I wrote a post a while back and never posted it! Sorry, all. I've just decided that we're going to aim for at least one post a week. Many apologies that the site has been neglected - we've been very busy (well, I work every day on top of going to class, but Tom doesn't, so you'll have to ask him for his excuse). I get online once a week, so expect a post about every weekend.
The last post was about getting my hair cut (always an adventure; the guy gave me a very bad bob and was so nervous it took him an hour and a half!) and buying coats and warm shoes. So don't worry, everybody, we have warm coats. (Mine, a knee length goose down coat, cost $13!)
Yesterday was a strange moment for me. I was outside with my coat on but unzipped, and I was sweating. I thought, "Wow, the weather is really nice today! It's warmed up!" Then, I noticed the ice around our building wasn't melted... and when I got the weather report, I discovered the temperature was a high of 20F. Hah!
Anyway, things have been good recently. I've been very busy with work, and today is my day off! The school wants me to teach preschoolers at 9am on Saturdays, but I flat out refused (I even told them that I needed one day off a week, which is so spoiled and excessive here - but I don't care! Ha!). So today Tom gets a taste of working while I lounge around the house - but there is a lot of work to be done around here, so I don't think I'm actually going to be doing much lounging anyway.
Aside from work, we're busy with class and fun things, too. We've been hanging out with the Americans about once a week and our class has been spending more time together too. I hear tonight we're going bowling again, hurray! Thanksgiving was a little sad here, but not much. We went out with the Russians for dumplings, which was good. Later we heard that the Americans went out for a big American meal, but we missed that memo. Oh well. We did make a trip to Metro, the big German warehouse/grocery store that is full of imported stuff and bought some cheese (Irish cheddar and camembert!) and wine.
My adult students, whom I love, took me out to dinner last weekend. It was a lot of fun and my first experience of a meal out with a bunch of Chinese people. Let me tell you, it's exhausting - and not just because we speak exclusively in Chinese. Here's how it goes: everybody orders way more food than they could possibly eat, and a (big) bottle of beer for each person. At your place you have a saucer-sized plate, chopsticks, a spoon, a teacup, and a small glass.
The food is placed in the middle of the table on a lazy susan, which people turn as they want to eat dishes on the other side of the table. You eat out of the main dishes with your own spoon and chopsticks - I hear there was a movement to use "common use chopsticks," a set placed in each dish, but it's such a pain that practically nobody does. Also, it's a big no-no to dig around with your own chopsticks in a dish - that combined with the fact that people are extremely proficient with using them that hygiene is not too big of an issue.
At the start, everybody is poured a glass of beer - and everybody drinks it. (In fact, the Chinese word for "cheers" means "dry your glass" - and it's not a figure of speech.) Another glass is poured. You don't leisurely sip your beer. As everybody eats, picking from each plate, people "jing jiu" - I'm not sure how this is normally translated but it basically means you each chug a glass of beer. This, along with the rowdy (and increasingly so) conversation, functions as the entertainment of the night. More beer is inevitably ordered.
I hear that forcing people to drink is a common thing here - yes, bad, but maybe not as bad as it sounds. If you really can't drink, people won't make you, and it's not a frat party where they'll make you drink until you pass out - or die. That said, lines like "bu zui bu gui" ("if you're not drunk, you can't go home") are common. Refusing to drink when somebody "jing"s you is like refusing their friendship. However, my students were very clear that you only drink what you want - which really means if someone "jing"s you, you can drink a sip instead of the whole glass.
The drinking culture is so important here, especially in the Northeast, that we studied it in our Chinese class! It's not all bad, though. For example, when you make a toast and clink glasses, it's respectful for the mouth of your glass to be below the mouth of the other person. Usually this is to show respect to older people and important people, but between friends it means that they wrestle glasses to the table and even sometimes to the ground to have the lowest cup. It's quite cute. (I heard from a Canadian that the first time he drank in China he gave a hearty "cheers" and threw his glass up high, like we do in the West... and really offended all the people he was drinking with. Oops.)
So there you have it, drinking culture in China in a nutshell. In the end, by the way, we only ended up drinking about a bottle or two per person and the only people who got drunk were the baby of the group, a 17 year old (because he was trying to get drunk - he kept saying "I can still drink!" and of course if you do that somebody is going to "jing" you), and the oldest woman, a 30 year old (because everybody wanted to drink with "big sister," her nickname - it's a respectful term of address for people a little older than you. I can call elementary school kids "little brother/sister" and they call me "big sister" back. But I digress). So, for everybody at home concerned about our safety (or livers), no worries.
After dinner, the class went to sing karaoke - actually cool here, and a legitimate weekend activity! I tried to explain that in America singing karaoke is embarrassing and people usually only do it spur-of-the-moment while drunk at a bar, but they said, "Don't you like to sing?" (Well, yeah.) "So when you want to sing, where do you go?" (Uh... I sing in my apartment.) "But nobody can hear you that way!" Haha. Maybe next time I'll go with them and give you a full report on what it's like.
Well, that's all for now. I promise we'll be better about posting from now on - promise! We miss you all and hope all is well wherever you are.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Super Bowling
I bring you a tired, post-bowling update! Here's a reverse recap:
Our whole class (excluding two of the Russian girls - one is home for the weekend and one is visiting a friend in Shenzhen) went bowling tonight. We split up into two teams and had a very exciting, low-scoring competition, with a high score of 120 and a low of 7 (with 5 of those points scored in the 10th frame). I proudly announce that I clinched a win for my team... after bowling a horrendous game. Oh well. Each team won one and lost one, and we had a lot of fun together.
This all happened after we ate dinner together. We had that Chinese Competition this afternoon - more on that in a second! - and our class decided to go for Korean food. Best of all, our teacher came with us. She's really fun and about our age (25 I think?), so it's always good when she comes along... even with the obligatory reminder to review our vocab before class tomorrow. We tried to treat her to dinner, but she gave us 100 kuai and told us that she was treating us to bowling! She's so nice.
Anyway, that Chinese Competition! It ended up being a lot of fun. There were three parts: speeches, trivia, and performance. I missed the speeches because I was working, but I saw the other two sections and the performances were the best. I don't know why they wait so late in the year to do this, because there were at least 100 of us crammed in a classroom laughing and cheering on our fellow students, and it was a lot of fun. Today, all in all, was a lot of fun. Not bad for a Thursday!
Work is going well. I teach adults every week day and middle schoolers on the weekend - 8 hours a week in total. I'm not the best teacher, I guess, but I'm not the worst in this city either, so that's good. The adults are more fun but their English is horrible to non-existent, and the middle schoolers' English isn't bad but they're middle schoolers, not my specialty. Most - but not all - of them are well-behaved though.
Class is also going well. We have all our midterm grades back, and as usual Tom and I scored almost exactly the same: 100% for writing, 95% for speaking, 80% for comprehensive and 70% for reading. Our reading teacher... is not very good, which explains the two low scores (I lost most of my points on my comprehensive exam in the reading section... grr). Luckily, these grades don't count for anything! Woohoo!
The weather is getting cold. We haven't broken freezing for a few days and I think it's supposed to get to 0F tonight. Best of all, Tom and I still haven't bought coats, and I'm still wearing thin ballet flats. Actually, I get stopped several times every day with strangers telling me to buy warmer shoes. So we're going Saturday at the latest... perhaps even tomorrow after evening class. But on the bright side, we're adjusting to the cold. I almost don't want to give in so early in the winter.
Tom's about to run to the net bar, so I'll give this to him to post. Hope things are good at home. We'll try not to go so long between updates next time - but we're busy with fun things, so if we do, take it as a good sign.
Our whole class (excluding two of the Russian girls - one is home for the weekend and one is visiting a friend in Shenzhen) went bowling tonight. We split up into two teams and had a very exciting, low-scoring competition, with a high score of 120 and a low of 7 (with 5 of those points scored in the 10th frame). I proudly announce that I clinched a win for my team... after bowling a horrendous game. Oh well. Each team won one and lost one, and we had a lot of fun together.
This all happened after we ate dinner together. We had that Chinese Competition this afternoon - more on that in a second! - and our class decided to go for Korean food. Best of all, our teacher came with us. She's really fun and about our age (25 I think?), so it's always good when she comes along... even with the obligatory reminder to review our vocab before class tomorrow. We tried to treat her to dinner, but she gave us 100 kuai and told us that she was treating us to bowling! She's so nice.
Anyway, that Chinese Competition! It ended up being a lot of fun. There were three parts: speeches, trivia, and performance. I missed the speeches because I was working, but I saw the other two sections and the performances were the best. I don't know why they wait so late in the year to do this, because there were at least 100 of us crammed in a classroom laughing and cheering on our fellow students, and it was a lot of fun. Today, all in all, was a lot of fun. Not bad for a Thursday!
Work is going well. I teach adults every week day and middle schoolers on the weekend - 8 hours a week in total. I'm not the best teacher, I guess, but I'm not the worst in this city either, so that's good. The adults are more fun but their English is horrible to non-existent, and the middle schoolers' English isn't bad but they're middle schoolers, not my specialty. Most - but not all - of them are well-behaved though.
Class is also going well. We have all our midterm grades back, and as usual Tom and I scored almost exactly the same: 100% for writing, 95% for speaking, 80% for comprehensive and 70% for reading. Our reading teacher... is not very good, which explains the two low scores (I lost most of my points on my comprehensive exam in the reading section... grr). Luckily, these grades don't count for anything! Woohoo!
The weather is getting cold. We haven't broken freezing for a few days and I think it's supposed to get to 0F tonight. Best of all, Tom and I still haven't bought coats, and I'm still wearing thin ballet flats. Actually, I get stopped several times every day with strangers telling me to buy warmer shoes. So we're going Saturday at the latest... perhaps even tomorrow after evening class. But on the bright side, we're adjusting to the cold. I almost don't want to give in so early in the winter.
Tom's about to run to the net bar, so I'll give this to him to post. Hope things are good at home. We'll try not to go so long between updates next time - but we're busy with fun things, so if we do, take it as a good sign.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Happy Belated Halloween
A post written a few days ago by Lisa. An update will be coming soon.
Happy Halloween from Harbin!
Unfortunately, no one celebrates Halloween here, except for the clubs who cater to foreigners - and they celebrate it just like any other bar or club in America. No thanks. In keeping with tradition, however, Tom and I went to the grocery store and bought a bag of sour Skittles, a bag of M&Ms, and a Snickers bar. They're much smaller than in America - go figure!
I actually had a cute discussion with Kyla via text messaging about Halloween, which was so illuminating that I shall type it up for you to read:
Kyla: Thursday is All Saints' Day!
Lisa: Oh, it is! How do you know that? And what do you know about it?
Kyla: I found it when I was surfing the web. Plus my Canadian friend has told me before. I guess on that day people wear strange clothes and masks. Like ghosts.
Lisa: No, that's Halloween, which is tomorrow. Everybody dresses up in costumes and at night the kids go "trick or treating," which means they go to all the neighbor houses and ask for candy. All Saints' Day is Thursday, but it's a church holiday and no one celebrates it. Thursday is also "Reformation Day," another church holiday. Too much information? :)
Kyla: Sounds interesting! I will go to your home to ask for candy Ho Ho (@^@) [I wanted to say, no, silly, that's Christmas! But I didn't.]
Lisa: Okay, but we won't give you any if you're not wearing a costume :)
I must say today was a good day. One point of note is that we had very positive interactions with virtually every salesperson we came in contact with, which is unusual as business transactions in Chinese culture always seem very rude to foreigners. One of the food vendors was extraordinarily kind - often, Chinese people assume that foreigners can't speak Chinese, so they grunt and point even when you speak Chinese to them - and even the grumpy lady who sells snacks and drinks was polite today. I suppose it would seem strange that people being polite would make my day, but it really does.
Another exciting thing is that I woke up to my phone ringing (actually, I thought it was my alarm and groggily shut it off, whoops) - I got a call from an English school who offered me a job! I am meeting with Ralph, the Chinese guy who runs the school, on Friday, and if everything works out I'll be teaching middle and high schoolers English three hours a week. Hurray! I hope this doesn't mean I have to buy work clothes.
We're supposed to have many, many CouchSurfers this week - four, to be precise: two Australians and two Spaniards. We've cleaned house and made up beds, but even though the Aussies were supposed to call us this morning, we haven't heard from them yet. We shall see.
Despite the recent happiness, today was also a sad day because our friends left this morning for Yunnan. And we got our grades back for our reading class midterm - everybody did terribly. I got a C- and probably was one of the higher scorers in the class. Most frustrating was that (aside from the fact that the teacher scored our answers somewhat arbitrarily) not only did the essays have words we didn't know in them, which we all agree is fair game for a reading class, the questions did too - words that we've never studied and were not in the essay! The whole class erupted about that one.
Next weekend is a "Chinese competition," which means the class picks representatives to compete in speech, singing, and trivia competitions. My family will not be surprised to hear that I got picked for the trivia section, so now I have to memorize 100 trivia questions and their answers about Chinese culture and history (not hard) in Chinese (extremely hard!). Also, it just so happens that, because of the way the school split up the class levels, we, level D, will be competing against levels E, F, and G. We have no hope! So at least I hope we won't be embarrassed. And to think I was going to volunteer to paint "Go D6!" signs! Aiya.
Anyway, I have my work cut out for me, so I better go to it! Until soon!
Happy Halloween from Harbin!
Unfortunately, no one celebrates Halloween here, except for the clubs who cater to foreigners - and they celebrate it just like any other bar or club in America. No thanks. In keeping with tradition, however, Tom and I went to the grocery store and bought a bag of sour Skittles, a bag of M&Ms, and a Snickers bar. They're much smaller than in America - go figure!
I actually had a cute discussion with Kyla via text messaging about Halloween, which was so illuminating that I shall type it up for you to read:
Kyla: Thursday is All Saints' Day!
Lisa: Oh, it is! How do you know that? And what do you know about it?
Kyla: I found it when I was surfing the web. Plus my Canadian friend has told me before. I guess on that day people wear strange clothes and masks. Like ghosts.
Lisa: No, that's Halloween, which is tomorrow. Everybody dresses up in costumes and at night the kids go "trick or treating," which means they go to all the neighbor houses and ask for candy. All Saints' Day is Thursday, but it's a church holiday and no one celebrates it. Thursday is also "Reformation Day," another church holiday. Too much information? :)
Kyla: Sounds interesting! I will go to your home to ask for candy Ho Ho (@^@) [I wanted to say, no, silly, that's Christmas! But I didn't.]
Lisa: Okay, but we won't give you any if you're not wearing a costume :)
I must say today was a good day. One point of note is that we had very positive interactions with virtually every salesperson we came in contact with, which is unusual as business transactions in Chinese culture always seem very rude to foreigners. One of the food vendors was extraordinarily kind - often, Chinese people assume that foreigners can't speak Chinese, so they grunt and point even when you speak Chinese to them - and even the grumpy lady who sells snacks and drinks was polite today. I suppose it would seem strange that people being polite would make my day, but it really does.
Another exciting thing is that I woke up to my phone ringing (actually, I thought it was my alarm and groggily shut it off, whoops) - I got a call from an English school who offered me a job! I am meeting with Ralph, the Chinese guy who runs the school, on Friday, and if everything works out I'll be teaching middle and high schoolers English three hours a week. Hurray! I hope this doesn't mean I have to buy work clothes.
We're supposed to have many, many CouchSurfers this week - four, to be precise: two Australians and two Spaniards. We've cleaned house and made up beds, but even though the Aussies were supposed to call us this morning, we haven't heard from them yet. We shall see.
Despite the recent happiness, today was also a sad day because our friends left this morning for Yunnan. And we got our grades back for our reading class midterm - everybody did terribly. I got a C- and probably was one of the higher scorers in the class. Most frustrating was that (aside from the fact that the teacher scored our answers somewhat arbitrarily) not only did the essays have words we didn't know in them, which we all agree is fair game for a reading class, the questions did too - words that we've never studied and were not in the essay! The whole class erupted about that one.
Next weekend is a "Chinese competition," which means the class picks representatives to compete in speech, singing, and trivia competitions. My family will not be surprised to hear that I got picked for the trivia section, so now I have to memorize 100 trivia questions and their answers about Chinese culture and history (not hard) in Chinese (extremely hard!). Also, it just so happens that, because of the way the school split up the class levels, we, level D, will be competing against levels E, F, and G. We have no hope! So at least I hope we won't be embarrassed. And to think I was going to volunteer to paint "Go D6!" signs! Aiya.
Anyway, I have my work cut out for me, so I better go to it! Until soon!
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