Another very quiet week. Routines routines routines. I actually forgot to make a post until just now. Whoops. We are already halfway through our 14th week!
I may have, if you'll excuse the pun, created a monster with some of my kids at school. I was eager to share Halloween with them, and so I had several themed lessons last week. This past week we were back to basics and returned to the textbook, but now all the kids want to do is Halloween stuff! In fact, they demand it.
Luckily for them, there were still some planned Halloween activities. Something that our boss decided that all the children in the school should do is make a "Halloween mask". Apparently last year they tried to carve pumpkins with the schoolchildren, but apparently giving 1600 kids (who have never touched anything other than chopsticks) 1600 knives and 1600 pumpkins did not go over well. The mask activity basically entailed giving them all cardboard white masks and letting them decorate them for an hour. This translated to an hour of lesson-plan free activity for Jon-the-Teacher, so I was extremely happy for it! To make myself look good I did a brief "lesson" where I taught the kids the vocabulary word "mask", and then I showed them different types of masks to give them ideas.
It was pretty interesting to see the vast array of talent across the students. Even though they were all 8-9 years old, some of the kids were little Picassos and other ones were struggling to not eat the markers. I took the liberty of doing my own mask as well. The kids were enamored with mine, although I am not sure if it was because they liked the design or if they thought it was stupid.
This is true for much of my interactions with the children. I just don't know how they feel about me. Most of the time I think they like me. Whenever I am walking around the grounds of the school and ANY of the children see me they go absolutely nuts. They scream and cheer and run around and say my name (which they either say as 'jew-on' or as 'jom'). They run up and hug me and high-five me and are always showing me stuff they are working on. This all seems like pretty solid evidence.
Other times, though, it is entirely a different story. During class a lot of kids, especially the older ones, are extremely disrespectful. They don't listen or pay attention in class, they ignore me when I am talking to them directly, and sometimes they even go so far as outright bully me. This last week a number of children have decided to start shouting rude things at me, such as saying "Jon you are so fat" and "Jon you have stupid chicken hair" (I'm not sure what this means). I even caught some of them doing impressions of me as if I were the stay-puft marshmallow man lumbering around New York City.
Now, I am pretty thick skinned, and let's not forget that they are just children, but I find it pretty incredible that they have to audacity to say these things to me directly. I am really not sure what to do about it either, because it's entirely inappropriate to talk to teachers that way. So far I've just pretended not to understand, in the hopes that they would tire of their jokes. If it continues much longer, though, I may have to do something more serious.
In other news, the weather is finally starting to get more reasonable here. Of course, that just means that it's in the mid 80s instead of high 80s, but for China that's a huge change. The best thing is that in the evenings and early mornings there is a chilly breeze! I love it. It still gets really sweat-through-your-shirt hot during the afternoon, but in the morning it's so pleasant! I still do not believe that it gets very cold here though. We're almost to November and the change in temp has been so subtle that I can't imagine it dropping significantly in the next few months.
Speaking of weather, I don't think I have talked about the smog very much yet. Yes there is smog in China almost every day. It's not really as bad as a lot of people may think, though. Nonetheless, it is still rather depressing whenever it is bad. There are very few days where the sky is completely clear and blue, and it does not rain very much at all. The smog makes everything look kind of out of focus and far away and just slightly washed out.
Foshan is actually one of the less-smoggy cities in China. Apparently it's considered one of the cleanest cities in the province. It makes me shudder to think of what Beijing is like. According to one report I read, a day in Beijing is equivalent to smoking 21 cigarettes. Something that I think about a lot when I am on the bus going to and from work is just how much chemicals and crap are getting pumped into the atmosphere by China and the rest of the world every day. It's hard not to think about it. Sometimes I think about how this is all slowly killing the planet. It's a sad thought. Issues of climate change and the planet's health are not academic issues for debate over here. It's a reality that the people of China are dealing with, even as the governments and corporations in China are increasing their energy output daily. It's really sad stuff.
Less depressingly, Laura and I went to Guangzhou again this weekend. We went to several new parts of the city and saw some great buildings. First up on our list was Zhujiang New Town. This "New Town" is in the center of what has been deemed the new downtown of Guangzhou, and is built up around a stadium that was constructed for the Asian games in 2010.
The Asian games are basically the Olympics, but you aren't invited if you aren't an Asian country. This entire area was developed in the last 4 years to cater to the influx of tourists that were expected for the games. The Zhujiang part of town was really cool. First off, it was incredibly close to the Canton Tower. We still have not made a trip to the top of the tower because, as I mention repeatedly, it's obscenely expensive to go to the top. However, from Zhujiang we were able to get a much closer look at the truly massive city landmark. Next up was the stadium itself. I was extremely excited to see the stadium because, just like the Canton Tower, it was featured on the last season of the Amazing Race. After going to the top of Canton Tower the teams had to locate a landmark, which ended up being the stadium, and then after they raced to it they had to do an acrobatics challenge at it.
(The entire Guangzhou episode of the Amazing Race is here. I have now been to most of these places!)
For a minute it looked like we would actually be able to go into the stadium, which would have been awesome, but there was a security guard standing off to the side near the gate. Even being blocked from going in, we were able to see most of the stadium and I was able to see the towers where the racers did their acrobatics challenge. It's like I was on the race!
Moving into the actual town square itself, we were beset on all sides by beautiful, new, extremely tall skyscrapers. The square is actually a park, or "greenway" as they are called in China, and Laura and I enjoyed walking around and just looking at the buildings. Underneath the park, as in underground, there was a mall. I am pretty sick of malls in China, but this one was cool because of how it was built into the area. Plus they had a lot of western restaurants that I have not seen in a long time, such as Burger King and Subway! We had heard that Chinese Subway is bad, so we ended up having lunch at this place called "The Big Apple". Still sick of Chinese food, Laura and I opted for The Big Apple because the pictures on the menu looked really good and a little more fancy than fast food.
Unfortunately, we were completely wrong. The food was DISGUSTING. It qualifies as the worst meal we have had in China so far, including the fish heads. As an aside, whenever the cafeteria at school makes fish heads now, all the foreign teachers go out for lunch. The fish heads do not taste bad, per se, but it is one of the boniest and least meaty dishes that the school serves. Also, the heads are often cold for some reason and nobody likes cold fish heads. But anyway, The Big Apple was WORSE THAN COLD FISH HEADS.
After lunch we continued to explore the square. The square is home to the Guangzhou Opera House, which is quite beautiful from the outside. I have heard that a Cantonese Opera is a must-see thing in one's lifetime, but on Saturday we just admired the building. We weren't able to go inside, but we did snoop around. Another great building was the Guangdong Museum, which is a free museum. We were excited to go inside and look at the exhibits, especially when we learned that there was a special exhibit on Native Americans. The thought of seeing how the Chinese view Native Americans was an interesting prospect, but unfortunately this story does not end well. There was an extremely long line to get into the museum. We don't know why, maybe it was the NA exhibit, or maybe it's just always busy because it is free. Either way, we did not have an extra hour to lose just waiting in line, so we decided to save the museum for another day.
Another public building in the Zhujiang square was the Guangzhou Public Library. This building was gorgeous inside and out, and I took a lot of pictures. It was enjoyable just walking around and seeing all of the people going about their business. I have never been to a big city library in the US, but I would be surprised if any library was as busy as this one. It was mobbed with people!
One last stop on our tour of the square was the US Embassy. It was exciting to see the American flag and a whole bunch of signs in English. We were looking forward to going inside and looking around, and also finally registering with them. I had been told that registering with your embassy in a foreign country is a good idea and should be done as soon as possible, but to tell the truth this was literally the soonest that it was possible as we had not been able to locate it before! True to US Government fashion though, they are closed on the weekends and we weren't allowed inside. It's cool that I can travel 7,000 miles and still be inconvenienced by my own government. It made me feel right at home.
After a few hours of walking, exploring, and checking out the buildings all around Zhujiang New Town, we hopped back onto the subway and went to a new destination. Our last stop for the day was Sun Yat-Sen University. Sun Yat-Sen is an important figure in Chinese history. He is remembered for being the man who "planted the seeds of revolution" and "gave birth to the idea of the PRC". He ruled the country at the turn of the 20th century and is quite an interesting fellow. There is literally hundreds of things named after him in every single town, village, and city in this country. You are never far from a Sun Yat-Sen street or square or something. SYSU is one of the top universities in the area, and is known for having a beautiful campus. By this point we were pretty exhausted, so we did not feel up to exploring the campus down to the last blade of grass. We still got a great look around though, and it was an interesting place. It was cool being somewhere that was obviously a university, with all of the collegiate trappings, and yet also somewhere that was so very Chinese. The campus was quite austere, but there were some interesting statues and buildings worth inspecting. After giving our legs a good rest we headed home.
One of my more interesting encounters this week has to be the giant spider I met. The foreign teachers who live above us were coming down to visit on Friday when they told us "there is a HUGE spider outside your door!". We went and had a look, and they were right, he was indeed a gigantic spider. We were due out for the evening, so the spider was given a free pass. However, when he was still hanging out in the same place a few hours later, it was time to re-inspect our relationship. I was not sure if he was alive, or if he was dangerous, but I was wary of going to sleep with him so nearby to where we put our heads at night.
I decided that the best plan of action was to get rid of him. I don't like killing spiders, so I was going to avoid that unless it became a question of me or the spider (I would choose me). I grabbed a very large tupperware container and carefully coaxed him into the box. Once I agitated him a little bit he showed off his truly impressive size, but overall I felt in control of the situation. Once he was in the box I tossed him out a window.
Our safety guaranteed, I took to the Internet and did some research. Apparently our nighttime interloper was a huntsman spider, of which there are many subspecies all over the world. In fact, you have probably seen a few in your lifetime no matter where you live. This guy was definitely a big cousin. In fact, there is a bigger subspecies called the "Giant huntsman" which is the largest spider in the world when measuring by legspan (12+ inches).
I also learned in my research that the huntsman spider likes to eat pests, especially cockroaches. Having learned that makes me wish I had left him alone! Maybe he is the reason that our apartment has been rather bug-free lately. At any rate, next time I see him or another of his cousins, I will be sure to invite him to stay for a while.
In Chinese language news, I am happy to report that I am up to almost 200 characters that I can read and write. My "learn two a day" routine is going well. At this rate, I should definitely be able to hit my 300 by Christmas. I have also been making a concerted effort to use a bit more Chinese in public, and my confidence is slowly starting to rise. I may learn how to speak this language yet.
Overall it was a quiet week, but one where there was still fun to be had. This coming week promises to be pretty big though. The decision to go to Macau has officially been cemented. I booked the hotel this past week, and I also went to the bus station and got our ride. We are leaving this Friday!
Expect a picture post up soon.
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