The Tale of the Ice Skating

A local brother led Hilary and Andrew to a nearby university's outdoor skating rink. They hopped in a cab, paid the 6 kuai (about a dollar for a 5-10 minute cab ride), and walked through the gate. The December weather was frigid – a perfect day for ice to be ice. Snow covered most of the ground. It was the stubborn kind of snow that just won't melt until March. Before even getting to the ice rink, Andrew's beard had started freezing and all 3 pairs of feet present were going numb. They entered the rental skate building, and the local brother flashed his ID to the rental workers. The three were given skates for 10 kuai a pair, and then trotted outside to the rink. 

Putting skates on in the cold is a daunting task. The mittens were relinquished and fingers were numb. After the skates were satisfyingly tight (and his fingers were protected again from the cold), Andrew stood up and tried to skate. Instantly he realized that his left skate was not exactly in good working condition. The buckle was the only thing that held it secure to his ankle, since the laces weren't of much use. This clasp was too loose, and it slipped any time Andrew decided to tighten it. Instead of returning it, Andrew decided that he'd rather have his foot stay inside it, as it was warmer than the prospect of getting a decent left skate. He realized later that this was a mistake, as it may have led to an event which will simply be called “Andrew's fall.”

Hilary was the second most experienced skater in attendance. She managed to fall about 4-7 times, and was still happy. The only problem was the bruise on her elbow that still exists to this day.

The brother had only been skating once before. He mentioned that last time, he had only walked in his skates on the ice. He hadn't really skated. He managed to get up to a moderate skating pace that morning, which pleased the others greatly. After their hour was up, it was decided that they wouldn't pay for another hour. Our group then removed the skates and returned them to their rightful place inside the rental shack. They left that place, and went on to eat a glorious feast in a nearby restaurant. Thus ends the tale of the ice skating.

Until next time, keep your stick on the ice!

Sports Meet

Ready, set, GO!
This morning, instead of doing our normal school activities, the entire university attended a our 14th annual "sports meet" at my school. Students, teachers, and administrators were all there.

Now I ran track in high school, so I sorta knew how it would go, or so I thought. In China, things are bigger. The stands were packed - I had NEVER been to a track meet where that many people had shown up!

So we met at 7:50AM outside our apartments, and traveled to the stadium with all of the other foreign teachers and our foreign affairs officer (FAO), named "Thor." Before this, I had looked out my window and seen frost on the grass - it was somewhat chilly all day, but got better as the day went along. When we got to the stadium, we lined up to do some kinda parade! It seemed that all the students had done some amount of rehearsing... we weren't the best at marching. Oh well, everyone still loved us, cheered at us, and waved as we made our way around the stadium. We listened to some short speech (mostly in Chinese, with one of my team leaders doing the English translation at some points) and a flag ceremony which included the Chinese national anthem.

First up was the 100m dash. In between heats, they had entertainment! Students would dance for the crowds, or perform some type of martial arts, and there was even a rollerblading trick show (and believe me - around here, some people really know how to use roller blades like hockey skates, extending winter sports into the summer). We were never at a loss for something to see during today's festivities.

On a rather extraordinary note, a student friend of mine, a great runner, was doing a 1500m race, and he missed the start of the race (due to the school president walking around the track and waving at people, postponing the start). The look of surprise on his face! He shot off of the ground and started running. I'd say almost everyone else had a 3 to 5 second head start on him. Soon he was close to the front, and then he fell down. He got back up, and managed to get first place in the race! It was amazing.

Aside from the main in-between-heats attractions in the center, each department scattered around the stands had their own speaker system. I do believe I heard "Gangnam Style" about 20 times today, and about half those times included some kinda dancing. They played Party Rock Anthem as well, and We Will Rock You a lot. Sometimes I'd see one of those pop-n-lock dancers who want to dance to every style of music played. As long as you weren't getting in the way of the races, you could just dance on the track. Many foreign teachers (who all happen to be friends of mine) showed their fun side to their students today.

People sign up for events that they want to run. If you were a student, you ran against students. If you were a teacher, you ran against teachers. For some reason we teachers weren't allowed to sign up for my types of races (mid to long distance), so I had to settle for a 200m sprint. I got to the registration table and discovered that the male teachers' 200m dash was cancelled. Well great! Now I can't run. It turns out that there was a relay I could still do as part of the English department! Once I found my teammate (Sydney), she agreed to do the race with us.

The five of us waltzed over to the registration booth about half an hour before our race. It consisted of 2 laps (800m) with one person running 50m, another 150, and the other 3 people (including Sydney and myself) running 200m. The race had 2 heats. our team was in the 2nd heat. I was chosen for the honorable position of being the last runner - the one on the team who gets to cross the finish line! I had no clue what hand I would be dealt. POP! went the gun, and they were off. In a matter of seconds, the baton had been passed to the 150m runner. The runners came to my little corner of the track and passed the baton to my teammate (who I'm not exactly sure speaks English, even though he's in the English department). I hopped over to the waiting place and got the adrenaline pumping, since I had about one minute before that baton came to me! My teammate had passed the baton to Sydney, and she was booking it. She was in 3rd, but overtook one runner. She passed me the baton, and I was off. Sydney had given me a lovely 2nd place spot, but I had to catch up to the leader, who was maybe 7-10m ahead of me. I guess my legs were moving pretty fast, because I managed to overtake him around the 100-120m mark. I was afraid to look back, because I didn't want to slow down one bit. For all I knew, the other guy might've been right behind me, kicking it into high gear. I crossed the finish line, securing first place for our team in our heat. Someone told me that we got first place overall as well! Now I'm pretty sure the majority of my students thinks that I'm super cool or something.

I forgot how much fun it can be racing against somebody! Whenever I did a 1600m (1 mile) race in high school, I tried to find someone ahead of me to pass. It was like one of my goals - to not let down, and to make those last 100 meters leave me breathless. And if I failed - I at least gave the other guy a run for his money, and we both got better times!

So yeah, It ended at about 4pm. It was a super fun day, which ended with watching the finale of Harry Potter in a team leader's room, then writing a blog post. Good night!

First English Corner

It finally happened. I got to meet real students of mine!
I arrived 5-7 minutes early, hoping that the computer would work and that I didn't have to write down the discussion questions on the board. It turns out that the computer was in a case, and a student had to open it up for me. In the case were a monitor and all the controls for the projector and the screen. Lucky for me, it all worked!

Over the course of the English corner, I managed to write down all 16 different names of the people who attended (well... actually there were two different people who both had the same name so that was only 15 unique names). I think I managed to get them talking to each other in English, but when they talked softly, I'm pretty sure a lot of it was in Chinese. Since there were only 16 people, I could ask each one of them to answer questions so they could talk directly to me, but also so that their peers could listen.

At the end of class, I was shutting down the computer and turning off the projector. The student with the keys had to stay until I was finished, because she had to re-lock the computer case. She mentioned to me that they enjoyed the English corner, and that when I smile, it is very cute. ...I had to say "thank you." Oh the joys of China... At least I didn't get the dreaded "Do you have a girlfriend" question yet!

Anyway, let's hope that it only gets better from here!

Not teaching yet... Still not teaching...

Due to teaching freshmen, the start date of actual classes is not until September 24th. This gives me 12 hours teaching freshmen and 4 hours leading English corners. I feel like I have way too much time to goof off and do nothing... Anyway, aside from spending 2 ½ hours today watching Band of Brothers, I figured I'd write a blog post.

When it was still Monday, our entire group (at least all who were able to attend) had to perform at a Teachers' Day show. Yes, there actually is a “Teachers' Day” in China, and it's especially strange for me since I haven't taught any classes yet. So the performance was basically a variety show of poetry, music, and dance. Featured in the show were some students, some teachers, international students, and international teachers (us). We saw girls dressed as cheerleaders dancing, girls dressed in traditional-looking Chinese attire dancing, Chinese teachers reciting poetry, etc. Now our contribution was about 2 minutes long, and it took 2 days to prepare. We put together a routine set to Michael Jackson's “Thriller.” Basically, everybody loved it but said it was too short – we cut the song short so we didn't have 2 more days to finish it. If you are one of the stalkery people, you may be able to find a video on Facebook.

Skip back to Friday. It was 6:00, and we were on our way to KTV. KTV is Chinese karaoke. You rent a room that has at least one TV screen and a couple microphones and a bunch of different lights. Then you pick which song you want to add to the playlist from a touchscreen. We had a few of our local friends organize the entire thing, so some of the songs were in Chinese, but most of them we managed to get in English. Basically it plays a music video with words that come up on the screen. Some of the videos were rather questionable with scantily clad women, others were sad songs that everyone seemed to love for some reason, and a couple of the videos were to rock songs that I personally enjoyed more. Next time I go, I'll give more input as to the songs that I want to hear, assuming there is a next time.

Random things: I had liver for the first time. I didn't really like it, and didn't know what it was until someone told me. If I had to describe the taste, I would say something about it resembling a beef sausage with essence of fish. Something of note – Walmart has cheese here! It is very hard to find cheese, so I'm glad that it's in the store that sells everything. A&W root beer at the import store costs 9.9 Chinese Yuan, roughly equal to $1.55 for a 12oz can. I guess I'm saving them for a bad day. Another thing – Popcorn here does not really have butter. It's all some sort of kettlecorn, which is okay. I just still prefer to have my butter, and we can only get it at an import store.

In closing, I like butter.

-Andrew

Is there supposed to be jelly in this drink?

History runs deep.
Confucianism is responsible today for the Chinese having certain rituals they must perform. This can range from obligatorily offering someone something to drink, to sending cards and continually expressing hospitality with clients throughout the year even though a business may have decided to pursue a deal with another company.
Daoism is what causes the Chinese to wait out problems instead of actively trying to fix them. As a male engineer, I might be at odds with both of these philosophies from time to time. There will be many more situations when I am frustrated or at odds with things here, but I have to realize I can't change China – they've been doing things this way for a very long time. I'm sure I'll have a chance to expound upon these ideas throughout the year, so if you don't get it, just wait – I'm sure I'll confuse you even more later.

What shall I do on a free day? Obviously the answer is to learn how to solve a Rubik's cube. A fellow soon-to-be teacher (Josh, who will go to a different city than I) purchased a knock-off cube here. I figured I had a couple hours to kill before anybody else was doing anything fun. Josh taught me how to solve it using 4 or 5 different algorithms. I finally managed to do the cube by myself (without any help from Josh) 2 days later.

Random picture of a rooftop garden, taken from a bus on a clear day. Pretty sweet!

At 11am, a few of us rolled out to the art district on the other side of town. After a little subway detour, we found a taxi driver to take us to the 789 art district. We were hungry when we got there, so we found a reasonably priced place that sold quesedillas (translated as “pancakes”) in addition to more common Chinese cuisine. I had Chinese curry – it wasn't nearly as good as Indian curry, but I'm a little biased towards Krishna or Deep India back in Cincinnati. I took some photos of the sculptures around there, but we didn't have time to do too much exploring within the district.

Not where we ate, but it reminded me of America

Bottle Caps

Damien Hirst Exhibit

With the rest of the group needing to get back to the hotel before 5:30, we took a bus to the closest subway entrance instead of a taxi – all the taxis were stuck in traffic going the opposite direction, and they weren't using the meters at that time of day. We took the subway all the way across the city, but we still needed to take a bus to our hotel... so we waited. And waited. Finally the right bus did come, but it was so packed, and there were so many of us, that I elected to stay off and take one for the team. I waited around for another bus, but when it didn't come, I started walking. Altogether, I probably walked a mile or two back to our hotel and got some good exercise at least.

Today (Sunday) I visited the BeiJing International Christian Fellowship for church. It was probably the last English service I'll attend for a very long time. This coming Saturday I'll be taking a 7-hour train to ChangChun!

On a side note, I played foursquare today with a volleyball. We had a fun time! Oh yeah - and I found a bunch of suspended jellies in my Minute Maid grape drink today. I'm just going to assume that's normal.

We are Now in a Country of Pirates

I stepped out of the local Wu-Mart (not Walmart) and found a man selling his wares of definitely-not-legit DVDs. The thing about intellectual property here is that it basically does not exist. I see knockoff items everywhere and there's no guarantee that what I see will even work. Vendors will be one place one day, but not come back the following day, so returning a defective item will be much harder. This is only one of the difficulties we face in purchasing things in this country – I haven't said anything about the language yet!

Apart from the pirates, I'm living out of a hotel. I do my laundry in my sink, and have to wait 2-3 days for it to dry. Last week, aside from visiting the great wall, we did 4 days worth of morning and afternoon classes. It was pretty intensive, but the great wall trip was a nice break. We got there and it was like being in a steam room – the humidity was through the roof, and my camera lens did not unfog itself for a couple hours. It was definitely a workout though! There are many many steps to climb before even getting up to the wall, plus once you get up there, the wall is full of steps of assorted sizes. Some are hugenormous and some are annoyingly tinyful. The small steps are the ones you have to worry about tripping over, as they're harder to notice.

Training is going well. After a week's worth of learning about classroom teaching, I'm learning about Asian Culture and Communication, which is a welcome intellectual break. Today I will actually be taking a state test to fulfill certain requirements, upon which my work permit hinges. No big deal, really.  

Landing

Ahoy y'all!
After 4 flights, layovers, and a bus ride, I have finally arrived yesterday at the hotel where we will be training. The first thing I noticed about China was the smell. There are a few smells that just smell like China. Don't expect this post to be largely coherent, as my body is still adjusting to the complete time swap.
It's 5:14pm as I write this, and today was the second time I've ever been on a subway. I still have no idea how subways work. Public transit is just crazy.

Today I watched three of my teammates eat freshly grilled scorpions - they were squirming before being grilled. I decided not to participate for a few reasons, but one of them (aside from not having change to pay for them) was because I wasn't really into eating scorpions. Apparently they taste good and crunchy with some spicy powder... so if I ever try to eat some, I'll be sure to add the spicy pepper powder!

Earlier today before our meeting started, I went with a couple guys to look for a park where we can run or work out, with limited success. We quickly discovered that you have to watch your step in Beijing - dogs can make the sidewalk pretty messy. I believe we will soon be ready to survive the perils of the fire swamp, since I don't believe that r-o-u-s-es exist. Back to the story: One of us saw a patch of green from a people bridge that we were using as a vantage point. Eager to reach this field of joy, we tried walking directly to it. Sadly, there were various walls blocking us from getting to it from that direction, so we headed back to the hotel the best way we knew. I think tonight we will track down that field and throw an ultimate disc.

Good Morning, America! -Andrew

First Post

Hello Everyone! I guess I should start this before I leave. This is where I'll be blogging from China from August-June. Check back later for real posts.