I forgot to mention one thing about the Thanksgiving weekend. I travelled with Angel from Mianyang to Neijiang. This was quite the experience and I am surprised I had forgotten it until now. The bus we were taking is supposed to leave at 9am, so we get there about 8:40. Angel asked an attendant where the bus to Neijiang is, since we didn’t know the characters for Neijiang. The attendant told us to wait a bit since the bus wasn’t there yet. We wait and then it is 8:50 and we get a bit nervous thinking the bus should definitely be there by now. Then all of a sudden we hear that the bus to Neijiang is leaving, so Angel runs over to see what is going on and they tell him the bus that has been in front of us this whole time is in fact the bus we should be on! So we load our things and get on, but the bus is packed and there is only one seat. Angel tells me to sit and I said that we can switch at the half-way mark of this 5 hour bus trip. But then this lady gets on and tells Angel to follow her off the bus. When he gets off, the bus I am on starts pulling out! I start to say wait but it doesn’t look as if they are going to wait for me. I sit back down and Angel has sent me a text to stay on the bus because they are putting him on a different bus and if things get too weird try and meet up in Chengdu at the North Bus Station—I say okay but am really hoping this doesn’t happen because I always get a bit lost in Chengdu. We travel for a bit on the bus and then the bus pulls off on the side of the road and the driver tells me to get out. I was starting to get really nervous but then I saw Angel was standing on the side of the road too. As long as we are stuck in the same boat together I figured things couldn’t be too bad. So what happens is this- lady that first took Angel off of the bus flagged down a bus for us and three Chinese people and we all got on and made it to Neijiang. Just have to have fairht and trust. That is one thing I have learned about China. If you let someone know where you want to go you will make it there, even if it’s not the way you originally thought.

For example I took the train to Mianyang the day before leaving for Neijiang and I mentioned to these nice Hunan people sitting next to me that I was getting off in Mianyang and they told me when to get off the train. They were also trying to force this teenage girl to practice her English with me which completely appalled her. Instead I practiced my Chinese with them.


Back at school there was a hip-hop dance competition between our school and 9 other colleges. It was quite interesting. I had a few laughs watching it as the boys were trying to be gangsta and the girls were trying to be sexy—with ripping their shirts off and pretending to fire guns. Some of the dancing was actually impressive—though far short of So You Think You Can Dance. Our school got first and second place, which wasn’t surprising considering how much time is spent dancing here.

One evening I was asked to teach a group of students to make fruit salad. I said it wasn’t difficult—just cut up some fruit and put it in a bowl. But the main reason was that the students wanted to communicate with a foreigner. And also they meant Waldorf salad. I came and said that I think Waldorf salad isn’t eaten that much by westerners I know, and that I didn’t think it was tasty; so we should just cut the fruit and put it in the bowl, but if the students want to try waldorf later I would write the recipe on the board. When I first came into the classroom I was slightly overwhelmed because it was a large group and they were just waiting for me to "do something". Finally the students settled on me singing a song to start. The Chinese have this bad habit of treating foreigners like they are circus performers. Anyway I taught them two children’s songs (head shoulders knees and toes and If you’re happy and you know it). Then I let them ask me questions. At one point Janice came into the back and I made her join me at the front, but she left as soon as we started making the fruit salad. I showed them but said it really doesn’t matter what fruit you include and how it is cut up. Afterwards we played some games. The first game was that you were asked some questions by a ‘host’ and you had to answer quickly without using pronouns or saying um. It was rather difficult. It was all in Chinese but I still participated but they had to ask me the questions slowly and I responded even slower. If you used one of the pronouns you had to do a performance of some sort—song, dance or something else. Then we played another game that was a mixture of hot potato and truth or dare. If the ‘potato’ stopped on you then you must answer a question without using any pronouns and if you did then you must choose truth or dare. I used a pronoun on my turn and I chose dare and they made me do a dance, so I did the I’m a little teapot dance. When it was time to go back I discovered that I had been spending my evening with the English Club. I had no idea that there was an English Club. It is a student-led group that is interested in English and improving their English skills and knowledge of English speaking countries.

The next week there were several sports competitions, including ping pong and volleyball. I was asked to participate in the volleyball match. I am terrible at volleyball but it seemed I wasn’t the only one and anyways I was filling a space. It wasn’t very much fun since I don’t like volleyball but I was being apart of the department which was good. Our department won, but we won out of the losers. It was just for fun, though. In the middle of the game Kerry asks me if I am going to watch a movie that evening at Janice and Marks. Since I had made Skype plans with someone I said no. He said oh well then I should tell you now that the leaders said that you must be finished teaching this week and have exams next week and turn your grades in before Christmas. Well last I had heard we were to finish at the end of December and I had already made plans for exams taking two weeks and told my classes that day this. So I had to change my plans and track down the students I had already told my original plans to and give them the new plans. Apparently this happens every year and every semester. I can’t understand why they cannot figure out the dates earlier than they do. Oh well. I will make a mental note of this for next semester.

Lunch can sometimes be quite interesting. This time Kerry turns to me and starts asking me all these questions about Christmas trees. Is it true that you put real trees in your house? What kind of trees do you use? What do you do with the tree after Christmas? Do the trees in the school or the trees at the mountain we went to (more than a month ago) look more like Christmas trees? It turned out that Kerry had this crazy idea to go to the nearby mountain and cut down a tree to bring to his house for Christmas and then to keep it on his porch for the rest of the year. This is not a good idea—so us three foreigners thought. Luckily it didn’t work as he hoped and he bought an artificial tree. Actually his home was

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is easily my favorite holiday and this year proved to be no disappointment. Thirty-five Peace Corps volunteers, a crazy guy from Singapore with a hyper Chinese freshmen, an energetic Kiwi, a Danish guy, tons of delicious food and all of the beer from the little convenient store down on campus and you have the recipe for a good Thanksgiving in China. Many of the volunteers in Sichuan and Chongqing met in Southern Sichuan to celebrate the holiday. The volunteers in Chengdu found a real turkey and cranberry sauce at the foreign store (rarities in China), and the rest of us brought and cooked a massive feast. Many great cooks succeeded in making stuffing, cornbread, pumpkin pie, Dutch apple pie, macaroni and cheese, more stuffing, mashed potatoes, apple sauce, tuna noodle casserole, cakes, dumplings, corn, green bean casserole and I am probably forgetting something. I made banana bread and chocolate peanut butter cookies which I must say turned out surprisingly well in my little toaster oven. Since there were so many of us and just two volunteers in small apartments we all stayed in a hostel on campus. It was…pretty gross, but the company made up for it. While we were there a few of us visited a Buddhist temple that was around a 1000 years old. It turned out to be quite nice and this lady came from nowhere and gave the three of us standing together a lesson on Buddhism and Buddhist necklaces. There was also a fierce dog behind a door that all too much made me think of the three-headed dog from Harry Potter. I thought it was going to break down the door. Another kind man working at the temple opened a closed section of the temple for us foreigners which was rather nice.

This Thanksgiving experience also included us visiting a club. It was fun to watch these middle-aged Chinese men dancing on a stage and even more fun to watch some of our guys follow them and attempt their dance moves which involved much flailing of the arms and high kicks. Returning from the club to the hostel my friends and I witnessed a street fight. Not as dangerous as it sounds. It was on the other side of the road, and these two men chase this taxi and start kicking it. The cab slams on its breaks and about 7 Chinese men pour out of it and start yelling at the group of men on the street. The 2 women are trying to calm the men down. Then they start slapping and kicking each other and that’s about it. It was rather anticlimactic.

Back in Jiangyou there was an art festival all week. The students had been preparing all month with dancing, singing and drawing. Janice made a smart comment to say that if the college devoted as much time and money into academics as it did performing the school would be really good. Regardless the artwork and dancing were fantastic. I missed the musical show. I wish I had taken pictures of the students’ art which were quite talented and worthy of sale but this is annual so I will just catch it next year.

I missed the musical show because I told a student that I would have dinner with her. This student is a senior high school student that has taken to me. Before I went to dinner I ran with a freshmen student that speaks English quite well. But before we started running she said that she would be joining me and Lisa for dinner that night. I was surprised because I couldn’t figure out how she might have known Lisa (it turns out that Whitley was talking with another student about me and Lisa overheard and approached her about me and they formed a friendship based off their mutual acquaintanceship with me). I was pleased by this because Lisa speaks almost no English. During dinner Whitley translated that Lisa has been having a terrible time with her roommates. Apparently they smoke all the time in their room, stay up to really late hours, never study, and have put indecent photos of another roommate on the internet. Lisa wanted to know if she could live with me. She can’t of course but I told her she can come over to study or get away. Lisa had also started practicing her English by chatting with this American man on msn and wanted my opinion about the conversations she had with him because she was feeling a bit weird about it. I read through it and, yes, this man is a creepy and inappropriate man and I told her not to talk with him anymore. Then she was worried that he’d be able to find her since he said he was coming to China next year but I assured her that he wouldn’t be able to as long as she doesn’t give him her address and that even if he did that I would protect her at school and her dad can protect her at home. Whitley and Lisa came over for dinner Sunday evening which made Lisa almost flip with excitement. Janice and Mark said when they first came to the school the parents of their students thought they were lying when they said they had foreign teachers, and a few of the students that I talk with still have this issue. One student made me talk with her mom on the phone because she didn’t believe that she was sitting in the home of a foreigner. Funny.

Better news this week is that one of the girls in my running club passed her running exam in p.e! She was quite nervous about it since she had already failed it previously but in running club I had everyone run a fast 800 meters (which is their PE test) and I quickly discovered why she kept failing. She was going out really fast and then crashing the second lap. With my advice she was able to get through it. Funny that across the world I am still coaching.

This past weekend I went to Mianyang to have an early Christmas celebration at Angel’s. When I was at the bus station catching a bus to Mianyang a young Chinese woman approached me and asked where I was going. I told her and asked where she was going—which was the same as me. Then she wanted to know if I was Chinese. When I said I was American she said oh I can speak English! For the rest of the trip I chatted in English with twenty-three year old (same as me) Mia who works in administration in Jiangyou but whose family is in Mianyang. I told her that we can hang out sometime in Jiangyou since she just moved there and still doesn’t know many people there.

The Christmas gathering was nice and small. It consisted of all the foreign teachers at their college and one Chinese teacher. Three of us were Peace Corps, one was a Peace Corps volunteer a few years back but returned as a paid foreign teacher, another was just an American that came to teach, and the last foreign teacher was an Austrian woman that teaches German at the school. The Austrian woman said she was disappointed in my drinking ability and that I should train before going drinking with her again. I cannot compete with an Austrian! Maybe if I harness my Irish background. We were only joking with each other of course. The food was good and Angel gave us all small gifts which was incredibly nice. It was nice to have the celebration as an opener to the season. I did have one interesting conversation with a Chinese teacher that was with us. Jeff, Angel’s site mate, and I were talking with her about foster care in America earlier that evening. She had some more questions concerning the system. I gave her both scenarios of good foster homes and bad ones. In Tallahassee it is a bit nicer than in Chicago where Jeff is from. Foster kids get swept under the rug far too often but I think it is more so in places like Chicago, New York and Detroit. She said that it was nice that we have the system even if sometimes it fails because there is nothing like that in China.

The day I returned I met with Jane and her roommates to shop for cooking items because they were coming over to cook. They made dumplings, a soup, two vegetable dishes and a tofu dish. It was very good but there was so much food! Jane, Danny and I just helped fold the dumplings because we didn’t know how to cook the foods and were just in the way in the kitchen. After eating Jane and Danny did the dishes. They wouldn’t let me help with anything! When things were cleaned we watched a movie. It was quite relaxing. I continued to work on my knitting. Yes my knitting. I used to knit in college but stopped. It is quite popular here and I have picked it back up. I am currently working on a scarf. While I am here I want to try and get better and attempt things that aren’t squares—like hats and gloves, but we’ll see how into it I get. My students can only do scarves. Janice is the one I need to ask if I want to try something more difficult—she actually cast on for me because I’d forgotten that necessary step.

It is weird for me to think that this semester is almost over. In two weeks I will begin to give finals and at the end of this month I will turn my grades in for my first semester teaching in China. I have begun to reflect on my teaching and have made note of some big improvements that I need to make. I am going to ask my students to evaluate my teaching and we’ll see how it goes. Chinese students don’t like to say anything negative about their teachers, but hopefully I can convince them of the importance of evaluating my teaching.

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving and things are looking merrier these days!