China: Round 2

Hey blog stalkers! I know I haven't written in a while, but here's
what's new with my life lately. I'm back in China. I know I may have
mentioned some other plans, but hey, plans change and China is
awesome.

Here's what's new. I've ditched the government run school system in
Haimen to join up with a private English language training center
called Web International English. This basically just means that
people of all ages can pay to come here just to learn English.

I've been here less than a week, but I can already tell the job is way
better. Not only am I making twice as much money (yay! more Starbucks)
but the classes are smaller and I don't have to make my own
curriculum. So overall, so far so good.

I've relocated to a new city, Changshu, about an hour away from where
I was before. It's a little bit bigger, has a lot more foreigners, and
a McDonalds. Best of all, I've moved out of my jail like dorm room at
the school into a lovely apartment.

Okay, so maybe the apartment wasn't so lovely at first, but it's
lovely now, and getting better every day. Here's the thing about
Chinese apartments. They don't clean them out before the rent them to
you. When I signed the contract, they said they were going to clean
it. The problem was, my month in the USA apparently erased the Chinese
definition of "clean" from my brain. For those of you who have never
been to China, clean is a relative term. In this case, "clean" meant
remove some (about 60%) of the garbage from the last guy and mop the
floor with dirty water. So I was in for a tiny bit of a shock when I
got home from work to my new apartment.

I had a bit of buyers remorse. The shower was broken. It was dirty.
The last guy had apparently never cleaned anything. Ever. There were
tears. Thankfully, my lovely boyfriend came to the rescue, installed a
new shower, and paid a little old lady to clean my apartment.

So now the apartment is finally clean enough for me to clean it
myself. It's a good feeling to be able to touch stuff in your home
without feeling like you're going to contract some sort of disease.
Great success. I'll post some pictures as soon as I get it decorated a
bit.

Anyways, now that I'm back, I'll be blogging again, so follow along
for more adventures (and misadventures) for the new year.

XOXO,

Julie

I'm Thankful

This week, I’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving from China.  And living in China makes you thankful for all kinds of things that you tend to take for granted as an American.

I'm so thankful to be an American.

I just got done doing some shopping for the mini-Thanksgiving feast that some of the village Americans will be having. (Thanks mom & dad for mailing me some stove-top stuffing and a few packs of gravy!) It’s looking like we are going to have chicken instead of turkey, but hey, when in China... So anyways, while I was shopping, I was thinking about all the things that I have to be thankful for, and I thought I’d share that with you.

I’m thankful…

for my family and friends and dogs.

for western toilets.

for the ability to flush toilet paper.

for food without bones in it.

for variety.

for the opportunity to choose my major in college.

for the freedom to speak my mind.

for the opportunity to live in China. 

for the freedom to attend Church.

for Starbucks.

for the ability to drink water out of the tap without boiling it.

for showers with water pressure.

for the ability to freely access Facebook, YouTube, etc.

for comfortable mattresses.

for traffic laws that are enforced.

for American food.

for the completely awesome experiences I've had this year.

for the ability to afford to eat at a restaurant and own more than two outfits.

Yeah, it can be easy to bash America… because society as a whole is pretty much insane (think “Honey Boo Boo and Jersey Shore”)… But for as many things as we are doing wrong, there are a lot of things that we are doing right.

We are so freaking blessed to be born in America.

So celebrate.

Love.
Laugh.

Post a message on Facebook.

Watch a video on YouTube.
Praise Jesus. 

Take a nap in your bed that has a comfortable mattress.
Flush your toilet paper.
Be thankful.

Trick or Treat?

Halloween basically doesn't exist in China. Most adults have never heard of it. Only about half of my students knew what it was before this week. The only people in the village who know about and celebrate Halloween are the few American foreigners (there's three of us) and the very young students that attend one of the private English schools in town. And I'm pretty sure they are just enjoying people giving them candy.

In true form, we decided to celebrate Halloween anyways. As luck would have it, the infamous 0513 nightclub was having a "Halloween Party". Translation – maybe a few decorations, special outfits for the employees, but pretty much business as usual.

Except for the foreigners.

I've blogged about being stared at like a celebrity. On a normal day in normal clothes. But it's just not Halloween without a costume.

As luck would have it, a friend brought me a "Sexy Nurse" costume from the States.  (And believe me, the irony that she brought the costume all the way from the USA when it was probably made less than an hour from here is not lost on me.)

So there I was strolling through the village in a nurse costume…  I had a stethoscope, working "syringes" for shots of booze, a cute little nurse hat, and a significant amount of cleavage showing. I must note that this costume would not be considered the least bit scandalous in the USA, but here I was accosted by more than the normal amount of paparazzi.

The point is… we were the only people dressed up. And the commotion we generated was even more amusing than usual.

I think that we have quite a few new fans of Halloween. I'm pretty sure I convinced at least 10 people to dress up next year. As ridiculous as it sounds, our costumes were the starting point for some really interesting conversations. There's nothing like promoting cross-cultural understanding through dressing up like a nurse, sexy zebra, and Sock Monkey.

20 Questions

Kids are hilarious. Not always intentionally, but entertaining none the less. I wish I could remember half the things that some of my students have said to make me laugh. I really need to start writing things down as they happen.

 

This week was a particularly funny week. We were working on asking questions – I decided to play 20 questions with my classes.

 

Here are a few of the best quotes from class this week that I can remember:

 

Is it a superstar? Yes. Is it a woman? Yes. Justin Bieber.

 

Is it an animal? Yes. Can you eat it? No. Can it eat you?

 

Is it an animal? Yes. Is it black? Yes. Obama!!

 

Is it a sport? Yes.  Fuck!  Kid from across the room, "That's not a sport."

           

Is it a person? Yes. Is he sexy? Yes. Kobe Bryant? Yes!! Kid from across the room, "He is not sexy. I am much more sexy than he."

The Mystery of the Long Fingernail

Hi my name is Julie and I used to blog here often. Sorry I've been MIA lately, but nothing worth blogging about has happened. It's life as usual in the village. So instead of a story about something crazy that has happened to me, today I will attempt to answer the age old question, "Why do many Chinese men have one really long pinkie fingernail?"

 

Okay, so I really have no idea, but it is perplexing.

 

Thus, I've done a bit of research via the Internet and person to person interviews and come up with a list of several plausible theories. These theories come from both foreigners and local Chinese. Everyone agrees that the phenomena exists, but nobody really knows why. The evidence was pretty inconclusive.

 

1.    Home-grown cocaine scoop

2.    Booger/ ear-wax scoop

3.    Good luck

4.    Status symbol. In the olden days, long fingernails were a sign of wealth. If you're laboring away in the fields all day, you probably don't have long unbroken fingernails.

 

Personally, I'm thinking it's a good mix of all of the above. If you have any insight, I'd greatly appreciate the feedback.

I Stole Sugarcane Today

Unlicensed food stalls and street vendors are illegal in China.

 

So how do you know which ones are licensed and which ones aren't?

 

Easy. You wait until the police come by. The ones that scatter are unlicensed, and the ones that stay either have a license or aren't worried about being checked. You tend to see people scatter more often in bigger cities but every so often it happens here in the village.

 

Today, on my daily stroll through town, I stopped to buy some sugarcane from a guy with a wheelbarrow full of it. Business was good for him and he was peeling and slicing sugarcane left and right. There were probably about four people waiting when I was there.

 

Just as the man handed me my bag and I was about to hand him my 5 kwai, the police came around the corner and homeboy grabbed his wheelbarrow and took off down the alley at warp speed. Sugarcane was flying everywhere, children were diving out of the way, dogs were barking – it was ridiculous. This dude must have been caught without a license before; usually the escape is not quite so dramatic.

 

So there I stood with my bag of sugarcane that I did not pay for.

 

I felt really bad so I wandered around the area for about 15 minutes to see if the guy would come back, but he never did. I'll have to be on the lookout for him in the future so I can pay him back for my stolen sugarcane.

The Countryside

Today was the first day back from vacation, so I thought that I'd ask the kids what they did during their holiday.

 

"I went to the countryside" – was the overwhelming response. Even most of the adults I asked said they did this.

 

But what exactly happens in the countryside? I HAVE NO IDEA. I literally could not get anyone to expand on what going to the countryside means.

 

Do you visit your family there? Is there some sort of resort or orchard? Are there just thousands of Chinese people standing around in an enormous field? What happens in this mysterious "countryside"?

 

Nobody could tell me. Or maybe nobody was allowed to tell me.

 

The only conclusion I can make is that it is clearly a secret. Foreigners must never learn what happens there.