Chillin' wit my hommies in the Big C.

This week I'm teaching my students American slang:

What up?
Just chillin'.
24/7
Sweet!
That sucks.
She's/He's hot!
Let's bounce.

And so on and so forth.

After the lesson I have them get into groups of 2-4 and use at least 5 of the new terms. It is hilarious to hear them speak informally, since they are taught a more formal way of speaking. This is one of my favorite dialogues that mixed the formal British English with American slang:

Jan: Hey girl, what's up?
Chocolate: Not much.
Jan: You look hot today.
Chocolate: Thank you.
Jan: Are you free this afternoon?
Chocolate: Yes, I am.
Jan: Shall we go to the zoo?
Chocolate: A'ight. Let's bounce.

I had the same lesson with the English Club on Tuesday. I hadn't ever showed them pictures of my family and since it was the last English Club meeting for the year I pulled them up on my computer. They Ooooh-ed and Ahhh-ed in their collective Chinese way. At the end, one of the girls said, "Your family is hot."

Yeah, they are.

I knew it was going to happen!

I like to be semi-productive on Wednesday and Thursday mornings since I'm not required to be dressed or seen by anyone until 2 p.m.

Usually, I turn on my computer and eat a muffin while I wait. Once the computer is up and running I put on some music to do the exercises the chiropractor gave me. After that, I pick something productive to do: sweep, dust, mop, wash sweaters, wash clothes, scrub the kitchen sink, wash the windows, or whatever is dirty enough to bother me. This particularly hot and humid morning I decided the floors were the most offensive so I would sweep and mop.

The sweeping was quick and painless. Before fetching the mop from the stairwell, I had sense enough to put on a brassiere and change out of my plaid boxers into some real shorts in case I encountered someone on the stairwell. Like my neighbors, I hang the mop half a flight down in the stairwell so it will dry.

After mopping the entire apartment I rinsed the mop and carried it out in the bucket. As I was hanging up the mop I hear a door slam shut. I walked slowly back up the 10 stairs to my door and saw that it was the culprit. Ah, you say, so what? The So-What is that the apartment door is like the door in my freshman dorm, so it locks automatically when it closes.

I stood there in my tank top, shorts, the same slippers I dropped out the window recently, and my glasses all sweaty and unshowered staring at the door. It is a pretty flimsy door and you can see through the slats, so I pondered trying to break the door. Thankfully, I realized a few things before attempting this:

1) If I were successful it would be quite a mess to clean and the whole door would have to be fixed.
2) If I were successful or not I would probably end up with some nasty bruises.
3) It was highly unlikely I would actually break in the door.

It seemed my only option was to go to the teaching building, find an English teacher and explain my situation.

Of course at this point it was raining a bit and as I walked to the office, praying that the students would all be in class like they were supposed to be, I was reminded eerily of getting locked out of my dorm room freshman year of college while I was in the shower and having to go to the desk in my robe.

I hurried through the teaching building, convinced that the students were so riveted on their lessons they wouldn't glance up to see the foreign teacher in her tank top, slippers, and touseled hair. At the office I found Lucy to help me. She took my down to see Mr. Jong, the keeper of the keys, who laughed when she told him what happened. Smoking his cheap cigarette, he looked through the key cabinet. He couldn't figure out which key really belonged to my apartment so he gave Lucy and I a massive ring of keys to try. In a turn of good luck, the first key I picked out opened the door. Lucky me. :)

I like cheese, but I have my limits.

At the supermarket on Wednesday I came upon this package of cheese.

As you can see, the slices are brown - very curious! The answer to why the cheese is brown can be found in the lower right hand corner.




Yes. You read correctly. It's chocolate flavored cheese.

Harry Potter Jelly Beans were a hit. I may send a proposal to Jelly Belly outlining an assortment of Chinese flavored Jelly Beans.

Let's have a rest.

I don't think I ever mentioned, but we have an afternoon break at school that lasts from 11:35 to 2:00. They do this so everyone can have time to eat lunch and "have a rest" - which means take a nap. It used to be that classes began again at 1:45 on North Campus and 1:30 on South Campus, but now that it is hot they figure they need more of a rest. I am so glad that the Chinese love to nap and make it a daily activity, or at least set aside time for it. If you have errands to run, papers to grade, or classes to prepare for you can do that as well. I think it is necessary that they have this time to rest since they wake up so early and work all morning then well into the evening.
Having a rest in the afternoon, or after any activity, seems common throughout China. But an interesting thing that I believe is limited to this school, is that we don't have janitors. The students stay in the same classroom all day and are responsible for keeping it clean. Every other Monday they do a thorough cleaning with mops, rags, windows, etc. The other Mondays they clean their dormitories. This must cut back on costs for the university. I can't imagine if they told us we had to mop and clean the windows of our dorms in America.
The students get graded on the cleanliness of their classrooms and these grades are posted outside the teaching building. Their regular school grades (as a class) are also posted. Each individual will get a grade, but their grades are averaged (somehow, I'm not sure of the process) and that grade is posted for everyone in the school to see. Everyone in each class knows who the worst and best students are in each subject; there doesn't seem to be any privacy.
From talking with friends I've learned that collective grading is not limited to this university but also happens in high schools across China. It is quite a contrast to American schools where grades are treated as top-secret information and evaluation is given on a completely individual basis.
Does it make students work harder to know that their good or bad grades affect not only them but also their classmates? I don't know if the class grades are recorded on their report cards or files; if they mean anything at all or have any lasting consequences, but they do have some influence on the effort students put forth. This system of grading seems to be an extension of the peer-driven culture that they live in fueled by the pressure to both excel and conform.

The Wishing Tree

The second day in Shanghai it still wasn't raining as the weather forecast promised, so we took advantage of the weather and went to the Yu Yuan Gardens and Bazaar.

It was about a 25 minute walk from the metro station but well worth it. It is a few city blocks of ancient architecture filled with shops selling anything you can imagine - silk pajamas, jade carvings, fans, paintings, wood carvings, jewelry, statues, name stamps, etc. The bazaar was packed with people since it was May 1st; there wasn't a moment I wasn't touching at least two other people.

There was a Buddist Temple filled with incense, smoke, and people. The Garden was very relaxing with huge pools of fish and a very cool caligraphy museum. The Chinese have an amazing ability to create serene and peaceful areas in the midst of chaos.

My favorite thing at the Bazaar was The Wishing Tree. In the middle of a square surrounded by shops was a huge man-made tree that looked quite real. The trunk and branches were a very dark brown while the leaves were shiny gold. At booths on one side people could buy wishes. The wishes were made of a piece of metal shaped like an ancient coin and tied to the coin was a red ribbon with Chinese characters for either family, luck, love, dreams, or fortune. Tom and I bought two ribbons each - one to throw and one to keep. Then we went up to the tree, made wishes, and threw them in.

The tree with its gold leaves and red ribbons hanging all over it wit the crowd of people below was stunning.

Dropping Slippers

The people in China either wash their shoes all the time or have very stinky feet. This is an assumption I make from seeing their shoes hovering along the window ledges with the tongues sticking out all the time. Maybe they have stinky feet and they wash them all the time. Either way, I am impressed with way they balance them because if I tried it my shoes would definitely end up falling.
My slippers and flats needed to be washed, so I hand-washed them in a small plastic tub in the sink. I hand-wash my sweaters as well since I can’t talk to the lady at the laundry mat. It takes them about three days to dry.
There are screens covering all the windows except the ones off the balcony where we dry the laundry. I should also mention that there are rusty iron bars covering all of the windows. The balcony overlooks the very small, private, concrete courtyard of the first floor residents. I carefully balanced the flats lengthwise along the ledge. They seemed safe enough. I shoved the slippers a bit through the bars so the breeze could get inside of them. Quite pleased with myself for not dropping a shoe I turned to go back inside and hit one of the slippers with my hand.
It tumbled into the courtyard and I pressed my face against the bars trying to see it. Now, I had to go explain to my neighbors that I’d been drying my slippers in the window and one had fallen into their courtyard and could I please have it back? Needless to say I do not have the vocabulary for this.
I waited until the next day when I figured they would have gone in the backyard and seen the slipper themselves until I went down (other slipper in hand) to fetch it. No one answered the door when I knocked, but the grandmother and 2 year-old came back just then. I held up my slipper and pointed to myself, upstairs, to the slipper, then to their backyard. The grandmother talked to me then motioned for me to go inside after the little kid who shoved open the door and ran in. The little boy got my slipper and I thanked him, even though he was two. I was just glad he didn't cry when he looked at me.