new Chinese name

My TA and my students here did not think my old name,  李美 or Li Mei, fit me, so they have renamed me 乐乐 or LeLe, pronounced "Lu-ahLu-ah" with long "u" sounds. It means something to the effect of happy. One of my students is working on a family name for me as well (sorry mom & dad)!

Chinese lessons & more

My TA and I had a free day yesterday until 5pm when we had our two tutoring students, so we went out on adventures. The big company I did the demo class for the other day ended up picking an older teacher with another school, so now we're always free until 5pm Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

We went to a coffee shop in the morning to get some studying done. The Chinese don't really drink coffee and I don't know of a single coffee shop in Songyuan, but because TEDA is much bigger with more foreigners, there are lots. And of course they have Starbucks. Coffee is very expensive though because they it's not a standard commodity.

While we were there my TA ordered something that the menu called "sherbert with red beans." Sounds like a weird/gross combo. It ended up being small red beans in a sweet sauce over the ice from an icee that had a very light but sweet flavor to it. Strange, but not bad.

Our main point of study there was teaching me Chinese! Chinese is crazy to learn; she was laughing at me and how excited I got every time I got something right. There are four tones (flat, rising, falling then rising and falling), and the same word said with each of the different tones means four different things. I am only learning to listen and speak, not read or write the characters. That's a whole other can of worms that I really won't be here long enough to tackle.

I learned a couple key phrases and words yesterday, and then my TA started asking me to rearrange the words and phrases to make new ones. Word order doesn't change as much in Chinese and isn't quite as important as in English, so once you know a few phrases, it isn't too hard to pick words out of them and combine them into new phrases. Last night I introduced myself to my tutoring students and asked their names and they understood. This afternoon I did the same with my student; it makes people smile when I use Chinese (probably in part because I speak so slowly and get so excited). After tutoring this afternoon I told the cab driver I wanted to go to the grocery store and which store to go to in Chinese!

Aaaaand then I made us banana splits for lunch :) her first one. More cross cultural education.

I was seriously disturbed to notice afterwards though that my spoon was from KFC! I cannot escape KFC here. It's everywhere...

After Chinese lessons yesterday, I proofread my TA's introduction to a big English paper she has due at university and then we wandered around Tanggu (the area of TEDA that we live in) a bit. It was also my first time wearing my Chinese Warm Pants out (which I am in love with). Chinese Warm Pants are a cross between leggings, long underwear and amazingness. They fit like leggings, are furry on the inside and you can wear them by themselves as pants or under other things. They're awesome! The Chinese don't call them Warm Pants though, just foreigners. They're almost like something a stylish L.L. Bean would make; L.L. Bean for the 20 somethings.

financial area

Seriously, I'm going to start a campaign against KFC.

apple wisdom

The middle school girl I tutor shared a great piece of wisdom yesterday, so I felt the need to pass it along. This came up when discussing the vocab word "Jewish" and she was telling me that Steve Jobs and Warren Buffet were Jewish.

The 1st apple was in Eden with Adam & Eve.

The 2nd apple fell on Newton.

The 3rd apple was bitten by Steve Jobs.

Chinese, Irish & German bars

...and my first night out in TEDA! My TA had never been to a bar (seriously. at 23.), so we went to a couple of bars in Tanggu. She was quite concerned about our safety, which cracked me up because I'd have gone alone if she wasn't up for it. She even asked our cab driver on the way if he thought we'd be ok. We got in the cab and seeing a foreigner, he guessed the exact bar we wanted to go to.

 

We went to an Irish bar where I had a crazy expensive Guinness (literally 10x the price and 1/2 the size of a beer in Songyuan) and the staff wore hot pink and purple polo shirts (very authentic Irish). Then we stopped at a German bar where their specialty is Mexican food and margaritas. People seem a bit confused on their foreign concepts here...

My TA said from the tv dramas she had seen she was expecting creepy guys to be coming up to us left and right. No one talked to us until the last maybe half hour we were out, when two later middle aged white guys plopped down at our table. One was shithoused and my first reaction when he came up to us was to yell, "stranger danger!" which he did not appreciate. His friend was significantly more sober and had been teaching English in China for many years, so he was good conversation. The drunk one proceeded to dance by himself on the same side of the table as my TA.

He got to trying to touch her in conversation a little more than was necessary (i.e. touching her at all), so I politely asked him not to... and then shit got crazy. He leaned over the table and got in my face trying to start a serious fight with me. Meanwhile I had a big smile on my face and was telling him to please not touch my friend, but if you feel the need to try to hit me fine, it'll be funny and you'll ultimately go to jail. His friend was trying to pull him away the whole time yelling, "You're trying to fight a girl!" My poor TA. Luckily she wasn't too traumatized, but we did not give Americans a good name tonight.

All said and done though, it was a fun night!

random pix: KFC & Cheers

Why do you need a two story KFC?!?! And why is China covered in KFCs? And do they really all need to deliver? Yes, I understand they like chicken, but this is not good chicken! And why do teenagers hang out there for some odd reason...

"Where everybody knows your naaaaame..."
And yes, it does say, "You will feel at home," on the front of this bar.

lunch & drunk driving

Unexpected free afternoon... I was intending to just walk around and explore the city, but I ran into my school's owner who invited me to join him and a government friend at lunch (breakfast for me). It was interesting to say the least. That bowl in front I was surprised to discover tasted just like chicken noodle soup. The stuff in it looked kind of strange, but upon tasting it I decided it was dumpling noodles and glass noodles. Come to find out once we'd finished that it was shark fin soup. Good to know...

3 people + 11 dishes

2 people drinking + 1 bottle of wine

2 Chinese men + 1 American girl

1 Chinese speaker + 1 bilingual + 1 English speaker

The subject of DUIs came up (hence only 2 of us drinking); turns outs China's penalties are even crazier than Arizona's. In China if you get busted drinking and driving you lose your license forever! I've asked about this before because they have the best anti drinking and driving signage ever (see below), I just haven't been able to get a picture of it. When I got my visa, I had to write and sign a statement saying I would follow all Chinese laws and not drink and drive. Eek.

a day in the life: TEDA

Life in TEDA has been busy so far. I got in late yesterday afternoon, had two tutoring sessions with children yesterday evening, with minimal time to lesson plan, a demo class to a corporation this afternoon, a sort of meet and greet with an adult I'll be tutoring this afternoon and then my two tutoring children this evening. I'm not teaching all that many hours per week here, but I am teaching every day. That in itself I'd be ok with (accumulated time off is great), but my teaching hours are all spread out throughout the day. I have adults midday pretty much every day and children every evening, so I really can't go anywhere or do anything. Saturdays are my only option for exploration because I don't have anything until 5pm. We'll see how long this takes to drive me crazy...

I was thinking about a field trip to Tienanmen Square this Saturday morning and I asked my TA if she wanted to come but she declined. And discouraged me from going as well. Apparently it will be crazy on a Saturday and there's not that much to see anyway. She said she'd be up for a different adventure though, so I am now in search of anything else to do in the near vicinity. There's an art museum we passed yesterday that I want to check out, but I don't think we need an entire day for that. TEDA does have some fun and random public art that I saw today though.

The whole TA thing is kind of interesting for me. She was initially presented to me as a teaching assistant. When I got here she seemed to be more of a personal assistant to my school owner and now sometimes to me. She opens my car doors and shuts them for me and things like that. It's kind of strange, like she's almost trying to take care of me. We had some dirty dishes in the sink from our dinner last night that I washed today and she was so surprised at a foreigner washing dishes that she took a picture. What on earth have other foreigners been like?! She's fun though, and teaching me Chinese and we seem to have a lot in common, which makes for a good roommate situation.

My students here seem ok as well. I have a boy that is in middle school and absolutely amazing. His English is phenomenal. Better than my TA's or my school owner's. He cracks me up, when I was first asking him what he's interested in he tells me politics and history. Unfortunately I am interested in neither of those things, soooo on a compromise we are reading Anne Frank. I also have a middle school aged girl whose English is quite good, but not on the same level as the boy's. She has traveled all over the world and I am definitely jealous.

As far as the adults go, my demo class today was to an international software company. I ended up there through a contract with the government. The company saw my resume and decided I was too young though, so this demo class was my make or break, no word yet on how that went. They gave me no direction or level of my audience ahead of time, so I taught a class on marketing. Turns out I was teaching a bunch of managers in a technology department. They had no concept of marketing and were not participatory at all, quite different from my business English class in Songyuan.

Outside of them (if they decide to keep me), I have the middle school boy's father, who is actually very high up in the labor union here. He seems nice enough, but he has a very low level of English right now. Very different from anyone I have taught so far. Apparently I made a very good impression on his son yesterday, because he brought me a gift, a China tea set, this afternoon.

So I spent my Valentine's Day with a bunch of students, my TA and my boss. This morning my TA goes, "Happy Valentine's Day. I got you a present. It's breakfast." Made me laugh. We cracked up over our Valentine's dinner too; our school owner and another caretaker type guy that works for him made us dinner because they both cook and we don't. Nothing wrong with men cooking for two women on Valentine's Day!

random pix: badass fruit & PBR

My TA and I went grocery shopping today in between classes. It went much better than last time; I wasn't completely overwhelmed being so new, it wasn't too crowded because we went during the day during the week and nobody took any pictures of me. Clearly, I on the other hand took some pictures. I have no clue what the first three things are outside of being fruits, and my TA couldn't translate or tell me anything apart from the fact that the yellowish-brownish ones smell bad but taste good. These things are awesome, whatever they are! I also joined the grocery membership program to get the deals, liiiiike a soccer mom, lol. And the PBR just made me happy.

random pix: Valentine's PSA

a Valentine's Day PSA from Fabio

random pix: the white house

This was in my bedroom in my new apartment in TEDA when I moved in, lol. I think it's very sweet, a welcome home White House!

loogies, air quality & dehydration

Chinese people hock loogies like nobody's businesses. They are always spitting stuff out everywhere. When you walk down the street you don't have to look out for dog poop or anything, you look of for phlegm. It's got to be crazy unhealthy whatever is going on with them. Obviously the air quality has something to do with it. I thought it was bad in Songyuan, but in Beijing and TEDA it is much worse. It looks like permanent fog everywhere, or a really heavy rainstorm or something. If I start hocking stuff up like them I'm hitting the road. Maybe southern China is better...

They all have to be completely dehydrated all the time too. They drink a fraction of the fluids that I do in a normal day, and I don't drink nearly as much as I used to in the States. Their drinking glasses are very small juice glasses too, which doesn't exactly encourage drinking more. For people that guzzle gallons of soda and other crap I'm sure this is better, but for someone like me that just wants a glass of water, or five, every hour, it's no bueno.

driver license

I think I'm going to get my Chinese driver's license. I was thinking that they wouldn't give a driver's license to someone that can't read the local language, but my school's owner said they would, and most street signs have English under the Chinese. Granted the translations don't always make sense, but for the most part you can get the gist of it.

Last week one of the Chinese girls at school got her license (she's 22) and it was a big deal. They asked if I had mine and when I told them most everyone in the US gets theirs at 16 they were shocked.

Driving is a relatively new concept in China compared to the States. In small cities like Songyuan the drivers are absolutely crazy; I wouldn't want to drive in Songyuan. They don't follow traffic laws and they drive whevere they want, the wrong side of the road, the shoulder, the sidewalk, through a red light, etc. They just don't care. To their credit I haven't seen an accident yet but still, it's nuts. And crossing the street makes me feel like the frog in Frogger since there is no appropriate time to walk, you just have to go lane by lane.

Beijing and Tianjin are much bigger cities and traffic laws are obeyed much more closely. Not to say that it's quite like driving in the US yet, but more in that direction.

Most of the cars I've been in are stick too, so that's good. The way they drive them though makes me crazy. They never downshift when they're slowing down, so the cars do that shaky thing and then take forever to speed up. The backseat driver in me wants to teach them how to driver properly!

apartments, hot pot & restaurants

…and I have arrived in TEDA (Tianjin Economic Development Area), woot! My apartment here is significant nicer than The Crack Den and very large. I share with my Chinese TA, which I am completely fine with; we each have our own bedroom and bathroom and all that. She got here first though so she has the master suite, which kind of sucks, but whatever. That' s basically me bitching just to bitch at this point. It's still much much better than any apartment I saw in Songyuan. We have Western style bathrooms, a Western washing machine and Western stove, microwave and toaster oven (as opposed to a hot plate only in the kitchen) too. Pictures to come later.

It's also been confirmed that I still have new digs in Songyuan, regardless of where I am right now. My boss there came up to me yesterday, not knowing that I was planning on moving my stuff to the Indonesian Canadian's apartment until I returned, and said I should pack everything up so that when the Chinese American grad student leaves at the end of this week, she can have my things moved into his apartment to essentially claim it as mine. I asked a couple of the foreigners if they thought that was safe and the general consensus was that that should be ok, so hopefully I return to find everything there and intact!

After class yesterday I went home and finished the unpacking and repacking and then a Chinese friend of mine took me out for hot pot for my last meal in Songyuan. Hot pot is kind of fun, there is a hotplate in the middle of the table where they keep a pot of boiling water with whatever level of spice you like. You order meats and vegetables and such and put them in the water to cook them right on the table. There is also a crazy sauce bar where you mix your own sauces for your food. There honestly had to have been at least 20 options of sauces and things to mix in and people put a lot of different things into each sauce; I ended up with something very peanut-ey and something pretty spicy. I think I did pretty well for not being able to read what I was mixing and not wanting to be obviously sniffing every option. People stare enough as it is !

I have yet to cook in China (shocker), so I have been to a lot of different restaurants. Most of them have been the restaurant equivalent of dive bars, really cheap, not super clean looking but really good food. My business English class told me yesterday that China has a huge problem with food safety which was slightly unsettling, but I haven't gotten sick yet so I'm not too worried. The fast food chains here are more expensive than the divey places, and the Chinese idea of fast food is comparable to a Chiptole or Panera, as opposed to a McDonald's or Burger King. I've also been to a few pretty nice places (like the hot pot place), which in general have had significantly better ambiance but not necessarily significantly better food. Not enough to justify the expense.

It kind of makes me laugh a little when people ask me what I feel like in terms of food here. Whether we get dumplings or noodles or hot pot, it's all Asian food, so it all has similar flavors and makes no difference to me. So far, for the most part I've just been letting people order whatever they think is good for me. Most all meals here are family style, which I love since I always want to share and try everything. I'm still getting used to the over ordering though. The Chinese always order way more food than they need, part of it is to show that they can and part of it is to show respect for their company. Coming from a family where you had to finish everything on your plate in order to get up from the dinner table, this can get a little overwhelming! But they never expect or want to finish everything. They rarely take the extra food home though, which I need to get into the habit of doing (see above regarding not cooking!).

random pix: counting

This is from my hotel in Beijing. I really want to know what happened to the 4th, 14th and 24th floors...

Beijing, Li Mei & firing people

SO much to blog about tonight, but I am so tired... we'll see how far I get. I am in Beijing for the night on my way to Tianjin. I drove two hours from Songyuan to the Changchun airport and got there about an hour before my flight tonight, so I had a lot of time to actually make notes about things I'd been meaning to post about, now I have a whole list!

I'm glad to be staying in Beijing, the original plan was to head to Tianjin straight away after I got in, but luckily the guys that picked me up were tired too, so we're staying the night here. I wish I had time to explore the city, but it's very late and I'm very tired, so that's out unfortunately. Back on the plus side, my hotel is more on the Western side, so I'm pretty excited about the bathroom (Western toilet, stall shower with what looks to be an awesome showerhead!).

Today I had 4 hours of my business English class with the same group from Friday and Saturday. They came to class with my Chinese name today: 李美 (Li Mei). According to them it means "beautiful," "American" and "Liz." What they don't know is that it also is the name of the Mortal Kombat character below, lol, which I am definitely ok with.

When the term "ladies man" came up yesterday in conjunction with Fabio's namesake, a bit of a joke started about another man in the class, David, being a ladies man as well (both are actually happily married). They asked me to rename David, so now I have a Fabio and a Romeo in that class; I love it!

Today we covered writing business communications and I had the students do an exercise that involved them writing a letter terminating an employee. These were very interesting to read/hear; everyone was way too nice in their letters. They had a really hard time saying "you're fired" or explaining why without contradicting themselves and later saying the employee had done a good job, because they didn't want to hurt the employee's feelings and they were too concerned with the Chinese idea of being polite. It makes me curious as to how that goes in real life situations here, does anyone ever get fired?

ktv

KTV = karaoke, some stereotypes are true. KTV here is set up like at Geisha A-Go-Go in Old Town Scottsdale, you get private rooms. Sometimes you can pay women to come hang out in your room with you and drink and sing. Sometimes these women are hookers. Not all ktv's have English songs, and the selection is really random. We did some Spice Girls, All 4 One, Aqua, Beatles, Celine Dion, etc. last night. Good times!

business, dinner, Fabio & names

I taught my level 2 business English adult class today... for four hours. Sounds crazy and intimidating, but actually they're a fun group and time flies with them. They have a huge range in where they are at with the English language, so that can be tricky, but they understand that so it's all good. A group of them took me out to dinner after class; the more advanced students like to practice their English and have natural conversations. We had a great time! I think they liked the fact that I wanted a picture with them :)

Chinese people make up their own English names and change them whenever they feel like it. They all have a story for why they have their name, which can be pretty interesting. One of my students' names is Fabio, it always cracks me up. I asked today why he's called that and apparently a teacher named him that. This led to me explaining the term "ladies man" to my students and then showing them pictures of the real Fabio... which led to Fabio asking me for a new name, ha.

The group that took me to dinner is making up a name for me for class tomorrow, stay posted to see what they come up with...