school drama

See below for an updated teacher roster for my school and their various drama...

We have three Filipino teachers at my school that I've recently given the rundown on. The two that are a couple have been a bit stressed lately about getting enough teaching hours. I don't understand that, because I don't get paid by the hour, but as I mentioned, their deal is a bit different than the other foreigners because they're not quite looked at the same way. They never really hung out with the rest of us much, but they've distanced themselves even more lately because (I'm assuming) they feel their livelihoods are threatened by us.

We have one other teacher that's been around forever as well, the French Canadian woman I've mentioned before. She's kind of a loner, as she has really good Chinese, has been here for many years and is a bit older. Something's been upsetting her about our school recently, but she won't talk about it, so who knows what that's about.

Aside from her, we have another Canadian. He's a university student and only here for the summer. He belongs to the non-partier group of foreigners and doesn't really come out too much unless there are sports involved. He falls into the visa drama category, as he was with my hypothetical friend in the group that went to Hong Kong and not a single one walked away with a visa.

The third member of that group was a British woman. She signed a year long contract with the school, but told the owner from the start she was probably only going to stay six months. She kind of screwed herself there, because if she'd only signed a six month contract she could have had flight money built into it, but to break a year long contract she'd be forfeiting her flight money. Not that it ultimately mattered.

The failed Hong Kong trip and associated faked medical form were the final straw for her. She was just done with the school, the last minute changing of classes, disregard for teacher's time, etc. She took all of her accumulated holidays in the beginning of June, got her May pay and just up and left, forfeiting her pay for any work she did in June. She didn't tell the school she was leaving until she was at the train station. It's kind of awesome that someone sent that message to the school, you treat us like crap and we won't take it. The school is kind of covering up her leaving, they didn't really tell anyone, they have just been saying she's sick.

Awkward = me trying to pretend I didn't know she was leaving ahead of time! All the foreigners in town knew, except for the Filipinos and the French Canadian. Most of us kind of view it as an "us vs them" relationship with our school(s) and it's hard to judge which side those four belong on.

Then we have two Americans, one is a big partier and the other is a non partier. Neither of them hang around too much. The partier has offended a lot of the other foreigners and has the personality of someone that did waaaaaay too many drugs at some point. He's a nice enough guy though. The non partier is naturally kind of a loner I think; there's also something slightly different about his personality. He's got a little bit of Chinese also, which usually make people more inclined to be loners.

Outside of them, we have the Jamaican teacher I also recently talked about.

And finally we have/had the three teachers that were from the agency in Changchun. There was an American Libyan crazy party guy had a lot of drama recently. He got fired by our owner, then the VP talked him into coming back, then he had some family drama so he left for a bit to clear his head, then he came back and then a week later he and the school owner mutually decided he was leaving us.

The second was an older Kiwi guy. He was really easy going, but was getting fed up for a while with bs to do with the school. His final straw was when the school caretaker was at a high school to pick up him and another foreign teacher, but just got the other teacher and didn't wait for him because the caretaker had to drive other teachers somewhere after that. The caretaker was literally at the high school the Kiwi was at and decided not to wait two minutes for him because he had to drive other people. So he quit. And then about two weeks later the VP talked him into coming back (she really is the buffer between us and the school owner!). He got back and then maybe two days later they fired him (reasons unknown, I don't understand why they asked him back in the first place).

The third from the agency was a young American guy that was just weird. Everyone thought so, Chinese and foreign alike. Our school owner never liked him, so I don't even know why he got hired in the first place. Before he even arrive the owner told the British girl that this guy was stupid and he told me once that he had a special talent of putting people to sleep.

So, between everything going on with the people above, and then my hypothetical friend's whole visa situation as well, there really has been a lot of drama!

red, white & tan (& racist)

Chinese always exclaim to me that my skin is so red and ask me if I have been in the sun too long or am allergic to something. This is just my normal skin color (lol) and it's not exceptionally red, just maybe when compared to theirs.

We're kind of opposites in what we think is appealing and looks good in terms of skin color. Chinese always want to be more white. It's actually really hard to find any skin care products here that don't say "whitening" or "bleaching" on them. They carry parasols on sunny days to avoid getting tan. When I explain to them that Americans like being tan, that I like being in the sun and that we have such places as tanning salons they just get confused.

There are a couple of non white foreigners in town as well, and the Chinese's reactions to them are a little nuts. One of my students actually told me once that he was afraid to meet a black person because they might shoot him. WTF.

There are two Americans, one with Libyan heritage and one with Mexican heritage, that the Chinese call black. They tend to be a little wary of both guys before they get to know them, strictly based on their skin color.

And then we have a new foreigner from Jamaica. Clearly, she is fully black. Being from Jamaica, where of course most people are black, she has never experienced racism before and I feel terrible for her. She's having a bit of a tough time of it. People stare at us enough as foreigners, but being black on top of it, especially in a small town, makes it so much more intense for her. Children are sometimes afraid of her.

I tutor a student that I would call very open minded and western thinking that actually told me that she doesn't like my friend just because she's black. She also told me that my friend seems too sensitive about her skin color, even though she doesn't like her because of her skin color (make sense of that one!). She has had class with my friend and found her to be a nice enough person.

My poor friend is also having some issues with her work visa because of her skin color. Our school's owner is telling her that the government has denied her work visa because English is not her native language (it is). All of her documents (passport, degree, resume, etc.) are in English. He told her that unofficially, they're denying her just because she's black.

I asked a friend in Xiamen if that could be true or if she'd have better luck in a bigger city. My friend in Xiamen used to handle all of the visa paperwork for her school's foreigners, so she's a good resource for questions about stuff like that. She basically told me that my Jamaican friend is just SOL. And here we thought parts of the States were bad.

awesome invention: mosquito patches

Everywhere is China has mosquitos, blah, and they all love me. Different parts of the country have different kinds. Xiamen seems to have the most of anywhere I've been so far, and they are also the most vicious. I looked like I had leprosy on my legs when I was there, and the bites are still visible and that trip was like a month ago!

I've heard that eating certain foods is supposed to keep them away (raw garlic, vinegar or bananas), but none of these have worked for me. What does work is these awesome patches they have here that you put on your clothes. They smell like citronella, but the scent is pretty light and not bad or over powering. Now why have I not seen these in the States? I need to send my parents a Chinese care package, haha.

pee feet

The topic of toilets comes up a lot here, squatters versus western style. When the group of American high schools was here the other week, I was trying to explain to them why I prefer squatters. I'm a hoverer in America anyway, so squatting is completely natural for me. Granted I have good balance and good knees; I think being fat, pregnant or old might change my opinion a bit, but squatters are fine in high heels too.

The only problem with squatters is the splashing. No matter what, your pee is going to splash everywhere, it's inevitable, no matter how slowly you pee. Some squatters have splash guards on the front, but the doesn't protect the sides from splashing. When I first got here, I was kind of thinking I might not wear sandals in summer, but I hate shoes so I do. I've just accepted the fact that my feet will pretty much always have a little bit of pee on them. Fun fact of the day!

eating Lassie (& Thumper)

I finally did it, I ate dog for lunch yesterday.

One of my adult students has been talking about going to try it for a while now, so yesterday he took me to lunch with a friend of his and we did it. We tried dog literally prepared eleven different ways (or eleven different parts). It definitely has a distinct flavor and it's not especially good. I had a fortune teller tell me I will grow to love eating dog (completely random, I know) and an American friend told me to just wait, I'll crave it, but I don't see myself ordering it again.

This is ALL dog. The plate on the left is dog skin. The other two smaller plates are shredded dog meat in some kind of marinate, that one is the clear favorite for everyone.

This is a platter of dog necks, no joke. And I ate one. Eek!

Also, at the beer fest the other day, we tried rabbit, bbq style. The whole rabbit. Luckily they cut it up for us. But they were nice enough to give us the head (how sweet, right?). My opinion of rabbit was about the same, I probably won't ever go out of my way to eat it again.

random pix: more random food

Does anyone know what this fruit is? It's furry, almost like a peach.

I'm just shaking my fist that this, damn KFC...

Not sure what the food is, this was on the corner at a hot pot restaurant, but that's a bat in there.

hair dye & vinegar

I finally got my hair dyed here. I used to see my stylist about every seven weeks in Phoenix. I got my hair dyed the week before I came here. Then I got it done nine weeks later in Korea. Then I tried to do it about eleven weeks later myself with a box of bright purple dye I bought in Xiamen (cool colors are can only be found in big cities). I made the unfortunate discovery though, whilest I had a head semi full of dye of course, that I have enough hair that I require two boxes to cover my whole head, not one. It actually didn't look too bad, but I was definitely due.

I walked into a salon near my apartment and pointed to anything on the red/violet page of the dye book (having no clue on their skill level I didn't want to be too picky). They applied the dye and I read my book. And read some more. And some more. Then they tried to scrape the dye out and added some more. And then I read some more. And some more. Then we did another scraping and reapplication. All in all, it took about three hours to dye my hair and maybe four rounds of dye application. In the States if I get my hair straight dyed, just all over color, no highlights or lowlights or anything, it would take maybe an hour.

My students have told me that dyeing your hair causes cancer. As an avid hair dyer, I am inclined to disagree. Given that process though, and the fact that the dye made my scalp burn a bit, which typically only happens if you're going blond in the States, I think they might be on to something.

Either way, I'm definitely happy with the color. Granted I did pick the most expensive one; here you select the brand of dye you want and they all have different price points. It's holding up very well also. I'm currently washing my hair every day, which could potentially destroy the color really quickly, but it's doing fine.

When I was younger, I used to wash my hair every day. When I came to China, I was down to about every two or three days to preserve my color. Here, I cut back to every four or five days. I wasn't even brushing my hair at the point either, it had really good texture and the further I was in between washes the more compliments I got on it. And then I completely stopped shampooing it.

I have some friends here that don't wash their hair, they use vinegar (specifically apple cider vinegar) to clean it. I'd heard something about this in the States as well, not using soap or shampoo; it's supposed to be really good for you once your body adjusts. I'm not typically the person that is super worried about using the most natural products or whatever, but if all other things are equal, I'm definitely going to choose the natural route. Between that, curiosity and the whole "if I don't try it now, when else will I have the opportunity" thing, I decided to try it.

The transition to vinegar can be a greasy one while your hair rebalances, so I'm "washing" with vinegar every day. It makes my hair feel really soft when it's wet (like there's a bunch of conditioner in it). It's pretty normal when it's dry, aside from grease in my bangs and at the crown. I'm on about two and a half weeks of this, but the salon washed my hair quite a bit when I got my hair dyed, so we'll see how it is in another week or two.

don't judge me, I have a cleaning lady

I've never had a cleaning lady before. I've always thought it was kind of self indulgent and I'm a bit of a clean freak, so I'd usually rather clean something myself and KNOW it's clean. Here, not so much. Everything gets dirty so quickly and I don't like to be home and then my place gets dirty and then I went to be home even less... you get the idea.

Anywho, some of the other foreigners have a cleaning lady (they use the same one). After my last trip, I was completely overwhelmed by the idea of cleaning up after almost two weeks away, so I broke down and called her (well, I had someone else call her, she doesn't speak any English).

She's really affordable (50 kwai each time), she uses whatever cleaning materials I have around and she's completely trustworthy. We all make sure we're home to let her in when she arrives and then leave to get out of her way. So awesome.

urban planning propaganda museum

The other day, a Chinese friend asked some of us foreigners to go to a museum opening with him the next day. He said something big was going on, someone from the government was going to be there, and it promised to be something out of the ordinary. Also, I don't know that Songyuan has any other museums, so naturally we agreed.

Then it morphed into an I'm-not-going-with-you-but-this-other-Chinese-friend-of-ours-is-and-they'll-arrange-a-car-for-you kind of thing, which always makes you question motives.

There are definitely a good amount of Chinese that like having access to foreigners, whether they're friends with us or they know someone who is, because it makes them seem much cooler/more important/whatever to other Chinese. Sometimes being the token foreigners somewhere can be fun if you're ok with the ridiculous attention and questions, and it usually leads to a free meal or drinks. Typically you can tell from the outset of an invite though if that's what the whole thing is about, and our friends don't usually pull the bait and switch on us. The motives actually got a bit more confusing at the museums though, because one guy's boss met us and invited us to lunch and then he didn't even come with us.

Regardless, we went (to the museum and lunch). Turned out the museum had already opened, but very recently, and that morning the Secretary of Urban Planning for the province was there. We met him, but after going through the whole museum, and we didn't really talk to him at all.

All in all the museum was kind of cool, but I'd definitely classify it under the "propaganda" heading, as opposed to "education." 90% of it was about future Songyuan, with a lot of really, really impressive models, but they were completely unrealistic, they didn't agree with each other (I noticed the proposed Sky Tower in at least three different locations in the city) and if anything on them was going to come to fruition it wouldn't be for at least 50 years.

This model was the centerpiece. It was in the middle of the building on the first floor with second and third story balconies overlooking it. And naturally the Earth above it. You could actually go in the Earth and watch a little 360 degree animation clip.

Can't remember what this room was about.

More models and propaganda.

Virtual tour of the river, complete with seats mounted on a platform that swayed a bit to mimic the motion of the river.

FOREIGNER PERK: random gift when you leave the museum.

random pix: Chinese Mexicans, urinary reproduction & hair salon torture

I'm just confused.

This frickin' clown is EVERYWHERE in Songyuan.

These people are definitely not Mexican...

"Eastern Urinary Reproductive of Hospital"?

Most hair salons have this. WTF is it?!

Come again?

field trips

In the past three weeks I've gone on two field trips with my favorite class (my only class actually, but I love them regardless!). The rule for field trips is theoretically "English only" and the majority of the class must go. That class is a really fun group with good chemistry and they also happen to be adults with really good English; I think of them more as my friends than my students.

Field trip number one was a picnic. It's been raining basically every day for the past month or two, but luckily on picnic day the weather was absolutely amazing. There was one point where we thought maybe it was going to rain, so we packed up all of our stuff, but we ended up just relocating our base.

Enough of my students have cars for them to have been able to drive us all about 30-45 minutes away from school near the river and Long Hua Temple, basically in the middle of nowhere (yay for nature and green things).

Yep, some cows were hanging out with us. They made fun of me for taking a picture of them though, "Haven't you ever seen cows?"

...and some farmers.

Everyone brought food or props or something; I was in charge of games. We played tradition American picnic/children's games (Capture the Flag, Telephone, Red Light Green Light), some Chinese games (some kind of awesome blindfold game and the card game all the old men always play outside) and some we all knew (Charades, Hot Potato, soccer, relay races, three legged races).

Class is supposed to be four hours, 8am to 12pm, on Sundays, which picnic day happened to be. My students picked me up at 8am and I think I got home from the post picnic dinner at 6:30pm. I got to hang out with people I really like all day, enjoy nature and great weather, be active and get paid for the whole thing. It was kind of awesome.

Field trip number two was to play badminton (with a sprinkling of ping pong) this past Sunday. We were going to have class from 8am to 12pm, do lunch and then go, but we ditched class an hour early for more game time.

My students all work for some subsidiary or other of CNPC, the big oil company here, and we went to one of their offices to play (none of them actually work together). His office was kind of nuts, it was in an old hotel and you could definitely tell, they hadn't remodeled the majority of it. The carpet was my first clue, and not just that there was carpet, even though you rarely find that here, it was that "main-hallway-of-a-hotel" pattern also. In his office there was a bathroom and a bed (granted it was a twin), but it had clearly been a hotel room. There was even the standard fire evacuation map on the back of the door.

The ping pong was in the same building, in what might have been a conference room. They had special sport flooring and maybe ten tables, with balls, paddles and homemade hoppers (like in tennis, containers on handles that you can push down on top of a ball and the ball pops into the container so you don't have to bend over to collect them all). It was legit.

I mostly stuck to the badminton. One of the guys came into the badminton room and he was really sweaty, I asked what he'd been doing and when he said playing ping pong I was sliiightly confused. And then I went to watch. They're really intense about ping pong. They put all kinds of crazy spin on the ball and stand literally almost a full table length away from the table to play.

In a separate building, in what appeared to have been an auditorium of sorts, the company had recently built the single badminton court. The guy who's office we were at said everyone could play for a half hour of each workday. Since it was the weekend, we had the place to ourselves. We ended up playing for something like five hours.

I keep meaning to tell them about Sunday Funday and forgetting. We're essentially starting the Sunday Funday Field Trip Series. Next up: bbq and strictly English ktv!

visa lording update

When my hypothetical friend that was having issues with her school getting her visa in my previous posts flew into Changchun after her trip, a caretaker type guy from her school picked her up and informed her that they were spending the night in Changchun. A few of the other teachers were to meet them in the morning so everyone could get physicals for their visas. She and the guy that had gone to Hong Kong got theirs, along with three women that had been teaching at the school for like three years that all already had visas. The place they got the physicals was basically a physical factory; it was a medical office that only did physicals for visas and cranked them out ridiculously quickly for tons of people.

When she finally got back to Songyuan, she asked her school owner when he would send her to Hong Kong again with her correct paperwork. She basically told him she was leaving if it wasn't in the next two weeks. He promised her that by July 10th she'd be there, it was going to take some time to cancel her old, incorrect documents and reapply for them.

She's going on holiday again soon, and is supposed to be gone until July 8th, so when she leaves she just going to have all of her stuff packed up, and if he doesn't send her, she won't return, she'll head straight to the next city she plans to live in. At least that's her plan. She'll lose her flight money and a month of pay in that instance though, which really sucks.

On the upside, the guy pretty much knows not to mess with her as long as she's actually at the school, so he didn't end up trying to deduct money from her pay for the first failed Hong Kong trip.

random pix: fish 3 ways

Notice the jumper to the right... this happened about every 15 minutes while I was eating there. Nobody would notice until I started giggling every time.

Why wouldn't candy come in a plastic foot with a fish on it?

beer fest

When I returned from my latest adventure, Songyuan had transformed quite a bit. Apparently someone had flipped a switch and it was officially summer. Whenever a sale is happening or a new store is opening or something, once it's summer, the Chinese break out the crazy inflatable arches and lanterns, put up a stage and have some kind of singer or band or comedy act or something going on all day. Little vendors will set up all around and it's always entertaining. These kinds of things happen all the time, and it's slightly reminiscent of all of the festivals in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (where I grew up) in the summer, so I dig it.

That weekend, there happened to be a car festival on the street in front of my school, a real estate expo behind and a bunch of other nifty outdoor stuff going on. The real excitement began the next weekend though, with the beer fest.

The beer fest consists of two large circus style tents full of picnic tables for eating and drinking. In the middle of the two large tents is a big space with a stage at one end and the beer vendor at the other. All around the perimeter are food vendors. The whole shebang kicks off around dinner times and goes until maybe 11pm every day. It's rumored to be there for two months, 100 days or all summer, it's not really clear. And it's literally 100 feet from the front door of my school.

A bunch of us foreigners went the first day and had a grand old time. Unfortunately, as is usually the case when the drinking begins at 5pm and dinner is for the most part neglected, things got a little out of hand for some of us. Most of us left and went to ktv after a while, but a few laggers stayed and then forgot they were going to leave. Drinking with the Chinese turned into wrestling with the Chinese, which turned into a friend of mine trying to tackle a Chinese man, missing and hitting the underside of a picnic table face first instead. Huge debacle ensued involving lots of blood, some vomit, my school owner and a story in the daily paper (luckily omitting his name, race and school).

Naturally, whenever we go to the beer fest, the Chinese stare but eventually want to drink with us and we have a good time. A couple of my friend went on stage and basically ktv'd Linkin Park the other day, which was pretty cool. There's generally a really big empty space right in front of the stage (the first day the police made everyone stand a good distance back and now everyone still does anyway), so the rest of us stood dead center; we were the biggest spectacle but it was kind of amazing.

power oulets

Electrical outlets in China are actually, surprisingly, compatible with most plugs from the US. Anything with a ground won't fit, because that portion of the outlets is shaped differently, but most other things will.

If one of the prongs is bigger than the other, you have about a 50/50 chance of the plug fitting into an outlet here, and about a 50/50 chance of it fitting into an extension cord, but you can always find something to make it work (unless you're traveling around China, in which case you might want to bring an adapter just in case). All outlets are singles, so extension cords tend to be necessary.

One thing I didn't really think about too much until recently was the voltage of the outlets. Whenever you plug something in it gets REALLY hot, so I don't leave anything plugged in for very long (especially not anything from the States), but I've never really had it cause any problems. Until the gala the other week. I decided to try to curl my hair since I was dressing up and all. About a minute or two after plugging in my curling iron I noticed a funky smell, but couldn't place it. Maybe five minutes later when I went to curl my hair I figured it out, it was melting plastic.

Now, this was a cheap curling iron, which probably accounts for part of it (my other one survived). I've plugged in many other things from the States while living here and this is the first time anything funky has happened, but it definitely made me laugh.

I was talking about it with some friends here, and one of them said in their apartment there is a line clearly singed up the wall leading to the outlet where their tv is plugged in. Sliiiight fire hazard anyone?!

For anyone that's coming to visit me (or just curious), items I've safely and successfully charged to date include:

-MacBook Pro

-Kindle Fire

-iPhone 4S

-iPod Nano

-Fuji digital camera battery charger

-Clarisonic face scrubber

-Oral B electric toothbrush

-ConAir curling iron

-BaByliss hair dryer