I am taking my first trip out of Songyuan tomorrow. We are going to go to Changchun for a few hours to do some shopping (yay foreign food store!) and then headed to Jilin city for a few days. It should be a lot of fun... except all the train rides... but actually we might enjoy those as well..... me and chris and going to try to talk to as many people as we can while on the train.... try is definitely the key word there... and maybe practice a bit of the dialog we have for Chinese class.
Also... I picked up two books today that should be interesting to attempt to read. One is a peter pan story in Chinese. It has both the pinyin and the symbols.... so I might be able to figure some of it out. The second book was an AMAZING find... its a little kids story with symbols and pinyin.... but then under that..... its translated into English!!!! yay!!! so might try to read some of that on the train as well.
Gotta be at the train station by 7:30 tomorrow morning.... eeee... o well...... screw the bus.. i will just take a cab to the station... so much faster.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Shoping and Hooooooops!
One of the teacher at my school has an assistant or something.. some sort of intern. Well her English is far better then most of the teacher at my school, and unlike most of the teacher she is very interested in practicing her English... so she likes to hang out with the foreign teachers. She invited me to go shopping with her and her friends on Monday. It was definitely an interesting shopping trip.
None of her Chinese friends speak English.. and my Chinese still sucks.... so she was doing a lot of translating back and forth. I could understand an occasional word here or there.... but no full sentences or anything. We went around mostly looking for T-shirts.. but everywhere kept telling us that they wouldn't get any until May 1st. We found one shop that had some nice work shirts.. but they were really expensive. We ended up going to dinner twice.... playing cards at some guys house.. and going to a KTV. All of which was a hell of a lot of fun...... and the good part about going to dinner with the locals... they know what food to order :)
Finally got around to making some more hoops yesterday and gave a few to some teachers at my school... there are the shy ones that wont go near the hoops.. but they will watch.. and then there are the ones that just run up and are like let me try!!!! The "Let me try!!!"'s got hoops :)
Then decided that inviting the teachers to lunch wasn't working to well... so I just got school at the time that they go to lunch.. and just walked out with them.... and kinda followed them to lunch.... about half way to Bateer they invited me to join them for lunch.
They have like a 3 hour lunch.. so after lunch Tammy took me to a little store she knew would have cheap t-shirts of pretty good quality... and it totally did.. so now I have some new clothes! Then we went to the park and met back up with a few other other teacher. Chris showed up with his guitar.... he played music.. I hoop danced.. and the teachers watched. I got a few of them to hoop a little. But the ones that I had given hoops to weren't able to make it out to the park yesterday.
By the time we left we definitely had a nice crowd of people around us. Kinda glad we had Jess there to be like our spokesperson... people would all just come up to her and ask her things like where me and chris were from, what we do, where we work, how old we are, if we are married, and probably how much we make (for some reason thats a pretty common question from strangers). If I was resting at the moment and it was an easy question.. Jess would just be like.. go ask them. But most of the time she took care of it for us.
There will be many many more days of hooping in the part.. now that its getting warmer :)
None of her Chinese friends speak English.. and my Chinese still sucks.... so she was doing a lot of translating back and forth. I could understand an occasional word here or there.... but no full sentences or anything. We went around mostly looking for T-shirts.. but everywhere kept telling us that they wouldn't get any until May 1st. We found one shop that had some nice work shirts.. but they were really expensive. We ended up going to dinner twice.... playing cards at some guys house.. and going to a KTV. All of which was a hell of a lot of fun...... and the good part about going to dinner with the locals... they know what food to order :)
Finally got around to making some more hoops yesterday and gave a few to some teachers at my school... there are the shy ones that wont go near the hoops.. but they will watch.. and then there are the ones that just run up and are like let me try!!!! The "Let me try!!!"'s got hoops :)
Then decided that inviting the teachers to lunch wasn't working to well... so I just got school at the time that they go to lunch.. and just walked out with them.... and kinda followed them to lunch.... about half way to Bateer they invited me to join them for lunch.
They have like a 3 hour lunch.. so after lunch Tammy took me to a little store she knew would have cheap t-shirts of pretty good quality... and it totally did.. so now I have some new clothes! Then we went to the park and met back up with a few other other teacher. Chris showed up with his guitar.... he played music.. I hoop danced.. and the teachers watched. I got a few of them to hoop a little. But the ones that I had given hoops to weren't able to make it out to the park yesterday.
By the time we left we definitely had a nice crowd of people around us. Kinda glad we had Jess there to be like our spokesperson... people would all just come up to her and ask her things like where me and chris were from, what we do, where we work, how old we are, if we are married, and probably how much we make (for some reason thats a pretty common question from strangers). If I was resting at the moment and it was an easy question.. Jess would just be like.. go ask them. But most of the time she took care of it for us.
There will be many many more days of hooping in the part.. now that its getting warmer :)
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Hoop factory running again
I had my first birthday in China the other day. For the rest of the world I turned 26.. but in China I turned 27... hehe you are born at 1 here... so its always something to keep in mind when people tell you their ages. Also when I asked a student her birthday the other day (on of the usual warm up questions we ask) she gave me two dates.... one for the western calendar and one for the lunar calendar........ so ya.. birthdays are pretty damn confusing here :)
Since we had my very merry unbirthday a few weeks ago... I didn't really bother telling anyone it was my birthday. But I made sure to still go out and have a good time. We went to the BBQ restaurant that we go to a lot and had dinner (and of course its the only place in the city that has beer on tap year round, that we know of). And we got to sing Happy Birthday anyway. A couple of the waitresses brought out this big cake at one point and put it infront of one of the other waitresses... and as soon as they started lighting the candles... all the foreigners started to sing :) She didn't seem to happy about it being her birthday, but she blew out the candles and had some cake anyways... I was pretty amused and we left shortly after.. had we stuck around they might have given us some cake....which would have been really ironic.
We headed from dinner to CoCo's (the only good club in town) I had plenty of hoops with me and was ready to dance. As soon as the performers got of the stage.. I was up there with the hoop.... probably so quickly that I might have seemed like the next act to some people. There was a big name comedian doing a show earlier in the night (which isn't common) so there was a completely different crowd then normal. While I was on the box above the dance floor hooping.. one of the security guards walked up and handed me a 100 yuan bill ($15)... and pointed at some people on the side of the dance floor.... yay I got a tip :) It was really odd and I was a little reluctant to accept it... but that would have been very rude. So after I had hooped for a song or two I hoped down and went and thanked the people that sent me the tip and headed back to where my friends were. I spent a lot of time on the back stage (giving people dancing a chance to get on the box by the dance floor) and hooping.. sometimes with two hoops.... and basically hooped the night away!!! It was amazing. So a good birthday.
Also on Monday I did some wandering around the city with the new teacher.... and since its warmer now.. its a little easier to see in the shops as they don't have all the shit covering the doorways. I managed to find some electrical tape ($0.30 / roll) and some friction tape ($0.40 /roll) so I now have piping and tape..... HOOP FACTORY IS OPEN!!!! I have made 3 hoops so far and will be making more as I get time and the need.... the days are getting to where its pretty much warm enough I can go hoop in the park with a hoody on...... I tried a bit Monday but only stayed out for about 20 minutes.
Now I just need to figure out where to put the "Made in China" stamp on my hoops :)
Since we had my very merry unbirthday a few weeks ago... I didn't really bother telling anyone it was my birthday. But I made sure to still go out and have a good time. We went to the BBQ restaurant that we go to a lot and had dinner (and of course its the only place in the city that has beer on tap year round, that we know of). And we got to sing Happy Birthday anyway. A couple of the waitresses brought out this big cake at one point and put it infront of one of the other waitresses... and as soon as they started lighting the candles... all the foreigners started to sing :) She didn't seem to happy about it being her birthday, but she blew out the candles and had some cake anyways... I was pretty amused and we left shortly after.. had we stuck around they might have given us some cake....which would have been really ironic.
We headed from dinner to CoCo's (the only good club in town) I had plenty of hoops with me and was ready to dance. As soon as the performers got of the stage.. I was up there with the hoop.... probably so quickly that I might have seemed like the next act to some people. There was a big name comedian doing a show earlier in the night (which isn't common) so there was a completely different crowd then normal. While I was on the box above the dance floor hooping.. one of the security guards walked up and handed me a 100 yuan bill ($15)... and pointed at some people on the side of the dance floor.... yay I got a tip :) It was really odd and I was a little reluctant to accept it... but that would have been very rude. So after I had hooped for a song or two I hoped down and went and thanked the people that sent me the tip and headed back to where my friends were. I spent a lot of time on the back stage (giving people dancing a chance to get on the box by the dance floor) and hooping.. sometimes with two hoops.... and basically hooped the night away!!! It was amazing. So a good birthday.
Also on Monday I did some wandering around the city with the new teacher.... and since its warmer now.. its a little easier to see in the shops as they don't have all the shit covering the doorways. I managed to find some electrical tape ($0.30 / roll) and some friction tape ($0.40 /roll) so I now have piping and tape..... HOOP FACTORY IS OPEN!!!! I have made 3 hoops so far and will be making more as I get time and the need.... the days are getting to where its pretty much warm enough I can go hoop in the park with a hoody on...... I tried a bit Monday but only stayed out for about 20 minutes.
Now I just need to figure out where to put the "Made in China" stamp on my hoops :)
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Doves and a new teacher
So we were in one of our usual restaurants the other night (a BBQ place... which basically means everything is on a stick and has been grilled). The waiters and waitresses run outside for random shit all the time, well this time the waiter came back with two live doves in one hand. They were flapping a bit to try and get away.. but he had a pretty good grip on them. He just marched strait into the kitchen with them and I assume they came out a little bit later on a stick.. but i didn't pay enough attention to identify them. Damn that's some fresh food.... hehe and probably decently expensive.
I got to meet the new foreign teacher today. He is from Phili. So far I get along with him really well. It is a shame that he isn't staying in the same apts as the rest of us. He is down town closer to the school. He observed two of my classes today... and will probably be following around Adam today. We took him out to eat at TanBo tonight... but LiLi had already gone home. We will probably show him around a bit more tomorrow... he seems to be adapting pretty well and has already learned a few useful phrases in Chinese.
I got to meet the new foreign teacher today. He is from Phili. So far I get along with him really well. It is a shame that he isn't staying in the same apts as the rest of us. He is down town closer to the school. He observed two of my classes today... and will probably be following around Adam today. We took him out to eat at TanBo tonight... but LiLi had already gone home. We will probably show him around a bit more tomorrow... he seems to be adapting pretty well and has already learned a few useful phrases in Chinese.
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