9/29/2013-Week leading up to National Week

Week leading up to National Day break

• This week we played time bomb 
• Basically, I have a prop
•   Usually an umbrella or the class sign, basically something they can hold with two hands. 
• They have to pass that prop around for 45 seconds and the last person that has this prop has to say an English word 
• There are two teams 
• I’ve found that boys vs. girls always works best because if I split them into front vs. back teams they’ll just pass it around to themselves but if it’s boys vs. girls there’s a good chance of the prop passing between teams 
• The fun part lies in the fact that the students don’t know what the word is until the last person holding the prop has been determined
•  If the last person says they want to say the English word, then I reveal the English word 
• If they get it right, their team gets a point. If they get it wrong, the other team gets a point. 
• However, the person holding the prop has the option of (before the word is revealed) giving the other team the chance to answer. If the other team says it right, the other team gets a point. If the other team says it wrong, the original team gets a point. 
• This was the first time in weeks that I didn’t have to call for attention to explain the rules of the game
• Mostly, whenever I’m trying to explain a new game there’s kids crying, blood everywhere, that sort of stuff 
• And playing the game was actually a lot of fun to watch 
• There was one class where the teacher put all of the smart kids in a bunch and everytime the prop passed over to that side of the room a scrum would ensue. Luckily, smart kids aren’t usually the biggest kids or the bullies so they would wiggle about for a while and then it’d be alright. 
• The words I used (in order) (I always said the words twice before the students pronounced it
• Law-法律 
• Phenomenon-现象 
• February-二月
•  Six-六 
•  Methionylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamylserylleucylphenyl- alanylalanylglutaminylleucyllysylglutamylarginyllysylglutamyl- glycylalanylphenylalanylvalylprolylphenylalanylvalylthreonyl- leucylglycylaspartylprolylglycylisoleucylglutamylglutaminyl- serylleucyllysylisoleucylaspartylthreonylleucylisoleucylglutamy- lalanylglycylalanylaspartylalanylleucylglutamylleucylglycylisoleucylprolylphenylalanylserylaspartylprolylleucylalanylaspartylglycylprolylthreonylisoleucylglutaminylaspfraginylalanylthreonylleucylarginy- lalanylphenylalanylalanylalanylglycylvalylthreonylprolylalanyl- glutaminylcysteinylphenylalanylglutamylmethionylleucylalany- lleucylisoleucylarginylglutaminyllysylhistidylprolylthreonylisoleucylprolylisoleucylglycylleucylleucylmethionyltyrosylalanylasparaginy- lleucylvalylphenylalanylasparaginyllysylglycylisoleucylaspartyl-glutamylphenylalanyltyrosylalanylglutaminylcysteinylglutamylly-sylvalylglycylvalylaspartylserylvalylleucylvalylalanylaspartylvalyl-prolylvalylglutaminylglutamylserylalanylprolylphenylalanylarginyl-glutaminylalanylalanylleucylarginylhistidylasparaginylvalylalanyl-prolylisoleucylphenylalanylisoleucylcysteinylprolylprolylaspartylalanylaspartylaspartylaspartylleucylleucylarginylglutaminylisoleucylalanylseryltyrosylglycylarginylglycyltyrosylthreonyltyrosylleucylleucylserylarginylalanylglycylvalylthreonylglycylalanylglutamylasparaginylarginylalanylalanylleucylprolylleucylasparaginylhistidylleucylvalylalanyllysylleucyllysylglutamyltyrosylasparaginylalanylalanylprolylprolylleucylglutaminylglycylphenylalanylglycylisoleucylserylalanylprolylaspartylglutaminylvalyllysylalanylalanylisoleucylaspartylalanylglycylalanylalanylglycylalanylisoleucylserylglycylserylalanylisoleucylvalyllysylisoleucylisoleucylglutamylglutaminylhistidylasparaginylisoleucylglutamylprolylglutamyllysylmethionylleucylalanylalanylleucyllysylvalylphenylalanylvalylglutaminylprolylmethionyllysylalanyl-alanylthreonylarginylserine 
• Aluminum-铝 
• Antidisestablishmentarianism-反对解散国教主义 
• Onomatopoeia-象声词 
• Little-小 
• Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious-奇妙 
• Would-将要 
• Cough-咳嗽
• Here's a video
• http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjE1NzY1Mzgw.html
•  Didn’t realize you could cry so hard you could puke 
• There was just one child in my class who WOULD NOT pay attention (my classes isn’t all fun and games, I do actually teach them English too) and so I took his schoolbag and said, “if you want to see your book bag again, I want to see your mom” 
• After school, his dad came (which was close enough) and I met with him out at the school gate and when it came time for the child to apologize, he was not only crying a lot but also on the verge of puking
• At that point I almost gave the child his schoolbag to puke in but then I thought, “ah, bad idea” 
•  In the end, the child ended up puking on the pavement and normally I expect all of my naughty students to apologize but in that case I made an exception
• If you’re reading this blog and you think I make all of my students cry, you’re wrong 
• It’s only about 2% of them that I make cry in a given week, but it’s only because they’re naughty, and then after I explain to them what they did wrong and they apologize to me, it’s usually about 6-7 months before they act up again. 
• The thing is that I teach 900 students a week, so if one child cries and the rest smile, I think I’m doing pretty good 
• The thing is that I know I’m strict by even Chinese teacher standards, but I think that teaching oral English is something that you have to listen to what I’m saying in order to say a word or a sentence right, and for that to happen, students need to be quiet when I’m talking, and if they’re not quiet when I’m talking/teaching, they’re in trouble with me
• I also give them opportunities to talk, in case you were curious or worrid
• My favorite is when two boys are talking and I say, “Hey, you can flirt with your boyfriend after class” 
• My second graders love that one 
•  I miss my old apartment 
• I’m trying to live in a smaller, cheaper apartment this academic year and it’s taking a lot of getting used to 
• Basically, I moved from a western-style apartment with all of the furniture and appliances provided into a 430 sq. foot apartment with nothing in it and it’s taking a lot of getting used to 
• I could still afford the old apartment, I’m just cheap and wanted to save money to (maybe) go to Tibet/Northwestern China or Vietnam 
• You can find a good mosquito net for 50 RMB 
•  The first night I slept in my new apartment, I left the windows open because I didn’t have a fan yet and sure enough, when I woke up the next morning I had around 30 mosquito bites on my right shoulder and arm, 10 on my back, and about 20 on my legs 
• Those little buggers feasted on me so much, some of them exploded and left blood stains in my apartment
• I got a mosquito net (and a fan) the next day and that was the best 50 RMB I spent this week. 
•  I do love my new neighborhood 
• I can walk 100 ft. and enter a night market with 4 RMB milk tea, Beijing roast duck, tons of restaurants and stores, a guy who sells cute rabbits, etc. 
• Plus, it only takes me 7 minutes to walk to my school so that’s worth killing mosquitoes any day of the week.
• Plus, there's this naked guy

 

• I was walking around my neighborhood at 5 AM and I heard this banging metal sound and sure enough, it was a grown (at the time clothed) man beating the heck out of a lady's push cart of crayfish
• The guy got really worked up, went into a massage parlor, started tearing that place up, and the boss of that place got a butcher knife and made him leave
• When the massage parlor boss got the guy out of his shop he told the drunk now down to his pants man that "Hey, if you want a massage, you can stay but if you don't then get the hell out!"
• Sure enough, the drunk guy went down to his boxers and socks on this warm, misty day and demanded his massage to which the massage parlor boss declined his business
• Then this drunk guy went across the street to the convenience store, grabbed a couple of water bottles and threw them up in the air, went over to a lady pushing a cart with cut up, raw meat on it, grabbed 4 or 5 big slabs of meat and threw those in the air, and then finally decided that now was the time to get rid of the boxers
• I was trying to give the Shenzhen police a call the entire time and I connected with them 3 times but on the third time they recognized my voice and just hug up on me.
• I guess there's a reason why the motto for the Shenzhen Police Department isn't "People First"

 

9/22/2013-Visit to Rural Hubei, Tsunami Day

• So this week I went to see my girlfriend's parents in Hubei and it was an experience
• I worked in Yunnan and Shantou, Guangdong before (both places that even Chinese people think are pretty poor) but I have to say that visiting rural Eastern Hubei was definitely different than any other region of China I've ever been too
• It was weird because it was the first time since I've come to China where Chinese people were actually following the customs of "saving face" and the like by NOT YELLING AT PEOPLE WHICH I SEE AND HEAR EVERYWHERE IN CHINA!
• I came well-prepared for going there too
• I knew that the food of choice for Mid-Autumn Festival were moon cakes, so I decided to give her family 6 boxes of them and a plane to bribe the little members of her family into liking me and not thinking I was a blue-eyed devil

• So to get to this little town my girlfriend is from, we took a 14-hour train ride in a hard seat from Shenzhen to the Jiangxi-Hubei border (which was as much fun as it sounds)
• Then we took a 1 and a half hour bus ride standing up because there were no more seats left to the major township in the area  (which was nicer than it sounds after sitting in a hard seat for 14 hours)
• Then we got picked up in my girlfriend's father's pimp-mobile which had a top speed of literally 20 miles an hour so I got a lot of time to enjoy the rural scenery

• On the way to the house, my girlfriend's dad talked about the importance of giving cigarettes to family members as a way of introducing yourself so he helped me buy the most expensive pack of cigarettes in their town which came out to about 3 USD per pack
• At first I felt bad about giving people cigarettes but then I found out that for some reason, people from that part of Hubei will smoke about 6 cigarettes a day (and this is including women) and live until they're about 90, so then I didn't feel so bad
• Then I got to see the house my girlfriend grew up in

 Two stories and five rooms all for under $15,000

There was originally supposed to be a third floor but then they realized that a flat roof was just so good for drying fish that they said two floors was enough

• Here are two pictures of their living room and two pictures of one of the furnished rooms

 

• Because it was Mid-Autumn Festival and everyone had the day off, all of my girlfriend's family came back home and brought their adorable children

When you don't have Pokemon cards, there's always clear duct tape to play with

• Her family was really nice
• They liked to play Mahjong and Cards with the main rule being that I always lost money

• The atmosphere around my girlfriend's hometown was probably the cleanest of any place I've been to in China with the exception of very mountainous Yunnan

 

•  And the food was definitely the freshest I've eaten since I've been to China
• Girlfriend's mom: "Oh you want to eat eggplant tonight?" *goes to front yard, picks a couple of eggplants* "Alright, what else do you want to eat?"

The all-natural wood oven that my girlfriend's family uses

They have a lot of wood to cook with

That's chives that they put on the floor that we would later eat

Girlfriend's mom chopping up eggplants

Girlfriend with her brother reading a book on his cellphone. Those peanuts were picked out of the ground from my girlfriend's parents' house two hours before we ate them (and they were really good)

• My girlfriend's parents are also building a new house (and let's just say that China's version of OSHA isn't as feared in these parts as OSHA is in America)

The footwear of choice for this construction project were sandals

They plan on four families living in this entire complex and the complex will have about three floors (I say about because they could just build two and say "eh, that's good enough")

This is a house being built across the street from the house my girlfriend's parents are building and I think their slogan for safety is "Git 'R Done"

 

• 
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  
  Tsunami Days
  

  • So when I was growing up, we would have snow days if it snowed too much and we couldn't go to school
  • In Shenzhen, they just have tsunami days
  • On Sunday, September 22nd and Monday, September 23rd, the Shenzhen Meteorological Bureau issued a yellow tsunami warning (the scale goes from white/non-serious to red/your apartment is going to be flooded) which meant that all classes were cancelled
  • This couldn't have come at a more perfect time because I had just moved and I used those two days off to relax, buy appliances, and do errands
  • In fact, the tsunami barely got close to Shenzhen as it only rained quite a bit on Sunday and  Monday (except for the morning) was nothing but clear skies and warm weather.
  •   So really, it was like having an extra 2 days on what was already a 3 day vacation
  • I'm pretty glad of the deals I got on my new appliances
  • Washer-300 RMB=$49.01
  • Water Heater-300 RMB=$49.01
  • Water Cooler-60 RMB=$9.80
  • Refrigerator-free
  • 32" TV-free
  • Microwave (haven't pulled it out of the box and currently being used as my dining room table)- free
  • Still trying to get settled in
  • As you can see, I still have a lot of organizing to do in my tiny/really cheap apartment