Birthday Celebrations

I did it.  I gave in.  My blog is now open to anyone to read, which means you can send this link to your friends and whoever asks for it and they won't have to go through the hassle of contacting me and requesting an invitation, which I then send over and over until they find it weeks later...  My apologies to those who did endure that inconvenience.  

I had a birthday on Thursday - my 20th birthday, to be exact.  If anyone had told me a few years ago that I would be celebrating my 20th in China, I'd have told them they were crazy.  Yet here I am, and I'm glad to say that this birthday was a very happy one.  

Thanks to the efforts of the Geek Squad, I awoke that morning to a door decorated to look like a newspaper.

In a lighthearted parody of the recent milk scare here in China, one "article" in the newspaper was about the monster Milkzilla.

Milkzilla turns rancid toward innocent bystanders.  Many witnesses stomachs' were churned as the brutal scene erupted.  All is being done to tame this beast.  However, many people have curdled at the thought of the damage done to the city.  If we all stand together we can move Milkzilla out of our whey.  China conforms to new beginnings.

Cherstan drew the pictures, and Paige dictated to Heather what to write.  We all joke about being in a communist country, so you understand the last line of the article.  They added all sorts of funny inside jokes to this picture, and if you can get a closer look, you can see some of them.  There are a pair of guys playing a game of Magic: The Gathering, the Joker saying "Let's not blow things out of proportion," one man yelling "Save the cheerleader!" and even two guys dueling with lightsabers.  (Hut, Slip, and Ru: there's a chanilla guy in the front!)

This article reads:

Madison accepts Twenty as her new master.  Many feel that losing Nineteen will be a growing experience.  Twenty will bring a year of knowledge and discipline to her routine.  Hopefully, she will kick start Twenty's ability to bring her closet a new belt.  Possibly in black?  We wish Madison the best of luck in her year to come.  Happy Birthday Madison!

Isn't that fun?  I loved my newspaper decorations.

Brekka, one of my head teachers, gave me this adorable cake.

It was so good!  The best part was the pineapple on top.  How I miss pineapple.

One of our favorite things to do here is get washy washies.  We head over to the local hairdressers', where they shampoo your hair, massage your scalp, shoulders, and arms, then style your hair.  This was the best my hair has looked in about two months.  The guy who did my hair had the coolest voluminous hairdo that didn't move a millimeter the whole time.  Of course, my hair frizzed out again after about an hour, but at least it was nice at first.

Heather's birthday is this coming Sunday, so we doubled up our celebrations and had dinner at Steak Experts.  It's a little restaurant around the corner from us that has some killer spaghetti.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures.  

The Chinese teachers informed us the day before our last vacation that the second grade classes were going to be switched around because of the addition of two new students to the school.  The two sisters are from Canada and their first language is English.  Naturally, none of the classes we prepared were ever challenging enough for them.  The Chinese teachers decided to dissolve my class and give the two girls to me in addition to four of the most advanced students in the grade.  I was sad to see my old class go.

We had some latecomers this day, so you won't get to see Shareena or Ken until a later post.

Left to right, Nicole and Simone (pronounced Simona) are both native Chinese girls, though Simone's father is German.

Stephanie and Michelle are the Canadian girls. They are so sweet and are my best behaved students.

I'll have to post some more pictures of class when Shareena and Ken decide to come on time.

This coming week is a national holiday, so I'll be going out of town again for a week. Tonight, directly after class, my roommate Nikelle and our friend Brighton will hop on a bus and begin our two-day journey to the city of Xishuanbanna, where we will spend four days seeing the sights. I'll blog as soon as I get back!

Chinese Name

First off, I'd like to take a few moments to laugh about this photo.  

This is one of the classrooms in Kaiyin school where I teach. Above the blackboard it reads "Cooperate to Explore the Universe" and "Widely Learn and Perstently Work." I know what they're trying to say, but it's still funny. They come up with the most bizarre ways to word things.

But now to the main event. *does a little happy dance*  I gots a Chinese name!  My local coordinator friend, Catherine, gave it to me last week.  I've been meaning to post about it, but I kept forgetting after all the fun stuff that happened in Yangshuo.  Ahem.  

Here it is: Yu Mei.  It means 'beautiful dawn' or the beginning of spring.  Isn't that the best name ever?!  I love it!  It's so Lord of the Rings.  

And yes, that happy dance was Thriller.

Weekend in Yangshuo

This weekend the Geek Squad and I took a sleeper bus to the city of Yangshuo, which is just outside of Guilin.  It's a picturesque city, with gorgeous karsts everywhere.   (Nicole, we've been to Yangshuo - it's that little city with the cormorant fisherman guys.  When we took the ferry from Guilin, that's the city we got off on.)  We actually didn't go to Guilin at all, because a lot of the touristy things are right there in Yangshuo.  

Friday night was spent on the bus, crammed next to a bunch of random Chinese guys, which is pictured below.  The bus ride was 14 hours long, but actually a lot of fun.  We made friends with the guys next to us and shared our road trip snacks with everyone.  The bunks were surprisingly comfortable, and I was able to sleep for quite a while. 

Paige and Cherstan had the bunks in front of Heather and I.

Everyone had gotten on the bus and found their bunks when all these random people came in and sat down in the aisles.  I'm sure it was terribly uncomfortable for them, but we gave them our pillows to help a bit.  The guy whose face is cut off was next to me.  He didn't speak a word of English, but he was nice.

We arrived in Yangshuo at around 9:30 in the morning.  The bus was continuing on to Guilin, so we didn't stop at an actual bus station when we got off.  Mercifully, the bus stop was directly in front of our hotel, so we were able to drop off our bags right away and get a little breakfast.  

This is a common sight in Yangshuo; someone with a basket full of chickens or ducks to sell.  I saw this family going down the street with two tiny boys holding a chicken between them.

The major shopping center of Yangshuo is West Street.  Like Walking Street in my home city of Zhongshan, it's pedestrians only.  It's a very touristy area, but there's some great shopping and we spent our entire first day (Saturday) there.

On our hunt for breakfast our first morning, we found this great little restaurant called Drifter's that had some excellent and inexpensive Western food.  Here I am writing on the wall, which was pretty awesomely decorated.

I decided, upon finding these magnificent brass spectacles, that I must take a hippie-esque picture of myself wearing any round sunglasses that I find.

Back at Drifter's for dinner that night, I show off a silver hair thing that I bought.

The next day, Sunday, we woke up early, rented some bikes, and rode to the Li River for a bamboo raft ride.  This was my favorite part of the trip.

Here's the guy propelling my and Paige's bamboo raft.

The trip, though short, was so much fun.  I spent tons of money on souvenirs.  >_<  The bus ride home started out quite fun, as there was a movie in Mandarin playing on the bus tv.  We all watched it and provided dialogue for the characters, which, knowing Chinese cinema, probably wasn't much sillier than the actual dialogue. ^_^  After that, the ride went downhill fast.  This time, we were on the top bunks, which we have since decided are much bumpier than the bottom.  The bus driver drove even crazier than the usual, and combined with the teeny, dirty bunks, made for a severely uncomfortable night.  To say the least, I was extremely grateful to be in my own bed the following night.  My plywood mattress has never been more comfortable.

Some good news before I sign off: I finished my Slytherin scarf and it looks, if I do say so myself, fabulous.  As it is nearly midnight and I don't have a picture of the completed work yet, you'll have to content yourself with the knowledge that I did, indeed, finish it.  Pictures next time!

 

Randomish

I don't really have a theme for this post, so I'm just going to put up a few random pictures and talk about what I've been doing the past day or two.

Every Wednesday evening at around six, all of us English teachers assemble on the school track field with some of the best speaking English students to play games and talk.  I snapped a few pictures of the event, called "English Corner."  I know, bad name.  But it's better than the old one: "English Paradise."  Haha!

Here's one side of the school complex.  On the right of me, which you can't see, is the main school building.  ILP has the fourth floor.  Four is the Chinese unlucky number, so they always give us 'four' stuff.  We are also all living on the fourth floor of our apartment building, which is actually officially floor 3B.  No joke.

Different angle.  Now I'm facing left of the above photo.  Those apartment buildings are just right of my building.

A few of my fellow ILP teachers joined in this lively impromptu game of soccer.

Travis - one of two males among our entire group of 30+ teachers.  The other is married.  They're both troopers. ^_^

I snapped this picture in the bathroom of a McDonald's.  Most of the toilets in China are squatters, so Chinese people encounter western style toilets only on an infrequent basis.  Sometimes you'll see shoe prints on the seat of the toilet bowl, and you know it was some Chinese lady standing on it and squatting because she didn't know how to use it!  This sign, evidently, it meant to prevent such misunderstandings.

One of my favorite places here in Zhongshan: Walking Street.  I blogged about it before, but it's much prettier at night, and especially so with the lights up in preparation for the Mid-Autumn Festival.

I got a talking to by my Taekwondo instructor after I got back from China last time because I didn't have any photos of myself kicking statues.  Before I departed for this voyage, I resolved to get a picture of me kicking every statue I come into contact with.  (How's my form, Mr. Patterson?)

I really, Really, REALLY wanted to get these sunglasses, but they made my face look fat.  Aaaand there's the required Chinese-guy-staring-at-the-blonde-American-girl.  Typical.

Funny story before I sign off: last night, Heather, Cherstan, Paige, and I (the Geek Squad, of course) went to our favorite grocery store to pick up a few necessities in preparation for the weekend trip to Guilin for which we'll be leaving tomorrow evening (that means no emails for Madison until Monday).  On our way out, we saw our bus pull up to the stop across the street, so we ran as fast as we could to catch up to it.  We weren't more than ten yards away from the bus when it pulled out and left us completely in the dust.  To say the least, we were a little peeved, since this meant we had to wait another hour for the next bus to come.  

To amuse myself and my friends, I decided to show off some of my sweet moves and proceeded to bust out the Thriller dance right there on the sidewalk of a busy street.  The other people standing around for the bus naturally stared, my friends pronounced the performance a grand one, a couple of cab drivers actually stopped to watch, and we all shared a hearty laugh.  By the end of it, we'd gathered a bit of a crowd, so we all danced together and sang goofy kids songs (Down by the Banks and the Hokey Pokey among them) for the remainder of our wait.  I'm sure most of our onlookers had the same thought in their brains as they watched our escapades: "Crazy Americans."  It was probably the most fun I've ever had waiting for the bus.  Next time you find yourself stuck somewhere with naught much to do, I suggest dancing.

My Class

My mom's been bugging me for ages to take photos of my class, and today I finally remembered to do so.  I love my students; they're sweet and fun kids.  Last week was really hard, because I had no idea what I was doing and they didn't respect me as a teacher.  We're told to be strict and firm with our students for about a week or two at first until they recognize you as the authority, and then you can really start to have fun.  On the whole, they don't need much discipline, which makes my job really easy.  Our first class rule is that no one is allowed to speak any Chinese, and if that happens, the perpetrator is required to sit in the Chinese chair for a minute or two.  It's basically a time-out for speaking Chinese.  They're pretty good about it, and if anyone ever slips into their native tongue, Annie is the first one to tattle.  "Teacher, Chinese!" and she points to the guilty party.  It's funny.

The children were all given English names when they started English classes a few years ago.  They're about eight or nine years old and can speak fairly well, so my job is to get them reading.

These two were goofing around during the break.   On the left is Julie, and on the right is Bobby, my most rambunctious student.  They are both big sweethearts.  Bobby always likes to hold my hand when we go out for a break.  

Bobby is really into martial arts.  He loves to run around the classroom and do handstands.  I'm really jealous of his splits.

Melissa is very intelligent.  The first couple of days I had a hard time with her because she wasn't willing to listen to me, but now she's my top student.  She's eager to learn and is usually the first one done with an assignment.

Andrew is also in the top of the class.  He likes to goof around and be silly.  Sometimes during an activity he'll give an incorrect answer just to make everyone laugh.

Mary and Annie are fun girls.  They are having a tough time catching on to the reading, but they improve every day.  Mary is very affectionate and always sits next to me when we read a book.

Melissa was helping me put away the flash cards we used today.

Here are the tables.  Melissa is showing off a game we play to teach consonant sounds.  On the paper are five target consonants and one or two random consonants.  I read a word that begins with one of those five target consonants, and they point to the right one and shout out the right letter.

Here they are practicing their printing.

Teaching is very rewarding.  I dread making lesson plans every day, but once I get into the classroom and start teaching the students the time flies by.  They're really good kids.

I was in a mall in the nearby of Shenzhen this weekend, and I saw this dental office.  I thought it looked pretty funny right there next to the knockoff Gucci bag stands and pirated dvd stores.

This guy was getting a set of dentures.  The Chinese aren't really into dental hygiene, so most of them have lots of fillings and crowns.

Happy At Last

  

Maybe I'm just a big boob, but it's taken me until now to finally feel comfortable with the idea that I'll be living here for another three and a half months.  We have our classes all worked out (after VERY MUCH anxiety and trouble and frustration... I could go on and on), and I've spent this week laboring over lesson plans.  Teaching is the most scary and frustrating thing I've ever done, but it's also incredibly... incredible?  To start a class when the students barely know what sounds the letters of the alphabet represent, to the end when they can hear a word and name the first letter - that's magic.

I don't have many pictures yet.  I take my camera with me everywhere; I just forget to take photographs. :S So I present the few pictures I DO have:  

This is the school cafeteria - it's three stories and in a completely separate building than the rest of the school.  The children go in one class at a time, and the food is already out on trays on the tables for them.  This (theoretically) keeps the children from spilling too much and also cuts down on line wait times, since they all go to meals at once.

Inside the cafeteria.  Breakfast is definitely the best meal of the day.

Here's what's called the Walking Street, named such because no cars are allowed to drive along here.  This is like the city strip mall.  There are lots of little shops along here, though this was taken in the morning and most weren't open yet.

My three buds here, whom my mother has affectionately dubbed the "Geek Squad."  Paige, Cherstyn, and Heather, respectively.

Heather picks out a dragonfruit at our favorite grocery store: Vanguard.

Dragonfruit are so funky looking!  They're hot pink with green spikes.  The picture doesn't really do justice to the colors.  Amy, our head teacher, wants one of us to dress as one for Halloween this year.  I am so down with that. :D  One lifelong dream of mine is to be a baked potato for Halloween.

Aaaaaand... here's a few random photos from Hong Kong.  Remember how there was a TYPHOON (thank you very much, Nathan and Auntie Kelly) the day we flew into Hong Kong?  Here it is as it blows in.  Nicole, this is at the top of Victoria Peak, remember?  There was that mall, and then if you go out and around that right corner you can look over the city?  I found that same "muttrosexual" poster for the dog spa and showed my group.  They all had a good laugh about it.

I had to take one of the paperback British Harry Potter.

This cemetery was so packed, I couldn't imagine what it looks like after Memorial Day!  Ok, so they probably don't celebrate Memorial Day in Hong Kong, but I'm sure they have an equivalent holiday there.

(My apologies for the sappy title.  I couldn't think of a clever one this evening.)