Now, I know 2 posts in less than 20 days may come as a shock, but with some serious downtime on our hands I’m feeling the need to blog. Also, I’m kind of bored and I don’t feel like cleaning or lesson planning.

As Andrew wrote, we spent January 25-30 in Sanya, Hainan on gorgeous Yalong bay. I must say drinking out of a young coconut on the beach in 80 degree weather was the perfect way to spend my birthday. And when I say drinking out of a young coconut I mean that quite literally, they hack off fresh coconuts from the trees, drill them and shove a straw in there. We even had the brilliant idea of purchasing some of the cap’n to put in them for a little mid-afternoon cocktail. Lovely.

We stayed at this place called the Cactus Resort and it was absolutely pristine. They have their own private beach with wooden lounge chairs and umbrellas and little golf cart shuttles to take you to and from the resort, even though it was only about a 10 minute walk. We spent most of our time laying on the beach, swimming in the warm, warm water or hanging out on the hotel grounds. We even went out snorkeling at one of the little islands off the coast. The resort was expansive with a huge swimming pool, gardens, courtyards, hammocks and multiple restaurants and bars. I would venture to say that 95% of the time we were the only ones drinking at the bar, and that hotel was packed. I think Chinese people have some weird aversion to any alcohol that is not Bai Jiu, which is odd because I have an aversion to anything that IS bai jiu. For those of you who don’t know what bai jiu (pronounced ‘bye gee-o’) is, go to your local gas station and pick up a few shots of diesel fuel, downgrade that slightly and that is bai jiu. It literally means white liquor and I’m fairly sure it Satan invented it.

On my birthday we returned to the room after dinner to discover that the hotel had left me this adorable cake decorated with fruit and chocolate and complete with birthday candles. Normally I’m not a fan of cake (aside from the 3-layer chocolate amazing that my mom makes) but Chinese cake is usually filled with/topped with fresh fruit and it’s quite good. It was this really light white cake filled with a variety of fresh fruit and had star fruit, strawberries and oranges on top. Andrew took pictures, we’ll post one later. We hadn’t even told them it was my birthday, but when you check in they take a copy of your passport so they must have noticed my birth date. It was quite sweet of them. Incidentally, if anyone has the inclination to go to Hainan, absolutely stay there. It was 530 yuan/night which comes out to around $85, and that hotel in the states would run higher than that. All in all it was a very relaxing 5 days and if I ever come back to China to teach again I’m going to ask around in Sanya, I would absolutely hang out there for an extended period.

On a totally unrelated note, there was  a boy in Sanya who asked if we would take a picture with him. So somewhere there is a Chinese boy with a photo of him, Andrew, and me standing in front of the hotel.

Currently we are just taking it easy in Shanghai and planning for our next big trip. We leave on the 15th for a ten-day tour of the Western/Southern provinces. We have train tickets to Xi’an to hang out there for a couple days and see the terracotta warriors, then on to Chengdu for a day or two to visit the Panda Breeding and Research Center where I’m absolutely going to shell out a bunch of money to hold a baby panda. After that we’re planning on going to Chongqing to take a ferry down the Yangtze River through the ever controversial Three Gorges Dam to Wuchang city, then back to Shanghai from there. After this trip I will officially have seen more of China than the states.

The only thing I’m not looking forward to about this next trip is all the train travel. If you want to be extremely exasperated with Chinese culture, go on a 12+ hour train ride. Generally no one has any regard for anyone else and they do whatever they please. Also, white people on a train leaving from/to a smaller town in China are the recipients of many stares and shouts of “HULLOOOOOOO”… great, good, practice the one English word you know on me, I don’t mind. It gets old quickly, especially if you say hi back and they proceed to talk to you in fast Chinese. These two middle-school aged girls even came up to mine and Andrew’s bunks around 10pm and were YELLING, “Big eyes! Big eyes!” oh yeah? How about I go to your bunk and yell “FLAT NOSE!” see how you like it. hmph. The one exception, and this one I appreciate, to the no one caring about anyone else rule is when it comes to smoking in the car. Chinese men smoke like chimneys and this one older guy lit up in the car we were in and another old man yelled at him telling him he had to go outside that he couldn’t smoke in here. That was the first time I’ve seen that happen anywhere in China. I like that guy. Hopefully we get more like him on the next few trains, ha.

I think that should do it for now.

Cheers,

Alyse

As some of you know we recently took a week long trip to the very southern most part of China – a tropical island called Hainan. We stayed at a nice resort right off of Yalong Bay and the weather was very enjoyable. I think there is going to be another update with more details.

It was a 37 hour train ride from Shanghai to Sanya and here are some of my observations from the trip there:

Sunday, January 24, 2010, 14:00

Well, here we are on the first leg of our journey towards the warm and tropical paradise known as Hainan, an island on the very southeastern part of China. We are traveling by train and it is supposed to be a 36 hour train ride – needless to say we booked sleepers. “Soft sleepers” were incredibly expensive and comparable to just flying coach so we are bunked in “hard sleepers”. Our car has 11 little “rooms” with 6 beds per room, and you can put your money that all these beds will be full before the trip is over. We are rolling along the countryside and we’re in a part of China that has really beautiful hillsides with small, rundown cities scattered amongst them. Every once in awhile we’ll pass under large hills through a tunnel and the atmosphere on the train enters a fairly peaceful state; I’m hoping this is what it will be like tonight while trying to sleep. Outside however, the hills even here seem to be covered in haze and I’m having a hard time distinguishing it between smog and clouds. Perhaps even this countryside is tainted by industry. Trees and towns continue to stream by, and though I do see cities there hasn’t been much sign of life – perhaps a by-product of a lazy Sunday afternoon in China.

The scenery is almost enough to make me not notice the man sitting at a little table across from the beds smacking and gulping his food loudly enough to put most farm animals to shame. Everywhere we go it seems socially acceptable, maybe even encouraged, to eat your food as loudly as possible and of course you must do it with an open mouth so everyone can get a good glimpsed of your chewed-up food. Looking at the man I see that he is dressed in fairly nice attire, looks clean and respectable; this brings me to the conclusion that loud eating must be accepted across most demographics here (the only real demographics here seem are decided by wealth anyways, at least in the areas that we have had access to). He drinks a small bottle of bai jiu or “white liquor”, which is extremely vile tasting booze that I try to avoid but is really common among middle-aged and older men.

Not much has happened on the train ride so far, all the bunks in our room are occupied. When we first settled in I tried out a little bit of my Chinese and asked the younger guy above Alyse’s bunk if he was going to Hainan. It turns out he isn’t but I can’t remember the name of the place he is headed. I really don’t know where we are at this point, Alyse and I both dozed off for a couple of hours and woke up to the previously mentioned scenery. This train makes many stops and I figure we’ve stopped 4 times or so. It is an older train and makes loud squeaking noises right by my head when we turn; my bunk is the first one on this car and I’m at the bottom of the 3-high stacked bunks. Stewardesses continuously roll by with loud, clunky metal carts carrying food and beverages, but for the most part we got lucky with a quiet car. There is a small boy, no older than 2 years old, who keeps toddling by our bunks and is very curious with me, but also very uncertain. At first he came over here alone but now he is accompanied by his older brother who I would guess to be about 9 or 10 years old. He stumbles over here cautiously and will stop and stare for a minute, during which he isn’t sure whether to smile and me or cry. Needless to say I think he’s adorable and want to make friends with him, though I’m sure he can’t say much more than “mom”, “dad” and “no! (which I’ve heard him say several times)”.

Monday, January 25, 2010, 12:30

Still on the train. It was a bit of a rough night, the train rolled on and made a few stops throughout the early morning, which means people got on and off at those stops. People who liked to talk – loudly. Needless to say, I mostly got sleep through little 2 hour intervals and eventually had to put my headphones on with some good old Iron and Wine to sing me to sleep. The morning has been pretty uneventful so far, I woke up around 10:30 and Alyse is still dozing on and off still heavily under the effects of the Nyquil that we took last night.

I woke up to more clouds and haze all around, but now it is weaving in and out around gigantic hills and large jutting rock formations. It really is beautiful. I sat for awhile, making some more progress on The Fellowship of the Ring, I started it yesterday and am now well over halfway finished. Finally, I was able to snag a table and a power outlet so I can write and mess around on my computer. As soon as I plugged it in however a younger Chinese guy came up to me with his cell phone or “shou ji” and a USB cord and promptly plugged himself into my computer. He was asking me something I didn’t understand although I recognized “dianying” which means movie. I’m not quite sure if he was offering his phone that had movies on it for me to watch via my computer or he just wanted a charge. Either way I checked the contents of his phone and was unable to find a movie. He keeps on coming over here and checking my screen to see what I am doing and then picking up his phone and asking me a question but I must admit I really don’t know what he wants – it seems my Chinese has failed me here.

One more thing that I want to note quickly pertaining to cell phone usage in China: Chinese people are not capable of simply talking on their cell phones. They MUST shout into their phones, it seems as they have not grasped that the distance separating their conversation is overcome by technology. This is true no matter the place, time or situation. Walking down the street, on an empty or full bus, in your apartment, on the train at 3:00 am – all of these are appropriate cell phone yelling situations. Sometimes it isn’t even on the cell phone but face to face. I am dead serious when I tell you that I was kept awake for half an hour last night at 1:30 am by these two people that were getting off the train at the next stop. They felt the need, although everyone is sleeping and the lights are off, to speak at above normal indoor voices while conversing. I was aggravated. That last sentence took 10 minutes to complete because I was trying to convey to the cell phone guy that I’m just writing for fun and not for work. It took me awhile to figure out what he was asking and finally had to resort to Alyse’s pocket dictionary. I suppose all he wanted was for me to listen to some of his music from his phone – I ended up obliging him and listened to some crappy Chinese pop music for a little while. Crazy train ride.

Apologies, I know we don’t update this enough. We’ve had a lot of uneventful downtime recently though. However, paid vacation is so far awesome.

Last weekend we headed out on Saturday afternoon with a friend in the hopes of finding something new and interesting to do. We ended up on the other side of Pudong out by Century Park and Century Square. That was an entirely new side of Shanghai. It felt like we completely left China. Everything out there is very clean, pristine and new. We wandered that for a bit then went down into the subway where there was an entire underground market full of knockoffs and tailors and cheesy Chinese goods. If anyone wants some kitsch I can get you kitsch. We found a communist-happy store that had any kind of Mao paraphernalia you could possibly want. I bought a messenger bag with Mao on the front with some Chinese writing that’s so blurred I couldn’t hope to read it.

While in the subway shop maze, we also watched a *very* arrogant man bartering for a hideous metal peacock statue sitting atop a small “white jade” pedestal. He had the shop keeper down to around 250 RMB, I can tell you this thing wasn’t worth that, and he was insisting on a lower price while she was telling him it was real jade. He believed her. If that little pedestal really had been a solid block of white jade, which is rare, she never would have let him go that low.  I do enjoy watching a good episode of ‘Stubborn Westerners in China Theatre’.

We decided there wasn’t much of interest in that area since everything is expensive, so my friend and I decided to head down to Qi Pu road which is renowned for its cheap goods. My students often talk about spending days there and they love it so we thought we’d give it a try. Andrew headed home because he “didn’t want to shop”.

After finally finding the road we had to walk down about 2 blocks of it to find what we were really looking for. There are people hawking their wares all over the place but you have to hold out till you get to the big market. Outside there were street vendors selling awesome cheap food that was fantastic. We had egg tarts, and these Chinese burrito type things that had noodles, seaweed, potato and spice in them as well as giant slices of watermelon on a stick all for about 4RMB or 50 cents.

The first thing we saw outside the market was a man with what looked to be about 200 knock-off Louis Vuitton and Burberry wallets for 5RMB each. I bought a Burberry one. It’s not the greatest quality but hey, it was really, really cheap. Inside the market there are 4 or 5 floors of crammed in vendors stalls. You could get easily get lost in there and I almost did a couple of times. They have everything you could possibly want from fake PSP’s and ipods to tons of sparkly accessories and sweatshirts with poorly translated sayings such as: “I’m sad. So blue today. Like item!” or “Break it down, chill out, how ya hoin?” I almost bought it. One of my goals is to get a poorly translated sweatshirt but I want to find just the right one.

We took the train to Beijing the other night for a one day stint in the city. It was arctic terrain up there with temperatures in the teens and a wind-chill of -7.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Yes, Fahrenheit.  I wore 6 shirts, a turtleneck, a jacket and my ski coat plus tights, long underwear, jeans, and Andrew’s corduroy pants to keep warm. I felt like the little kid in a Christmas Story, “I can’t put my arms down!” We managed to get out to Tiananmen Square where nothing happened in June of 1989, and the Forbidden City.  We weren’t going to go into the Forbidden City but like Andrew said, when else were we going to be there again? So we went and it was touristy for the most part but there was some beautiful scenery and Andrew got some good shots of the city before we left.

Tiananmen Square was an odd place to be because as Westerners we know the atrocities that happened there, we know the full scale and why it was so horrific, but the Chinese don’t. As far as our generation is concerned, some rebellious students started something and the government came in and saved the day. It’s quietly referred to as the June 4^th incident and no one asks questions. There’s nothing at the square that indicates anything happened, and when my students talk about going there all they say is that it’s impressive because, “it’s the largest public square in China.” It’s so sad, so disconcerting that they don’t know what really happened.

We didn’t have much time to spend in Beijing this time, but we’ll go back in the spring to go to the Great Wall and see some more of the city.  Hopefully we’ll get out to where the Great Wall meets the ocean, or find a more remote section to go camping in the summer.

We’re heading back out to Qi Pu this weekend with friends for some more shopping-tastic fun, and then going to see Avatar in 3D.

We leave for Hainan in a little over a week, but for right now we’ll just be hanging out here in Shanghai!

Cheers,

Alyse

While riding one of the trusty city buses the other night, Andrew and I started discussing those subtle yet somehow major differences that make Chinese culture so, um… endearing? Yeah, endearing.

The conversation was prompted by the massive amount of heat being pumped out by the air vents on said bus. It was around 35 degrees outside, but according to the thermometer in the bus, it was a balmy 80 degrees. The same goes when you enter a building anywhere in Shanghai when it’s even just a little bit cold out; you’ll be greeted by a blast of hot air and somewhere on the premises there’s a thermostat that says it’s 26(+) degrees Celsius. I’ve seen them go as high as 30. The one in our office at school is jacked up to 27 on a daily basis now (that’s 80.6 degrees for those of us still not on the metric system.) Contrarily, in the warmer months, when you enter a building the air conditioning is on full blast. It seems as though if it’s cold outside you must be sweating inside, and if it’s warm outside, sweaters are required indoors.

This got us thinking about other little differences in day to day life. On the surface it’s fairly similar, but once you start noticing things, lots of little nuances start popping up. For example the breaks in between classes. Each class is broken up into 2 periods of 45 minutes with a 10-15 minute break in between. So instead of just being in class for an hour and a half you must want to rest in between and have a cup of hot water or tea. If you don’t, you’re crazy. Having a rest is a huge thing here, you work for a bit then have a break, whereas in America this kind of behavior is seen as making things take way longer than necessary… because it does make things take way longer than necessary. There is even a sign promoting the 2010 Expo that says “Doing our best to make you relax.” Yep, that’s Shanghai, the city of forced relaxation.

My personal favorite difference is the amount of food that must be ordered at a restaurant. When we go out, Andrew and I typically get 2 or 3 dishes and share them. Every single time we order and say, “no, that’s all we want”, the waitress looks at us like we’re crazy and we’re obviously looking to starve to death. Even just 2 people in a Chinese restaurant will order 5 or 6 different dishes, and I’ve seen tables that are just stuffed with so much food there’s no way those 2 people will ever finish it all. You are also expected to eat meat at every single meal. When we eat at the cafeteria below our apartments and all I get is vegetable dishes they look at me like I’m going to waste away if I don’t have some meat. One night the cook even threw an extra veg dish on my plate because she was convinced I didn’t have enough food. But even for all the food they order and all you’re expected to eat, the Chinese people are still stick thin, which I find patently unfair.

One new difference we experienced in the Christmas season is that gifts are not really surprises here like they are in Western culture. Our school bought each of us a silk blend scarf, they match in different colors and they’re so soft I want all of my clothing and bedding made of that material from now on. However, three days before we received them I was talking to my boss in his office and he casually mentioned that the department had bought us a Christmas gift and that they were silk scarves that cost  380 RMB. So not only did we know beforehand what we were getting, but also how much it cost, and that Ellen went to 4 different shops in Puxi to find them. Even upon giving them to us they said, “it’s a surprise, it’s a scarf,” before we opened it. I’m not sure why they told us what they were, let alone how much they cost. I wouldn’t go up to someone 3 days before Christmas and say, “hey, I bought you a necklace for Christmas and it was $50!” it reminds me of the Office when Michael says, “giving someone a gift is like saying I care about you this many dollars worth.” Or perhaps the Chinese do not like any surprises. At all.

There are many, many more of course, however I can’t think of them off the top of my head. More on these things later.
Merry Christmas!

-Alyse

So

It seems no one bothered to tell China that pink and purple are not Christmas colors. Allow me to do that now,

Hey China,

It’s supposed to be red and green. Not glittery pink and purple. Also, chill out a little on the tinsel. No one needs that much.

Thanks.

All the best,

Alyse

I suppose they can have points for trying. However the giant thing, what Andrew calls the ‘Christmas hut’, outside People’s square is just ridiculous. It looks like a Mardi Gras jester hat in some kind of pink/purple/gold argyle print, and says Merry Christmas in gold glitter letters. I have no clue where they got the idea that those were Christmas colors, but what’re you gonna do. There is one street that has green, white, and red LED lights and red Chinese lanterns all over the trees. It’s like hi-def Chinese Christmas. I can’t wait to see the Spring Festival decorations if they’re doing all of this just for the commercial side of Christmas which people don’t even really celebrate here. They play Christmas music in stores, and the ex-pats are all out buying gifts but there is definitely not a rush on the mall here like there is at home. There are even copious amounts of the Sonia Rykel and Jimmy Choo for H&M lines here… no one is buying them. So if you want some designer H&M come on down, Shanghai’s got lots.

We went to Mass last week to try it out and see what church is like in China and to curb some of that aforementioned commercialization of Christmas. Well, with the Holy See (Vatican) not having a relationship with China at all, it was sort of like Catholic Lite: now with Splenda. Since in China all churches must be government approved, and the Roman Catholic Church is definitely not , the Church here is run by the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. The government does not want any outside influence on its people so the Pope is not even allowed to be mentioned in an approved church. This means that there are a lot of discrepancies between the two churches. The two that bother me the most are the lack of reconciliation and the obvious absence of the Blood of Christ at the Offertory. There are some underground churches, however I don’t feel like getting thrown in jail or deported right now. The Protestant church has suffered similar setbacks due to the government’s wish to control everything, and the fact that all Christians were forced underground during the Cultural Revolution. The government did not want any religion influencing its people. However, both churches are now working to restore their former numbers in China, and with the death of certain key communist party leaders, evangelizing is no longer illegal, and the Protestant church has seen substantial growth. So we’ll see what happens with this whole religion in China thing. It should be interesting. At least it’ll help keep Christmas real and not just commercialized.

On a completely unrelated note, I had it confirmed for me today that as soon as finals are over in 3 weeks we have 7, yes SEVEN weeks off for Spring Festival. The Chinese know how to do that holidays right. We’ll be travelling to Hainan, Yunan, Tibet, Beijing, Harbin, Qingdao, and Chengdu among other cities.

Our passports are out right now for our visas to be renewed so every one cross your fingers that we don’t get deported! We’d really like some more travel time. haha

Cheers,

Alyse

Well, I don’t much feel like working on grades and such at the moment, which means it must be time for a blog post!

First up, Thanksgiving.

We spent Thanksgiving at our new favorite, and now frequented, spot, the Boxing Cat. Complete with everything from green bean casserole to spicy maple sweet potatoes, it was as near to a home-made Thanksgiving dinner as we could possibly have gotten. Everything was delicious and well done, and even the wine was from the Napa Valley, which is far and away better than any whine wine that China has ever produced.

In the days following Thanksgiving, another Bates teacher arrived in China and we went out with him and Yuan Yuan who is one of the Wuxi teachers I hosted at Bates over the summer. We went to the standard “impress new guests” restaurant, yes I do mean the Nanxiang Steamed Bun restaurant in Yu Gardens. Some time was also spent shopping for the four things China does best: silk, jade, pearls and knockoffs. I do enjoy getting Burberry scarves for $15.

On Sunday we went out to brave the crowds at the supermarket and found that Christmas (at least the commercial kind) had arrived at the Carrefour. We bought a 1.8m tall Christmas tree for all of $9, and got lights and ornaments for it as well. We even have some tinsel on there, since whomever had this room before me left a drawer just chock-full of random Christmas decorations. One package of ornaments that Andrew bought contained the single most frightening little Santa ornament I’ve ever seen. Hopefully he posts a picture of this. You really must see it. Andrew also decided that our tree needed “snow” so he bought a $1 pillow, ripped it open, and the fluff is now strewn about our tree. It looks good in some places, and a little like we tried to “stuff” the tree in others.

Hopefully we’ll have some more exciting tales with which to regale you soon. We want to get out to Suzhou, Wuxi and Huang Shan (the Yellow Mountains) soon, not to mention Beijing and Xi’an, so that should yield some interesting stories and pictures.

I do believe that’s all that’s been happening… all that’s worth writing any way. If Andrew disagrees well then, I suppose he can do a post of his own.

Cheers,

Alyse

 

Another update within a week?! NO WAI!!! Yes folks, it is true, I am here to update this site again. This time however I want to share some more personal feelings, rather than just a bunch of events.

The onset of this cold weather that began a week ago has really started to make me a bit homesick for Washington. The constant rain and bitingly cold wind makes me remember those many dreaded days of walking to class only to be drenched for hours upon end while trying to pay attention to the droning lecturer. How I miss those days. As odd as it may seem, I really do. Not so much the tests, homework, reports, assignments and such. I do miss learning (in its conventional classroom form) to some extent as well. The lack of my old friends and family are causing the approach to this holiday season to feel odd as well. The weather has incited this feeling of Thanksgiving and Christmas to arouse inside me, but only to fade away as I realize it isn’t going to be the same. Alyse and I will have each other which is definitely a comfort, but it is still an odd feeling.

I recently invested in a new toy. http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=139&modelid=18385. Check it out. While nothing too advanced this will be a great camera for me to begin exploring my interest in photography. The decision came about from the inability of my point and shoot not being able to capture images in a way that I wanted (obviously). Look forward to seeing some laughable attempts at my photography. On that same note, you can see on the right side of this page that I have been able to upload a picture to my flickr account. This means…. that there will be more to come very soon.

I’m beginning to feel a little bit restless. That is why I am trying to find an expat soccer team to play on, a scary endeavor I have to admit. I have researched a little bit into the league here around my home and the ages of the men on the teams vary from mid 20’s – 50’s. My skills are very rusty and I am out of shape, however I’m hoping that my energy and love for the game will be enough. I’m only planning on playing around at the practices anyways and watching games. I don’t think my abilities will be marketable enough to land me a spot on the field, perhaps though – who knows? This will be a very viable way for me to get out, get some exercise and meet some people who live here.

I found a ping-pong table. The one I am going to buy is a mini table and is much cheaper than the others. More updates on that later.

Well, there you go. Another post to keep you enraptured until we come up with more to write about. A trip to Beijing may be in our near future – so keep yourself updated. Also, more pictures!!!

Your favorite world traveler -

Andrew

Alright, so we’re bad at this whole ‘keeping the blog updated thing’. Our proxy coupled with the internet over here is just so slow that sometimes it’s quite frustrating. Anyway, on to the good stuff.

 

So on Saturday night last weekend we met up with some people to go our for our friend Liz’s birthday. It was a mix of Westerners and Chinese people, so we had people from China, Cambridge, Connecticut, the mid-west, and us. After dinner at this fantastic Malaysian restaurant we went out to the bars/clubs. One bar was in a district in which there were possibly more westerners than Chinese. The place looked like it could be in any nondescript western town. There, we went to a bar called Brown Sugar, where there was a live band and quite possibly the most entertaining bar singer I’ve ever seen. She did say she was from Vegas though. After Brown Sugar we somehow figured out how to get to a club located on the 18th floor of a building called Sin. The drinks there were ever so slightly more reasonably priced, and the view was fabulous. We stayed there till around 2am, and it seems the later you stay out the higher the number of westerners in a place gets. We then headed off to Velvet for some lounging and one last drink. It was packed though so the lounging didn’t happen, and Andrew and I ended up heading home around 3am. Apparently clubs and bars stay open past 3 here, often till 5 or 6 in the morning, so the night life is definitely not lacking. Hopefully we’ll be able to go out like that more often, it’s nice seeing something besides the apartment after 9pm, and being in a lot of English-speaking, western style places really helps with the culture shock.

 

When we were out with said friends, one of them mentioned a place called Boxing Cat Brewery , and said that if we like microbrews we needed to go there. So last night we decided to give it a go. Simply put this place is the Boundary Bay of Shanghai. It was founded by a chef from California, a brewer from Texas, and a business man from Taiwan, which is evidently the perfect mix of people.

 

We sat up on the second floor, and I looked out the window as it started pouring down rain and we easily could have been in Washington or Oregon. The beer is amazing. It’s right up there with BB. At first we wondered if it was so good because all we’ve had is Tsingtao so far, but no, it’s delicious. Even the menu has a northwest sort of feel to it with it’s copious amounts of salads, and stellar-sounding entrees. Not to mention it’s the first place we’ve gone with any kind of good service. We chatted with our waitress for a while, and she ended up comping us a free pint and cupcakes (which I couldn’t fit in at the time and is now making a nice breakfast).

 

We even talked with the manager and one of the owners, all of whom were very warm, genuine people. That place is going to be very dangerous for spending the RMB. They’re even having a big Thanksgiving for all the people who can’t go home, with a traditional menu and NFL games on all day. We just may have to take part in that. The owner said they could also arrange to show Sounders games if they’re being played on ESPN, possibly even if they’re not since they have a satellite, so come the 2010 season, we may not have to miss out on too many games!

 

On to work related things, we’ve had a lot of schedule changes this week.2 of Andrew’s classes are leaving for ship-board training, and I’m gaining 4 classes. That means I’m now teaching a total of 360 boys this semester. Good thing they’re quite well mannered, or I may lose my mind.

 

My English classes are a different story. They think they’re already rock stars at oral English, when really all they’re good at is reading out loud and repeat-after-me English. This results in a lot of people skipping class and is especially true for my 2nd class. I’ve told them that if they miss more than 3 they fail automatically, and I’ve warned them all several times since, but if they don’t want to come to class, fine. They don’t have to pass. I have about 14 students who come regularly in that class, out of the 40 registered. That’s fine with me though, since we’re able to do more advanced exercises since they’re the more advanced students who are very willing to learn. Last week we had a game where I played English songs to them and they had to decipher the lyrics. At the same time I taught them some colloquialisms and how to start picking out some of the more abstract meanings in songs. Next week I think I’d like to start working on short stories or poetry so as to show them some things people do with English and so they can explore their own opinions and analysis of things.

 

For today, we’re off to watch some of the teachers play sports at school. This seems to be a big deal since they’ve been preparing for a while, and they all have matching outfits no less. After that, we’ll probably do a bit of shopping, maybe go out for the evening, who knows. The weather has started to turn here, so we may have to cut off the outdoor activities for a while. C’est la vie. I think that’s all for now.

 

Cheers,

Alyse

Okay, okay. I know this update is long overdue. Which means its going to most likely be an excessively large post. Get some popcorn and relax – here we go:

Teaching classes has been a very enlightening experience. Teaching Chinese students has been enlightening. Working for an administration that speaks very mediocre English has been enlightening. We have been enlightened. The past 3 weeks have been spent figuring out the best way to teach these classes so that everyone can get a chance to practice speaking the English language. There have been the unavoidable students that just don’t want to learn because they just don’t want to be in these classes – that’s bound to happen when you go to a school run by the government and you get placed into a program you don’t necessarily want to be in by the same government. I have been encouraged by some of the students however, the ones that really seem to want to better themselves. I don’t know if this was addressed in an earlier post but this is how the whole schedule is working: I teach 2 separate classes of first year English major students oral English twice a week. Got that? Then I teach 5 separate first year Navigation classes oral English once a week. Classes last for about 2 hours (periods as they call them). So for example, on Tuesdays I get to school at about 7:45am and teach a 2 hour session (with a 10 minute break in the middle) to one of my first year English classes. Then I move on to teach a 2 hour session to one of my first year Navigation classes. Around 11:45am I get an hour or so for my lunch break (or as my department head always tells me “have a rest, have a rest as you like”). I go on to teach 2 more 2 hour sessions to 2 other Navigation classes then go home around 4:30pm. It makes for a long day teaching for 8 hours. Luckily, I only teach Mon.- Wed. and get a 4 day break.

We have been charged with the task of giving our students a class where they can practice and enrich their speaking skills. This basically means there isn’t a written portion in our classes and we need to find ways to get these kids to speak. At first we were told to use this book but found out it was too easy for the students – besides with the book the class consisted of a lot of reading and they are already good at that. So we decided to ditch the book and find ways to get them to talk and voice opinions in English – giving them topics that they care about. This stage of our evolving teaching method worked out pretty well – basically we gave our students a topic and gave them some time to write down and think about what they want to say and then force them to stand up and share, one by one of course. The problem is, we would really like to encourage discussion and speaking on the fly instead of prepared speeches. It is just so difficult with a class of 40-44 students, especially when a good 10-15 of them just don’t care about the class at all. We could find ways to have them discuss with a partner, just with a class that size there is no way to ensure that they are speaking English all the time. Last week I had them bring in a news article and share a summary of it and their opinion about it, then I facilitated a little bit of discussion on each article. Alyse has come up with a game that can be used to stimulate English conversation. We’re slowly figuring out how to run these classes in an efficient manner while achieving the goal of actually improving their spoken English. I’m not sure how we would’ve prepared for this in America.

So that is how the teaching gig has been working. Besides that part we “get” to help out at the English language club every other week for an hour on Wednesdays. This past meeting Alyse and I spent about a half hour giving a lecture about campus life in American colleges. It was fun – the students seemed to pay attention and asked good questions at the end. We also have been given the opportunity to make a little extra money (1000 yuan or about $150) by attending the English club at a different university every Thursday night and spending about 2 hours a week there. Definitely not a bad deal.

On the living in China side of things we have definitely figured out how to get ourselves around pretty well; we’re getting the hang of the bus system and the subway. We mostly spend the evenings relaxing and watching T.V. or whatever.

Last weekend we took a trip southwest to the city of Hangzhou. It was a very pretty city built around a lake, simply called “West Lake”. What we didn’t know prior to arriving was that that Saturday evening was their yearly fireworks show over the lake. So we found ourselves a pub/restaurant that had an outdoor elevated balcony and had some food and watched the fireworks light up the sky. It was by far the most spectacular fireworks show I have ever seen. I don’t even want to try to describe it because I know I will fail horribly – even the pictures and video we took do not do it justice (we will figure out how to post some pictures soon, don’t worry). All in all, it was a pretty cool trip out of Shanghai. I purchased a travel guide book of China and have been thinking of some really awesome trips that we’re going to take before we leave here.

I know there is probably some other stuff that I have thought, “Oh! I need to blog about this” but I can’t remember those things. If I remember and it’s important then rest assured, you will find out about it. Check back soon and I’ll try to get some pictures of the past month or so up!

- Andrew

 

P.S. Happy Halloween! We found out that Halloween is observed here, but it is mostly for small children. The young adult “party” version of Halloween isn’t really present here like it is in the states. You get 100 cool points if you dress up as me for Halloween and put a picture online!

We realized last night that it’s been over a week since we updated, so it’s about time for a new post. Get ready for a long one.
We wrapped up our first week of teaching on Thursday, and the week was definitely a learning curve. We don’t have to use our text books; the students find them boring, we find them boring, and even though they’re new books, the stories are in the king’s English and arguably from the 1950’s. So from now on it looks like it’s just going to be us giving them topics to discuss, playing some games, and listening to them give speeches to prep them for their final.

For the first time the other day I had to explain that I was pescetarian to the cafeteria workers. Apparently telling someone you don’t eat chicken, beef, pork, etc. but you do eat fish is enough to cause an international incident and evokes “BUT WHY?!” from at least  5 people in your immediate vicinity. I think I managed to get the point across though… maybe.

On Friday, we set up our bank accounts, and got our debit cards which for some reason don’t expire until 2049. So if I ever want to retire here, I’m in luck.  After spending an hour there trying to get all of our documents and money in order, with our translator of course, we went out to Shouning road again for some more of that fantastic seafood. We then took a walk and I discovered the glories of Starbucks being an international chain and got my latte fix. They even spoke English, which was handy because I never learned how to say “I’ll have a grande soy vanilla latte” in Chinese. I was wearing my  le sac dress and another American came up to me while I was waiting for my coffee and asked if my dress was from American Apparel, which it is. We started chatting and she told us how she had lived in Shanghai for a year already and she teaches at an international kindergarten in town. She gave me her number and we’ll be going shopping downtown sometime in the very near future.

Last night we went to the Nanxiang Steamed Bun restaurant with Madame Jia (who got us these jobs), her husband, two translators, and another American professor and his wife. Apparently people wait 3 hours for a table here, but we walked right in and went to a VIP table in the back in our own private room with exquisite views of the temples all lit up at night (pictures to come!). Madame Jia, knew the owner. Frankly it seems like she knows everyone in Shanghai. We did a little shopping before hand for silk and cashmere scarves as well as jade jewelry. Madame Jia did all the bartering for us, and we got away with paying 680 RMB for normally 1000 + RMB bracelets, and she made sure we got the real stuff and none of that dyed jade. My purple jade bracelet was actually being held for another customer, but they sold it to me instead because that’s just how much sway Jia has. She even got us less than half price on most of the scarves I bought. Hopefully we’ll be able to go with her again and pick up some fabulous gifts for people.

That’s all I can think of for now… I do believe it’s Andrew’s turn for a post next.

-Alyse