Beijing Books Building adventure

I'm reading "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl" and "Are You There God? It's Me Margaret" with my two middle school tutor students and I had been "borrowing" the text for both online so far. My school owner sent my TA to Beijing today to actually buy the books, so I decided to tag along for adventure.

I discovered today that traveling with her is almost like traveling with another foreigner. People always want to scam me because I'm foreign. People always want to scam her because she is so very, very naive and it's very obvious. She has never lived on her own or really traveled on her own and she prefers to ask people questions to figure things out rather than look around for signage and instructions. She always impressed when I can figure out where we need to go and then I point out the English on a sign somewhere.

I had to tutor tonight at 5pm, so we had to get up pretty early and catch the 8:30am train to Beijing. We got to the train station right around 8am and heard that our train was sold out. Naturally we get up to the ticket counter though and, seeing a foreigner, first class tickets are suddenly available.

So we get to Beijing and our school owner tells us he'll meet us at the book store instead of picking us up; no biggie, we take the subway there. It. Was. Insanity. On the subway; so many people, in such a small space, an agoraphobic's absolute hell. We get to the bookstore and it's this monstrous building that is also absolutely packed with people. Being a big reader, I could have spent a week in there; my TA on the other hand, not so much with the reading.

"Beijing Books Building"

We find the books, school owner doesn't show, so we call and he says he'll pick us up when we're done and take us to lunch, but asks me to pick SAT study books for my tutoring students as well as Oral Business English textbooks and Comprehensive Business English textbooks for a government class I'm teaching beginning next weekend. Never in my life have I picked out a textbook. The girl I'm tutoring that's studying for the SAT is 12. I've never met the people in the government class so who knows what level they are or what their needs are. Eek. To top it off, the book store isn't organized very well (or at all) and there are rows upon rows of textbooks, which naturally have only Chinese on the spines. Now that was a project and a half. I'm pretty happy with my choices though, and he was too so, yay me.

We finished with that and then he tells us to get a cab and meet him at the restaurant. We went to The Peking Duck for lunch, which I'd actually heard of before and was pretty good. Then we headed home. Or tried to. The 3:30pm train from Beijing to Tanggu was sold out when we got to the train station, so we opted to take the 3:30pm train to Tianjin and cab back to Tanggu in order to catch my tutoring student on time. The line for cabs when we got to Tianjin was over an hour wait (which would have put me around 45 minutes late for tutoring), so we decided to take a bus. Which we then had to take a taxi back to our apartment from. And took forever. I think we finally got back at 7pm, only two hours late. I was supposed to tutor until 9pm so she stayed until 10pm.

Then I had a full night of lesson planning ahead of me. I tutor the labor union guy tomorrow morning for an hour and a half and he's a very quick learner and goes through material like nobody's business. Then I have the middle school girl from 5pm to 9pm. I also wanted to get a jump on my lesson planning for the week because I have my first visitor coming out on Tuesday! I only work 5pm to 8:30pm Tuesday through Thursday, so a Chinese friend from Songyuan is coming and we're going to go on adventures around Tianjin, I'm very excited. As much as I love my TA, it'll be nice to have another non-student here, and it'll give her a chance to catch up on work (she's very excited about this part as well, ha).

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.