Big Red

Open Class Nightmare

2009-05-12T15:24:00.004+08:00

It's parents' week at my school and I have to give five open classes. I am a little sressed out about this. Not only will there be 50 students giving me blank stares for 45 minutes, but their parents will be too. I just know I'm going to make a fool out of myself.

Will Someone Please Fan Me

2009-02-24T12:48:00.007+08:00

This post goes out to Cathleen Hamel. Also, Happy 30th Birthday to my brother Christian. He is my first sibling to enter his third decade of living on this beautiful earth.

I wish Chinese classrooms had air conditioners in them.

It's hot again, the kind of hot when you immediately want strip off your clothes, drink a big glass of ice water and just lay on your bed for 10 minutes and do nothing. I do not miss this weather; in fact I dread it--a lot. I would be happy if Shenzhen's January weather which is about 65°F stayed all year long. Today reminds me of first arriving in China last August, sweating a lot and being very bitter. Virginia is humid enough.

Hot weather is not only uncomfortable but also costly. A few of the discomforts of hot and humid weather are as follows:

Devoting twice as much time and money to laundry

Drinking more liquids → using more Chinese squatties (toilets) → more peeing on yourself
Chinese bathrooms usually don't provide toilet paper either, so you also have to buy more tissues

If you are my friend then you must deal with me complaining more than my usual amount

Stinky children in the classrooms after PE class and stinky armpits in your face on the bus

Life has been busy

2008-12-23T19:55:00.000+08:00

My first two grade 4 classes were cancelled this morning. Of course I was not informed of this until I walked into the classroom at 9:30. Alas, this is how China operates, everything is done in the now. Schedules shift and somehow the foreigner is the last to know.

I have been very busy spending time with Chinese people lately. When you agree to one thing it’s like agreeing to 10 things all at once. It all started out at lunch a couple weeks ago. One of the better grade 6 English student’s mother, Xia, asked if I would help her daughter, Cici, prepare for an oral English competition that was taking place later that afternoon. I agreed to help her for a few minutes after lunch. In addition to helping her daughter prepare, she also asked me to join them for dinner and a sleep over the following night. This lady had been insisting I stay over with her and her daughter since the day I started teaching at Cai Tian. I decided it was easier to agree to her request than spend the rest of the year thinking of excuses as to why I cannot. Whilst at the competition that afternoon, one of the judges asked Xia, Cici and me to attend International Food Night at her primary school (we weren’t able to go, but had we I would have gone). The next day on the bus before even arriving at Xia’s house, she asked if I would get dinner with her and a friend Saturday night. I agreed. At that dinner, I was asked to attend another oral English competition. And that competition, I was asked by the coordinators to attend all the future oral English competitions.

And to give you an idea of what else I’ve been doing with my time…last Tuesday I participated in a tug of war competition with teachers from my school. On Monday I gave a speech to over 2000 students on the differences and similarities between American and Chinese students. I was recently a judge for an English singing competition, which included popular hits such as "Low" by Flo Rida and "Baby Hit Me One More Time" by Brittney Spears. In two days I'll be directing and acting as the Ghost of Christmas Future in A Christmas Carol. Oh and in the past 10 days I’ve watched "How the Grinch Stole Christmas” 16 times. And in two weeks, I'm scheduled to model in the nude for one of my student’s father who is a painter.

Surprise!

2008-11-05T23:06:00.006+08:00

My friends threw me a surprise birthday party last Saturday night. I couldn't have asked for a better birthday gift. It went down like so...

Ranjana invited me over for dinner and said she was going to cook. During my commute to her apartment I ran into two other friends who happen to be going to her place too. Since we often gather in groups, I thought nothing of this at the time. I assumed Ranjana had invited them to celebrate my 24th with us. After getting off the bus I called Kiki, a good friend of mine here, and asked her to join us for dinner at Ranjana's. She responded to my request with "thanks, but I'm staying in to watch Gossip Girls tonight." Disappointed, I hung up the phone without letting her know how absurd I think the show probably is (even though I've never seen it) and continued to walk on towards Ranjana's imagining the home cooked mystery meal that awaited me.

Once we arrived I was tired from walking and plopped my ass down on a chair to recover; small talk ensued. Ranjana asked if I was ready to cook. Damn! I thought she was going to cook for me. I told her to give me a second to sit and that I would love to help her in time. She proceeded to tell the guys she didn't haven enough food to feed them. I thought this was a little rude at the time, but wasn't in the place to ask them to stay with it not being my home. Dan and Kofi said it wasn't a problem and that they would grab something on the street and come back later. Ranjana told the guys they didn't need to leave right away; we could all go on the balcony to have a chat before getting started in the kitchen. I lazily got up, not wanting to go back outside into the heat, and sauntered over to the balcony doors behind Ranjana. She drew the curtains and a loud "SURPRISE" erupted from the mouths of 15 of my friends.

The whole thing caught me off guard. I was truly surprised. It was no coincidence Dan and Kofi were on the same bus as me and Kiki wanted to stay in on Saturday night to watch Gossip Girls. We celebrated my birthday that night by getting western food for dinner. You can never go wrong when you go western. And although Ranjana and I never actually cooked we did share a large Hawaiian at Pizza Hut that night. Then they bought me a sundae and sang Happy Birthday. It was the best birthday to date.

Thanks to everyone for making it happen:
Ranjana, Serena, Cody, Megan VA and Megan O, Scott, Lucie, Kiki, Lori, Kofi, Dan, Alison, Ian, Fred and Jeff

Things I feel like telling you...

2008-10-26T02:19:00.006+08:00

I left my wallet in a cab last night. It's my own fault, but I am still bitter. Mao damn this country.

I do not have to teach on Thursday and Friday. All classes are canceled for the "sports meet". Essentially all the students and teachers participate in various track and field events. Maybe I will be the ace.

Next week is Hallowe'en and I'm just going as your average Chinese person. Meaning I will be sporting camo from head to toe. Well, I hope anyway. I don't actually own any camouflage and clothes in this country don't fit anyone above 5'6", but I'm going to try my best.

Nowism

2008-09-22T15:54:00.008+08:00

"Maybe you teach this class? It starts... now. Here is the reference book."
When a Chinese English teacher approaches me with a statement like this, all I want to say is, "Look, most foreign teachers like myself haven't ever taught in the past nor are they likely to in the future, meaning I can't wing it. So, if you don't want me to teach the lesson that I prepared then how about handing me that damn reference book a day in advance. Maybe you teach instead."

"I forget to tell you; you have basketball. They will practice. It started at 5:00. You go now, you are late. You must practice. You will be the ace."
I haven't played basketball on an organized team in 10 years. I am horrible at this sport and any other organized sport that requires constant motion. The reason being I have absolutely no stamina to speak of. Sure, ultimate frisbee was fun and I could throw a decent backhand off the field, but I could never run fast enough to successfully block or catch a toss during a game. Basketball is the same way, the only thing I do semi-well is shooting free throws, which ain't going to get me anywhere on the court. Baseball is suited more to my liking--the pace being nice and slow. I also enjoy snowboarding in which gravity is really the only thing you need to get your ass down the mountain.

I'm finally in China...

2008-09-08T15:09:00.007+08:00

Things have been better. The past three weeks getting to know the other participants was fun, but now it's time to do what I actually traveled thousands of miles for--live and teach in a developing country called China. Yesterday was the contract signing ceremony. My headmaster and contact teacher are both male. Although they are cordial it would be nice if I had a female I could depend on around here. I am the only foreign teacher at Cai Tian School. There are 2,500 students. I was told I would be teaching primary, but it appears I will be teaching both primary and middle school. I don't know how I feel about this. It's all so overwhelming.

And that last entry about the Chinese staring at foreigners needs to be amended. Everyone stares at me. They can't take their eyes off of me. The most common greeting a Chinese woman will say to me is, "You are very beautiful". But basically any foreigner who isn't overweight is beautiful in their minds. I don't have a problem with this so much, but the staring in general gets old. I don't ever want to be in the public eye. I don't know how I'd handle all the attention.

Picture Time

2008-09-03T12:34:00.001+08:00

From Lizzy in China

Kiki and Jeff doing karaoke

From Lizzy in China

Hanging out and getting our karaoke on.

From Lizzy in China

Hot Pot dinner. This was spicey stuff.

From Lizzy in China

The field chicken dinner.

From Lizzy in China

The bus ride from Hong Kong to Zhuhai.

From Lizzy in China

So exhausted.

Training

2008-09-02T19:15:00.000+08:00

TEFL-Chinese-TEFL again and then more Chinese. Ordinarily our training would have taken place in Beijing over the course of three weeks. But due to the Olympics we're getting certified in 10 days here in Zhuhai, a city located off the south China coast in the Guangdong province. That's really why I haven't written lately, whenever we do get free time we try to take advantage of it by exploring the city.

So the food here is different to say the least. Last Sunday a group of twelve of us all decided to grab dinner and drinks on Jiu Ba Jie (Bar Street). With vague directions we managed to get very lost. We rode the bus until we could ride no longer. That was our first sign we had missed our stop. We never ended up making it to Bar Street that night, but we did wander around enough to make it to what seemed like Salon Street. It was as if every other store was an Amici Style. I thought Curtis was going to pop out to try to and sell me about $100 worth of Bumble and Bumble products to keep my hair tamed in this hot and humid climate.

Finally we stumbled upon what looked like the back of a restaurant. Indecisiveness is always a problem in big groups so I took charge and led my people in. In order to get to our table we walked by all sorts of fish tanks with live animals in them. Some of which we would surely be eating within time. We ordered a variety of dishes. Besides the vegetarian plates everything was mostly little balls of meat fried in oil with bones still sticking out of them. One of our friends who has been to China before said you're basically supposed to eat around the bones and then spit them out once your done. I compare this to eating sun flower seeds--a lot of work for not much reward.

We also ordered a dish called field chicken. Once everyone had tried this mystery dish our friend told us we had just swallowed bits and pieces of froggie. The Chinese call this field chicken because the only fields in China are rice paddies. I have to say besides the bones it wasn't too bad, but I don't think I'll order it again.

Halfway through dinner, some of these waitresses used their cellphones to take pictures of our table. I guess seeing such a large group of foreigners isn't such a common sight in Zhuhai. Although Zhuhai is no small city. Thomas Friedman was here recently visiting a few of the city's wind power plants and had an op-ed published last weekend in the New York Times on how parts of China are beginning to go green.

Back to the whole staring thing though. I actually don't mind it. And in reality there's not all that much of it anyway. Although some are more curious than others. If I'm walking down the street with a friend and two Chinese men peddle by on a bike or ride by in their car they might yell out hello with a big smile on their face. If we're out shopping it's not hard to catch people studying you for an extra second than they normally would. It's as if they're trying to figure something out but then give up almost as immediately as they begin. Actually, my roommate and I were walking to get lunch at a little jiao zi (dumpling) stand the other day and on our way back we were stopped on the sidewalk and asked to be English teachers at school here in Zhuhai. So if anyone has trouble finding work back home and they like to travel they should consider moving to Asia because they could definitely find a job. You only need one skill--speaka da English.

Typhoon

2008-08-22T14:51:00.005+08:00

Norfolk to Sacramento. Sac to San Francisco. SF to Hong Kong???

My flight has been rescheduled for Friday morning due a typhoon scare somewhere out there in the Pacific. This frightens me. I actually get very nervous when flying. While encountering turbulence during a flight may be an ordinary thing, any little dip of the plane sends my mind into a state of paranoia, if only momentarily. My family will be familiar with this story; I get the same feeling during turbulence as I did when the left rear tire of our van spontaneously fell off its axle on that trip up to Timberline to go skiing in West Virginia. Even though the tire was repaired later that day and everything was supposedly in good shape I still got scared every time we went around a hairpin turn on those mountain roads. I kept thinking our tire would pop off its axle again, only we'd be rolling to our death down the mountain side instead of stuck on the side of I-64. So, I really hope there isn't any possibility of "inclement weather" tomorrow.

With my flight canceled I was able to do a bit more exploring in SF. Since I went to the see the Golden Gate Bridge yesterday, today I wandered through Fisherman's Wharf, Presidio, Chinatown, and various other places. I went to Chinatown only to test whether or not I'm really up for the move. Turns out I am. Let me just say that the Chinese love chaos--the crowds, the pushing, shoving, yelling, anything in that general category and they're into it. I'll get used to it I'm sure. Another thing, Christine suggested I color my hair black to fit in. I may just do it.

It's getting late here so I'll have to elaborate on the rest of my day in SF at a later date. By the time you guys read this this I'll probably be half way through my 14 hour plane ride. I'll miss you all. Thanks for everyone's support.

K - I'm taking the seashell you painted for me on the plane ride tomorrow. It's my good luck charm.
Mikenna Lee- Good luck with your ballet lessons. I love you to the moon and back.
A Bear/Neville - Be nice to your brother and sister.
Anika - No more peeing your pants at night! You're almost 15 months now.
Dunlaps/Simons/Choquettes - Keep on keeping on. And feel free to wire me money anytime.