If it's Sunday, it must be...

a school day! Yes, Sunday we had a normal school day. This was so that we could take off 7 days in a row for the National holiday. When we get back from the vacation, we must work a Saturday as well to make up another day. Everyone is just resigned to it (including the students), and they may not like it, but they just shrug and say, "This is China - anything is possible..." So we've got one more day tomorrow, and then 7 days off. I don't think there's another vacation until the Chinese New Year in February (we get one day off for Christmas).
Any plans for the holiday, you ask? Well, a couple things possibly but nothing in stone. I'd like to see the terracotta warriors, tomb of Emperor Jingdi, and Hua Shan, one of Taoism's 5 sacred mountains. Whether I get to all 3 will depend on getting some people together. Things are much cheaper if you can get a small group together, plus it just makes it nicer getting around when there are more of you struggling to understand and be understood!
Since we were teaching on Sunday, 10 of us got together and went to a local restaurant known for Peking Duck. What a treat that was!! Had my best meal yet in China! There was cauliflower, sugared yams, mushrooms, lotus (really common here and this was the best I've had), duck soup, and of course the duck which you wrap in some kind of tortilla stuff and put some other stuff on it and then put some sauce stuff on it. Yumm! There was a bunch of other stuff too, which I don't know what it was but it was delicious. And also some flower tea.  All that for a little over 8 dollars, and no tipping allowed!
They are instituting a new on-line grading system at our school for the first time. It is called Engrade. I caught on instantly and  everyone wants to know how I do it. I told them I've been Synergized. It is not as complex as Synergy but has some other features that are very nice. Sorry, Synergy, you've lost a customer.
I noticed one of my female students singing with some other girls before class started one day. I asked Nebular (her English name) what she was singing and she said Taylor Swift. I asked if she would sing for me and the most beautiful voice I've heard in a long time came out singing English lyrics perfectly. I am still amazed by it...
Well I took some pictures at school the other day for anyone interested and made them public. Here they are: https://plus.google.com/photos/102773079683555477704/albums/6064109948989858881
There are captions to most of the pictures, but sometimes they appear at the bottom, sometimes at the right. It's a little complicated to describe how they name the classes so I'll spare you right now.
Í'm a little apprehensive what's going to happen when this holiday starts. The Chinese love to blow off firecrackers, and not just little ones! Sometimes the noise can be deafening!

Che dan

That's Chinese for bullshit. I'm starting to learn the really important words now...

The rain has stopped. As a result, we finally had the opening ceremony for the school season today as it is held outside on the athletic field. It is definitely interesting. The sound of students chanting at the top of their voices is somewhat scary - I have to say it reminded me of the Germans in WWII. They teach the students to march and follow orders. Bizarre... they are brought up doing it so I don't think most students think twice about it... and you can see some students in the middle kind of horsing around so you know they don't all take it seriously... but it is nonetheless a little unsettling. We teachers had to sit on stools for 2 hours during this assembly and not understand a word of it...

October 1 to 7 is a holiday. I'm not real sure what it is for, but they have it every year. The dates vary, though, and it wasn't announced when the actual days off would be until like 10 days ago. So that makes it very hard to make plans, get reservations, that sort of thing and get a decent price. It's also a crazy time to travel because it's when all the people who have moved to the cities go home to visit their families in their home town - so everything's really crowded. I checked into going to a couple places that people have recommended in Vietnam and Thailand but the prices are just too high. It'll have to wait until another time I suppose. Here's the real kicker, though. To get 7 days off in a row, we have to make up for the weekend that we're off so we have to teach on the Sunday before the holiday and the Sunday after. Isn't that just crazy?  Why they don't just add the days on to the end of the year I don't know. Obviously teachers in the States would never agree to do it, but here it isn't questioned (by the Chinese). Maybe I can now say I'm a Sunday school teacher!

One of the teacher's wife is Chinese and she has agreed to give Chinese lessons for us. She will do a good job I think. Her husband, David, is like the VP here and is from Scotland. She's the first Chinese person I've met who speaks English with a Scottish accent. David is excited about the Scottish election tomorrow for independence from England.  Win or lose, he wants to go celebrate tomorrow after school so I thnk we'll go back to the pool hall we discovered last weekend. I was hardly aware of this vote, but being in a room with English and Scots, I've gotten my fill of it!

With the rain gone, I'm hoping to get out a bit more this weekend. Some of the weirdness of the Chinese culture is getting to me right now, and I don't like it when women cut in front of me in line because they know I won't say anything! (Or can't say anything!). It's che dan!

Picture this...

I'm thinking what to write tonight and it occurred to me - just do some pictures. So here you go...

Sign at the bottom of the Wild Goose Pagoda:

Was it necessary to translate the spitting part?

A Buddha figurine:

Look closely at the necklace around her neck. I did not know that Hitler borrowed the swastika from Buddha. He just reversed it.

The ceiling of a mall in downtown Xián:

It is the largest LCD display I've seen on a ceiling. Very cool...

Sky banging on drums in a Chinese arcade:

Hot pot dinner over at the boss's flat:

My poor soggy clothes that won't dry out in the wet weather we're having. I made the mistake of washing all my pants this weekend and none of them were dry by Monday morning. So I wore damp pants...

It's supposed to stop raining on Thursday...

Rain, rain go away!

We are now in our 8th straight day of rain. But no worries, it isn't a downpour or 24 hours a day. But it is getting rather tiring and dodging all the rain puddles on the sidewalks can get challenging (doesn't seem to be very good drainage built in...). The weather report says we will see the sun on Friday. People around here say all this rain is unusual, but I've decided that the weather is always unusual...
Not venturing out much this weekend compared to last. Headed over to Sky's again last night for dinner and his dad prepared the meal. Sky says his dad is a better cook than his mom. He cooked up 3 dishes (they never have just a single dish) - some kind of mutton soup, eggs with sauteed onions, and something else that I have no idea what it was (very common for me!). It was all delicious. Jake and I rode one of those electric 3-wheeled taxis over there. First time I'd been in one, They are a bit cozy and slow but about a third the cost of a regular taxi. How do we tell the driver where we want to go, you ask? You have a business card of the person or place with the Chinese address written on it and just hand it to him. And no tipping!
Sky's dad is the same age as me - speaks no English but enjoys having people over. He is retired - a government worker I think. He had cancer a couple years back and Sky said he underwent chemo and lost all his hair. It looks like he has fully recovered. Both his mom and dad are members of the communist party (Sky is not and has no desire to join it). It sounds like it is a pain in the ass but has many perks. I can tell you that their apartment is certainly extremely nice!
Many of the students are studying for their upcoming SAT exams. I don't know the exact date, but the SATs are not given in China - the students have to fly to Hong Kong to take it. It ends up costing them about $1000 to take the test after figuring in plane, hotel and meals. Quite an investment! I asked Sky why don't they give it in China and he thinks that SAT doesn't want to because the Chinese students would score too well - they would take it at every opportunity.  I don't know if I believe that, but I do agree they would probably take it every time it was offered!
Friday night after school a bunch of us teachers went to a new pool hall here. They have 5 beautiful tables and absolutely no one was playing and the place was deserted. I guess pool hasn't caught on here yet. So what we found out was that everyone single one of us is a terrible pool player. But it was fun. We left from there to go back to Barbecue Street for late night snacks and play some more liars dice.
They  finally told us that we would have Oct.1 - 7  off for a national holiday (I can't remember what it's for right now). But in order to get a full week off we have to make up for a couple days by working 2 Sundays! And I was going to go to church...

Teacher's Day!

Today is National Teacher's Day in China.  Students actually walk up to you and say "Happy Teacher's Day!" I got a few cards, box of pens (mostly red because only teachers use red ink - students will refuse to write in red), a plant and a miniature cake at lunch. Not bad for only having the students for 1.5 weeks. I'm trying to learn all their names but their room teacher constantly moves them around and every time they do that it sets me back to zero. It will be a long process...

One aspect of teaching here is that there are no substitutes (can't really call in an English-speaking sub). So guess what? We have to cover for them. Due to crazy circumstances already, I have had to do this 3 times and envision it will be quite common. Chris, the Econ teacher from Ireland, just up and quit on Friday (said it was family issues but everyone knows different). Jake had visa problems and had to go to Shanghai for 2 days this week to get it resolved, and 2 teachers have called in sick. Sure makes it interesting!

Now here's something that I found fascinating - all of the heat in China is government controlled. The gas and electricity and water that I pay for is all separate from the heating system. And the Chinese government turns the heat on November 15 and shuts it off on March 15 regardless of the weather. So if it's cold before Nov. 15, too bad! (Well, I've been advised to buy a space heater.) And I have no control over the temperature when it is turned on. Reminds me of the heating system at Michigan State when I was there - you couldn't turn the heat down in the dorms so you'd just open your windows in the middle of winter if your room got too hot...  And you do receive a separate bill for the heat.

Students are all issued their own textbooks here - they own them and can do whatever they want with them. The interesting part is that they are all bootlegs - they take a real textbook and copy it page by page, bind them up with a nice cover and voila! It almost looks like the real thing! The principal can't understand why they do that because the cost of real textbooks, while definitely more expensive, could just be rolled into their tuition amount without any large effect. And the copy machine is definitely something to behold - big, ancient, and noisy - but extremely fast!

Many of the students are in the midst of studying for their Toefl exams - it shows their fluency in English. I believe they also have to have a certain score to get admitted to the universities in the US. Like any place, some students pick up English quickly and for others it's a struggle. Many students are shy too which makes it tough. But in the long run, I think most of them come out ok...

It has been raining here since Sunday (today is Wednesday) and the weather forecast is calling for rain through Tuesday. It's not torrential but more than Portland-style. One thing I notice about many of the sidewalks, hallways and corridors is that they were made without any concern for drainage. You have to dodge huge puddles (even the hallways at school, which are covered but open-aired). Rain jackets are not common but you will see a sea of umbrellas.

I think for lunch today I had some kind of Muslim food. No idea what it was, but it was good!

Mid-Autumn Happy Festival

No school today, Monday Sept. 8.
Here is how the holiday is described on the bulletin board at the back of one of my classes:

Get together with family, sit around the table beneath the star and round bright moon with lots of delicious food, especially moon cakes. Children playing in yard, some sitting beside their grandparents and listening to the old region of change. Every year in this day, the moon will be exceptionally clear and bright. When the people who work far away from home cannot get back look at the moon with their family. They always start to miss each other and see the same moon...

So for dinner tonight the principal has invited a bunch of the newbies over to his flat to have dinner and we will look at the moon together. Unfortunately, it is cloudy and rainy today so I think we'll have to imagine it...

Yesterday I went to the Wild Goose Pagoda with Jake and Sky:

It was built during the Ming Dynasty to house Buddha writings and relics. You may notice it leaning slightly to the side, but not as bad as the leaning tower of Pisa! The grounds around it are well-kept and it has nice gardens - it's the first time I've seen any birds in China other than the little sparrows that are around the city. It is 50 Yuan to get into the park and another 30 to climb to the top (which we did). There are many old documents and relics on display - Sky commented that he could not read the ancient Chinese as the symbols are all different.

Outside of the park area is the Xián fountain. It is supposedly the largest fountain in Asia - I can tell you that it is extremely long - 3 football fields? At 9 every night they do a light show with the fountains to music:

The night scene there was very festive with lots of families. Jake, being a tall westerner, gets requested to have his photo taken with lots of people. He's getting a big head...

I had my first experience with a "squattie". It's the toilet that's basically a hole in the ground. They don't have toilet paper in the bathrooms either so you carry it with you or they'll sell you some. I didn't have any so I bought some and then entered the bathroom from hell. Luckily I finished without falling over or passing out from the smell! If I could have waited I would have!

Returning back from the fountain there were 5 of us looking for a taxi. No one was picking us up but an illegal taxi stopped and offered a ride. Another teacher once got caught in an illegal taxi and the police let him go but the driver gets in serious trouble. Anyways, we made it home, but not before driving through the diciest areas of town I've seen yet! Certainly the legal taxis don't take that route! We were all joking about being abducted and robbed and it made for an entertaining ride home...

Go Ducks!!!

The Wall

No, not The Great Wall. The Xián Wall, which surrounds the original city and was built sometime in the 1300's. Obviously not as long as The Great Wall, but it is wider.

I traveled to the wall with Jake. He's a recent addition to the staff and teaches US Geography. He hails from Denver but spent the last 2 years in the Peace Corps in Mongolia. We grabbed the #6 bus which takes you all the way there - 1 Yuan (16 cents). When we got about halfway there, one of the doors on the bus wouldn't open so the driver pulled over and we all had to exit and wait for the next bus. Thankfully, it wasn't a long wait, but we were already standing room and the bus we joined was standing room so you can imagine how intimate we became with the other passengers. We were warned to be wary of pickpockets on the buses so I kept everything secure in my front pockets...

Once we got there we were joined by Sky, the Chinese math teacher who has sort of adopted me and watches over me. He's 25 years old and speaks very good English. We walked down to Muslim St and got the dish that Xián is noted for - sorry I can't tell you the name. It's a soup with small bread cubes, mutton and a bunch of other stuff. They serve cloves of garlic on the side which people eat separately with the meal. It was really tasty, however I just tasted the garlic and left it at that... Muslim St is a long street with mostly restaurants and populated by a Muslim minority in China. Very colorful, very busy.

From there we went to the wall (entrance fee 54 RMB). Once on top, we rented bikes (40 Yuan) to go around. It is 13.74 km full circle.  I'm glad we did because at first we talked about walking it but in that heat the bikes turned out to be the ticket. It is very impressive - wide enough to drive 4 cars across with room left over... There are also some other historic buildings in the area - The Bell Tower and The Drum Tower - but we were told that they are impressive to see at night so we'll go back some other time. There are also some fountains there with a great night show so we'll catch that too.

We caught the #6 bus back without incident and had dinner at the local Dicos. Dicos is sort of like KFC. Sky said they had hamburgers, but it turns out their idea of hamburger means it has a hamburger bun. It was really a chicken burger. Not the best, but ok! I got home and went to bed!

Pics:  Top - view looking on top of the wall looking down the wall - it's a long ways!!
          Middle - A guard with a foreign tourist standing next to him
          Bottom - Muslim St

The previous night, Friday, we had a staff get-together on Barbecue St (a nickname because all the restaurants on the street barbecue their food and the roadway is closed off - street is filled with restaurant tables). It was a good turnout of staff and we had a great time. The waitresses brought us some cups with dice after dinner and we played a Chinese dice game until about midnight. I think we were the loudest table on the street and the Chinese had a good time staring at us! From what the returning teachers say, the group this year is MUCH better than last year. I'm sure it's the Oregon influence!

Inquiring minds want to know...

How do I dry my laundry?
Chinese apartments, at least around here, don't seem to have dryers. So you just hang it up. At first, I had nothing to hang anything on except furniture so I had every chair, sofa, and anything else I could find to hang it on (reminded me of what some families in Australia had to do). Now I've upgraded and have one of those stand thingies to hang stuff on. It works... Now don't ask me about ironing because that isn't happening...
How is your water heated?
Gas and electricity. I have to first plug in the heater, and then turn the gas switch on. The tank must hold about 2 gallons I figure. I think I've got it figured out now - I can wash my hair and face before running out of hot water. Then I turn the shower off, lather up the rest of my body, and then there's enough hot water to rinse off. I've had a few cold showers...
Gas stove?
Yup, it operates by turning on a separate gas switch. I've only used it for boiling water for coffee, eggs, and dumplings. My first big purchase was an electric teapot because it'll be cheaper and much faster.
How's the coke taste here?
Pretty much the same but they don't put as much carbonation in it.
Any western food places there?
Yeah, I discovered a Subway within walking distance. It's fairly identical and the prices are reasonable but expensive by Chinese standards. There's also a DQ, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, and maybe a Burger King somewhere. But they are too far to walk to... A plain latte in Starbucks will run you over $6. I like coffee but not that much.
Is the internet censored in China?
You betcha. Although I really don't understand why because anyone who really wants to avoid the filters can figure out a way. All the teachers use VPNs which direct us through dummy proxies. Right now this entry is actually coming through Los Angeles.  One thing that's available on the Chinese internet is free music and movies. But I avoid it because it is full of viruses and I don't know what the buttons say that you click on...
Are Chinese students really that smart?
Quick answer, no. But they have a different learning style that emphasizes a lot of memorization. So they can rattle something back to you but perhaps not have a deep understanding of it. And some of them are unmotivated. But a little chat with the principal supposedly brings them in line. The Chinese teachers are pretty hard on them. I don't think us foreigners could get away with that, nor do I want to.
Did you say that Chinese kids sometimes poop right on the street?
Yeah. They're trying to break people from letting their kids do it (I'm talking little kids), but some parents maybe find themselves in a bind and... It's a strange sight but doesn't seem to raise any eyebrows.
Seen any traffic accidents yet?
Strangely enough, no. If you saw them driving on the street you'd think there'd be an accident every other minute. But they seem to have it figured out and use their horns enough where I've yet to see a crash. But I know I'll see one eventually...
What's your favorite part so far?
The staff at the school. Good bunch of people from all over the world. Love to listen to all the accents.
Good day mates!

Blue skies, nothing but blue skies...

End of Day 2 at school. I looked up at the sky today and saw blue! That is the first time since coming here that I have seen blue sky - even one of the locals commented to me today on how nice the weather is. Something we kind of take for granted in Portland...
I keep forgetting to take my camera in to school - as soon as I do I'll have some more pictures. I've been getting up around 6 every morning and trying to hit the sack around 10. My body seems to have adjusted to the hard bed (can you say rock?) and I don't seem to have any sore muscles. My breakfast so far has consisted of a hard-boiled egg (they sell them in bags at the market - I bought a bag and there were 16 eggs in it!) and a piece of bread with some jam thrown on top. Along with a couple cups of instant coffee that seems to get me going. For lunch at school I've been eating in the cafeteria and that is my big meal. They pile the food on your plate - no way I can eat it all. And I have no idea what any of it is - yesterday I thought I was eating something with chicken in it and turns out it was eggplant. Whatever it is, it's healthy!

I think my largest class has 27 students in it. The most they could have is 30 as that's the number of desks in a room. Once the school year starts, the students don't move around much so your numbers don't change.  My smallest class is 17 and all the others I would put in the mid 20's.
All of the students have their regular Chinese names and then an English name that they choose because many of their names are so hard to pronounce. A couple of my favorites so far are Black and Strong...

So a few pics to take a gander at: the living area of the apartment, kitchen, and bedroom. The bottom photo is the view looking out one of the windows. I'm on the 11th floor of a 20 story building. Hope everyone had a great Labor Day - no such thing here!