Chinese Thanksgiving

So, I was not expecting to have a Thanksgiving in China.  I expected to get a couple people together and try to scrounge up some semblance of a feast worthy of Thanksgiving.

That isn't what happened.

Teaming up with some American students at the foreign dorm down the street, we managed to get quite a Thanksgiving Day party going on.  We had just about every kind of Thanksgiving food you could want.  Turkey, pork, candied carrots, bread and than some non-traditional Thanksgiving food that people kind of improvised (fajitas, Korean kabob things, vegetable dumplings, sushi).  All the food was great.  The story about getting the turkey is great too.  The Turkey Team (West Point kids, I think) just go to Wal-Mart and find the only turkey.  The butcher asks how much they want (because no one would want a whole turkey) and Turkey Team is just like: "No.  All of it.  We want all of it.  Give it to us."  Conquered that.  But we had a couple dozen people at this little shindig.  At its peak, I think we represented the United States, China, Korea (the good part), Argentina, Spain, Russia, Mongolia, Mexico, Jamaica, Niger, Pakistan and probably a couple others that I can't think of right now.  Everyone brought some food or drink, happiness and all that kind of stuff that makes Thanksgiving awesome. Just across the city, there was another Thanksgiving party too (probably representing the other half of the world).  Don't believe anyone that says that Thanksgiving doesn't exist in China.  

We even got on television for our shenanigans.

So, my Chinese Thanksgiving was super fun.  Probably in my like...top three Thanksgivings ever.  In China.  With my giant multi-national family.

Still missed my family in the States though.  This definitely helped.

I'm totally thankful for Chinese pilgrims,

- Andrew 

This lesson got kind of mixed responses, but it was fun for me and a good handful of them got way into it.  Basically, what I decided was that their English was pretty alright when I was speaking - but I have a pretty general, no-accent, American way of speaking.  I don't speak academically, but when I'm not speaking too fast (probably my biggest problem while teaching), I'm fairly clear in my speech.  So I though, huh, I wonder if I could get them to start developing an ear for various English accents (regional American, British, Irish, Australian etc etc).

This took a few hours of preparation, but it was a fun kind of preparation.  I just hunted the internet (I downloaded a fancy program that lets me download streaming video - Relay Media Catcher 4), and downloaded dozens of clips from movies that utilize various accents.  Some were definitely harder than others.  But I started off by showing them this clip:

21 English Accents.avi (13.20 mb)

(I wish that would show up as a movie). 

Most of them think its pretty funny and kind of cool, and its a great start to this lesson.  I explain to them that while their English is improving, there are many accents and its important to have some kind of ear for them or you might end up in a situation where you can't understand someone even though they're speaking "perfect" English.

I would show a clip (typically 30 seconds to 2 minutes long) once or twice and then ask them what they were saying/what the clip was about.  They had a lot more trouble with some of them than I thought they would - especially with British accents (apparently, without subtitles, they have no idea what Harry Potter is saying), but it kept their attention, and I got to feel like I was showing them some awesome movies.   Each time we did an accent, I would open up a big world map I had put on my hard drive and point to where that accent was found.  After the clip, the person that was able to tell me with the most accuracy what went on the clip got the choose the next accent we watched/listened to.

What my students got: Introductions to the accents of the world, developing ear for accents, developing knowledge on figuring out where each accent was from, English conversation comprehension.

Movies/Accents I used:
- Inglorious Basterds: Aldo Raine
- Invictus: South African
- Harry Potter: British
- Snatch: Dirtier British/Pikey (this one was hilarious)
- Crocodile Hunter: Austrailian
- Storm of the Century: New England accent
- Thank Your For Smoking: East-Coast accent/Western-Cowboy accent
- Outlaw Josey Wales: Cowboy
- Matrix: Standard American/French
- Aliens: Military talk. (I used the scene where they were doing that knife game on the table with the Android.  Literally, all of them tried it afterwards.  It was hilarious).

I got a bunch more, but that is all I can remember right now.  Just think of a movie with an accent and seek it out.

Enjoy and g'day mates!
- Andrew

The Weather #1

I'm going to post random snips from weather.com  as the winter progresses on and gets, well....more terrible.  Just so people at home can make graphs or whatever they do for fun besides read my blog.

Note the part where it says "Feels like 4'F"

Yeah, I don't care for that,

- Andrew

English Corner

It took forever for CCUT to organize English Corners for us.  Two months basically.  And I was kind of dreading it the entire time.  Extra work at the end of the day, and on something that was never really explained to us....though it was insisted that we didn't need to prepare.  What the hell is English Corner, anyway?  We just make the kids talk?  Like we do when we teach?  Outside the classroom?  I don't know.
Well, the first one was last night.  Which also corresponded with our first real-life, Chinese snow day.  We were told that we would have a big group of sophomores and to we could do 'whatever we wanted.'

About that time, Carter got a text from one of our friends at Jilin University.

"Snowball fight at 8pm!"

So, we were pretty sad that we were going to miss it doing something that we didn't really understand.  And...y'know, having it be work.  Work with no rules or supervision.  No clear restrictions or guidelines. 


"Hey, wait."

So, for our first English Corner, we rounded up our small army of sophomores and marched them down the road to the Jilin University 'Friendship Hotel'...which is where a lot of our foreign friends live while they are studying in China.  The snowball fight was outside in the huge yard.

Snowball fights are like learning English, right?  They learned English like:

ATTACK!

FIRE!!

HOLD THE LINE!

FRIENDLY FIRE!

DEFEND THE GENERAL!

Overall, it was a pretty fun night.  They got to have fun, talk to other foreigners, make new friends, and in theory, increase their war-time vocabulary.  

Some of the team.

Also had a talk with them about how you're not suppose to attack journalists (aka: Me) unless they have a weapon (snowball).  They...did not listen.

Hopefully we can keep this pace with future English Corners.

'Til Next Time,

- Andrew

Fun Lesson #1

I guess I'm going to start posting the lessons I have that are super fun and/or successful (hopefully both).
I did this one on Monday.  I basically when through my computer/the internet and got tons of pictures that I had taken (friends, family, American college, general things in America) and numbered them 1-whatever.  I also collected a bunch of famous or really influential photographs and labeled them A-Z.

In class, I put the list on the projector and would call on students one by one to pick a photo (I explained the difference between the numbered and lettered ones).  Then, I would bring the photo up and make them tell them at least three things about the photograph (in English, obviously).  It was super fun.  After they finished describing it, I would take time to answer any questions, give them vocab or just explain something in the picture that they may not necessarily have in China. About 95% of the class was into it, they had awesome reactions to photos that came up and I got to feel like they were learning and I was teaching them.

My students got to utilize using English when put on the spot, learned new vocab and learned about American culture.

And it was super fun.

Good stuff,

- Andrew

Teaching Doesn't Always Have To Be Serious

Exhibit A:

Maybe I know more about business than I have been letting on.  

Peace out, dawgs, 

- Andrew

Chinese Business

So, teaching Business English classes consumes about 85% of my schedule.  I teach it at the Sophomore and Junior level - some of those classes are Non-English majors (which makes teaching pretty difficult) and others are English majors ().  I wasn't really into business in college, and only took a few classes related to it (mostly entrepreneurship-related ones) so at first I was kind of at a loss at what to do with these kids.  I spent my first week or two awkwardly teaching from their awful textbook, until I had an epiphany.  

I would have them start their own businesses.  In class, of course, as kind of a role-play sort of thing.  I had them organize themselves into groups, and told them that for the rest of the year, that group was their company.  Then I had them make whatever kind of business they wanted in that group.  The only restrictions I put on their creativity at this point were (1) Whatever product/service they were offering had to exist today, (2) It had to be legal.

Since the inception of all the companies, I base each class over different things businesses have to deal with and once a week, I give each company-group a problem they have to solve and then the following week, they have to give a short presentation on what the problem was, why it was a problem and what solution they decided on.  Sometimes I give each group an individual problem and other times I give the whole class a big problem (which requires more thought/work/impressive presentation).  The two big problems were "How do you plan on advertising your company and attracting your target market?" and "Hiring!" (Also tied into resumes and interviews.  Three birds, one stone).

I won't lie, its still a little bit hit or miss at this point (Non-English majors class is a smidge more chaotic to communicate with than my English-majors classes), but it gets them thinking outside of a textbook and forces them to listen when I teach for tips and to try to learn business vocabulary to prepare for the solution presentations.

Here is a short list of companies that they came up with:


GV (General Vehicle) Bicycle Renting Company: You come to them on certain streets/parks, and rent a bicycle.  There are different stations all over the city where you can return it.  The cost is determined by either the amount of time you rented it, or the mileage (if you go from one side of the city to the other on the bike, it would be more expensive than if you just went to the other side of a park).


Kingdom Digital Company: Sells specialized phones to children and the elderly.  Larger buttons/screen, fewer unnecessary features, simple designs, easy-to-use speed dial and GPS (so children can't get lost).


Yummy Hots: A restaurant that specializes in Ma La Ta (I probably murdered that word). It literally means 'Hot Hot Hot.'  But its a spicy noodle-vegetable-soup dish that is pretty popular in Changchun. They want to try to open restaurants in America and make it very popular there.


Barbie Company: A shampoo company targeting young girls.  Their main attraction is that they use only natural products to create their shampoo and no synthesized chemicals.


Xiao Xiao Milk Company: A milk company in Mongolia.


RSCR LTD. Co: This company creates new energy cars (ie: Green technology), and they are trying to sell them so a person on an average income can buy them.


Magic Company: (Originally they wanted to call their company 'BP', but when we were doing this, it was in the middle of the Gulf oil spill and I told them that 'BP' was a bad name) They are a woman's fashion company with a huge emphasis on customer service and international markets (they basically wrote a page about all the things they are going to do to help customers that come to them).  I had a lot of fashion companies actually, but I will only put this one up.  


E-Shine: An international five-star hotel/entertainment center. I give this group a lot of big problems because of how big of a company they decided to make.  Bigger company = bigger problems.  But some of the smarter people in the class are in this group, so I think they can handle it.


JunYi Hotel: A small, local hotel that tries to cater mostly towards the very wealthy.


Cake House: They sell cakes, obviously.  They have the cool idea of being able to order/design your cakes online and then picking them up later or having them delivered when they are done.


Letters To The Future: The idea is that you come in, write a letter and pay them to keep it safe and send it at a certain date (like, ten years later).  Yes, its like that one movie that I can't remember the name of right now.

 2nd Hand Books: Local business.  They buy textbooks from college graduates and sell them back to current students at a lower cost.


Mr. Dodson Co: (I love this one.  Yes, its named after me) Originally, this was Dodson Travel Agency, but they decided that with the bad economy, no one was travelling so that went bankrupt and they started 'Mr. Dodson Co', which is an electronics company, with a focus on video games.


Dream Home: An apartment building chain/company, that tries to attract recent college graduates with lower rates.

Its kind of interesting to see what they thought would be a good business.  Some were a bit more abstract and less sure than others, but there is a market for everything.  

All of the pictures I used were of the mock interviews my non-English majors class did last Tuesday.  I told them to dress up...but they didn't.  My next set of classes will though.  I'm sure of it.  

Go business!

- Andrew

PS: My brother just reminded me that I wanted to say this with his comment.  But, like I said, I'm not a business major or person or anything, really.  I'm kind of casual about my business learnings.  So if anyone has any cool ideas with problems I could give any of these companies/business models to face, let me know.  Or if you have a good idea for a big problem that I could give the entire class, even better.  

Changbai Shan Trip For Great Glory of China

The next few posts, I'm going to do all within today, my day off.  I've been neglecting my blog, mostly because I've...well, been doing as the Chinese do.  And also doing stupid weiguoren stuff that probably gave me more stuff than I actually wanted to do.

First of all, the National Holiday.  First week of October.  I said good-bye to my classes the week before, wished them all a merry holiday - I even let one class skip if they promised to turn in a big assignment when we got back from break.  I was going to Beijing and it was going to be awesome.

Nope.

Apparently train tickets to Beijing sell out waaaay in advance during the National Holiday.  Its cool though, I had a fall-back plan:

Dalian.  I could go to Dalian.  Awesome city by the coast.  I could see the ocean one last time before the temperature started to drop below -10C for the next 6-months.

Nope.  Sold out.  Waaaay in advance.

Jilin City?

Nope.  Not because of tickets though.  One of my students that lives there said that after the recent floods and such, it was not a good place to be.  But I could come later.  But not during the National Holiday.
So...I guess, Changchun it was.  Hooray?

The other American teacher here, Carter, saved the day.  While I was in my last class of the week (he had a super light load the first month or so we were here), he got invited to a Teacher's dinner honoring...y'know, a teacher.  There he meant Vincent, a guy that we had met a week or two prior, from New Zealand.

He had a great idea. (Vincent is the one that looks like he's from New Zealand.  The weird one.)

Changbai Shan.  A giant mountain on the border of China and North Korea.  There were slots still open on the tour, and apparently it would be one of the last tours going there this season (it gets super cold).  Well, sign us up.

Paid about 360yuan for a two-way bus trip, and a night in some town at the foot of the mountain.  Also a meal.  Pretty awesome deal.  And good company.  We also met Vincent's friend Marek (older gentleman from Australia, but a kind of German-accent?  He's a pretty interesting guy.

Here is Marek, doing something Australian.

The trip to the mountain was about as eventful as you would imagine a 6-hour bus ride through rural China to be.  

Not very.  

We (Carter and I) talked with Vincent and Marek, we made friends with a group of Chinese girls and general tried to do anything to pass the time faster.  I'm going to hit fast-forward to the part where we're on the mountain, because I think I can show you what we saw better with pictures than words (I am no poet).

I will assure you, it is many more steps to get to the top than you think.  

From the side of the mountain

Looked like the peak.  Pretty awesome looking.  North Carolina mountains look a little bit different...

Behind me, in the caldera of Changbai Shan (oh yes, its a volcano), is Heaven Lake or 'Lake Tianchi.'  Apparently there is a monster that lives within it.  I believe it (I saw it).

Here is me looking dramatically at North Korea.  Legend states that Glorious Leader Kim Jong-Il was born on this mountaintop, and his birth was foretold by a swallow and heralded by a double-rainbow.

I believe it.  

Here are the Chinese girls we befriended.  Most of them are Japanese majors, the one in the middle, I think, is an English major.

And, like life, its a long way from the top.

What followed was a 7-hour bus ride to Changchun, where I promptly went up into my apartment and went comatose.  I mean, I thought my bed was comfortable, you should have seen the digs that this Chinese hotel gave us:

Super comfy.

For the glory of China!

- Andrew

They're Real People Now!

I promise this will be my last post about the crazy military training that freshmen have to do...because, well...its done.  Last Tuesday, I was convinced by a handful of my more persuasive students to cancel class ("Just free us!!" - Persuasive Chinese Student) and go down to the field and watch the ceremony.  It was like any other military graduation-thing, I guess.  Marching around in formation, showing off skills that were learned and a lot of staying still while people talked in Chinese.  Obviously, I took a lot of pictures.

11th Formation.  These girls are part of the English department - so they will be my problem soon.  Well, not mine, actually.  Carter is the only one that has a few freshmen classes.

All neat in little rows.

Have some scale.  A lot of little soldiers there.

These guys had some pretty awesome rifle fighting skills they showed off.

I think these were special forces trainees?  Not really sure.  They showed off a lot of close-combat stuff. 

You don't see that in the USA,

- Andrew

'My Fair Lady' Has Got Nothing On This

"The rain in Spain", indeed.

I made my students read this crazy poem today in class, called: The Chaos (by G. Nolst Trenite).    It took about ten minutes for them to do the whole thing, and quite honestly, they did much better than I thought they would.  After we finished the poem, I went through each verse with them and pointed out words they mispronounced and helped them all get it right.  I'm going to do this reading again in a few months and see if there has been any progress.

If you don't see a video below, here is the direct link:  My Class And This Crazy Poem

Good stuff,

- Andrew

What's In A Name?

Some of my kids have chosen some pretty crazy English names.  I don't think they fully understand the amount of power choosing a name gives them.  If they go to an English speaking country, and they introduce themselves to a person, that person will struggle to pronounce their Chinese name (to be polite) and then, the student could offer them their English name - and that first impression is pretty important. That is how that English person will know the student for the rest of their time together.  Too normal of a name, and its forgettable.  Too absurd, and...well, its absurd.  They have to hit it just right, getting the meaning they want behind the name as well as capturing an aspect of their personality.

I spoke to another American teacher, and they said that we have every right to help them choose a better name.  Or make them do it.  If I believe that their English name will hinder them later in life, its best to try to convince them to change it now so they can get use to something different.

So, here is a list of some of the names that my students have chosen for themselves that I'm probably going to talk to about changing them:

- Snowy (I have a lot of 'Snowys' or 'Snows' and things like that)
- Star (Ehhh)
- Wind (God, this is an awesome name.   The kid looks like a young Jet-Li too.  But I'm not 100% sure if its appropriate.  I may let him keep it because its just awesome)
- Echo (Pretty much the same thing as 'Wind's'.  Just an awesome name...but not sure if its a good English name.  On the wall with this one)
- Adolf (....yeah.  I don't think the world is ready for 'Adolf' again just yet.  Even if it is a common German name technically)
- Hurray (This is a guy's name)
- Lichard (Yeah, I don't know what to do with this)
- McGrady (I'm just going to tell this kid that his name is the last name of every stereotypical cop from Boston)
- Pink (I have to tell these kids that there is a difference between an English name and a nickname)
- Cream (she's so nice and helpful, and I'd hate to do it.  I may allow her to keep it, because it fits her, but is it really a good English name?)
- Seanday (Yeah, I have a lot of trouble pronouncing this)
- Shrimp (Adorable, but this is a nickname)
- Seven (You can't have a number as a name)
- Vae (For a guy.  Is this a good name? I don't know.)
- Goblin (This is a girl)
- Lasting (on the fence with this one.)
- Merlin (Pretty sure he is friends with Goblin.)
- Nemo (Again, on the fence)
- Rock (This kid is not Samoan.)
- David (This would be a perfectly fine name if it belonged to a gentleman and not a lady)
- Wonderful (Cute, but not a wonderful English name)
- Boopa (...what?)
- Smith (Not a good English first name)
- Kaka (I think this kid is playing some kind of joke on me with this name.)

Name this,

- Andrew

Freshmen Military Training

I don't know, but watching the freshmen at my university go through their month of mandatory military training is just...fascinating.

Marching on!

Flag duty?

Combat training!

Knife fighting practice!

Riot Police Training

Chinese girls looking kind of bad-ass.

And then, as soon as they spot me taking pictures, everyone starts getting giggly and excited over theweiguoren.

I am a distraction.

Moving along,

- Andrew

To Resume, Or Not To Resume

One of the classes that I've been given to teach is 'Business English.'  I have three classes of this, with both meeting twice a week.  Two of them are English majors, so communication is super easy and the class sizes are small, so it makes it much easier for me to individually assist students when I have them working.  The other class is a non-English majors class - mostly consisting of, well, business-related majors.  A majority of them have workable English, but as I walk from the front to the back of the class, there is a noticeable gradient in their ability.  Also, the non-English major class has 75-ish people in it.

My latest lesson plan has been explaining how they might go about getting a job in America - so, I started from what I consider the starting point.  A Western-style Resume.  I had a class on how to write a resume almost every semester I was in college - the professor would always have a resume-day on the syallabus and it was always the same old thing.  I figured, I had resumes down and teaching it would be a snap.  And honestly, yapping about them is not that difficult.  Showing examples is not that difficult.

What I did not count on (and what I probably should have counted on) was going to each student individually during our resume workshop - this was a two-day workshop in my non-majors class.

I don't think there is anything similar to a resume at all in Chinese culture.  I don't know how many times I had to explain that you had to be specific in a resume.  Putting "I was a cashier in a little shop," is not acceptable on a resume.  I need to know the name of the little shop.  I need to know how long you worked there.  I need to know skills you used when you worked.  It doesn't just stop there, tons of my students have earned academic scholarships - but none of them know the specific name of the scholarship.  Tons of my students have won important competitions, but none of them know the name of the competition (other than: "It was an important English Speech competition."). 

And, I know they're only trying to be polite or modest, but very few of them can think of a single "special skill" to put on their resume.  It takes a lot of prodding for me to get them to tell me anything that they're good at.  I managed to convince them that the fact that they can speak with me in English is, in fact, a special skill.  Of course, to that I get a lot of: "Ohhh no, my English is very poor."

Overly-modest Chinese students are adorable.

But, except for repeating myself over and over and over and over to a point that I lost my voice, it is amazing to see people maybe two years younger than me doing work that I gave them.  And its actually a ton of fun going from student to student during the workshop and helping them figure this resume-thing out.  The experience level between American students and Chinese students is pretty fascinating. 

By the time I was in college, I had at least one job that I had worked at for over six months.  90% of the students in my classes have worked maybe a month at a job.  Some just have a single-day of working experience - but they work at really interesting jobs.  Some sold special brand of cigarettes, some worked for Toyota and sold cars and a lot worked as teacher's assistants...but they only worked at these place for a week or two, and I guess moved on?  I'm not sure, but very few had worked anywhere long-term.  So, when these kids finally enter a workforce, they have almost no real work experience.  A fairly interesting difference, in my opinion. 

I'm pretty sure it goes back to the idea that in America, getting a job is more based on merit first and who you know second (mostly), whereas in China, its pretty opposite (as I understand it, anyway).  They got the 'guanxi' thing going on.  Got to get me some of that.

So now, I have 130 or so Business English students with scraps of paper listing everything important they've ever done.  Their neat-English handwriting listing everything and my scrawls telling them what they should and shouldn't do....mostly what they shouldn't do.  Or how to do it better. 

Being a teacher is fun.  Ish,

- Andrew

This Is How We Learn

Now I can cook like a real Chinese person.  They literally have a wall of cleavers at Wal-Mart - and I'll probably pick up one or two more.  The one in the picture above is small and was pretty cheap (Wal-Mart brand actually.  You won't see that in the States) and it came with a cutting board and a four sets of chop sticks.  I also bought a good-sized wok, so I'm pretty set as far as food preparation goes now. 

I got my electric stove thing working.  In order for it to heat up anything, you have to (I think) complete the electric circuit on the surface of the skillet.  So, that is fairly terrifying.  I expect sparks to fly whenever I touch anything I'm cooking.

I managed my first "meal" in China.  I say meal with quotation marks because it was just meat - I guess what passes for steak here.  I had bought vegetables and other things to go with it, but they were taken away at the check-out counter.  My pleas of: "Shenme?", "Wo yao naxie" and "Wo bu dong" were answered with Chinese that was way too fast for me to understand.  So being the kind of individual that I am, I just smiled and nodded like I understood her rapid-fire, foreign explanation.  Then, I left with just some meat, juice, kitchen stuffs and Skittles (oh yes, they have Skittles here).

I figured out the mix-up later on: It would seem that when you buy vegetables in China, you must then go to some kind of attendent and have them weigh the vegetables and put a price tag on them.  Its much simplier in the United States. 

So, my first experience cooking in China (beef and Skittles - not at the same time, of course) was also my first experience having to go out to eat soon after cooking for myself so I could get "real" food. 

But this is how we learn,

- Andrew

Have A List

I don't have a lot to report now, so here is a short list of things I like in China that I don't think I've mentioned:

1) Being a pseudo regular at resturants on the strip outside my apartment.  Its not the best food in the world, but the people are super nice.

2) Walking down the street and having my students run to me excitedly, saying: "Teacher!" and bowing and talking to me for a few minutes.  I've told them to call me Andrew, but I mostly get 'Teacher'...which is kind of growing on me.

3) Going into a new resturant and getting the best seat, normally near a window, because I'm white/foreigner/American.  Something.  Yeah, I know I'm there so I'm display so they can show off that they got an American in their resturant.  I'm not 100% sure if I'm good for business, but I like the nice seats.

4) My god, Chinese children are adorable.

5) Talking to strangers, learning Chinese while I teach English.

6) Juice is crazy delicious here.

7) Everything is so cheap!

8) Hearing inappropriate American music in certain stores and knowing full well, that the owners don't know what the song is actually about.

Oh! Unexpected situation last night.  A Jamacian guy found Carter and I while we were eating, than proceded to try to convert Carter to Christianity.  That was nowhere on my list of things that could happen while I was in China.

Other than that weirdness, things are pretty good,
- Andrew

Lest I Forget

This was suppose to go with my first post.  It happened on my first full day in Changchun.

Carter and I were walking around, exploring or trying to find someplace to eat.  We had already gotten use to being stared at by everyone, but still weren't use to....y'know, everything else yet.  We were (and still are, I guess) practically infants.  We couldn't read, we couldn't understand most of what was said to us, we didn't know where we were and hell, we didn't know what we were doing.  Just over 24-hours prior to that point, we had been sitting in California, eating at an In-And-Out Burger.  Since then, we had literally moved to the other side of the world and cleared our comfort zones by at least 5000 miles.

As we walked down the side-walk, taking it all in, a little Chinese girl - probably 4 or 5 - points up to us with big eyes.

"WEIGUOREN," she proclaims.  We looked down at her, startled and unsure what how to respond.  Her mother quickly ushered her away.

Weiguoren means 'foreigner.'

And yes, little girl. 


Yes.

Good Times In China,
- Andrew

Hakuna Matata

Literally, two days ago, if someone had asked me what the strangest thing I've ever eaten, I probably would have gone with "pigeon."  Yeah, its a common bird and a delicacy in a lot of countries, but in America, you don't eat pigeon (even though those are probably safer to eat than the ones here).  But, as of tonight, we have a new winner:

Bombyx mori.  Silkworm.  Two of them to be exact.  Fried and served alone. Tasted (I know its cliche to say) like chicken.  Very chewy chicken.  Definitely not a bad culinary experience. 

How did this come to be?  Well, Carter (another American teacher) and I decided to become regulars at this resturant right next to the foreign teacher's apartment.  Nothing really special about it - just a 'food-on-a-stick' resturant.  We go there every night or two, either for a quick bite or for a beer.  We befriended one of the waitstaff.  We called him 'Cool Dude' and refered to the resturant as: "Cool Dude's."  His real name is Yu Qiang Wang, but when we speak casually about it, he is definitely 'Cool Dude.'  He hooks us up occasionally by taking a few yuan off the bill (or giving us something), we help him with his English, he helps us with our Chinese.  Tonight, as we were preparing to go, Cool Dude comes out of the kitchen with a tiny bowl and puts it down in front of us. 

Our initial reaction, looking at the fried little lumps in the bowl was something to the effect of: 

"Uhh...what is this?"

Cool Dude pauses for a moment, struggling for the word.  "Its....baby butterfly."

Oh. 

We took a sip of beer, nodded to one another and then I willingly ate my first bug.

I am just racking up the new experiences.  And I've just been here a week.  Where am I going to be a month from now?

Hakuna Matata,

- Andrew

The Chinese Pizza Hut Experience

I worked at a Pizza Hut in the United States for just about a year.  It wasn't the greatest of jobs, but it could've been a ton worse.  Bad job but good people kind of thing.  In America though, I would put Pizza Hut just a notch (maybe two in some places) over the typical fast food place.  Our food is typically better than that McDonalds, and you wait just a bit longer for it too.

In China, as it turns out, Pizza Hut is a legit dining experience.  Four or five stars.  People open the door for you when you come in, all the servers are dressed really nicely.  Everyone has a big 'Customer Maniac' button on their uniform and they all seem legitimately excited to see you.  And you can get specialty fruit drinks.  And wine.  And its really, really clean.

(I will note here, that the pictures are bad and/or blurry because it seems like the kind of nice resturant that would get mad at me for getting up and taking pictures of everything.  I was trying to be discrete.)

We got a Hawaiian Pizza.  Fairly typical.  But you know what we could have gotten?  Steak.  Or Popcorn Chicken or Shrimp pizza.  Or Tiramisu.  Or delicious-looking coffee things. 

Look at how many tabs this menu has:

Wow, I wish there was an easy way for me to resize that.  But whatever.  Pizza is just one tab.  And its not even the entree tab (that is where the steak is). China is a crazy place.  I like to think that the Sylva Pizza Hut was a pretty nice place...but it really has nothing on the one in Changchun.

Though, if it means anything, the pizza really wasn't that good.  Just...alright. 

I should probably talk more about teaching in this blog, rather than the weird stuff I find over here. 

Or maybe not,

- Andrew