class so that a bunch of fat, chain smoking, corrupt police officers could occupy the time of the one foreign teacher in town. Also what bothered me was the fact that the police also new what they were doing and how they were taking away my services form a whole grade level of students and still tried lure me with the prospect of a relatively high salary, not to be patronizing but relative being the key word (a whopping $15 a week.)

So, the resolution is that I will teach all of my original classes, 5 of David's classes, (in total 18 classes,) and only 1 evening class for the police officers a week. The decision came down to the fact that the reality of the situation is that local officials in China are still quite corrupt and determine who the handouts in the town are allocated to. The school is only funded at the local level, so the revenue from this office is really important for the survival of the school. I have also become fully aware of how desperately this school needs such handouts from crooked officials. Everyday I witness students kneeling behind their desks because their chairs are broken, the lack of any playground, broken windows in the dead of winter, and chalkboards with pieces falling out. Whose to say that the money that the local police will slip the school under the table will actually go to fix such things or will simply land in the comfy pocket of the principal and other head teachers.

This is just another example of how in China it's very very easy to get stuck between a rock and a hard place. You want to stand up for your beliefs, especially as a freedom totting, soap box standing American but you realize that you are often just another cog in the system. Rather than cause a stink and destroy relationships in a system that uses such relationships in place of legitimate laws, I guess it's best to work within the system from the inside out. This is all within reason though, some change needs to come from total non-complience. For example i made it known to the officers and the principal that taking time away from the students during the school day to make my way to the police station to teach them was wrong, and that it was not fair to the students. Though on the other hand, I did agree to teach them for a reasonable amount of time if and when i had time outside of my school day.

So, everyone wins, no? Now what do i get out of all of this you say? I work my ass off, teach three different grades levels with now an increased number of students (around 1,400), and have to shlep myself into town in 30 degree weather to teach a bunch of commi police officers who will probably chain smoke, pick their nose and hawk loogies on the ground during my class. My hope is that I will make the classes as enjoyable for myself as possible. I plan to make the class for the police officers really really difficult, with regular exams, and public posting of their grades, Chinese education style all the way. In addition their will be weekly presentations, skits (that of course will be really really embarrassing). So if they want a high quality English class so badly even if it's at the expense of the students own opportunities, then they will get one. But maybe teacher Natalie will not give out A's in this class.

I don't mean to sound really sour about this but if there is one thing in this world that I detest, it's people who feel entitled, entitled to things that set them above anyone else. Such ideals that are supposed hold true in the wonderful system of "Chinese communism," but let's face it China is in no way communist at this point. Everything is about getting ahead, under the table handouts, cut throat competition and their is no such thing as equal opportunity. Because these officers feel that they are more entitled than my students merely because they have weight to throw around, it immediately puts a bad taste in my mouth. I try to look at this opportunity as a learning experience for me to understand the ins and outs of the local communist party in Wulingyuan. I don't really want to play the game of being associated with the commi officials but at the same time it could be a good opportunity to increase my sphere of influence to a older generation of Chinese. I don't mean to come off sounding like I am going to walk in there with the Declaration of Independence, or a copy of "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail." By influence I merely mean sharing with them the idea of cultural exchange in a growing globalized world. They grew up in a time when Red Guards were purging China of anyone and anything that could be potentially deemed "counter- revolutionary," essentially meaning anything western, capitalist, or democratic.

So tomorrow the chaos begins with a totally new schedule, but for now i am going to make hot chocolate and watch bootleg dvds while wrapped in 5 blankets, cheers!

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Nov. 25th, 2006

08:43 pm - Can the state own body parts?

Can the state own body parts? Yes, infact they can in China, they have full jurisdiction over your most essential and personal organs and parts. At least that's how it was a mere 10 years ago. Now why did i start thinking about this rather dismal and unpleasant notion?

Last Sunday I went to lunch at my friend Lucy's house who is a senior student here at the school. I tend to eat at her house on most Sundays while her mother teaches me how to cook the local Tujia minority culture's food. We can't communicate very easily because she speaks a language that is specific to her region of Hunan, and I unfortunately only can speak the standard boring version of Mandarin. Anyways, as best I can I joke with her every weekend telling her that my children will one day visit her and thank her for teaching me to cook cause they won't be fat like other American children with such dishes as steamed fish with cilantro, fried cucumbers, radish and red peppers, tofu and pumpkin greens.

So, as Lucy and I were helping her mom set the table and prepare the food, we got on the topic of her mother's large extended family. She told me that her mother has eight brother's and sisters, she being the second youngest of the group. She was saying that previously in China women had as many children as they could possible manage to pop out during children bearing age. At this time (late 1970s) most women didn't recieve education past elementary school, they were forced to marry before 22 and leave their homes to go live with their husband's family and were essentially then bound to the duties of being an obediant wife and mother. Even though this kind of life was not ideal, and brought unimaginable stress and few prospects for women to explore their own interests, occupations etc. motherhood was the one thing that women in China could claim to take full ownership of. You ask any young person in China now about their mothers and they will tell you their mother is incredibly conscientious. hardworking, and surely nagging when it comes to caring for the family.

Lucy talked about all of her cousins, aunts and uncles with a sense of excitement and pride, as the list went on and on telling of various people who were scattered all over Hunan doing with all kinds of labor jobs. She then got very quiet and began to talk about how it's different in China now, families aren't as happy. I knew what she was getting at but i didn't jump in at an inopportune moment. She asked me if people in America knew about the one child policy? I told her yes and that many people think it's very unfortunate but also maybe necessary for China since in the 20th century Chinese people suffered tremendously trying to feed such a huge population. She agreed, then asked me if i knew she had a sister. I told her that I knew she had someone that she called her "JieJie" which means older sister, but that I didn't know if this was a real sister or a cousins, as now in China they often call their cousins sisters and brothers.

Lucy went on to tell me that she infact does have a real sister who is 21. I asked her how her parents were able to have another child? She told me that at the time she was born in China, which was around 1990, there were huge campaigns in the countryside to ensure that every household was complying with the one child policy. The local governments had regional quotas they had to enforce and if they went over those quotas they would be serverely punished by the provincial governement.

Lucy explained that when her mother was pregnant with her, she lived in fear throughout her entire pregnancy that the local officials would come and abort her baby. Her parents got pregnant by accident since at the time the one child policy was merely meant to succeed on the practice of abstinence, brilliant. They didn't have acces to an ultrasound machine and thought that if the baby was born a boy the local officials might let them keep it cause there would be a greater chance of the child succeeding and contribuing more to the local economy. If the local officials deemed that a forced abortion would jeopardize the health of the mother, if she was a weak peasant and couldn't withstand the procedure, instead they would sometimes destroy a couples house, confiscate their cows, make them pay in a year's earnings of rice or flour, and afterwards forced the women to undergo sterilization.

Lucy also explained that a few months before she was born one of her uncles who was a local government leader on accident also had a second child. Her uncle was a member of the party and served as a local official who was expected to not only abide by the laws of the people but enforce them. Just before Lucy was born her uncle made it known to his entire family that he personally had to kill his own newborn child in the name of the China's one child policy, and expected that other's follow in his example. Lucy was due to be born only a few months after this incident, and subsequently her mother was terrified of what her own brother would expect her to do at the time of the birth, especially if the baby was a girl. Lucy didn't get into how it was exactly solved, but after a very private birth at home so that no one would know the sex of the baby her mother was somehow able to keep little baby Lucy. Her mother had to undergo immediate forced sterilization and give up their house and to this day are still paying fines for little baby Lucy who is now 17 years old.

Being the youngest of 3 girls never really stood out to me as a privledge, though after being in China I understand that the freedom to merely exist as the sex you were destined to be is a privledge in itself. I have been reading the book "China Wakes," which i highly recommend to anyone who is interested in 20th century Chinese history. The book is written by a couple who were reporters in Beijing for the NYT at the very beginning stages of China's economic reform period(1980-1990s.) The book talks about various social issues in each of it's chapters, and the one I happen to stumble upon in the last few nights was titled "were have all the girl babies gone?" The chapter has some interesting statistics that explain exactly the phenomenom that Lucy's family had to endure throughout the late 80s and 90s.

-In 1993 Hunan province started the most brutal attempt at mass abortion and sterilization procedures called the "early birth shock brigade." Millions of women in the countryside (like Lucy's mother)were violently forced to be sterilized or abort their babies when the authorities arrived on their doorsteps unannounced.

-For women who chose to have their second children and bare the brutal consequences, families in the Hunan countryside could potentially be fined 80% of their family income for an entire decade.

-Furthermore statistics in this NYT reporters findings showed that in 1992 of all 1st born babies that were girls born in the countryside and actually registered with local governments(which was rare) mysteriously 12% of them would go missing by the next year population reports. This rate continued throughout the early part of the 90s, with a total of 1.7 million baby girls going missing annually. There are a few things to explain this phenomenon which the book points out. 1. The parents often payed less attention to the baby since it wasn't a boy and thus it gave it less food and medical attention, possibly resulting in death before it's 1st birthday 2. The baby was sold to another family and the parents reported that it died so they could try for another in the hopes of a boy 3. The parents themselves killed the baby 4. After it was born he parents never continued to register the baby girl with the local government intending that the girl baby would never need to recieve any of the bennefits of being a citizens, ie, education, health care etc.

So, sorry this is dismal I promise to have a more upbeat journal entry next time. Though, it's really just crazy to think that all of this was going on while I was 9 and really really concerned that my ski clothes were hand-me-downs from the 80s, and yuppies mothers were going gaga over the positive effects of hypoallergenic disinfectant wipes, ergonomically sound strollers, and $5 jars of orangic easily digestible baby food. BARF! Hope this story isn't easy for you to digest cause it shouldn't be, reality for people like Lucy is not simple or easy to face. She and her family have endured more hardship than i can even try to imagine, yet I have to say, raised on absolutely nothing, she is maybe the most well adjusted, confident, and mature 17 year old I have met, ever.

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Nov. 23rd, 2006

08:19 pm - I am grateful for Hilarious CHINERS KIDS!

So the project of the day with my 6 junior two classes (about 7th grade, 11 years old,) was to write what you are grateful for in honor of Thanksgiving. We went over the name of the holiday, it's meaning, the word grateful and then they had to finish the sentence "I am grateful for........."

The results made me grateful for being able to see the youthful still imaginative, unspoiled side of Wulingyuan students at their best. So for about 400 students in total i got over 1,000 things listed. Many were repeats, the most popular being mother, father, teachers, friends, and of course MaoZeDong. I suggested this as my example sentence saying "I am grateful for MaoZeDong," and i kid you not i received a standing ovation, many head nods and total elation. The best response i recieved was one student that put Teacher Natalie, Mao, and KFC in one sentence. I was honored to be with the two things i probably despise the most, genocidal men, and capitalistic greedy life sucking fast food chains. BUT it's China and nothing makes sense in such a post modern setting. So here is the list, which will soon be typed up for all 6 classes, lamenated and hung up to decorate their bleak classroom walls that only have a rules poster and a faded Chinese flag. ENJOY!

Oh, I didn't edit any of them, so they aren't typos.

I am greatful for:

mother

father

strawberry, because it is very delcious

girls

our classmates

MaoZeDong

Beijing

friends

brothers

fruits and vegetable because they give me health

girlfriend

you

WuLingYuan town

music

sisters

my math teacher

HuJjinTao

GuanLongPin

rice

friends (they are my wonderwall)

DaiYunPeng

Watermelons

anything

ice cream in summer

Teacher Natalie come to Wulingyuan

TianZhiJun

eyes

books

my friend ZenMao

sweet milk

China

KFC

grandmother

basketball, give me happy

my bike

water

love you

pig baby

Wuilngyuan middle school

fun

computer

apple

orange

clothes

ice cream

tofu

bus

taxis

doctor

money

healthy food

chicken

hamburger

hairdressers

teacher Wu

my life

Brad Pitt

ears

love

bathrooms

pens

hands

pancakes

earth

nature

moon

sun

stars

grandpa

America

fried rice

computer games

farmers

trees

plants

my desk

workers

my mouth

my nose

foot

my pens

my classes

my life

FuLan (Had to remind that this is how you say Hunan with a Hunan accent, though it was funny that they wrote it out)

boss

monitor

prize

money

shark

seal

visitor

duck

octopus

championship

grandson

teach

sky

my home

pear

noodles

JiangZeMin

tomato

the people

the head of China

animals

a leg

YuanNongPing

computer science

my programmer

my engineer

Teacher Nartalia

Jay Chou

DengXiaoPing

banana shake

dog

my grandfather's father

my grandfather's mother

my grandmother's father

my grandmother's mother

coffee

Teacher Natalie invitation

watch TV

chocolate

Ellan

light

everybody

Texas

time

camera

tooth

Bill Gates

snow

NBA

boys and girls

Harvard

basketball team of China

James, he is famous in America, do you know he?

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Nov. 21st, 2006

12:20 am - gobble gobble

so i have 2 journals on the way, but here was something i thought was interesting that i stumbled on while trying to prepare for tomorrow's class. I am teaching a class on the meaning of Thanksgiving and why it's Teacher Natalie's favorite holiday. I went to look up the word for gratitude in my Chinese dictionary and thought the translation was very telling. The word for gratitude in Chinese is LingQing. The word Ling literally means leading, or supreme and Qing is emotion or spirit. So together, the word for gratitude means the most supreme of feelings, telling of the Chinese??? Hard to put in a modern consumer laden context, but in small instances i think it might be there. Thought that was interesting, perhaps not, but hey this is how i keep myself entertained on cold Hunan nights, peace

nat

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Nov. 15th, 2006

09:09 pm - Chinese students shy, docile, obediant...sure....

So, we all are aware of the steriotypes that say Chinese students are well behaved, meek, and extremely hard working. Well you can leave your assumptions at the door of Wulingyuan middle school. I would just like to make a luandry list of the items I had to confiscate in class in the past 2 days, mind you this is only 6 classes and these students are 11-13 years old.

-5 lighters

-1 cigarette

-1 box of matches

-chewing tabacco

-trashy magazine

-2 comic books

-3 knives

-a thermos of hot milk that was being tossed around

-a full water balloon

-a series of balloons

- AND A FULL SIZED HAMMER!

When i confiscated the water balloon of course the whole thing exploded on me. The students also exploded and of course the lesson was shot at that point. Luckily I was able to express to them that I wasn't happy and that the next person to disrupt the class was going to have to leave.

Most of my dicipline issues occur with my Junior 2 students, who about the equivalent of 7th graders in the US. I also teach Junior 1 and Junior 3. They are about 11-13, and are at that stage where you can't entertain them with renditions of "Teacher Natalie had a farm, E-I-E-I-O," like with my Junior 1 classes, but you also can't have discussions with them about cultural comparisons like with my Junior 3 classes. So, I continue to struggle a bit every week with how to entertain, inspire, teach and dicipline them.

I think back to some of my middle school teachers and I can honestly say that many of the more strict teachers were some of my favorite. That remained true through high school as well as college. I think we can all think back to that weak Teacher's Assistant or young fresh college grad that we all had fun driving mad with tons of pranks and unruly behavior. I DON"T WANT TO BE THAT TEACHER. I remember that teacher in high school so clearly, her name Ms, Britton. She was straight out of Harvard, weighed about 90lbs and we had a field day with her. We would hide under the desks and make cat sounds and climb out the window during class, and yes one time we even made her cry. Now looking back on it, she just didn't set her expectation very high and thought that if she was our friend first that she would gain our respect, then she would be able to teach us something. WRONG WRONG WRONG, kids and teenagers have plently of friends most of them don't need any more. On some level I want to be my students friend, but i am realizing more and more that children need soooo much structure.

When one of my classes wouldn't stop talking and continued to disrupt the course of the lesson, I stopped the class entirely, rather than try to continue on and not give attention to their negitive behavior. I thought the best thing to do would be to be honest with the class, act like i was talking to adults and lay out my expectations and frustrations with them, so I told my class that I was dissapointed in them, and not happy. I continued to ask them a series of questions such as "where is my mother?" "where is my father" "where are my siblings" "where are my friends, " they all replied "America." Then I asked "do i speak wulingyuan language?" "no," they responded. "How many students does Teacher Natalie have every week?" "we don't know," " Teacher Natalie has 1,000 students to teach every week." "Is my job easy?" "Am I tired?" They got the message at this point. I figured that to reason with them and put the responsibility and reality of the situation in their hands was the best thing to do, rather than me shushhing for a full 40 minutes. I know that some students were taken aback by this approach and saw the always smiling and spunky Teacher Natalie to have a more adult and authoritative side. I am sure this created some distance between them and me, but i am begining to think that this is ok. In a class with 90 students all of which are under the age of 13, there has to realistically be a short leash, or else those 5 loose cannon kids will ruin the lesson for everyone.

My main problem with teaching in this environment are the enormous class sizes. I walked into a class last week of my Junior 1 students which would be equivalent to 6th grades about 10 years old and i thought to myself that it had to be my most packed class. Indeed I was right, after counting 101 students, I took a deep breath and started my lesson fingers crossed. The fact of the matter is the larger the class, the more strict the teacher has to be, and more time has to be spent on dicipline. The other teachers just use scare tactics-hitting, public embarrassment, sending to the principals office, failing grades. Without those i am left to the option of reason, reasoning with pre-adolescents that is. They aren't even teenagers yet, so they don't really have a concept of the world outside of their own little lives, ie their image, crushes, friends, insecurities etc.

For anyone who knows me well, you know that i am a pretty sensitive person, who also loves loves loves kids. So, using a hardline with 1000 students to keep them on task while trying to support their creativity and confidence is a nearly impossible juggling act. We all know of those kids in middle school who were perpetually acting out and being suspended or sent to detention or the principals office. Often times they were disturb for some reason beyond their own control, they had bad families, or not enough direction. After years and years of recieving negitive attention, and punishments from teachers and administrators, where are they now? We all know a few of them, I know i do, they are 23 and have babies, or didn't finish college, or just are just living lives below their own ability level, cause they were constantly reminded of all the things that they were doing wrong. It's just difficult to know when to discipline and when to ask yourself if you simply aren't meeting the needs of the students. Luckily I can communicate with my students in Chinese, so when they act out in class i can go a step further and ask them to explain themselves, apologize, or meet me after class if need be. However, the gap isn't so much one of language, but one that pertains to each student's individual situation that they come from. With 1,000 students I have no way to know how or why the students act the way they do in class, and the personal, family or educational pressures that they face.

Hahahaha, i just have to add that while i am typing this journal entry a cockroach just ran across the couch. Oh my life! There are also a bunch of drunk male teachers yelling and singing in the stairwell right outside of my door. Oh you gotta laugh, really most of the time I am just amused. That's about it for now. I have to get back to lesson planning for tomorrow's class with my Junior 1's.

Hope you enjoyed this evenings glimpse into the life of a really tired Teacher Natalie.

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Nov. 13th, 2006

04:21 pm - Rock out!

So today in class we did a lesson where the class made their own rock songs and had to recite and or sing them. I had this idea because i went to Kunming Yunnan this weekend for a teachers conference and found myself rocking out to an underground Chinese rock band. I thought that the students would be interested in what their fellow, slightly more progressive country men were contributing to the Chinese music scene. To my surprise in this dark, smoky underground club there were mohawked, pierced and tattooed Chinese men and women all enjoying a night of debaucherie and rock music. This scene honestly made me feel like I had landed in an underground Oakland club, with a crowd of rebellious bay area youth. So due to the total culture shock that i endured just by going to another city in China, I thought i would share this with my young impressionable teenage students who have little to no access to what is going outside of this mountain town. Fortunately i cleaned up the presentation a little, censoring out the pictures that showed cigarettes, beer bottles, and face tattoos, but presenting them with the reality of bold free and slightly agnst ridden expression in the underground Chinese music culture.

After showing them the pictures of the black clothed rockers and their energetic fans, I presented them with an opportunity to create their own rock song. The song would be called "115" "116" or "117," depending on what class it was that i was teaching. These are my most advanced students in the junior 3 level which is about equivalent to our 8th grade. So I gave them a skeleton of a song and they had to get into pairs and write in the missing lyrics when necessary.

Here are some of the funniest lines from the 200 songs that were written today.

"115"

Come to 115 because we are always happy,

We never sing but we are always naughty.

Come to 115 because we are crazy.

We never get mad but we always play super jokes on others.

When you come to 115 you will feel like you are part of ours.

Come to 115 we are enourmous,

we never exhausted but we always entertainment.

when you come to 115 you will fell entertainment.

Come to 115 because we are energetic

we never upset, but we always cry.

when you come to 115 you will fell crazy.

Come to 115 because we are very happy.

We never chew gum in class but we always fight

When you come to 115 you will feel funning.

Come to 115 because we are friends.

we never fight with classmates but we always exercie everyday.

Come to 115 because we are interested

we never fight but we always angry with my friends

In class 116 we never let you down.

I want to tell you about 116 because we are the best.

Please be polite with me, let's go on.

If you want to laugh just look at my behavior.

we like to sing.

Come to 115 because we are confident,

we never smoking but we always studying.

In class we never cyring.

I want to tell you about 116 because we are wonderful.

Listen! please sing with me, let's go dance.

If you want to laugh just look at my face.

WE LIKE TO ROCK!

In class 116 we never feel boring.

I want to tell you about 116 because we are funny. Listen!

please crazy with me.

If you want to laugh just look at my grade.

We like to study and sing songs that we can dance to.

You'll never forget 116!

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Nov. 12th, 2006

09:58 pm - YES!

So been recently having fun with the ambigously ethnic Daniel lately as he has been galavanting around the Hunan coutryside and beyond. Daniel is a unique American blend of Philipino and French Jew. Though to every other Chinese person he looks Indian or maybe Pakistani. So i will just make a quick laundry list of the activities that have occured with the help of Pakistani Dany.

So, first of all we both tend exist under the assumption that when in China just say YES! so after class we decided that we wanted to go to the top of the mountains that sorround the school to look out over the town while the sun was setting. Motorbike ride? YES! So we payed 2 kuai for a man to drive us to the top of the mountain and leave us there. We told him we would make our way back and that we just wanted to walk around. So we walked in the hills passed a graveyard, some orchards and a few stone one room houses perched off from the road. A man in a truck drove up and asked us what we were doing. We told him that we were looking for dinner, to see what kind of offer we could get. Oh here is an important cultural note, In China, and especially out in the countryside they don't say "hello" when they see you they simply say "have you eaten." I was pretty confused by this when i first got here cause i hadn't heard it in the cities and never really saw myself as a seemingly starved person. But someone later explained to me that in areas that have been traditionally poor they ask if you have eaten yet, since not even 30 years ago China was plauged with severe famine and such questions were the first thing on people's minds.

So back to the story, the man then of course asked us if we wanted to eat at his friend's house. Chinese are absolutely crazy about feeding guests, especially Hunan people since they are so incredibly proud of their food and treat it as a means to impress, show off, and entertain. So after a short ride in this man's truck through a few orchards we came to this small house sorrounded by fields. We walked into the house and a woman and man were just finishing dinner with an old woman. Now imagine a a few random foriegners just walking into your kitchen in your house that sits on the top of a mountain in rural Hunan. What would you do? We told her that her food looked incredible and that we would be so pleased to eat her leftovers, if she wouldn't mind. She was beyond thrilled! So we dined with them, munching on some cabbage, tofu, pork, cilantro. Of course it was delicious cause it was Hunan food, but these people were so shocked that we had wandered into their house and the driver of the truck so pleased with himself for brining us that they all just kinda ran around the kitchen in a tissy trying to accomodate us.

They told us to come back and that we could pick food together from their farm and that they would teach me to cook local dishes. So we stayed a while chatted, Daniel flirted with the grandma, I looked at the woman's new wedding photos and we were on our way. The night however, did come to a bit of a sour ending as we flew down the mountain in our new friend's truck. I was sitting in the front seat, and suddendly from the side of the road three large dogs darted out into the middle of the road, and not only did the driver not attempt to stop, but he sped up. We completely ran over two of the three dogs. The driver obviously new he was going to hit the dogs and just wanted to make sure that he finished the job. I asked him "what are you going to do about it?" and he tried to tell me that they were wild dogs that were dangerous anyways, right.......

So the next adventure for the evening took us into town. We got massages after dinner at the seedy massage joint which also acts a venue for gross Chinese men to come and have their pick of 18 year old girls. I like to frequent this place for a real massage so that the girls get their 30 kaui from me, along with a friendly chat and are spared an evening with a potentially dangerous encounter. The massages were just fine and rubbed away some of my heavy guilt that i was carrying around with me from the dog incident.

We decided that infact after so much time resting that we needed more of a dinner. Daniel was curious to try one of the restaurants in town that serve Korean food. We went in orderd a few things and started talking to the few other people eating in the small restaurant. The tiny kitchen was run by one woman, who had an interesting Chinese accent. She asked us where we were from and we told her America. A man at the table next to us starting asking us questions about why we were here. After we told him that we were eseentially volunteer English teachers, he responded with a "See i knew some Americans were good honest people."

I asked him where he was from cause i knew that his Chinese aceent was a little different from ones i had heard in town. He said that he wasn't Chinese and when I asked him if he was Korean he sheepishly said no. When i asked him flat out where he was form he said "a place outside of Korea," "ChaoXian." I had to process it for a moment. Oh my, N. Korea! He continued to tell me that he has been living in Wulingyuan Hunan for only two months since he made his way from the border through Beijing and down to Hunan. I felt a little uneasy about being the boisterous American who came sauntering into their restuarant and started talking about how i am volunterring to spend my time teaching English to Chinese kids from an American run global development organization, but it turned out this guy was incredibly nice and nothing really phased him about us. We talked about the fact that we both have only been here for a few months and are trying to get acclamated to the culture, food, people etc.

The best part of the whole night was when he asked me if i would be interested in tutoring him in English. I said yes of course, and then stopped to think about the reality of this opportunitiy. I may have more first hand experience with a former N. korean than any American media source could ever dream of. I told my new student that I would plan to meet him once a week and we can simply have a free of charge cultural exchange and English lesson.

So all of that was just one single day on a Friday night in Wulingyuan. As long as I keep saying YES, to whatever comes my way, I will continue to have an infinite supply of stories to draw from, so as to keep you all entertained. Ok, more later...........

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Oct. 29th, 2006

05:08 pm - Tell us about the French!

So, i'm exhuasted it's Friday afternoon and I'm skipping town. I decide to go visit the closests American teacher who lives just a short 5 hours south of here. So I get on the train with only a ticket for a hard seats, aka bring your livestock on board and find a vacant bench section. So i find my little bench and proceed to pull out my book and put my headphones on. I can tell everyone is starring at me but i'm just going to pretend i am on the T in Boston and zone out for a while.

So no more than 3 minutes goes by and i have a young man and his girlfriend sitting next to me asking me the usual 5 foriegner questions. #1 Where are you from?, #2 Why can you speak Chinese? #3 Are you married/have kids ?#4 Where do you work? #5 How much money do you make? Of course these curious folks were the best kind, the university students who eagerly want to use you as a free English tutorial.I mean you can't blame them cause i am probably one of five foriegners they have seen their whole lives. But the fact is Teacher Natalie is tired after speaking Teacher English for a whole week and can't stand to not use any contractions and use ALOT of EMphaSIS when she speaks(insert hand movements) VERY S L O W L Y. So my idea was to say that I am infact French and speak very little English. BIG dissapointment, i'm white but i don't speak English that's like a monkey that ca't do tricks or a parrot that can't say "Polly want a cracker." But this cracker stuck to her guns and played the role of a lone french traveler on a train trying to find a little peace and quiet.

The students reverted to Chinese and proceeded to ask me questions about my life and why I was here, which got a little tricky. I told them that there was this little school in the countryside of Wulingyuan that needed a French teacher cause French is totaly on a comeback. They were very sweet and told me that Chinese people think that the french are all very romantic and asked me if i brought over a year supply of perfume to China. So they were nice kids and got off the train leaving me with their names and cell #'s cause they wanted to come visit me at my school and go hiking with the really cool and romantic french teacher. Oh by the way their English names were Lion and Rain, they asked me how to say it in French and i just kinda gruggled the words in a French sort of way while sticking my nose in the air, they bought it, poor kids. But I told them that i would study my english a lot so when they came to visit we could practice speaking English together. I explained to them that French and English were practically the same language so they should give me about a month and I will have it down.

So after they got off the train i made friends with another guy named XieBo. Now this fellow was a local, real local. He had niccotine stained teeth to the point that you could barely make out if infact there was still actually any white left. So this guy also wanted to talk about how romantic French people were since he heard me speak with the University students, as did the whole train. So all kinds of crazy topics were touched upon, what age people in France get married? how many kids they are allowed to have? do French people love Mao-cause they should, Where will i go for the Spring holiday? Do i want to go to his house? Are French men attractive? Do French people like Japanese-cause they shouldn't. The list went on and on and this guy proceeded to buy me 3 bottles of water, a pack of chewing nicotine, a pack of cigarrettes, and a bag of chestnuts, none of which i asked for and tried to refuse. This train ride mind you was 4 hours of putting the French girl on the hot seat with a whole train car of Chinese people standing around to listen. Finally my stop came and I was free to leave my French identity on the train. As we pulled into the station, 4 men and 1 woman got up to escort me off the train and help me with my bags. They walked me all the way off the train onto the platform and to the stairs. We all exchanged cell phone numbers and goodbyes(i had no choice.)

So i made a train load of friends in 4 hours of deliberately trying to escape my identity as the foriegn English teacher and have a moment to myself. I have to say though, as a foriegner there's no way to go anywhere on a train in China and not make friends or have numerous invitations to total random stranger's houses. I will take the overload of hospitality and store it away for the moments that i ask myself "What am I doing in China." It's definitely these crazy interactions that make the whole experience worth it and every moment a new crazy story, even if it is totally exhausting.

Ok, off for a run in the fields and then lessong planning for a week of "trick or treat" lessons. I am having trick or treating for the whole school at my apartment on Tuesday, along with an attempt at pumpking carving.

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Oct. 26th, 2006

09:47 am - I'm not bitching......

I just have to get this out there cause i accept all forms of coddling, affection and attention.

in the past 48 hours i have had intense food poisoning-lasting about 12 hours due to a nice meal that included river water, migraine due to dehydration caused by the food poisoning, got a red chilli pepper in my eye and thought i was going blind, had a 6 hour allergy attack from dust mites in my blankets, got slightly (but not too slightly) electricuted in my shower cause Chinese love exposed wires, and just recently found a mouse under my TV, caught 3 crickets, 2 bees and 1 cockroach in my house.

Oh i forgot to mention that my kitchen light blew out so i had to make dinner with a candle in hand next to a huge gas tank, and my sink has a leaky faucet that isn't really leaky but just plain running non-stop at this point.

I don't kid about any of this.

Weekend is coming and i am going to this little town called MengDongHe where a really famous Commi Revolutionary film was made in the 60s. It's in the mountains and is famous for their tofu soup, yum sounds good since it's getting cold. More upates later but really all is good on the China front and nothing can be unexpected except for consistancy and normalcy. peace,

nat

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Oct. 21st, 2006

07:44 am - You know you're in China when......

Notes from a rainy weekend laying low at home......

You know you're in China when:

1. You wake up with bruised ribs cause you slept on your stomach and your bed is just a little hard.

2.As you are washing dishing on a friday night the water goes off and doesn't turn back on for 6 hours. When it does turn back on it spits brown, chunky "mud" for about 30 seconds.

3. Because you can't wash dishes as planned on your friday night, you find yourself watching the wrestling match between the cockroach and spider that is taking place on your living room floor(don't laugh, i'm serious.)

4. You wake up and hear ducks being caught in the river and then killed soon there after, mind you this is the river where the whole town washes their clothes.(bird flu anyone?)

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Oct. 18th, 2006

12:27 pm - "whamp-em" stick

So, i would just like to start out by stating how my life started out this morning like all mornings in some sort of hilarious and nonsensical fashion. As i have mentioned before the loudspeaker goes off every morning at 5:40am into my bedroom window, with some kind of techno version of a crap American song. Excuse me that's incorrect, it's not always techno, it's either techno or the Kenny G version. Anyways, this morning was no different and at 5:40am I groaned as the bell went off and coverd my head with a pillow. What came out of the speakers was beyond odd, think count dracula organ music like the kind they play when they show a haunted house with sporadic lightening and bats flying around. So the dracula music continued until it busted out into a full blown techno, DJ Drac remix with full blown organs. Honestly i was laughing at this point, just thinking holy shit if someone from my normal life could just see this right now! Oh, but it gets soooooo much better. So they didn't want to just play one song today they decided to really get everyone in a happy mood with "If you are going to San Francisco." Yeah they did, they had to go mess with graceland. There is nothing more ironic than playing "if you are going to San Francisco" at a militant Chinese school to wake kids up so they can start studying chemistry in the dark at 5:40am. Such lyrics as "there's a whole generation, with a new explanation, people in motion, " "and you're going to meet some gentle people there." Well members of Wulingyuan middle school are not so much talk about revolutions and power to the people as they are talking about getting smacked if they don't do well on their math tests.

So, this is why i love China, exactly for this reason, IT'S SO PERPETUALLY CONFUSED. It's China's totall state of cultural limbo and seeming hypocrisy that i find to be never ending and so entertaining. Another example of this same kind of irony is how when you turn on the TV in China and watch about 5 minutes of commercials, 4 of those minutes will be spent on hospital advertisements. This is a "communisit" society and they have fancy adds for private hospitals, they even call some of the hospitals "Western hospitals" and "Korean Hospitals," to try and attract the richer clientle. One other note, i had to take someone to the hospital the other day and the doctor who met us in this dingy room was chain smoking in the patient and my face and even offered me a cigarette cause he was soooo excited that there was a foriegner in his hospital.

So to go along with the idea of "gentle people" which i was reminded of this morning in my beloved song, I have come up against some dicipline problems in some of my classed. Since this is a really remote countryside school there are some practices that still remain key to Chinese's diciplinary protocal, ie. beating kids. No, i don't mean hitting kids, i will call it beating. There is a bamboo stick that sits at the front desk of every classroom, and if a kid falls alseeps, talks, or does anything else that the teacher deams out of line, then WHAPPP! Not, necessarily on the hands, can be the shoulder or even across the face. So, me being the reasonable peace loving person that i am like to play a little game called "hide the whamp-em stick" whenever i go to class. I ussually put it in the trash, down the hall or behind the mops. There was a small bamboo whamp-em stick at the front of the room and i saw a child get hit with it that day so infront of class i broke it in two over my knee. The students thought at that point I was going to get hit with the whamp-em stick, well the teachers can come and find me if they are not pleased.

So in my classes for the most part kids are really well behaved, well really is an exaggeration. They are pre-teens and do what all pre-teens tend to do in class, through wadded forms of everything, listening to music, hit other kids etc. Today was especially pleasant, I had a whole roll of toilet paper going flying across the classroom, 12 year old kids chewing tabacco, using a cellphone, trading NBA cards, and lighting paper on fire. So what to do in these instances? I ussually try to make a lesson out of it and make the culprit student come up to the front of the classroom and use his forbidden object in a sentence. For example today a kid had to say "sorry teacher Natalie, I know that eating tabacco is bad for my health, i won't disrespect you in your class again." A kid in another class had to use his word in a sentence by saying, " that WAS my cellphone, but NOW it is Teacher Natalie's cellphone."

So this is my take on the whole idea of dicipline, they get called out, given the due attention they are obviously seeking but have to redeam themselves by saying what they did wrong and improving their English at the same time. The problem though, is that my really really naughty students are way beyond reason and are conditioned to think, will i get hit? no? ok well then i don't give a shit about respect, or why acting out in class is harmful to the teacher and all the other students. The students are treated like animals and begin to act like them, thinking only about what the bottom line consequences will be for them and their bodily health and not why acting out is bad in itself.

So about the child abuse issue, it definitely won't go unrecorded while i am here but i just have to conduct myself accordingly in a school that is hosting me. As for now i hide or break the "whamp-em" sticks, voice my opinions about hitting kids to other teachers, and hope that i can keep control and a little sanity in my own class.

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Sep. 25th, 2006

08:24 pm - The legacy of GWB

Yeah that's right, I'm sitting at my computer in a pair of mid calf nylon socks with little bells and flowers trailing down my ankles while my feet sit comfortably wedged into my toyota camry shower shoes. The sandals came with the apartment, and honestly I have really grown fond of them. As I look down and think about how my new taste for Chinese foot apparell has changed I can't help but be reminded everday that even though I work as a member of a Chinese faculty, and make every effort to speak Chinese,use chopsticks, even hock a loogie or snot rocket when i see fit, I am always regarded as "the foriegner." Not only am I considered the foriegner here but more specifically the American. And even more interestingly, at this current political juncture, I am one of "Bush's American's."

I was so harshly reminded of this negitive association(let's not kid ourselves) the other day when we all gathered together as members of Wulingyuan #1 middle school during the first all school assembly. So David and I sat with about 12 other principles, headmasters, head teachers and dignitaries at the front of the assembly, looking out over 2,500 little faces. David and I were well aware that all eyes were on us, as we were the only one's on the stage who weren't male, old or Chinese and didn't sport the traditional black pants and white shirt uniform. We sat and stood and sat and stood through the Chinese national anthem, various speeches, and the naming of students who would be recieving merit scholarships for the year.

So the next man who followed in giving a speech was a middle aged man who introduces himself as the high school head math teacher. He was warmly recieved by the students and began a passionate and crowd pleasing speech full of politically inspired slogans and Chinese nationalistic words of wisdom. The students were hanging on his every word, until he came to a critical juncture in his speech. He spoke of how the students should stand up for the future of China, but more importantly that they needed to stand up in the face of the world bully, America. The crowd halted, some looked shocked, some laughed, some stood up in their seats to look at us. I was running through the sentence just stated in my head to make sure that i had the translation correct. He continued to say that our government was the primary cause of the current suffering in the world and to take notice and think about this when learning English. There were awkward stares at us as I simply proceeded to acknowledge the teacher and translate his powerful message to David.

The teacher basically ended his speech and 2,500 students filled the courtyard with frantic chatter. So, naturally the next honorary person to arrive at the podeaum to speak was me. I had a speech prepared that talked about how lovely the school was and how accomodating all of the teachers have been towards me and David during our first few weeks. Not only did the speech shower the school with compliments about their own students and faculty but also posed personal hopes of how cross cultural experiences such as this could potentially strengthen the relationship between China and the US for years to come. Without time to improvise I stood like a complete dunce and delivered this glowing speech.

After the initial saluations were given and i continued to give the speech in Chinese, the crowd became filled with surprised chatter as they realized that the previous teacher's words had been recieved in full by the two Americans. The crowd finally quieted and i finished my brief speech and had to walk back to my seat where i was conveniently seated right next to my teacher friend with all the lovely words of welcome. Infront of all 2,500 students and teachers he extended a half laughing apology and claimed that the whole statement was merely in jest. I calmly smiled and simply responded with a "it's not a problem," and turned to face the audience of students who nervously watched this tense exchange.

The assembly finsihed and we all continued on to our afternoon classes. I was trying not to dwell on the negativity of this morning's experience, which did for the rest of the afternoon make me feel not only like a foriegner in China but a representative of a country,ideology, war machine, rich Texas family and all other things that I thought i left at the LA airport when I began my simple life as an English teacher. I was half defensive and half ashamed, and not knowing which half would get the better of me I blocked it out of my head and continued with my next three classes. My students once again came to my rescue. All three classes jumped to their feet and cheered when i entered the classroom, asking me if i was nervous when i gave the speech and if I had been practicing in my apartment infront of a mirror for several days.

While in class I felt like a teacher who happened to be a girl, white and from America, and the students saw me as Teacher Natalie and nothing more. Granted they are all about 11 years old, so I could count on the fact that their perception of the world or Americans wouldn't extensively draw upon outside sources. Regardless, I was glad to find some solace in my classes that semmed to exist away from East vs. West, America the bully vs. the rest of the world.

Later on that evening, David and I were discussing the assembly under a tree at the far end of the campus. We both expressed confusion, anger, humor and several other emotions in an effort to try and sift through our understanding of the statements that the teacher had made. David brought up some good points about the fact that this teacher was of a specific age group in China that many people referr to as the "lost generation." These people are generally mid to late 50's now though when they were just about my age or even just college bound, found themselves to be on the cutting edge of the revolution. This age group served as Red Gaurds, promoting all things in the name of the CCP and doing away with any republican values.

Young people at this time sacrificed their lives, families, carreers, homes and anything else of personal value in the name of the Chinese Communist Party. The wave of the future would be the idealism of an egalitarian country founded on the hopes of the proletariat class. The values of the Red Gaurds, Mao, and his little red book swept across China and revolutionized the modern notion of the Chinese national identity in the face of western capitalistic imperialism. For the Chinese, there time had come after a century of imerpial and colonial humiliation from the British,Americans, Germans and Japanese to build strength and solidarity from the communist movement to counter balance the world powers.

David and I both agreed that we were still angered and embarrassed by the whole ordeal,and the teacher's remarks were completely disrespectful, though also acknowledged the mix of opinions that were bound to come out of a country such as China that has required its people to completely alter their world view and values over the last few decades. For a man who once swore against everything capitalist, western and non -revolutionary as the basis of his cultural and national identity to find himself sharing a teacher's lounge and coffe mugs with two privledged Americans employed by Harvard University is just unreconcilable. With the rate that China's is changing, there are people in such outter reaching areas such as Hunan, who do not empathize with the current trend to attatch to everything western and essentially American. I am sure that this skepticism of the western imperialist is only reaffirmed for people such as our teacher friend, who can see that in our current political context the economic and market interests of a country such as America determines the stability and peace of so many marginalized and overlooked cultures.

So the best i guess i can do is prove to any other interested colleauges, students or community members that other than being an American I am also just a young teacher trying to understand how history has been written for people on all sides. President Bush has made my job harder in a lot of ways, as we are universally known as the arrogant, impulsive and ignorant bullies unable to carefully see into cultures and civilizations that each have their own complex social and political histories predating the US by thousands of years. On the other hand being in China and weathering the bad and the good of US foriegn policy allows me to demonstrate the most important aspect of being an American, dissent and freedom of speech to criticize my own government in the name of justice.

So since the teacher's speech i have had many conversations with concerned students about whether or not i was offended or victimized by the teacher's words. I try to explain that in no way do I have to agree with my government and its policies, thus I am not personally offended by what the teacher had to say and that this might be one of the most hopeful things about being an American. The idea may or may not have landed. i think they just believe that i am really confused and have a huge identity crisis on my hands. oh well, maybe from now on I will claim Canada until we can get our shit in order.

Ok, i'm tired. that's about it. I'm American, everyone thinks that i love Bush and that i want to make the world's children turn into little English speaking drones....but really i am just trying to sort it all out while I sit here in my embrodered nylons and toyota camry shower shoes. Goodnight.

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Sep. 20th, 2006

06:50 am - impressed

So i am up at 5:30am with the bells, the bells! There is an all school assembly this morning and so rise and shine with the first bell, well minus the shine cause at 5:30am all you see here is pitch black. The only light that you may happen to catch at 5:30am in Wulingyuan are the bicycle lights of students riding down the path behind the school. This morning I dragged myself out of bed, put the crap insta- coffee on and watched out my kitchen window to see what i could find in all this morning blackness.

I heard various students yelling to one another as there bike lights swerved down the path trying to make out the back road in the dark. They were just as awake as any other time of day, as darkness in China doesn't seem to phase people's notion of work vs. sleep. As the bikes whizzed by and i watched from the comfort of my kitchen window, coffee in hand and still completely drowsed in sleep and enjoying the comfort of my sweat pants, i heard what seemed to be like English coming from the path. I tried to look out into the dark and confirm that this was just a drowsy mistake, why would i be hearing English on a dark path at 5:30am in Wulingyuan?

As i stuck my head out of the kitchen window i saw an older student, maybe senior three (17 years old) perched on his bicycle and leaning over his English book with only one tiny flashlight. He was repeating an english passage by the side of the road at 5:30am just before the first class bell. He spoke facing the river that dropped off from the far side of the path, and acted as though it was his own stage to practice away from the classroom of 70+ students who would soon drown out his all his English efforts.

The boy continued for 10 minutes and i sat and watchecd the whole thing. I wanted to praise all his efforts and give him the recognition he so deserved for such detication, but i think that it might have been a little overwhlelming for the poor student to realize that he not only has the pressure of the upcoming test, but that he also chose to practice on the path right outside the English teacher's apartment.

Also, in no way is this example of a student's detication rare, or out of the ordinary. Where this student stood to practice his English along the river at 5:30am there were probably 10 others that were doing the same thing at the same time all at their own spots on the path preaching English or a history lesson or a passage of classical Chinese out to the anonymity of the river. These students are in class all day, some go home to a sleeping house, others to a quiet dorm and return while the rest of the working population are still fast alseep before the start of a new day. So these students steal their private time to recite, review, and voice their newly acquired lessons in the early morning hours, on a dark path our out into the quiet river as a precious and fleeting moment in their busy day where they can hear their own voice.

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Sep. 19th, 2006

05:59 pm - I See Red People

So its been a while. Well there was the "Huntsman Spider" fiasco, the 5 minute Chinese speech infront of 2,200 people, oh and the order by a leader of the school that I will take 50+ middle school students camping on the highest peak in Wulingyuan. Tired? Overwhelmed? Searching for plane tickets home in between classes.....well perhaps. But, no in all seriousness, I am whiped but really enjoying the craziness that every day brings.

So in short, yes i found a spider in my house that is literally the size of a softball, with two huge fangs hanging down in front. I have locked him in the spare bedroom and plan to keep him there for a while. i figured he was too big to kill, way too messy and who knows what kind of venom would come sqwuishing out of all sides. So according to whatsthatbug.com his main purpose in life is to eat cocroaches, which i have plently of so, hats off to you mr. huntsman.

So yes there was a speech that was 5 minutes long in Chinese, none of which were my words but still sang the praises of this beautiful school, exactly the way the leaders liked it.Am I being a pushover? For now maybe a bit, but waves will be made, oh i think so eventually but i am working on some relationship groundwork right now. Thus the BS was read, and read with a smile, all was happy in Wulingyuan as it always is.

So everyday i see students, often times they are these little budding minds that yelp, howl, scream, laugh and act out as normal children often do. They drive me crazy and drive me to do things like stand on a chair to teach class, or dress up in funny costumes just to get the idea of "grandmother" or "doctor" across. But at least i know that on my time the kids can have a spontaneous moment of laughter that won't be deemed as misbehaving.

I was teaching a class today and was acting out different emotions, happy, sad, excited, confused, angry, fine, bad, hungry, sleepy. The students would howl whenever i did angry cause i would pretend to box with a student, and hungry was a winner too as I managed to grab my stomach and faint, falling to the floor. So the students were yelling out the answers to whatever feeling i was sooo absurdly acting out. Then a teacher stuck this big, bald, head in my classroom between the bars of the window. The students stopped dead in their tracks, picked up their pencils and put their heads down. I didn't think i had acted out the feeling serious, or lame so was totally confused by their immediate change in disposition. Then i noticed the teacher standing there shaking his head, and in Chinese I had to say, "no you were doing so well, let's continue," made an "excited" face and jumped up and down. Haha, the students returned back to our game with that little encouragement. Final score: lame balding, power tripping Chinese teacher-0, Teacher Natalie and he traveling Monkey English show-1.

So David and i have come to an agreement on one important thing. We live in the most commi spot in THE WORLD. No really there is reason behind this distinction. So there is China right, pretty high up their on the list of commi countries. Hunan, uhhhhh Mao's home province, Western Hunan, so incredibly removed from modern western capitalist ways that i actually was called "comrade" at the grocery store the other day. So in addition to this we have decided that David lives in the most saturated spot of all. See his apartment is actually in the midst of several classrooms and teachers offices, so he has the pleasure of enjoying the blaring loudspeakers that are literally mounted in such a way that they face into his bedroom. Chinese nationalism for breakfast, lunch, dinner, in the bathroom, 24/7.

On an average day the amount of free time and open air space that an average person in Wulingyuan can enjoy is close to nill. So, Every morning the bells go off starting at 5:40am and ending at 10:00. So between these hours you are continually bombarded with nationalistic songs, headmasters speeches, and seriously jut plain counting. No, i kid you not, when students are out of class or in between periods the loudspeakers blare throughout the campus with a woman's voice counting from 1-6 and 6-1. She doesn't even get to make it to ten! You can't hear yourself think, ohhh the beauty of such a system. Just imagine, all those little minds and no thinking, just 1-6 and 6-1, it's brillant.

Oh and this is my favorite, so at the end of 5th period every day the students hear the bell and drop, and i mean DROP everything and close their eyes and put their hands on the face and massage their check-bones and under eye area. David and i now referr to it as Zombie Pavlov time. I didn't really get that this was such a serious practice so on my way out of a class as i was packing up i said goodbye and waved and students didn't even open their eyes or look up but took their first two fingers off their faces and tried to wave goodbye. There is even a class monitor that walks throughout the class to see if they are all rubbing vigorously enough and of course in step with the 1-6 counting woman.

And lastly I would just like to say that today a boy named himself Marx. Yes, there was a Marx and infact an Ingles. But maybe i shouldn't take this to mean too much since there was also a "Fried Rice" and an "Echo" and of course "Cher." Hey you bring Marx I will bring Cher. Oh and another weird thing, that is very very concerning, they LOVE GERMANY! David has a student that named himself Hitler. Being the open, freedom loving teachers that we are, we let it slide. But i was also a little perplexed when i came into a class today and all 85 of my students starting fervently singing "Aldewiess," of course Hitler's favorite song.

So that was my last few days. Enjoying my exhaustion thoroughly.

later...........

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Sep. 13th, 2006

09:42 pm - guanxi?

So today was by far the most interesting of all my days in Wulingyuan. I had a 2 hour discussion tutorial with Mr. Fish. We sat and chatted in my living room, as we do every Wed evening from 6:30-8;30. The discussion topics ussually range from how incredible the food is here, to how hard working the students are to how gorgeous the mountains are. I won't use the P word here(I hope you are still with me.) I have been thinking about this notion since lately i have been truly inindated with nothing but songs at 5:40 am that speak of a beautiful, bright China (which it is of course,) to the 15+ channels of CCTV that miraculously all have really really wonderful things to say on the news everyday. PS, i saw a special on AIDS yesterday, and don't worry it's in the bag. Pandemic, don't be silly!

Anyways, i don't want to sound cynical, i am taking it all in as an interested bystander, smiling through my day and trying to figure out just how it all seems to be so tightly held together. That's the bottom line though, it really is held together very very tightly, maybe iron fist tight. For instance, the students at our school wake up at 5:40am every morning, have one hour for lunch where they are expected to study while they eat and one hour for dinner where again studying over a bowl of noodles is common, and then class until 10:40 at night. They don't play, exercise, see their parents, read a newspaper or book, surf the web, listen to music, draw, day dream, pick their nose, etc. So, seeing that some of the students in my class, at age 11 had huge bags under their eyes, I decided to ask Fish about this seemingly relentless schedual.

I asked Fish why he thought it was a good idea to keep these students in class for 15 hours a day? Was this really an efficient use of their time and brain capacity as growing little people? He explained to me that this region, historically was known to be very very poor. Because it has always been a minority village tucked away in the mountains away from other areas of economic development, it has seen more than its fair share of hardship in the past century. The Tujia and Miao people who live here have never had it easy and have historically existed outside of the mainstream Mandarin speaking Chinese culture. Until Now! With the advent of the Korean, Taiwwanese and Hong Kong tourist Wulingyuan has seen what it would consider to be a tremendous economic boom. You could have fooled this dumb American, cause i still see lots of things in my daily life here that astonishes me, such as people with gruesome injuries that are left untreated, elderly people doing intense physical labor,and most people existing without running water and having to haul their laundry to the river every morning.

So Fish continued to explain that ten years ago this school was in the process of being shut down. The area was so poor that the people who could afford to send their kids to school were moving to other counties to find work. Then the tourist came and then the local government had some money on their hands. They decided to give the school a chance and gave them a trial run with the help of a few yuan. He explained that from that point on it has been a matter of how to "save face" for the school and ensure that the government's money has been put to good use.

Consequently there is a famous term here in China that kids often referr to when talking about their childhood, "chi, ku." This literally means to eat bitter, or suffer through unpleasant things. From my western perspective and granted in the given context it's limited in many ways, the kids here are choking and drowning in "ku!" The students have shouldered the burden of being known as a poorly performing school and have by their own hard work have reclaimed Wulingyuan middle school's reputation. Even though the local government was very generous to support the school, should this gesture be seen as the local government's obligation or the school's new debt?

To continue and further the growth of the school, administrators go out to other regions of the province to find students who they think will perform well under the intense pressure of Wulingyuan. Often times they promise to employ potential student's parents as grounds keepers, dorm monitors, and cooks in exchange for their studetns high academic performance. So the success of this school is not necessarily dependent on any reforms or initiatives to address the local area's specific needs but rather on the performance of pressured students who continue to create a good name for this school all 15 hours of their school day.

That being said, this evening i was also asked to give a 5 minute speech tomorrow afternoon infront of the 2,200 members of the school in Chinese. Topic, not of concern b/c the speech was delivered already written singing the praises of the "most beautiful and excellent school i could hope to live and work in." Don't really know what to think about my words that are written on this page before i have had a time to think about them. Like my students maybe i know it's just best for me to smile, aviod making waves and keep this massive machine running smoothly.

off to practice "my" speech.

PS- i do really love China- and by love i mean find it fascinating, so only take this to be half as cynical as it sounds.

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Sep. 12th, 2006

07:15 pm - craaazy class!

Class today-AMAZING! I love the weeee one's. Today my kids were about 11-12. They were so enthusiastic and before that awkward, pimply, anything i say will be uncool stage. These kids presented me with a huge challenege but at least were not afraid to speak out, more like yell out, jump out of their seats and try "speaking ENRRRRISH!"

I taught them wassup, and the word respect that had to be pointed to on the board as i waiting for them to collect themselves and quiet down. One thing i learned about little ones, shushing, yelling, clapping, nothing works when they are being naughty but total motionless silence. I stood at the black board with my finger on the word respect translated for their and my convenience and just stared at them, and stared and stared, said thank you and proceeded. And Vvvvwhalah! kids hate silence, it's your only defense when it's 90 little screaming voices vs. one lone English teacher.

After class David and I held an "english corner" chat session in my apartment for students who wanted to practice outside of class during their dinner hour. THe students have no free time from when they wake up at 5:40 until they go to sleep at 10:40 expect for 1 hour at lunch and dinner. So even with this totally ridiculous and unhealthy schedual we had some die hard students from David's upper level classes who stopped by.

At this point, we have come to expect that there are certain things that Chinese have a really hard time saying in English. For example "th" and "L's", as David and i maliciously walk around campus telling people that "sis year we are Engrrish teachers." Just kidding. But anyways so in the midst of a discussion, one girl Kelly who is always so extremely enthusiastic about speaking Engrrish, asked David if he was planning to play soccer with the boys in their tournament this weekend. They discussed the soccer matches for a while and then David asked if the girls would play. He proceeded to say, "Oh, maybe teacher Natalie would like to play as well?" The girl half confused half totally amused laughed, shook her head and said, "Oh no sze girls wourd raszer go take a fuck."

"What!!!" i replied, half thinking, well good for them, i guess, get the liberation any way you see fit?

David and I totally confused but getting those stuck in church on Christmas giggles and she sensing that we were trying so hard to keep it together, thought about it for a moment. "Oh no, I mean a w-w-ark? hmmmmm w-w- warrrr--kkk?"

"SHE MEANS A WALK!!!!" i got it, phhewww and like that we went from x-rated risky behavior in China to nothing more than girls resorting to a (lame) walk because too much physical activity for females is still seen as unfit in these parts.

So, that was the excitement for the day. Off to go running not "falking" or "faurking" but RUNNING. later,

Nat

ep. 11th, 2006

08:31 pm - 1st day of class!

First class today, 10am this morning and yes it was my biggest class with 90 13 year olds, present and accounted for! So i thought i would start the class by modifying what the students had previously learned in the way of English greetings. Lesson one: "Sup" short for "What's Up?" The kids loved this cause they seem to catch on to the idea that I was going to teach them "Zhen de English," real English. We practiced mock greetins with "wassup teacher Natalie," "Hey, Wassup 1 of 250 students i have today" " and 1/2 hour of role play and i think they got it.

I went to the market with david and coming back across the river I ran into some of my students and got about 20 Whas Sup's, a truly proud moment.

So in all today i taught about 250 students, confiscated 2 tape players, 1 magazine, and told a kid to stop strangeling another kid. After noticing that the kids were really into music in my first class since they tried listening to some of their own on their tape players, i ran back to my room before my second class to grab my ipod and speakers. I thought that i would introduce a favorite song or two as part of my personal introduction section of the class. Of course at the moment of truth when i thought technology could save the teacher, MEI YOU DIAN! MEI YOU DIAN the students shouted at me when i tried to plug it in to the jack that was half hanging off the wall, no electricity. So plan B.....uh????? I was able to save it with some question and answer games, but good to know that i only have use of a black board and a few pieces of chalk, no overhead, no TV, music, maps, i mean there isn't even a heater and a good number of the windows are missing.

So tomorrow i teach even younger students who hardly know "hello," so it's back to the drawing board for this evening. Totally pooped and will enjoy my woked food with a nice Chinese soap opera for the evenging.

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Sep. 6th, 2006

09:14 pm - my heart will not go on at this rate!

5:40am, and the school's sound system goes off as usual. No big deal, heard it before and have always been successful in putting a pillow over my head and getting in a few more hours before i actually roll out of bed.

This week being military training for the middle school students has made everything all the more exciting yet seemingly odd in my foriegn opinion. So this morning at 5:40am sharp the fuzzy, and unnecessarily loud sound system began blaring the Titanic joys of "My Heart Will Go On" from every corner of the campus. The gruff military men must have thought this was truly worthy of being so much more than just the rise as shine song because they continued to play it for the next 1/2 hour while the students took part in their early morning exercise drills. I mean i can understand that nothing gets a Chinese guard going in the morning like Celine Dion amped up on high while circuit training. BUT COME ON!

So yes, i did fall back asleep but no fear, within another hour i was woken up again this time by a slightly more unpleasant sound than Celine (if that's possible.)This time I was being pulled out of my cozy sleep by the sound of pigs squealing. I looked out the window and in front of my apartment there were 2 shirtless men swearing and graveling while they tossed live, hog tied hogs from the truck to the ground and into the school cafeteria's kitchen.

With my weak stomach and propensity to faint, i decided the best thing to do was just convince myself that the whole thing, Celine the live hog tied hogs and potty mouthed shirtless men were just a bad dream and let myself be "officially overwhelmed" as my mother would say and pass out until 11.

11am came and that was actually the beginning of a great day. Two high school students stopped by room to introduce themselves and invite me to lunch. Another example of how friendly and gracious Chinese people can be, especially students to their teachers. They took me to a great resturant in town and without me noticing paid for the bill. This tends to be a Chinese custom that students take their teachers out to lunch to show respect for their work. So I promised the boys that i would make them lunch tomorrow in my apartment and we would listen to some American music. They seem to go crazy over the idea of American rap, though luckily most of it is too fast for them to comprehend, and not of an English that one would learn in rural China or else my job could potentially be on the line. So, fried rice and Jurassic 5 with John and Jason seems to be the only thing on the schedule for tomorrow.

Cherishing these last few days of rest before the judgment day on Monday.....

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Sep. 5th, 2006

10:49 pm - what's wrong with the world?

So had to add this quickly. David just came back from teaching 3 vocational classes today. These classes are held in a dark dungeon of a room with no windows, just bars on the windows(nice in the freezing winter months,) and 86 kids packed in with not enough desks or chairs. These are students who didn't pass the exam from middle to high school and will be taking classes until they drop out, basically acting as a babysitter until they find some kind of service or labor job. While looking through the chapter titled "Service" David found this to be one of the sentence patterns used:

Typical tourist: Geeh, it is very humid and hot today, please will you bring me another gin and tonic?

Chinese Service person: Yes of course!

Typical tourist: Great service! keep the change.

Chinese Service person: Thank you sir!

I am glad we are teaching such valuable skills to these kids who have already been told at 13 that they have no use for an education.

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05:08 pm - tuesday in the Wu

This might have been one of my most reassuring days thus far. I still haven't started teaching b/c my students are in strict military training for the entire week. I woke to the sounds of chanting and marching outside my window and about 1,000 little voices following the lead of Chinese soldiers. 1,000 little Chinese soldiers can definitely be a rude awakening at 7am.

After a surprise phone call from a friendly voice with a lengthy catch up session i started what i thought would be my boring and slow foggy day in Wulingyuan. After emails, the newspaper, sheet washing, mopping etc i went out for a walk. I walked across the river and past the "market" which is comprised of about 10 tables with umbrellas and people sleeping, playing cards or feeding chickens. I took the road that followed the other side of the river and decided i would walk until i hit the next town. Before i got more than 1/2 mile i ran into a woman who was standing outside of a large gate that held in hordes of screaming and laughing 2,3,4 year olds. She waved me over and shook my hand and asked me to come in a sit down and talk with her.

I ended up making friends with Teacher Kang who is the head teacher of the preschool in the Wulingyuan area. She asked me everything from my monthly salary, marital status, and weather or not i liked the local spicy peppers or little children. The kids just sat around us and watched us talk in total confusion. They knew something was off but they couldn't put their little dirty pre-k fingers on it. You could see the wheels turning in their heads but still they were totally thrown by the fact that i looked different but was having a conversation with their teacher in Chinese.

Teacher Kang asked me to come back tomorrow to play with the kids and said that i was welcome whenever i wanted. This playground from what i could tell needed another adult hand. There were about 100 preschoolers and about 6 teachers! They had hoses going and were swinging from tree limbs and playing on playground structures that would make any American scream tetanus or lawsuit! The little girls were so cute they had pony tails coming straight off the top of their heads or two pig tails going straight out to the side. They were also the smallest little people i have ever seen. I think that my 6month old nephew could have easily won out in a chubby kid contest.

So after saying goodbye to my new friends, i decided to go buy some fruit from the "market" at the crossroads before the river. I passed by some of the vendors who thought it was a good idea to cheat me on my first couple of days here, thinking that i was a tourist. I kept walking and a cute younger woman in her pjs again waved me to come over.

She told me to sit next to her and relax. What was meant to be a 5 minute fruit purchase ended up being an hour chat with this woman about a variety of topics. She was my age and happend to be about 6 months pregnant, hence the pjs i guess. She taught me some new vocab and gave me advice on how to select the best kind of Chinese fruit. After an hour of munching on chestnuts and persimmons and getting familiar with some of the local gossip,I told her I would come back to visit tomorrow and i headed back to my apartment.

Coming back from my afternoon outing has made me realize that China is a very easy place to make friends. Chinese people are extremely curious, welcoming and generally very good at playing host. People here are not obligated to welcome me off the bat but for some reason they always take the initiative to go the step further to extend their friendship and makes this town a friendly new home for me. Being in a small town only makes it that much easier to keep track of all the interesting and friendly people who i see on a daily basis.

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Sep. 4th, 2006

10:44 pm - MSG!

just read an article on the effects of MSG. Nerve damage, panic attacks, depression, and hypertension don't sound so great. In Chinese restuarants they put it on the table as the third salt shaker, it's in everything! anyone want to send me some olive oil and butter?

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01:14 pm - environment cont.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/04/world/asia/04pollution.html?hp&ex=1157428800&en=f5f01feaba4cf9a9&ei=5094&partner=homepage

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Sep. 3rd, 2006

09:41 pm - what makes you likeable in China?

A few things that (may) make you likable in China:

Being able to call out a scam and argue about money.

Having a face as 3D as possible.

So David and i feeling tired, hot and maybe a little cranky on a slow sunday afternoon decided to treat ourselves to a little Sunday brunch. Well, brunch is a bit of a stretch since we weren't really able to find any foods in Wulingyuan that strayed too far from the regular 6 vegetables, 5 meats, and white rice routine. So we jumped into a cab(big treat for us avid walkers) and headed into town to dine at the luxurious Kuai Can Ting(Chinese fast food kinda place.)

We were real adventurous and ordered eggs fried with tomato and some kind of green vegetable doused in oil and garlic with a huge wooden pale of white rice. This is maybe the most common and cheap food you can find in Hunan besides plan noodles. So after an hour of chatting about home, foods we missed, and being starred at by the 20+ service people that gawked at our peasant like taste, we asked for the bill.

24 kuai! not a chance in hell that our "brunch" would cost a whopping $3 usd. So i had to call the manager over and ask if this was "dui" correct. The man just broke out with the largest smile like i had solved the matrix that was China and whisked the bill away. He came back with the whole thing scratched out and a nice 10kuai written on it (1.25 usd). His expression made it seem as though he genuinely proud at my use of a single Chinese word and the fact that i dared to question his addition, or really his intentions. He thanked us many times, as did many of the other servers and as we walked out called to us to come back soon.

Now let's place that scenario in the US, first, how embarrassing would that have been for all parties involved and would you ever return to a place that tried to scam you? Well not only will i go back but i plan to stop by and pay a visit to my new friends and hope that within a month i can get them down to 8kuai.

So the other thing that can help one to make friends in China is whether or not you have a "3 dimensional face." So on our walk home from the eventful brunch, David and I were stopped by some students who were heading back to the school. They were extremely friendly and made such an effort to use all their English to introduce themselves and make us feel welcomed.

Only moments after meeting Annie and Teetly(?), Annie turned to me and said rather directly that i was "sooo beautiful b/c i had an interesting nose." and then in broken English and resorting to Chinese explained that my face was "just so 3 demensional!" Well, if that's a compliment in China i will take it. I told her that i thought Chinese girls such as herself were also beautiful if not more but didn't want to return the compliment with the opposite or opposing observation(uh whatever that would be?)

So today's lessons:

-Don't always assume that arguing and skepticism are seen as negative qualities, cause your new best friends may infact like you for it.

-Learn to appreciate your dimensions!

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08:53 pm

So here is my first attempt at trying to break down all of the thoughts that are swarming around in my head. I had a great weekend visiting with some other teachers who like myself just found out that they don't start teaching until the 11th.

I will be teaching junior students, and they just started their week of military training. The campus is now a buzz with pre-teen energy/ oppressed hormones and Chinese gaurds leading them in various formations and drills. So for the week i will continue to venture out buy fruits from various vendors, eat at an array of dumpling stands,master my enormous wok and gas barrel and play transformers games with my 2 year old best friend across the hall.

This weekend we ( other teachers david and I) went hiking to BaoFeng lake, which is one of the many beautiful sights in the Wulingyuan national park area. We hiked to the lake and then beyond to a ridge that overlooked only one section of the overwhelmingly large Wulingyuan park area. Besides the occasional Korean tourist, we were the only one's to brave the mountain which left us with the entire mountain range essentially to ourselves. Besides the obvious brillance of the area there were a few things that stood out to me once we entered into the park.

The first thing being the tremendous amount of trash that is allowed to exist in and around the park, and the second being the local economies efforts to create a commercial and envrionmentally unfriendly tourist destination out of many of the scenic areas. Economic incentives are not to be blamed in the least, China is on an upswing after a long century of economic turmoil and business is naturally the bottom line. I came into this experience knowing that China was never a country known for its strick environmental protocol, though when living within a national park you can't help but wonder how it used to look and what it will look like in 10 years when the number of tour buses, motor boats, and 10 story hotels rapidly increases.

Personal responsibility for things such as trash, and conservation is very much a western, and privledged notion. As i look around the park area and even the school grounds i notice that trash collecting, bottle sorting, and cigarette butt sweeping is a paid position that ensures someone an income. We have to be personally responsible for where we put our waste in the US b/c we don't really have a population of people who are employed to do this kind of undesirable labor. These people who pick up after the population of 1.5 billion who throw everything on the ground make up a significant work force. In a sense this is a pratical way of ultizing a work force that otherwise would be without a job. In my mind though, it's just really difficult to watch as people enter into one of the most beautiful areas in China use it as if it were their personal toilet. There is only so much that public cleanup people can do to pick up after such a large population and at some point it really gets down to a moral issue.

Ok, so that's my rant for the evening. I do love the Chinese people and the country that i am now calling home but at some point there are crucial issues such as personal responsibility and the environment that just can't be pushed aside in any cultural context. The people in this area are so proud of their natural landscape and the unique minority Tujia culure that it has nurtured for centuries. I hope throughout my year here at Wulingyuan middle school #1 something can be done to turn that pride into a awareness that impells people to make even the smallest changes. I mean there doesn't have to be complete systemic change here, we can keep producing all the loogies and snot rockets on every street in China, in exchange for every plastic bag, cigarette box and water bottle.

So challenge #1, how to work a "protect the environment" lesson into the cirriculum of my 1,000 11-13 year olds? Any suggestions?

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Aug. 26th, 2006

07:22 pm

hope this works, all of the instructions are in Chinese. but this will be my livejournal link. enjoy!

So I've been blocked!

2007-03-09T20:54:00.000-08:00

Sadly I have to say all of my hard work has been held up in the abyss of the internet. I have been blocked by the Chinese bureau of whatever thinks my opinions are somehow offensive and or threatening. So here is my new blog site. In the meantime I will try to retrieve all my old work, so enjoy!
Teacher Natalie