Hello again dear readers. Time for a weekly update on all the trouble we get up to, all the children whose lives we irrevocably change, and all the messed up things that happen to our bodies.
If the first week was all about discovering new, exciting, scary things, then this week has been about getting settled in. Work has started to feel a bit more like a normal job. The routine of things has taken away some of the glint and the sheen of "Wow I work in a shopping mall!... I mean at a cool Chinese summer camp!".
Teaching the same 7 page children's story for a second 5 day period in a row has really started to get kind of taxing. This has led to some new forms of creativity. I guess it's true what they say, that excruciating Turnip-based boredom is the mother of invention. I decided to spend a few lessons being a super strict and boring teacher, making each kid pronounce every syllable perfectly. These kids could GD say turnip by the end of that lesson, I'll tell you what. Other days I decided to be the ultra-fun laid back hippie teacher and just played some made up games the whole hour.
One of the games that we played involved my drawing about 50 vocab words on the white board. All of these were words that were featured in the book, or that were words we had covered pretty extensively in class, or were words that they ought to know by know (like the numbers one through ten). I had the kids form two teams (because I'm AMERICAN and everything needs to be a COMPETITION) and on each turn I would shout out a word and one kid from each team would race to the board to circle the word.
This worked wonderfully. Once. The first round was really fun and the kids were laughing and trying and giggling and always sunny all the time always. Then the next round started, the round where one player was the sort of overweight sensitive kid, and the other player is the class bully/clown/dunce. I shouted go and they both went up to the board and the bully/clown/duncy literally punched the overweight sensitive kid in the face!
Suddenly I started thinking about all the wrong steps that I had taken to get to this point in my life. I remembered that a lot of the kids in this camp are actually the children of people who own/run the school, and that if I got in trouble in China I could get in a LOT of trouble. Luckily nothing came of it, but I learned quickly that I had to really idiot/bully proof all future games that I came up with.
Another game that I invented involved me teaching directions, such as "Go Forward" "Stop" "Turn left", and so on. After the kids learned a handful of these, I would have them shout them at me and pretend that I was a robot. If they didn't tell me the right directions in time I would walk into walls and fall over and generally make an ass out of myself. Eventually I turned it up a notch by putting a blindfold on myself and giving them missions like "Guide me to Ms. Laura's classroom". These kids lose their freaking minds when a teacher puts a blindfold on and pretends to hurt himself bodily. The things I do for education...
This, I decided, was a much safer way to conduct business. If I hurt myself it's comedy, if the children hurt themselves it's... I don't know, but I don't want to find out. It's not that I am scared to be living here, or afraid to be working here, it's just that I'm not from here. Back home in America I know what I can and can't do, and I know more or less exactly what will happen if I do something I can't. Here, I don't know all of China's laws or codes of conduct, and I don't know the sorts of things that actually happen when and if they get broken. Better safe than sorry/making Christmas lights in a jail cell is my policy.
One of the great things about my job, and about living here in general, is that I can be whoever I want to be. I am literally a stranger to every single person in this country (except for Laura). Most of the people in this city have never even seen a white person in real life, let alone an American, and have certainly never interacted with them. There are no expectations about my behavior or my identity at all, and anything that I do is just chalked up to my foreignness. For example, if I were at home and I decided to wear high socks and sandals with some shorts on, a fanny pack, and a big white visor, most people would think I was some kind of asshole or at least a hot mess. Whenever I do that here, people just assume that's how all Americans dress. Which it is, right?
Before going on I would like to definitively express that I have not yet once dressed like that here. I don't even own a fanny pack. I don't even like saying the word fanny pack. Henceforth the word fanny pack is banned from this blog. Okay?
This same sense of freedom also extends to me "trying on" the local customs. If I try to act like a Chinese person and am successful at it, nobody bats an eye. If I want to spit on the street or slurp my noodles or walk around without my shirt on because I'm hot, I can. It's normal here! If I fail at anything, they just chalk it up to my foreignness. It's not personal at all. This is incredibly freeing to someone like me who, try as I might, have always been secretly very concerned about how people perceive and judge me.
Something else worth noting about week 2 of people a foreign teachers is that I got to know the kids a little bit better, and I can safely say that I really dislike a number of them! Those aforementioned bosses kids? They're the worst! That bully kid? My god! He's such a bully! And so stupid! It's amazing how quickly the cute veneer of little children wears down. A lot of the kids are still really cute though. The kindergartners are the best. One little kindergarten girl had the biggest crush on me. She cries whenever I don't pay enough attention to her, and demands that I pick her up all the time and is always hugging my knees (because she is so short, you see). She's adorable, and I'm going to miss her.
Week two was the end of this session of camp. It all culminated in a little recital/talent show on Friday afternoon for the parents of the children. Each class performed a little skit, and most of the classes also did a little dance number. The eldest kids performed the book I had to read to them as a play. I was asked to play the turnip because I was so big. This kind of flattery made me feel weird inside, but I decided to just go with it. The rehearsals for the show ended up killing a lot of time during hours when I ran out of lesson material, so it was all good in the end. Plus everyone thought it was HILARIOUS that I was playing a humongous fat turnip.
The day before the talent show, literally Thursday, Laura and I were informed that we were to be IN the talent show. "I know" I said to them. "I'm the turnip!". "No", the informed me, "you will have your own act to sing or dance in". This was mildly stressful for a minute, but then we remembered that whole "nobody knows you here and they literally couldn't understand you even if they wanted to" thing. Our Greek friend loaned us his guitar, and we sang a duet on stage at the end of the show.
I decided on "13 Wonderful Love Songs" by the Irish band "A House" because I knew the chord fingerings for that already. I'm not sure the Chinese people are ready for minor hits from the early 90s, folky-pleading/wailing-Irish-pop genre. But we had fun and that's what counts, right? Our Canadian friend did TNT by ACDC, and they enjoyed that a lot more.
Chinese people like to clap along to music. To all music. Even when it's inappropriate. I think that that may have been a factor in them liking the ACDC a little bit more, but maybe I'm just jealous.
Also during the week we spent more time trying different restaurants. One place that we tried had these altogether sort of combo meals that came with a bunch of extras. I picked the beef ribs and Laura picked the duck back. Our meals also came with enormous bowls of rice, some soups, and some greens. While we were eating our meal I pulled out my Chinese character dictionary and started studying the menu a little more intently, especially in regard to our soups. I learned that my soup contained sea stars, Solomon roots and ladybells. It was actually pretty good. The sea stars were more or less whole in the soup, and I still have been unable to determine if they are meant to be eaten or not. I took a few bites, but it tasted like bones/rocks/sand/grit. It was ultimately flavorless and kind of impossible to swallow.
Laura's soup, on the other hand, had "Caterpillar Fungus". This, I later learned from wikipedia, is a fungus that infects tiny caterpillar larva and sort of consumes them from the inside out, turning the entire caterpillar into a fungus and not a caterpillar anymore. It's still caterpillar shaped though, which is kind of awesome. The soup didn't have any obvious caterpillar bits in it, and kind of looked like chicken noodle soup. We both took a few tentative bites and decided we didn't care for it. It did not taste gross, and the texture was pleasant, but it was incredibly bland. It was like chicken noodle soup with no noodles or vegetables and also someone forgot to put salt and pepper on it too. Just sort of watery brother and bland meat flavor.
I'm not sure if that's how it's supposed to taste or not, but I was pretty disappointed. I'd be willing to try it again if I was promised a stronger flavor. I would have preferred it to be gross, honestly, than just how disappointingly boring it tasted.
After some research I learned that both soups are Chinese medicine/herbal remedies. Caterpillar fungus has been used for like 2000 years to treat both lung trouble and also erectile dysfunction, apparently. I'm not sure what the connection there is, but Chinese medicine makes less sense than the crap you hear on Dr. Oz, so who knows.
Friday night we went out for a night on the town. It was our Canadian friend's last day of work before he moves to Foshan to start a different job, so we celebrated. I am hoping to stay in touch with him once we move to Foshan at the end of the month, but only time will tell. We went to the same outdoor bar that we went to last week. After a few beers we decided to try "KTV" for the first time. KTV is Karaoke, for the uninitiated.
Our first task was getting there. It was nearly impossible to hail a cab on a Friday night in down town, but the place was over 5 miles away and the six of us couldn't all fit on the Canadian's little motor scooter, so we continued to try. After nearly 20 minutes, a car pulled up and a Chinese lady asked, in remarkably good English, where we were going. We told her, and her husband said "get in, we will take you, we promise we are not bad people".
Now, if I had to do this again, I probably wouldn't. But to be perfectly honest we were all a tiny little bit drunk, and the lady was right. We were very unlikely to get a cab for the next hour. "Please don't kidnap me!", I said as I hopped into the nice leather car...
As it turns out, they were not kidnappers and were actually quite nice. The couple had just gotten into Zhaoqing from New Zealand where they had lived for the last ten years. They were spending a few months in China for business and also to see family and old friends. We asked them why there were so nice, and they said they were getting homesick for New Zealand and for English speakers, and that we looked like we needed help. They were some of the nicest people I've ever met, and we all exchanged our contact info. We may be getting dinner with them later this week.
Anyway, onto KTV.
KTV is noting like Karaoke in the states. First of all, every karaoke place is in this SWANKY-ass building. These places are nicer inside than like the hotels and apartments that I've been in around here. Every party rents out a private room. We got a "small" room, but it would have comfortable sat 8 or 10 people. When you rent out the room, you get the room for as long as you want, and as many karaoke songs as you want to sing. These are all "free", but you have to promise to spend a minimum on drinks and food.
For the small room we had to agree to spend 400 yuan (about $64). So this ended up being about $10 per person for a case of beer, a bottle of wine, and 4 hours of karaoke. All in all it was a great deal. Anyone who wants to come visit us in China, we're definitely going to go do KTV!
Although, if I am being honest, we did get scammed a little bit. You see, our Canadian friend is engaged to a Chinese woman, who is also our friend. This Chinese friend of ours is the one who set up the room and ordered the drinks and stuff. After getting us all set up, she went to a different private room to meet up with some of her work friends. While she was away the staff of the Karaoke joint brought in our drinks and also a bunch of food. We weren't sure if the food was complimentary or had been ordered by our friend before she left or what. As we sang, drank, and got merry, the food began to be eaten.
YOU GUYS THE FOOD WASN'T COMPLIMENTARY.
This ended up spiking up the bill quite a bit, but it was still less than $20 USD per person, so I wasn't even mad!
The final anecdote worth noting for this week's post was that today (Sunday) I decided to try and walk around Seven Star Lake. This lake is right in front of our hotel, and is sort of the main fixture the town is built on/around. It looks pretty large, but I ventured a guess that it was only 8 miles or so in circumference. Owing to the fact that Laura and I have run a marathon before, that we had hiked like 12 miles through Dinghu mountain last week, and also that we had nothing better to do today, I figured 8 miles would be no big deal. We would take it slow, bring lots of water and some food, and just amble around the lake all day.
Next time I have a great idea like this, I hope Laura just shoots me in the foot.
The walk was nice, really it was. But the lake is SIGNIFICANTLY bigger than it looks. We couldn't see it from our hotel, but isn't a perfect oval. There are these sort of wings that jut out on the east and west sides. Something else I didn't take into account was that there was absolutely no shade on a large portion of the path. Walking through the mountains, where the altitude is higher and there's a rainforest of trees and cool waterfalls is a lot different than baking in the 100 degree sun on flat land all day.
After walking for nearly 4 hours, getting pretty sunburnt, and running out of all the water we brought, as well as some water we purchased from a vendor, we decided to catch a bus home. This failure will sting in my eyes and in my heart for years to come.
Actually no, it wasn't that big of a deal. I wanted to see if the lake could be easily walked around, and the answer is no. No it can't be.
Also we saw a tiny little lizard that was the size of a big ant or a centipede or something. I sort of caught him but couldn't pick him off the ground for fear of smooshing his little organs. He was worth the trip.
So until next week my western readers, eat your bug soup and maintain healthy lungs and erectile tissue!
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