Christmas in China

Merry Christmas

Well.. to start will.. I totally had to work the entire Christmas weekend.... and it was a damn busy weekend at that. Which I guess is better than sitting at home alone on Christmas.

So... as far as China and Christmas goes.... stores put up Christmas trees and decorations......but thats about it. People give each other apples wrapped in shiny paper stuff...... these you are supposed to eat at midnight on Christmas... for good fortune or something like that. Pretty much every Chinese "tradition" has something to do with getting more money. Its amusing the number of Chinese people that are shocked that the foreigners don't know that they are supposed to eat apples on Christmas night......yay for holidays adapting to other cultures...... hehe

A bunch of our friends went to Tanbo for Christmas dinner. They had invited us.. and asked if Chris's band could play and I could hoop a little. But Chris was in America for Christmas. I ended up hooping to a random version of Jingle Bells (not my choose)............it kinda worked.. and all the people in the restaurant were pretty impressed. They announced me going out there to hoop and everything... it was fun.

We had 11 people there that night and 4 of them were Chinese, but still when the manager came to tell us something or ask us something... she came to me and attempted to tell me instead of going through one of the Chinese people, that was also kinda cool.... its my restaurant :) and it all ended up being free! When we went to pay they told us that the owner had covered. So of course I went upstairs and thanked the owner...which was interesting.. i haven't really talked to her since I have been able to actually speak decently. So Christmas dinner was a great success and we went out to a bar for a little while afterwards... and some of us stayed decent enough to make it to work at 8 the next morning...... others didn't make it at all the next day.

On to the fun part.... my classes were actually pretty decent (even though i had to teach most of them in joy)... The earlier part of the week I still had mostly Earth Village classes (the school i usually teach at) a few that i really like... Which was nice because in EV I got to teach Christmas stuff (it was fitting and I was wearing a Santa outfit). But for Saturday and Sunday I was covering a lot of Joy school classes because Chris was in America. These are not my students... I never teach them... and we weren't allowed to teach a Christmas lesson in Joy. But I was good and only skipped ONE of these classes!

The good thing about Chris being gone for Christmas.. was I get to teach his Foreign Teacher Only classes. Which have a lot of students I like in them and are very good classes. These are EV classes that are 2 hours each and there is no Chinese teacher (we still have Cici sitting in there to help us if we need). The students in these classes are also in other classes in EV ..... so these are my students.

I bought a Santa outfit for me.. and a female Santa outfit for Cici(my co-teacher for those classes)(really a Mrs. Claus... but they didn't know that, and I didn't tell them). Between the 3 classes there are only 27 kids total, so they are all pretty small. I went to the 2yuan store (like our dollar tree but cheaper) and bought a bunch of random shit..... notebooks, pens, toys, soap, toothpaste (yaaa... one kid totally got the soap) I put a number on all of the items... wrote all the numbers down on little slips of paper and then put them in a hat and let the kids draw a number to get their gift.

These classes were great, we did one hour of normal lessons and then an hour of Christmas party... which was a lot of fun and involved me giving out the gifts and teaching them a few Christmas words. A few of my students also gave me some presents, some candy, a phone tassel, some paper cranes on little strings, and a drawing...... with my name misspelled....

Phone tassel was given to me by Lucy (there is a Lucy in every class). But she is smart but sometimes a little lazy... unless she gets mad at another student... then she wont stop answering. I remember her mostly when we were going over the question "What did you do yesterday? I blahblahblahed yesterday." And you get the same few answer from all the kids(played computer, went to school, did my homework....). But she was mad at one of the boys in the class, so her answers were a lot more fun "I hit Bruce, I cooked Bruce, I ate Bruce, I gave Bruce Poopoo" I don't remember a lot of them... but I called on her a lot that day.. and she used any words she could think of to insult him.... and he totally lost, because of course as soon as she says one about him.. I would call on him to retaliate... he got few but she definitely won that. I love watching kids fight in English.... mainly because they are actually thinking about any words they know and how they can actually use them....other than the exact sentences they learn from the book and are drilled on.

The drawing is from a very crazy student May.... she is a lot of fun sometimes...... but just can't stay in her seat for the life of her....

The paper cranes are from Rose.... a very smart but quite student. She doesn't speak to much in class unless you specifically call on her, but between classes you can sit down and have a basic conversation with her.

Before my 2hour class started on Christmas I had one random class at joy after lunch.. .and then only a few minutes to get to the EV branch school Songjian. Normal day it would have been fine, but I had my box of toys and stuff for the party. Also my favorite class was at the same time as the Joy class. So I called the lady that makes the Joy schedule and told her I wouldn't make it to that class, got my box of stuff, and went to Songjian. I got there just in time to. The manager of Songjian was going around giving candy to all the classes (only branch school that did this) and taking pictures of the classes. I got there in my santa outfit (that i wore on the bus, but i had a jack on over most of it) right in time to jump in the picture with my favorite class. Its a bit of a big class and half the students are really good and the other half are just there, but the ones that are just there don't cause any problems so I don't bother them.

My favorite student is Linda the little girl in front of me and to the right, in the yellow shirt. She is amazingly smart and head and tails above the rest of the students.... mostly because she is creative... she really breaks through the cookie cutter mold of the sentences we teach and tries to say what she actually wants to say. So she always talks to me before the class starts and does ok at actually having a conversion. But.. she is smart and REALLY a teachers pet for the Chinese teacher... so a lot of the other students pick on her a lot.

This picture of me with the very unhappy look small child is damn amusing. This is of course not my student, she is to young for our school (only like 5 or 6). She is the Songjian's manager's daughter. But she often sits in and watches the 2 hour classes.

The Rabid Chinese Kid

Not really much of a story hear... but the other day I was teaching a class in the small branch north of the river. I have taught this class a few times before.. but its been awhile. It is one of Lily's classes so of course like all her classes... they are far more violent then most other classes (kids constantly hitting and kicking each other).

For the most part the class was being pretty good this day.. I used some new games that work really well. There was one exception though... one kid that just could not stop hitting the people around him... and being kinda weird about it.... I didn't really think twice about it and just moved him to the seat closest to the door. Like ever kid, he of course wouldn't move. I did what I usually have to do and grab his arm and pull him over to the other chair, and he moved like most kids do.. but starts hitting my arm. He is a very tiny kid so I didn't really care he could hit me all day before I feel it, but its still odd for a kid to hit me. Granted I do have kids hit me occasionally but usually they are playing. In one of my songjiang classes a little 7 year old girl will slap my but occasionally if I walk past her desk... very strange kid.

So... this kid is hitting my arm and noticing that I don't care, then he decides he will dig his fingernails into my hand as I put him in the new seat. Now this should not happen, and of course the Chinese teacher is not there. So I tell him in the simplest English I can that if he hits me again he is out of the class. I continue teaching and every time I look over at him he makes a growling face and raises his hand and makes like clawing motions at me. With his size and actions he kinda reminds me of Gollum.

As I start the next game and am throwing a really big dice to a kid I catch a glimpse of my hand and it is totally bleeding.. .not badly bleeding... but still. I have already warned the kid.. and its been a few minutes since he did it.... and he isn't really disturbing the class, just kinda sitting there looking like Gollum... so I can't really throw him out at this point..... though I wanted to.

The class continues and he actually plays the games, but when he sits back down he starts hitting the kid next to him.. and scratching at him. So I just grab his desk and slide it a few feet away from the kid other kid.. so that he is isolated and in front of the open door (where some kids parent is standing watching the class). I continue teaching and the kid moves his chair back and continues assaulting the other kid... who for some reason is not fighting back at all! So I moved him again... this time he just jumps out of the chair and backs out the open door.... now standing in the hallway looking terrified almost like a cornered animal. He is out of my class.. thats good enough for me.. so I stick my head out the room and call down the hall for the Chinese teacher.......................................no response..........I call again.........still no response.... but this time the kid runs into a another classroom so I take a quick glance in there and he is hugging some older women that I don't know... so I assume its his mom.

At this point.. there's like 5 or 10 minutes left in class, so I finish up the class and then find the Chinese teacher and tell her about the kid. She tells me "Yes, he hurt me last week" and shows me the long scratches down her arm.... and says "He has head problem, its ok"......... um NO!

At this point Lydia finds us.. which is nice, Lydia's English is far better than Lily's and she is the head of the Super Kids teachers (this is a Super Kids class). We discuss the kid for a few minutes. Then I had to teach the teach another class.... which is Lydia's class.. and older class that is a good class. While I was teaching that class Lydia and the branch manager go to talk to the kids grandmother (the older women) and the kids mother.

After Lydia's class she tells me that the kid wants to apologize. So the grandmother drags him into the teachers office and is telling him over and over in Chinese to apologize. They finally get a sorry out of him as he is beating and clawing at his grandmother. I accept the apology and tell him to just be good in class, Lydia translates ( I don't let students or parents know I can speak Chinese). And the kid leaves still beating the grandmother.

This of course went to Simon the next day...(not by me but by the branch manager).. and they had a big superkids teachers meeting over it. And supposedly the Chinese teachers are actually going to stay in the classroom now (some do anyways). And one of the teachers told the other teachers i got "mauled" by the kid... that was pretty funny.. but really its just 3 small cuts on my hand that have mostly healed now. Though that kid did have some pretty dirty fingernails!

This kid obviously has some problems..... he is about 10 years old.. and smaller the most of the rest of the kids in the class... but not by much. There is a weird difference in how other kids react to this in China and America. From what I can remember, if kids figured out one kid had a problem in an American class.. that kid would be teased and beat up on and stuff. But here they let him freak out and beat on them... and sometimes look kinda worried about him... either that or they are watching him like some sort of freak show... "what will he do next?" kinda thing.

Its almost like a weird protection of the weak sometimes..... like when there is a new student, and I go to ask them a question, many of the other students will jump up telling me that student is new and try to convince me to not to ask them a question.... or just lean over and try to help them.

That was a much longer post than I had expected it to be.. and probably pretty boring..... hmm.... I guess I should add some random pictures at the bottom to make it interesting.

First big snow

So.. its winter... or at least it looked that way for a few days. The snow just randomly decided to come down.. and it came on fast and strong! We decided to go play in it after it had pretty much covered everything already.

The snow stuck around for almost a week.. but at this point its getting a bit warmer and pretty has pretty much all melted... the last few days everything has just been covered in horrible slush. And everything is pretty much back to normal...... but for those few days there was snow..... it was weird.

As soon as the snow it... of course the roads were pretty covered..... and the usually really fast and crazy driving...... REALLY slowed down.... it also became very hard to get a taxi. The cars were the easiest thing to notice....but when you really looked around.. EVERYTHING seemed to be going slower. Everyone just seemed more relaxed and less in a hurry. The kids even seemed a bit calmer in class..... its almost like everyone went into some sort of hibernation mode or something. It will be interesting to see if that keeps up when the actual winter hits in a few weeks or so.

OMG Snow!

ok... so ya... it got cold fast! One month ago I took a nice long bike ride and it was hot...Chris went the majority of the ride with now shirt on........today.. it snowed at like 1 in the afternoon.. .and then again randomly every once in awhile for the rest of the afternoon. None of it stuck to the ground.. but it was pretty to watch come down, especially from the classroom I was teaching in at the time....... 8th floor of a building... two of the walls were windows..... pretty awesome. I think I am ready for winter... though...I will definitely miss my bike and playing outside all the time...... but ready or not.... ITS HERE!

Also... Chris read through some of my blog the other day and gave me a little bit of hell for the spelling and grammar problems in my blog... but...... I justify that by the fact that this is all just coming strait out of my head..... and I don't read back over it or even give it a second glance.... hell, your lucky if I am even looking at the screen when I am typing it :)

The great bike trip

I am really lazy sometimes about making these posts. But I am finally getting around to it.

Me and Chris have been talking about making the great bike trip to Chagan Lake for months... its 50km away. In preparation we went there by bus first... hehe. It only took about 50 minutes.... i watched as we drove and memorized the route. We started to plan our trip... we kind of wanted to camp.. but decided getting a tent and shit would be to annoying... so we decided we would just make a fire by the lake... roast some fake marshmallows and sausages.

So the next week... we packed up very small bags of essentials and hit the road at about 8am. I started out a little tired.. which was bad..... we made a few random breaks to walk the bikes for a bit and have some water and food occasionally. We still had the plan to make the fire when we got there.. but we weren't sure how it would work out... since we would have to college all the wood we needed... and not sure if we are really allowed to. .......but luckly... on one of our random breaks I stepped off the road between to bushes to pee and whats there right in front of me....... a box of charcoal! .... Chris said i found my burning bush telling me to light a fire!

The trip there was pretty tiring....we got to the lake around 12:30... and road around it for awhile.. we searched around at the different hotels.. and found some pretty cheap ones... but then we went to the nicest one on the lake... and damn was it nice! It actually wasn't much more expensive than the other hotels.. so we stayed there! Went around and collected some small sticks to start the fire with... added our charcoal.. built our fire on the little lake beach... had a pretty damn good night...... crashed at about 8pm!

The way back was a little more eventful. Before we left Chris bought some cool Christmas presents for his family.... and we stopped by the guy that rents bikes and asked to use hit pump and things to tune up our bikes real quick before we hit the road. Since we had the great luck of finding the charcoal on the way there... .i told chris... well maybe next time we stop to pee.. you will find a hot chick in the ditch.... hehe.... and we kinda did.

The trip back was so much easier... I felt like I had so much more more energy the second day. We had to make far fewer stops.. and just powered through most of the day. When we were about an hour away from home we saw a baby chick on the side of the side of the road... REALLY close to the cars... I am amazed it was still alive... not sure where it came from.. but we stopped and picked it up. For some reason we decided we should take it with us.... so i tried to stick it in my bike basket.. but that moved to much... so we put it in the top of chris's bag... but it tried to jump out (the bag was pretty full)...... so we unzipped the front pocket of his bag... shoved it in.... and zipped it back up..... i know it sounds horrible.. but its better then it falling out of the bag on the side of the road again.

We got about 3 or 4km away from Songyuan when we went by some construction and BOOOMB... chris's tire is just gone... he hit a little piece of metal in the road. So we start walking the bikes back... thinking there are little towns around... there has to be a bike repair place somewhere. I see an old man on a bike so i ask him.. he might get his fixed up somewhere..... but no.. he is terrified of me. We keep walking and end up walking past this beekeeper on the side of the road selling honey.... I decided to stop and look at this as chris moves towards the big area of buildings behind the bee keeper to see if there is a bike repair place. The honey was really tasty.. so I bought some... and then ask the guy if he knows where to repair a bike.. and tell him my friends tire is busted. He calls over his friend that works at the big truck repair place behind him.. and i call chris back... they start taking the tire off of his bike and putting patches on it and stuff.... of course the guy selling craps across the street comes over to see whats going on and helps as well. The honey salesman's wife is sitting in the doorway of the little shack with a like 2 year old kid.

For some random reason... I get the great idea to pull the chick out of chris's bag.. and take it over to the little kid.... kid loves it... so we give it to the kid......who knows how long it lasted. The kid is happy.. .the honey salesman is happy.. and after about an hour and a few patches... they get chris's tire fixed up.... I really wish i would have taken some pictures of this group of people.. it was a very interesting group...... the honey salesman did take a few pictures of me and chris holding his baby..

When the bike was finally fixed up and ready to go.. chris tried to pay them for at least the patches.. but they wouldn't let him... so he bought 3 pounds of honey... hehe... after that the guy selling crabs was like "Do you want to buy some crabs!?" ... me and chris look at each other and are just kinda like..... uuuuhh.. no we don't....

We were back on the road and ready to go... made it home in no time... got some KFC and crashed. It was definitely an interesting trip... it felt kinda of like it played out almost like a video game..."you find a random box of coal"....."fill plastic bag with random coal and shove it in your bag"..... "you find a baby chick......" "shove it in the bag".... "talk to random honey salesman"..."man is fixing your bix.. what should you do" ..."give random baby chick to man's son"..... people are talking to you while fixing your bike.... you gain 5points of chinese speaking experience.

It was definitely a fun adventure... and the last bike adventure we will have this year.... its getting COLD!

The Rock Show

Chris did a really good job with pictures and videos on his blog... so I am just going to give you links to it.. hehe .... so lazy..

http://choosemyownadventure.posterous.com/pineapple-international-music-festival-part-1

http://choosemyownadventure.posterous.com/songyuan-pineapple-international-music-festiv

http://choosemyownadventure.posterous.com/songyuan-pineapple-international-music-festiv-0

The show was pretty amazing... It was definitely the most fun I have had at a club in china. Granted.. how often do you really have a club filled with just your friends.... well there were a few random people.

Our students really made the party.... they were great.... if they hadn't been there it wouldn't have been nearly as good. It took me a little while to really get people dancing... but I started by just grabbing a few students and make them go to do the dance floor with me.. then luckily Juliet joined me (one of the teachers at Joy.. she is really cool.. far more active then most of the teacher). Soon we had the dance floor packed with people...................jumping.... hehe. The dance floor is either a little broken or VERY VERY strange..... but it was kinda like a trampoline... so everyone was kinda just jumping and dancing a bit.

I also had a bit of my 服务员(waitress) army out there... mostly Tanbo staff though. Took me awhile to get them dancing.. but I eventually got them all out there!

Me and Adam got out there during a few of the songs and did some moshing (no one else was on the dance floor during the songs) and during one slow song we did a nice slow dance... well really a very bad slow dance.. but everyone enjoyed it.

It was EXTREMELY hot in the club and I was dancing a lot... so by the end of the night I was completely drench and was actually able to wring out my shirt when I got home.....but my hair looks really cool when it gets wet like that :)

The past month.. and Chagan lake

The trip home from Weihai was in someways a bit harder then the trip there.. but also a little more interesting. We got on the boat at 8:30pm from Waihai to Dalian..... I managed to get a little bit of sleep... but ended up just walking around to boat watching the water most of the night. So we got to Dalian at about 4:30 in the morning and found a cab to take us to Mcdonald... were we sat for a few hours waiting for things to open. We also hit a Starbucks and Subway while waiting for our train to leave at 2pm.

By the time I got on the train I was completely exhausted..... so I fell asleep before the train even left the station. So when I woke up a few hours later... the first thing I see is this cute girl watching me from the bed across from me and above Chris. So of course.... at so

me point in this train ride we had to talk to her and the other girl she was talking to most of the time.

Her name is Li Dong Mei(李冬梅) and neither of the girls we met on the train speak any English at all... which made the conversation a little difficult... but mostly stayed in the areas of conversation that I have all the time... so it wasn't to bad. We ended up getting their QQ numbers... though I don't think either of us added the other girl... just Dongmei.. hehe. She is about 23 and goes to college in a city few hours north of Songyuan. Pretty cool girl.. maybe we will visit her city at some point.

Since then she has talked to me pretty much EVERYDAY on QQ in Chinese. At first this was REALLY hard... I had talked to a few waitresses a little bit on QQ but not much. In the last few weeks I have noticed a huge increase in my speed a reading and typing in Chinese (characters of course). I have also been working on using our conversations as study materials. When there are words I don't know.. I quickly just translate that word (yay google) and continue the conversation... but later I go back through my chat history and look up all the words I don't know and write most of them down on flash cards to study.. Then take some of the sentences that i don't fully understand the grammar in... and go to one of the teachers at my school and ask them to explain the grammar to me. So far its been working pretty well.. I am learning words that are used commonly in conversations :)

Two weeks ago we had new foreign teachers come in... and my boss always sends someone to go pick them up from the airport.... well usually its someone that speaks English.... well I guess they were all busy, he decided to send Micheal(pretty much the maintenance guy at Joy School). He is a really nice guy.... but he is a pretty big chinese dude and speaks maybe 5 words of English.... not exactly the first person you want to meet from you school when you first get to China

*p0ints to the open door of a taxi* "uuurr uurr... car!" . So ya.. I told my boss if he covered all of my expenses for the trip to Changchun, I would go with Micheal. The agreed with this very quickly.

Their plane came in at 8:30 at night... so we went to Changchun early that morning and spent the day walking around and doing some shopping.... was a slightly awkward day.. for some reason Micheal's mother was with us, and it took Micheal about half the day to realize he needed to slow down a bit for me to actually understand anything he said. (partly my fault... I arranged when we would meet and wear to leave by text messaging him in Chinese... so he assumed my Chinese was far better than it actually is..... at this point I can read and type better then I can speak.... not very common of people learning Chinese).

When the new foreigners got there they were happy to see me.... and I was able to translate enough to tell Micheal a little about them and their trip and some random stuff they wanted or needed. Also Micheal insisted on doing the ordering of food at the restaurant the next morning... but their likes or dislikes with food was very easy for me to translate. So we got them back to Songyuan with no problems and we have to knew pretty cool foreign teachers.... Jason and Alex... (Jason has a ninja turtles tattoo and an Invader Zim one!)

Trip to Chagan Lake(查干湖）

I am going to make this brief and just load in some pictures. We went to Chagan lake today... about an hour away by bus....maybe 30 minutes by taxi... and we are thinking about 3 or 4 hours by bike... which we are hoping to try one day. Today we took the bus (Me, Chris, and Alice from work)

We decided to get a look at everything that was around and keep Alice out of the sun in mid day... so we rented this crazy little bike type thing... me and chris got on the outsides and peddled and Alice sat in the middle and controlled the break.....it had a nice little top that kept us out of the sun.... but wow am I glad this place was kinda empty... Alice wasn't to good with the break.. hehe.

We of course had to eat some of the famous Chagan lake fish..... it was pretty tasty.. but still just fish... definitely not worth the price to do it more then once. I will say one thing... I am getting better at eating fish that still has bones... its so so much easier with chopsticks then with a fork. Alice ended up doing the ordering for us.. because the only thing I could really understand was that everything was fish.... the whole menu was names of like special dishes... so even the ones i could read the characters... still had no clue what it was.

We decided we needed to get on the lake for a little while... so we took Alice for her first trip in a boat... we were calling her Queen Alice for awhile because we did all the peddling on the bike, and now we were rowing her around in a boat.. hehe. It was a pretty windy day... but me and chris managed to row us around for awhile..... I was a little bothered by the fact that they didn't give us life jackets... mainly because Alice can't swim, but we randomly checked how deep the water was with the oar and we never got anywhere more then waist deep.

It was a fun day out at the lake! Even though my hands got a little hurt from the oars.... but I guess that just tells me that they are getting to weak and I need to work on that.

The people of Weihai

Surprisingly it didn't take us long to find the foreigners in Weihai... as we were walking down the main strip by the beach.. some guy came out of one of the bars (which really is a bunch of tables on the sidewalk.. and started talking to us... we found out he was from singapore... so English is his first language and he lived in England for like 6 years. He owns the only foreigner owned bar on the strip... so we told him we were going to look around for awhile (it was only like 6:30 at night) and that we would stop back by later. When we went back later there were about 5 other foreigners at the bar... some teachers some not..... and thats were things get interesting in Weihai.

Weihai is about the same size (population wise) as Songyuan (during the summer weihai technically has more people because of the tourests though). But unlike Songyuan, Weihai has a few colleges.... and this makes a HUGE difference. So we meet a group of teachers here....but its not all English teachers, there were a few French teachers, Russian teachers, and even an art teacher. Then we have the students... a few Russian and Korean students that were there learning Chinese in one of the colleges. Weihai does a lot of ship building... so one guy was from Chili (but has spent a few years in Germany as well) and works for a company in Chili that is having ships built in Weihai. There is another guy from Germany doing something similar.

Add all this together... and you have one CRAZY mix.... and to keep up you almost need to speak like 6 languages. With one of the korean girls, and one russian girl... our common language was Chinese... so that was a little different.. but again gave us some more practice. Most of the people spoke English very well.. but many of them have been in China for at least 2 years... so their Chinese is pretty good as well. There were many times that have the group would just start speaking french... or a few would switch to German or Spanish or Russian... and then over to Chinese.. and back to English. It can definitely get a little confusing...but didn't really seem to cause any problems.

The other foreigners here are very nice..... and welcomed us into their group very quickly. By the second day we were hanging out with them, I was able to feel pretty relaxed around them and it actually felt pretty normal... not like these were new people. One night a group of us went to oen guy's house spent like 8 hours playing Xbox games. We had a going away party for one of the French guys one night... kind of like potluck... but we lack a kitchen in our hotel... so we went and used the guys that was throwing the party.... lacked a grill as well.. but we still made some damn tasty hamburgers....... well lamb burgers :) and something that looked like it would be similar to bacon when i saw it in the store... but once i started cooking it i realized it was a bit thicker and much different... but i added some random sauces and spices and they turned into little mini steaks... and everyone seemed to enjoy them.

One of the girls that is leaving soon is from England but she spent most of her life in France... and she reminds me so much of Veronica thats in Thailand its not even funny.

I think this is kind of the way of the expat community... like wherever we travel in Asia... we should be able to find other expats that will introduce us to their town and possibly invite us into their group for the time we are their group.
We also went out to all the good clubs in town.... Weihai is still a small city...so there arn't that many... but i liked the ones we went to. Sadly I only got pictures of one (2046) but it was still a really good club. Music was great and lots of people dancing. I didn't have much room to hoop... but when people got off the very tiny floor I was able to get down there and have some fun with the hoop. At each bar we went to we also met random people there... and unlike songyuan.. most of them seemed to be between like 19-30ish.... where as in Songyuan... they are older business men usually or gangsters. It was a pretty good crowd.

Met this girl at 2046... and she is just so damn cute.... the picture doesn't do her justice at all... and the glasses are fake.... for some reason a lot of people carry around frames with no glass and wear them occasionally. (I have no clue who the hand behind her head is)
We have gotten a lot of email addresses and QQ numbers so that we can keep in touch with some of the people here. Many of them have many contacts with schools here and in other areas... and one of them actually works for a recruiting company.. that helps place people in schools.

Today we start to head back to Songyuan... it will be about a day and a half trip.... but I definitely think it has been a good vacation!

Post that need to be made:
The Rock Show/My first performance in China
My Reach High Students

At Weihai

So we finally got off the boat in Weihai... wondered for a bit.. found store to buy a map of the city and asked random people (mostly waitresses..... it seems I have a nack for talking to them) where they thought the best beach was... and all of them pointed to the same place... so we hopped in a cab and headed there.

We went to a few hotels asking if they had any rooms available (yaa... we are horrible planners).... and many of them didn't... then we found one right on the beach! And its only 230 a night (like $32). Not only is it on the beach.. but has a window facing the beach! We decided to get just it for 2 nights... not knowing if we want to travel elsewhere.

The next few days were a bit raining.. but no to bad.. we had random hour or so of sunshine each day... but it was usually just cloudy. As we were walking around we were kinda shocked at the number of people that weren't Chinese..... but as we got closer to them we figured out they were all Russian. So the Chinese people that work around here are pretty used to the Russians that don't speak Chinese. So they would automatically try to just show us the price of things on a calculator and stuff like that... but once we started talking to them in Chinese they all became much more friendly and prices started to drop a bit :)

Today was a REALLY pretty day and we spent a lot of it out on the beach..... which is actually pretty clean.. .for the most part.... I was kind of afraid of how a beach in China would be. Littering isn't even thought of as bad here... its just the way of life... finish something.. throw the wrapper on the ground. But this beach is advertised as being very clean... not because the people litter less.. but they just have a hordes of workers going and picking up trash all the time. So the beach itself is really clean.. there is still some random shit floating in the water... but not to bad.

So far very good and successful beach trip!

Next post:
The people of Weihai

Post that need to be made:
The Rock Show/My first performance in China
My Reach High Students

The Bike Adventure with Alice

So the day after I bought my bike... it was a very nice day and I decided I needed to explore the city. One of the RH teacher (Alice) also has a bike and is far more active the most of the teachers at Joy school and Earth Village (not to mention the RH teachers English is FAR better). So she joined me for my biking adventure around the city.

We decided to meet that morning near the stadium about 11am. She was a little awkward on her bike at first because she hadn't used it in like 10 years, and I had ridden mine around for awhile the day before. We were discussing were to go... and the first place we both said was Jiangbei! As we started to bike to the bridge... I found out that even though Alice had grown up in Songyuan... she had only gone to Jiangbei 2 times in her entire life (Jiangbei is just north of the river), so I had actually been there more times then her because I have taught in our EV branch there 3 times.

Crossing the bridge was one of the hardest parts.... Songyuan itself is VERY VERY flat... so biking around is REALLY easy... but the bridge is a bit of an incline for awhile. So by the time we got to the other side (3km bridge) we were a little bit tired and wanted something to drink. We found a random corner store right outside a little village and a big farm. Jiangbei is not as developed as the other side of the river.

Then the great tour of Jiangbei began... we rode all over that part of the city and found a couple of cool parks and other neat carvings and statues. I will definitely have to bike over there and hang out again at some point. It was kinda interesting being the foreigner and being the one that was making sure we weren't lost in the Jiangbei and figuring out which direction we should go to get back... but it wasn't to difficult... Jiangbei is north... Jiangnan is south :)

After awhile we decided it was time for lunch and that we wanted to eat in Jiangnan... so we biked across the other bridge and went to the farthest south part of Jiangnan... meaning we basically had to cross the whole freaking city again... and found a nice little place to eat. This was about 2pm. We sat down and rested for a bit and talked about the random stuff we had seen.

Alice was quite tired and expressed it.. but was a happy tired.... she seemed to really enjoy the bike ride. And she was excited over the amount of exercise she had gotten that day... because she is trying to lose weight... which is pretty crazy. She is about 5 foot tall and about 100 pounds..... so she definitely doesn't need to.

After sitting at the restaurant for awhile we rode past Alice's apt and then I showed her how to get to the place that we would have the Rock Show at on July 30th. By this point it was getting close to 4:30 and I had a classes added to my day off... so I had to teach at 5.... so off I went biking back to the school and Alice headed home.

Our total trip was about 30 km that day.. most of that between 11 and 2. So about 18 miles... not a bad run. Me and Chris want to take a bike ride out to Chagan lake, which is about 50km away... it would have to be a two or three day trip... first day travel.. stay there for the night.. possibly another day.. and then last day to come home. I think its very doable. Granted we could just take the bus and be there in about an hour and a half (its stops in a lot of small towns on the way)

Alice is a very very expressive/emotional person.... I know some of the teachers exaggerate a lot what they say because they arn't quite sure how to express themselves in English...... but I think Alice just wears all over her emotions very strongly out there for everyone to see. When she is happy and having a good time.. like this day... you can definitely tell. When things go a little bit wrong.... she cries for quite some time..... and whens he is bored and pissed off... she stands somewhere angerly drawing circles on a piece of paper. I think I was all three of these activities in one day at work.... it was pretty crazy. With all the crazy mood swings and emotionalness.. she is still one of the cooler teachers at our school... and usually pretty fun to hang out with.. so yay we made more friends.




Next post:
At Weihai

Post that need to be made:
The Rock Show/My first performance in China
My Reach High Students

Vacation Beach Trip part 1

Chris and I started our summer holiday on August second. The first day was just getting shit done and kinda relaxing after the month of doing a lot of over time classes, we also spent some time trying to figure out where we were actually going to go for vacation. We new we wanted to go to a beach.. and the original idea was to go to Dalian... but right now it is very polluted because of and oil spill and fire. So we decided on Weihai... which is on a peninsula a few hours south of Dailian.

China is kinda retarded in how it does its holidays.... right now... EVERYONE is on vacation... they have two sets of vacation in the year.. winter right after spring festival.. and then summer at the beginning or end of August. So... all forms of transportation are pretty crowded and buying tickets can be tough sometimes... so i got Alice from ReachHigh to go with me to get the train tickets.... and of course they were all sold out until the 12th.... so we changed routes a bit...

Tuesday morning at 7:30.... Train .... Songyuan to Changchun. 2.5 hours.
Tuesday night at 10:20..... Sleeper train... Changchun to Dalian. 8.5 hours.

These were the tickets Aliced helped me get... not bad.. it got us to Dalian... and then from Dalian we can take an 8 hour boat ride to Weihai.... the only problem.. gotta buy the tickets when we get to Dalian.... but I actually was able to handle that part pretty well. Also when we got to Dalian we bought our return tickets home from Dalian to Songyuan for the 13th.

Sleeper Train.

Not really that much to say about the sleeper train. We made sure to get bottom bunk... so that we can actPost Optionsually sit down when not wanting to sleep... middle and top bunk don't have enough room to sit in the bunk. We got on the train found our bunk.. asked a random person what time we would get to Dalian... then pretty much passed out... it had been a pretty long day of wondering around Changchun with our bags.

The Boat


When we got to Dalian at about 7 in the morning we took a taxi to the boat station and bought tickets to Weihai.... for a boat that left at 8:30 that same morning... grabbed some quick breakfast and a few snacks and were on the boat. We bought 4th class tickets... but the boat wasn't very crowded... so it seemed like they moved everyone into 2nd and 3rd class.. and had 4th and 5th class closed off... we got "seats" when we got on the boat... we ended up in a room with 4 old ladies... which wasn't to bad.. they slept pretty much the whole time (so did chris)(each room had 6 beds)... and i spent most of my time outside watching the water.... I love being on boats...... the boat ride was pretty nice and a lot of fun.

While I was sitting outside one of the workers came up and sat next to me for awhile.... he was like a manager or something... he we pretty good at keeping the conversation decently simple... he introduced me to another one of the workers that was standing near kinda trying to listen but she was pretty shy... he getting her to introduce herself... it was pretty funny. The guy went back inside at one point.. but obviously not far...because she was facing inside I think talking to him... when I heard my name... I turned around and looked at her and she looked at me and ran inside. So for the next like 2 hours while I was wondering around the boat.... I would randomly here her call my name... and then she would disappear into some random part of the boat..... it was weird.

By about 1pm.... all the people that worked on the boat (even the person that was selling snacks behind the counter) were gone.... just disappeared.... I guess it was rest time. Then when we got close to land... they all showed back up again and helped everyone get off the boat and stuff. It was a really nice boat ride... and I got to read a lot.

Next post:
At Weihai

Post that need to be made:
The Bike Adventure with Alice
The Rock Show/My first performance in China
My Reach High Students