a Change in the weather

Well, it has been a while since I have made the time to update my blog... For this, I am sorry!!! Much has been happening in the last week... It has finally stopped raining and the sun has been shining since Tuesday! More notably, I am now engaged in full time classes... Although I have not begun actual lessons, all of my classes have started... as previously mentioned I teach a total of 8 classes 5 writing and 3 conversation... In total, I have close to 400 students!!!! I am exhausted... I want to remember all of their names but it is almost impossible... I find that preparing lessons for class is extremely difficult, especially for writing, where I have encountered three major problems: 1. I have no book assigned to my class ( and I am not at liberty to assign one) 2. I teach 5 classes, 3 of which are transfer class students which means that they are not only behind the other 2 'non-transfer' classes, but they all have varying backgrounds with English, making it difficult to teach. 3. I only meet with each class once per week for 2 hours each time... I want to accomplish many things this semester but, I feel that this schedule is not conducive to learning... I do not want to burden them with 2 hour lectures, and I think that meeting with them more often would be better...
In short, I think that this semester will be challenging but very enjoyable!!!

Ms Liu's spinning tricks

This video is of our building caretaker playing with some sort of fancy Chinese top/yo-yo! she has two sticks with a string attached and makes the top/yo-yo spin by running the string through it... once it is at full speed, it hums and she can do some pretty fancy things with it... One of the foreign teachers, William, has attempted this game and succeeded to some degree... Ms Liu tells us that it took her more than 5 years to learn. ENJOY 

Ping Pong

As many of you may or may not know... I love ping pong!!! Fortunately, China is the ideal place to play this sport. (yes, I am going to call it a sport-- if I sweat doing it, then its a sport [under this criteria walking up several flights of stairs is ALSO a sport]) Since my arrival, I have not had as many chances to play as I would like nor have I been able to play many people... Not to brag, but I am pretty good (especially for a fat white guy) and in the dozen or so games that I have played, I have not been beaten!!! 

There is a table in the office directly adjacent to our apartments, but we are unable to play during regular business hours-- I guess we make too much noise... This limits us to only nights and weekends... I am currently in the process of recruiting people to play against me and beat me bad. I have been told that students can actually major in table tennis!!! That's who I want to play! I feel that if I can play against this caliber of competitor often, my skills will escalate dramatically!!! 

(short)Ben has arranged a challenger for me this evening... He tells me that SHE has got some skills! Stay tuned to see if my win streak continues!!

The Zoo (Foreign "Expert's" Housing)

the front of my spacious apartment, complete with front porch

The area between apartment buildings

Behind my apartment

The above pictures were taken recently inside the the apartment area of the foreign experts housing... We jokingly call this compound "The Zoo." As you can see in these pictures, we are completely fenced in! If you look closely at the first picture, you can see that these bars are even topped with spikes. This fence is complete with a heavy iron gate. As if the fence itself were not enough to give the feeling of "zooness," the creatures inside certainly complete the picture. I am referring of course to US-the foreign teachers... On  nearly a daily basis, while outside the apartment either eating breakfast or doing whatever, passersby will literally stop and stare into "the zoo." The funniest part is that many of these people make no attempt to hide the fact that they are staring at us- some laugh and point, others just look dumbfounded... Being stared at in China is definitely something that I will have to get used to... We teachers joke that we need to hang the following sign on the fence: “不要饲料的外国人” （do not feed the foreigners)

"Poopin' in the Street Dada dee da dee"

I have have been having trouble keeping up with my blog as the internet has been down the last couple of days. A lot of interesting things have happened in this time. I will break these occurrences up into separate blog-posts in order to keep my readers interested. I am sure that the title of this post has everyone intrigued, so I will waste no more time in getting to the point... Here's what happened:

Yesterday for lunch, a small group of foreign teachers (the Ben's and Malory and I) went to a small restaurant outside of the south gate. As the rain had subsided for a few minutes, we decided that it might be safe to sit at a table on the sidewalk... We had ordered our food and just before it arrived, a cute little Chinese girl (between 2 and 3 years old) walked out from a neighboring shop and started pacing around in the street near our table and holding her pants. We all knew it "she's going to poop." no sooner than we all agreed that this was going to happen, (but way before we were prepared to witness it) the child pulled down her pants and squatted down within ten feet of our table... She proceeded to squat for about five minutes as she pinched a couple of logs right there on the sidewalk, all the while looking at us foreigners as if we were the ones out of place... Midway through this five minute relief session, our food arrived. Somehow we were able to eat normally and nearly finish our meals. (Small Ben, however, seemed a little disturbed and I had to help him with a few bites) This experience has certainly brought new meaning to the term "dinner and a show."   

Mid Autumn Festival: Moon Cakes

an example of a fancy moon cake

This past Monday was a national holiday which meant NO class as China celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival. The Mid-Autumn Festival is a traditional Chinese festival best explained by the experts of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Autumn_Festival

When I ask students or Chinese friends what they do on Mid-Autumn Festival they always same the same thing: "eat moon cakes 月饼." So in order to experience the holiday in a traditional manner, I emulated the locals and spent the weekend sampling moon cakes. Fortunately, I did not have to actually buy any cakes because I received several as a gift from the International Programs office and from other teachers and friends... This venture was semi-successful at best. The very first one I tried was pineapple flavored, which was delicious. The next few were not quite so good... The next one was what I call "ambiguous meat flavored"Yeah, I know, meat in a cake GROSS!!! and it is indeed as gross as the name implies... I made it one bite in before throwing the rest of it away... The third one was also a "dud" as I have been calling the bad ones. It started out good as it was sweet red bean filled. The sweetness ended abruptly when I bit into something hard, yellow and bitter. I thought Potato? Ben, who I think knew what was coming and decided not to tell me for his own enjoyment, quickly informed me that it was actually duck egg-yolk... From this point on, I made it a habit of either asking explicitly "what is in this?" or breaking the thing open to examine it before putting it in my mouth... This has generally been a pretty good practice as I have successfully avoided two more "ambiguous meat cakes" and managed to find another pineapple cake, a strawberry cake and a peanut cake!!!

The Cold, The Rain and the Foreigners

These last few days it has been pretty miserably weather wise. Actually, we have had pretty constant rain for the last week... The temperature has also fallen about 20 degrees since my arrival when it was in the mid to upper 90's. Now it is cool and comfortable in the low to mid 70's. However, the rain does make it feel a bit cooler. Being from the 'North Pole' of Ohio, I find this weather along with the cool mists to be quite comfortable and  therefore have not changed my wardrobe from the shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops that I have been wearing for the last week. On thee other hand, it appears that everyone else in the city of Kaifeng (including the other foreign teachers) has decided that it is now time to wear pants and fall jackets... What does this mean for me? I stand out even more!!! Now its not just "Oooo, look at that foreigner," its "Wow, look at that crazy foreigner who is not wearing any clothes!!" While walking downtown yesterday, I saw a moped crash into the back of a bus right beside me... I have a strange suspicion that it was because he was trying to steal a second glance at me and Ben and didn't see the bus stop in front of him!!!
My clothing choice also seems to be bewildering to my students and Chinese friends that have asked me on numerous occasions: "do you feel cold." I always answer "No," and try to explain that where I come from it starts snowing sometimes in November and that the snow comes up to our knees!!! I start wearing pants when the temperature goes below 55!!!