Radio Interview June 26, 2008

Our school has a "radio station" run by some of the students. Every day at lunch and supper for a half hour, some students will be on the radio. They play some music and talk about a topic they choose. Thursdays at noon is the English radio slot. They talk about something in English, and play English songs. We heard lots of random songs, but we always enjoyed hearing Outkast "Hey Ya". That was a welcome sound of home!
Since June 26th was our last Thursday in China, some of our students requested that we come and do an interview with them. We didn't know that's what we were doing until 5 minutes before, but we had a really good time! They asked us about our travels in China, what we thought about the country, and what we thought about the school. The previous two weeks I had taught my students Leann Womack "I Hope You Dance", so they played that song. Afterwards we took pictures with the students that were there and they gave us gifts. It was a wonderful way to say goodbye to all of our students.

Li Zhi (Litchi)

About two weeks before we left China we were introduced to a new fruit: litchi. The first time I had one I didn't like it very much. It wasn't very sweet, and was too difficult to eat to be worthwhile. But the second time, Sara asked Cathy how to eat them. She informed us that the ones that are pink are more ripe, and the smaller/less round ones have smaller seeds. You dig your fingernail into the spiky bark-like shell near the stem, and peel the shell off the fruit. The flesh is similar to a grape, but it has a sweeter flavor. I was addicted after a few! Cathy got each of us a large bag of dried litchi's to bring home, so if you want to try one, let me know! They're delicious!

I'm HOME!

Everything went as planned. Except that our flight from Guangzhou to Shanghai was delayed. We boarded the plane on time, but sat there for three hours. Good thing we weren't in a hurry to connect flights that day! Monday went smoothly and we arrived in Madison at 10:30pm as expected. I was exhausted and slept until 3:30pm on Tuesday! Needless to say, that screwed up my plans of getting right back into the right time zone. But now I'm fine. It only took three nights to get it right!
As for my first reactions to America: the sky is so blue, the grass and trees are beautiful, people talk fast, and "I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free"!
Thank you everyone for keeping up with my blog and adventures. I hope to see all of you soon and share even more about what I did this past year.
Happy Fourth of July!

It's Time to Go HOME!

Wow, it's time to go home already?? I can't believe it. This year has been amazing. I've learned so much about Chinese culture and about myself. Thank you all for reading my blogs and keeping up with what I've been up to in China. There will be more since there are many stories I haven't shared yet, so keep checking back! This month has been a whirlwind of parties and preparations for our return home. We spent the last two weeks saying goodbye to all of our students. I brought a few things for them to look at, their favorite being MONEY! And then we spent the majority of the classes taking pictures. Some of the students prepared songs to sing for us, and we also received many different gifts. I noticed that Sara tends to get large gifts and I usually get small ones. Of course, they are all special to us. I will miss so many of my students. I hope they will continue to write to me. We've also had many parties to go to. Brandon and Caroline left last Sunday, so we had goodbye parties for them as well as our own. They have been a lot of fun, and I am so thankful to have such good friends here. We're leaving XinXing Sunday morning around 9am. We'll take a van to Guangzhou's airport, and then we fly to Shanghai at 3pm. We'll stay overnight there, and fly out at 4pm on Monday on our way to Chicago! Then, we will land at 4:45pm Monday (45 min flight?! Awesome!) in Chicago. We then have a 5 hour layover and will arrive in Madison at 10:30pm on Monday. It will be the longest day ever, but we'll be so glad to be home. Pray for safe travels for us! Next time I write, I'll be back in America!!!

Weather

Just thought you might be interested to know that the high these days is in the mid-90's and fairly sunny! The low is pretty close to 80, so it's as hot here (sometimes hotter) in the middle of the night as it is in MN and WI in the middle of the day... Our clothes are drying much faster! In just 4 hours the other day! Oh, the novelty of putting your clothes away the same day you wash them... :)

Another Festival Today

I don't remember the name of the holiday, but I just found out yesterday that our students have off today for another one. This one I will not be participating in though... it is the day they eat dog meat. Poor puppies!!!

Exams June 7-9

We had a four day weekend! Partly it was for Dragon Boat Festival, but mostly it was for Senior 3's Entrance Exam. You would not believe what goes into the preparation for the most important exam of a Chinese person's life. First of all, the Sr. 3 teachers are not allowed to watch the exams because of cheating, so many of our friends who teach Sr. 1 and 2 had to give up their long weekend to watch the exams. Also, two teachers watched each class of 30 students along with a video camera. The Internet was shut off for the entire weekend in order to send the video footage to Guangzhou where officials would watch them to ensure that no cheating took place. As you can imagine, our friends were very afraid of making a mistake and hurting the students chances of getting a good score. Stephen told us that a teacher had made a mistake about 10 years ago and they still mention his/her name during the preparation meetings as a warning. Each exam lasted 2-2.5 hours and the teachers could do nothing but watch the students. They were bored and exhausted.

Second of all, each classroom was cleaned out so there were no books or papers of any kind. The desks were lined up with pencils and note paper. Then the doors were sealed with a piece of tape that looked very official. Outside each classroom was a piece of paper with pictures of the 30 students who would be in that classroom. The walkways near the classrooms were blocked off so that no one who was not allowed could walk anywhere near them. This way there would be no distractions or cheating possibilities. We had to walk through the gymnasium to get to the front entrance of the school.

Third (yes, there's more!), the street outside the school's front entrance was blocked off to traffic. Only bikes and walkers were allowed there. They can't take the chance of any noise distractions. I'm pretty sure that any construction near the school was halted, too. It was incredibly quiet for three days. When we left for lunch on Saturday, there were mini buses lined up in our parking area and in front of the school gate. I am assuming that the buses were there to take the kids home or to lunch so they wouldn't have to travel so far and stress themselves out. I had read an article once that told of student's parents renting hotel rooms near the school so that they wouldn't have to travel and could go there to rest after their exams.

It was all pretty intense. Sara and I went to Zhao Qing on Sunday to get away since the Internet was off and our friends were busy. And on Monday after the exams were over, we had three Sr. 3 girls come over to our house for an American meal. Now they are all gone for the year. I'm not sure when their graduation ceremony is, but they will find out their scores on June 29^th. I hope they did well.

MFC

I don't think I've mentioned our favorite fast food restaurant in XinXing much. It is a McDonald's/KFC knock-off restaurant called Mai Ken Ji -- the "mai" from Maidanglao (Chinese for McDonald's) and the "ken ji" from Kendeji (Chinese for KFC). It is also called MFC, which I have determined based on Mai Ken Ji, is short for Mc Fried Chicken. We have taken pictures (on Snapfish!) of the menus and food wrappers, also the pictures posted up around the restaurant. Look for the poor-quality photo shopping they did to fuzz out the original brand names and logos and replace them with "MFC." Note also the still-mostly-visible golden arches on some of the cups on the menu. In the family photo, they have done a poor job of photo shopping out the Colonel's picture on the cups. Also, there is a picture above the stairs as you walk out of a little boy making the "shh" sign -- as if to say: "It's our little secret. Don't tell anyone." Last time we were there, one of the employees was wearing a shirt with a tiny McDonald's M on it with a line thru it. She unknowingly posed for a photo with Adam while I zoomed in on her shirt. :) Another thing I think is funny, is that they have no qualms about leaving the Coca-Cola logo on the cups on the menu when they serve Pepsi...

Brandon once asked if he could have or buy a menu to take home with him, so he could learn the Chinese for the various menu items. A friend who works there said it was not allowed, against company policy. They're no dummies. We didn't ask about taking pictures though. ;)

Apparently, MFC is a chain restaurant. Our friend who works there was sent up to Guangzhou to another one for training for 3 months this winter. We haven't seen one there, but it is a large city. We've questioned how they can get away with their obvious copy write infringement. My guess is that it is extremely difficult for an American country to complain to the Chinese government. They have to either keep their mouths shut, or lose their place in China completely. I mean really, what hasn't China copy written?

Shari - May 18-31

As many of you know, my good friend, Shari, came to visit me last month. She came for two weeks and we had a really good time! I'll try to fill you in on the highlights.

The theme of our two weeks was: Shopping! We went walking and shopping almost every day for two weeks. I can't believe I still have any money left! But really, I already had most everything I need, and I don't know how much I'll be able to take home in a month, so I was able to control myself most of the time. I did buy two more pairs of shoes, several shirts, a couple purses, a pair of capris and a pair of shorts. Oh, and a pair of jeans that already stretched way out. :( Shari and I were pretty excited to find two MN Twins t-shirts here in small town XinXing! Except that it's Minhesota, and they were champions in 1887... Then I also found a shirt that said something about Milwaukee shoes! Also while in XinXing, we were able to go to the hot springs one evening. There were very few people there so it was nice and quiet.

We traveled to Zhao Qing for one night where Shari was able to find two pairs of shoes and a large suitcase to take my stuff home in. We also went to Guangzhou for a weekend. Instead of shopping the entire weekend, we went to Crocpark to show Shari what a 'zoo' is like in China. It had all the animals you would expect at a place called Crocpark: turtles, lizards, snakes, iguanas, hundreds of crocodiles. And also some you wouldn't expect: chipmunks, squirrels, mice, rats, hamsters, muskrats, porcupines, guinea pigs, goats, and pigs. The best part about the pigs was that they put on a show every day. It's called... Pig Diving!
So they have this obstacle course for the pigs to compete on. They go up an incline to the diving board where they get pushed off into the water (you would think they would be used to this, but pigs really aren't supposed to dive...), then they do a long jump into a sand pit, then run a ways until they come to the hurdles and back into the pen. We felt so bad for the pigs, but we had to admit it was pretty funny! I also have a video of one of them "diving". We also saw children feeding chicken heads to the crocodiles, and a crocodile wrestling show that was pretty boring.

We also traveled to Hong Kong for three days. The weather was rainy, so some of our plans got ruined, but we were able to find things to do anyway. We walked around HK Island around the bases of the skyscrapers, went shopping in the ritzy expensive malls (didn't buy anything, though), went up to see Victoria's Peak on the night of the tram's 120^th Anniversary, went dancing with our HK friends, and ate lots of good food. One of the most exciting moments, was went a car pulled up near us and some young guys got out while a swarm of paparazzi took their pictures. Unfortunately, they were Asian, and I didn't recognize them. They arrived for the grand opening of a new Diesel store. I still love Hong Kong!

Between travels and shopping, Shari watched my classes. I think it was a little boring for her, but some she was able to get into more than others. She could have taught my classes after a day, though. For my Oral English class, we had them write punchlines to strange questions. I'll have another post for some of the jokes. They had a hard time, but I think they did a pretty good job. How would you answer a question like: Why did you pour hot coffee into your coat pockets? Or Why did you put ice cream in the rice cooker?

Wushu Performance Video 4-28-08

I figured out how to show this video. I hope you can watch it even if you don't have access to facebook. Enjoy! 

 

 

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=16599460151