Good evening wei guo rens! or good day...
A little delayed I know but Happy New year to friends and family. Chinese New year isn't until february 3rd so I will exempt myself from such delayed accusations. I've been here 5 months now i can say i'm at least part Chinese.
I'm here now at the halfway point of the school year as well as my time here and I'll have to say, China has been everything i'd imagined as well as nothing i could've conceived. I can only write about my thoughts and feelings about this place but you really can only fully grasp it by being here. Even then, so much of China is 50/50 that you can never quite pinpoint what it is. For every thing I admire about China, another thing opposes it into almost redundancy. For example, they seem to be uptight about saving energy. They have heaters in the classrooms and buildings but almost never turn them on. I teach my classes in my winter jacket, breath visible from the cold and my hands shaking as they write on the chalkboard. Most restaurants are practically outside. The buildings have no insulation or central heating, they are just concrete slabs. Now coming from Canada, this has been completely backwards to me. We are a culture that is quite prepared and adjusted to the cold, but Wuhan has no idea what to do when the snow comes. I see people outside walking around with umbrellas when its snowing and I can't help but laugh. When i've asked why they don't shut the windows or doors and turn the heaters on they have told me that it would waste power. Also, they believe that if they shut all the windows in a building they will die of not having enough fresh air.
Now heres the redundant part. There is no fresh air in Wuhan! You can barely see across the river on a clear day, through the grey blanket that covers the city. This is also the reason it always feels colder or hotter than it actually is. The sun cannot penetrate the pollution cloud very well. I've noticed it only gets lighter in the morning around 8 or so because it takes the sun awhile longer for its light to penetrate the hazy Chinese horizon. And on the wasting electricity part, they seem to turn there heads when it comes to advertisement or aesthetic. Forget comfort of human beings. Like I noticed back in my first day here the Chinese light up everything. They put huge neon signs on everything the eye can see, advertisements and eye candy glittering 24/7. Even the ancient pagoda in the centre of the city, Yellow Crane Tower, hasn't escaped this fate. At night it's lit by thousands of bright yellow lights.
They pride themselves on proper parenting, they say us from the west are too soft on our children. So they put them through almost 12 hours of school a day and when they get home at 7 or 8 at night its 3 hours of homework or practice before bed. Where is the quality family time in that? They eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at school except on weekends, even then they probably eat at the various training schools they go to. I believe it is too much. This was nailed on the head for me last week during the kids final exams for the semester. One of my favourite students from my grade 4 class came up to me with red scars and bruises all over his face. When I asked him what happened he said his father hit him to make sure he got over 95% on all his tests. And this is one of the smartest kids in that class. This seems like its quite commonplace here. And I don't like it one bit.
As crazy as that all sounds there are many good things about China. I'm still here aren't I? There's just something about being here that's hard to explain in words. It's definitely a love/hate relationship and I'll write about some of the more positive aspects of China in the future. But let me update you all a bit on recent events.
I had a great weekend, I finally experienced a truly Chinese night out on Friday when I was invited by Christian to come out with all his chinese friends. See, while we have all been hanging out with each other on weekends, Christian has gone out and made a lot of chinese friends. Ones that speak decent english, no doubt. Which are hard to come by.
We all went to the roller skating place again. It took me awhile to get used to, but everyone there holds hands. Guys in the chinese group would come up to me and hold my hand while I skated. Which years of hanging out with dudes back home told me was a definite no no. Then, Chinese girls would also come up and hold my hand while I skated. Which years of being around women, told me it was time to throw on the old charm (and fail). Alas, Neither was the case. This is just normal here.
Afterwards, we all went to a typical Chinese barbeque, where we got every type of animal known to man barbequed on a stick. I ate cartilage and intestine for the first time. That was interesting. Then me and Shane, being the canadian men we are, decided to challenge the chinese guys to a beer chugging competition. Let me remind you that Chinese beer is 2.5%, so let's just say we destroyed them.
This all backfired when we noticed all the guys were then quite drunk. Apparently drinking 3 beers in China is a big deal. And if you all remember the last time I was at dinner with drunk chinese men you can imagine how it went from there. Next thing I knew I was driving someones car through the city to a KTV (karaoke) bar. If you also recall what I have written about chinese driving you can imagine my fear. But don't worry mother I only almost got hit by a van once and slightly crashed while parking. Just a dented license plate. No big deal.
About half an hour later I was standing on a couch with two beers in my hand singing Bon Jovi to a room of chinese people. How do you hold a microphone and two beers at once you ask? Easy! You hang the mic from the ceiling.
Chinese karaoke is very different from our karaoke. You basically get a room with a big TV, a couch and a table. You all just take turns selecting songs and sing to each other. It was strange at first but once i got into it I was singing backstreet boys and at the same time wondering where my dignity went.
After getting home at 5am, I woke up the next day and started to prepare for my show. Me and Shane were performing for our second time at the Toucan.
I'm really starting to like this bar. And I think they are taking a liking to us as well. We've played there twice now and every time we do they keep offering us more. We are now booked every second weekend as well as get free food and beer. They also booked us St. Pattys day, which will be ridiculous considering the Toucan is the only Irish Pub in the entire Hubei province. It's such an escape from China being there. You walk in and you could very well be at any pub in Ottawa. They have real beer and real food. I convinced them to make me poutine and we are in talks about getting hockey games played as well.
On saturday we invited all the chinese friends out from the night before and showed them a western style party. Heres a video taken by one of the chinese girls of me and Shane introducing Canadian east coast music to the Chinese populace.
http://www.56.com/u32/v_NTc4NDU4NTM.html
Anyways, now here I am all alone in the building. All the other teachers have already left for their holidays and I don't fly out until Thursday. I'm getting pretty anxious to leave, my bags are pretty much already packed and i've been pacing my room all day. Also, I was sleeping the other night and my bed decided to break. Actually more like implode. It sent me crashing to the floor and as you can imagine it was quite the way to be woken up. Once again, this sort of thing only happens to me.
So I am now sleeping on the floor.
I'm not going to have my laptop with my on my trip so after Thursday I won't be able to update this for a month. But I think i'm going to take my notebook with me and try to keep a written journal of the trip. I'll just type it all up when I get back. I think that might be better than me just trying to remember everything like on my trip to Beijing/Shanghai.
Anyways, i'll write again before I leave.
Good bye!
在见！
ลาก่อน!
For those of you who don't know yet, I will be spending the next year in Wuhan City, China. I will be teaching English to children in a public school and living in Wuchang (a district of Wuhan.) Because China has so kindly blocked facebook, youtube, myspace, wikipedia entries, google, twitter and many other sites, This will be one of the only ways I will be able to keep in touch and update all my family and friends of my adventures. Enjoy!
Monday, January 17, 2011
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
a Chinese Christmas
Ni hao foreigners,
Just finished marking two of my classes and i finally have some free time so I have decided to update everyone on my Christmas adventures in Wuhan.
First of all the Chinese really don't celebrate christmas so the schools were still open but our school was nice enough to give us friday-monday off to celebrate.
And celebrate we did.
Thursday:
I taught my usual classes in the morning and then was told all the teachers were supposed to meet at the main school afterwards for a performance. The big show that is next month had its final showing for all the principals and directors so Super MJ Dance Team all piled onto a bus and headed over there as well. I was very nervous for them as we have not been practicing lately because the school either fails to give me proper equipment or enough space to have a proper practice.
I arrived fashionably late with another teacher and sat down to watch some of the other schools performances.
There were dancers, singers and actors. I was happily treated to a performance of some disney movies. They put up scenes from Lion King, Beauty and the Beast and Shrek and had the kids acting them out or doing voice overs for the movies. It was hilarious.
After a few performances it was Super MJ Dance Team's time to go up and finally show everyone what they can do.
I sat there biting my lip hoping for the best. But turns out I didn't have to worry because they performed it almost flawlessly. It was amazed and apparently so were everyone else. I had people come up to me after saying it was the best performance of the show.
I really never thought i'd pull it off. It was all them.
After the show, we were told that all the teachers were going to be taken out for a christmas dinner. We walked on through rundown, dirty Chinese allies and in the middle of all of this strangely there was this very nice, fancy restaurant where we had a private room waiting. We all piled in and I somehow got placed at the table with all the chinese men. There was Nemo, Mr. Li (the boss of the foreign department) and Mr. Ye (the big boss of all the schools) as well as our driver who is a scary, beast-like man. I thought this would be the lame table as everyone else would all be drinking and talking at the other tables.
I didn't realize how unbelievably wrong that was.
Almost immediately we were brought out 5 boxes of red wine and a large amount of beer. The food came and we picked through the various Chinese dishes which were actually pretty amazing. So far pretty normal little gathering.
But then came the Bai Jiu. Oh yes, the Bai Jiu. This drink will destroy you. I believe i've mentioned it before, It's about 45% alcohol and takes and smells like something I cannot describe. It's one of those alcohol's that leaves a taste in your mouth for days after and makes you cringe at the smell or thought of it.
But these Chinese men weren't messing around.
Mr. Ye began to poor full glasses of this stuff and giving it to the other chinese men. As well as me and Shane, the only other men at the tables. It seemed custom that the females were not allowed to drink it but I didn't ask why. Nemo looked at me terrified and begged me to take some more of his full glass. You can tell he was only drinking because he had to do what his bosses told him and it would be disrespectful not to. I felt the same way. This is when things started to go downhill.
Flash forward about an hour.
Everyone had congregated at our table now and were taking drinks with all the bosses, who were loaded out of there minds. They brought out another few bottles of Bai Jiu, a bottle of Jin Jiu, another box of wine and a whole crate of $60 cigarettes. It was utterly insane. Everyone was yelling and hugging. Mr. Ye stood up on a chair and yelled "MR.................... YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAA!!!" and cheersed all the foreign teachers. The next time I looked back at him he was on the floor passed out. One of the other chinese teachers who I don't think had ever even drank before was stumbling around with two cigarettes in his mouth, smiling and speaking nonsense. Nemo was pounding shots and laughing maniacally.
Well this got out of hand quickly, I thought. We all left after that. At least I think we did. Because like I said, I partook in the Bai Jiu fest as well. Last I remember we were sitting on a couch outside the corner store we usually go to singing at the top of our lungs. I somehow also got my hands on a guitar in all this.
I woke up the next morning with a bump on my head and the worst hangover I've ever had in my life. Who would have thought that beer, red wine, Bai Jiu, Jin Jiu and Chinese food all mixed together well.
Friday (Christmas Eve)
Consider it erased from my life. I lied in bed for like 10 hours then finally got up and went to Mcdonalds. I had a fantastic, heart-warming Christmas Eve feast of a chicken sandwich and fries, which I ate alone in my room. Merry Christmas to me.
Saturday:
All the teachers woke up relatively early and decided we were going to cook a huge breakfast. Some of the other teachers had went out the night before and bought a GIANT brick of cheese, bacon and sausages. We just needed potatoes and eggs so we went out to the supermarket as well as a christmas morning hunt for Baileys.
The baileys was unsuccessful, but at the supermarket one of the butchers seemed to have a "dog special" on at the time. Just in time for the holidays, how lovely. Sitting there on the counter in front of me was a decapitated dogs head, freshly cut, eyes staring at you. This was definitely one of the more disturbing things i've seen first thing christmas morning in my life. Way to go China.
I shook that off quickly as we all sat down for an amazing breakfast. Me and Bobby, being the manly chefs we are, took control of the kitchen downstairs and cooked for a good hour. They gave us the keys to the eating room and we all sat around the big table, cracked some beers at 11am, cheersed to our new family and gave thanks for the wonderful meal we had. Appreciating it once again so much more. I will never take a good breakfast for granted again.
After that we all played a big game of basketball and I came back earlier to get ready for my second big meal of the day. All the teachers at the Xudong school were having a big late lunch at a place called the Toucan. I rushed over there and enjoyed a massive turkey dinner, barely able to get it all in after the breakfast I had.
The Toucan is the only Irish pub in Wuhan. They had real Guiness on tap and a nice stage set up in the corner, where a guy was trying to get set up to play but seemed to be having trouble. He asked people in the audience if anyone could play guitar to do a soundcheck for him. My friends shoved me up there and I played a bit, then he asked if i could also sing a bit to check the mics. I play like 20 seconds of a Neil Young song and the next thing I know the owner comes over and tells me to keep playing. He wanted me to take half the guys set. I refused but everyone seemed to force me into it. Somehow, I ended up doing a whole set and the owner asked me to play there again next month.
Just when I thought the fun was ending we all went out to a roller skating bar. Flashback to the 70's. I didn't think these things still existed. I had a great time though, I picked it up quickly and was bombing around the place, knocking over many chinese people. I even showed someone what a proper body check was.
Later we went on to Wuhan prison where I got into the Absinthe again and after that I went to Vox where I danced for a good hour.
What a day. I went to bed exhausted and satisfied.
Sunday:
Essentially another write-off day
Monday:
We woke up and decided to have another massive breakfast and enjoyed our last day off
So it's Tuesday now and i'm back to teaching. All my students told me they missed me today and cheered as I walked into the classroom. As hard as it was to spend my first christmas away from my family and friends all the people here as well as my students really made all the difference in the world. I now have New Years to look forward to and then 3 weeks in which I am going to begin preparing to go to Thailand.
I already picked up a few words of Thai. Which turns out is even more rediculous than Chinese
Sawaatdiikhrap!
Corey
Just finished marking two of my classes and i finally have some free time so I have decided to update everyone on my Christmas adventures in Wuhan.
First of all the Chinese really don't celebrate christmas so the schools were still open but our school was nice enough to give us friday-monday off to celebrate.
And celebrate we did.
Thursday:
I taught my usual classes in the morning and then was told all the teachers were supposed to meet at the main school afterwards for a performance. The big show that is next month had its final showing for all the principals and directors so Super MJ Dance Team all piled onto a bus and headed over there as well. I was very nervous for them as we have not been practicing lately because the school either fails to give me proper equipment or enough space to have a proper practice.
I arrived fashionably late with another teacher and sat down to watch some of the other schools performances.
There were dancers, singers and actors. I was happily treated to a performance of some disney movies. They put up scenes from Lion King, Beauty and the Beast and Shrek and had the kids acting them out or doing voice overs for the movies. It was hilarious.
After a few performances it was Super MJ Dance Team's time to go up and finally show everyone what they can do.
I sat there biting my lip hoping for the best. But turns out I didn't have to worry because they performed it almost flawlessly. It was amazed and apparently so were everyone else. I had people come up to me after saying it was the best performance of the show.
I really never thought i'd pull it off. It was all them.
After the show, we were told that all the teachers were going to be taken out for a christmas dinner. We walked on through rundown, dirty Chinese allies and in the middle of all of this strangely there was this very nice, fancy restaurant where we had a private room waiting. We all piled in and I somehow got placed at the table with all the chinese men. There was Nemo, Mr. Li (the boss of the foreign department) and Mr. Ye (the big boss of all the schools) as well as our driver who is a scary, beast-like man. I thought this would be the lame table as everyone else would all be drinking and talking at the other tables.
I didn't realize how unbelievably wrong that was.
Almost immediately we were brought out 5 boxes of red wine and a large amount of beer. The food came and we picked through the various Chinese dishes which were actually pretty amazing. So far pretty normal little gathering.
But then came the Bai Jiu. Oh yes, the Bai Jiu. This drink will destroy you. I believe i've mentioned it before, It's about 45% alcohol and takes and smells like something I cannot describe. It's one of those alcohol's that leaves a taste in your mouth for days after and makes you cringe at the smell or thought of it.
But these Chinese men weren't messing around.
Mr. Ye began to poor full glasses of this stuff and giving it to the other chinese men. As well as me and Shane, the only other men at the tables. It seemed custom that the females were not allowed to drink it but I didn't ask why. Nemo looked at me terrified and begged me to take some more of his full glass. You can tell he was only drinking because he had to do what his bosses told him and it would be disrespectful not to. I felt the same way. This is when things started to go downhill.
Flash forward about an hour.
Everyone had congregated at our table now and were taking drinks with all the bosses, who were loaded out of there minds. They brought out another few bottles of Bai Jiu, a bottle of Jin Jiu, another box of wine and a whole crate of $60 cigarettes. It was utterly insane. Everyone was yelling and hugging. Mr. Ye stood up on a chair and yelled "MR.................... YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAA!!!" and cheersed all the foreign teachers. The next time I looked back at him he was on the floor passed out. One of the other chinese teachers who I don't think had ever even drank before was stumbling around with two cigarettes in his mouth, smiling and speaking nonsense. Nemo was pounding shots and laughing maniacally.
Well this got out of hand quickly, I thought. We all left after that. At least I think we did. Because like I said, I partook in the Bai Jiu fest as well. Last I remember we were sitting on a couch outside the corner store we usually go to singing at the top of our lungs. I somehow also got my hands on a guitar in all this.
I woke up the next morning with a bump on my head and the worst hangover I've ever had in my life. Who would have thought that beer, red wine, Bai Jiu, Jin Jiu and Chinese food all mixed together well.
Friday (Christmas Eve)
Consider it erased from my life. I lied in bed for like 10 hours then finally got up and went to Mcdonalds. I had a fantastic, heart-warming Christmas Eve feast of a chicken sandwich and fries, which I ate alone in my room. Merry Christmas to me.
Saturday:
All the teachers woke up relatively early and decided we were going to cook a huge breakfast. Some of the other teachers had went out the night before and bought a GIANT brick of cheese, bacon and sausages. We just needed potatoes and eggs so we went out to the supermarket as well as a christmas morning hunt for Baileys.
The baileys was unsuccessful, but at the supermarket one of the butchers seemed to have a "dog special" on at the time. Just in time for the holidays, how lovely. Sitting there on the counter in front of me was a decapitated dogs head, freshly cut, eyes staring at you. This was definitely one of the more disturbing things i've seen first thing christmas morning in my life. Way to go China.
I shook that off quickly as we all sat down for an amazing breakfast. Me and Bobby, being the manly chefs we are, took control of the kitchen downstairs and cooked for a good hour. They gave us the keys to the eating room and we all sat around the big table, cracked some beers at 11am, cheersed to our new family and gave thanks for the wonderful meal we had. Appreciating it once again so much more. I will never take a good breakfast for granted again.
After that we all played a big game of basketball and I came back earlier to get ready for my second big meal of the day. All the teachers at the Xudong school were having a big late lunch at a place called the Toucan. I rushed over there and enjoyed a massive turkey dinner, barely able to get it all in after the breakfast I had.
The Toucan is the only Irish pub in Wuhan. They had real Guiness on tap and a nice stage set up in the corner, where a guy was trying to get set up to play but seemed to be having trouble. He asked people in the audience if anyone could play guitar to do a soundcheck for him. My friends shoved me up there and I played a bit, then he asked if i could also sing a bit to check the mics. I play like 20 seconds of a Neil Young song and the next thing I know the owner comes over and tells me to keep playing. He wanted me to take half the guys set. I refused but everyone seemed to force me into it. Somehow, I ended up doing a whole set and the owner asked me to play there again next month.
Just when I thought the fun was ending we all went out to a roller skating bar. Flashback to the 70's. I didn't think these things still existed. I had a great time though, I picked it up quickly and was bombing around the place, knocking over many chinese people. I even showed someone what a proper body check was.
Later we went on to Wuhan prison where I got into the Absinthe again and after that I went to Vox where I danced for a good hour.
What a day. I went to bed exhausted and satisfied.
Sunday:
Essentially another write-off day
Monday:
We woke up and decided to have another massive breakfast and enjoyed our last day off
So it's Tuesday now and i'm back to teaching. All my students told me they missed me today and cheered as I walked into the classroom. As hard as it was to spend my first christmas away from my family and friends all the people here as well as my students really made all the difference in the world. I now have New Years to look forward to and then 3 weeks in which I am going to begin preparing to go to Thailand.
I already picked up a few words of Thai. Which turns out is even more rediculous than Chinese
Sawaatdiikhrap!
Corey
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Sheng Dan Kuai Le!
Hello friends and family!
For those who don't know already "Sheng Dan Kuai Le" is Merry Christmas in Chinese. It literally translates to "Holy Birth Happy!" which sounds mildly neanderthal but so do most literal translations of chinese words into english. "Ni Hao" (Hello) for example translates into "You, Good."
Other hilarities of the chinese language which i find amusing is the word they use for thinking. When we talk we usually throw the word umm, uhhh or likeeee and hold it a bit while we think of whatever we're going to say next. The Chinese have a word they use for that too, its "ne ge." That might look perfectly normal to you english folk but in chinese it is pronounced "nigga." Which, as you can imagine, caused some concern for me the first time i heard it. One day a student wanted to get my attention and proceeded to call out "nigga.. teacha!" and my eyes widened in shock. Now some of the teachers have already been complaining that my students come up to them and props them and say "whats up homie" (so glad i taught them that!) so I thought maybe one kid did his research and took it to the next level. But then I started hearing it everywhere. On the bus, at restaurants and in shops. I had a Chinese teacher explain to me what it meant, but still, nothing compares to a 6 year old kid dropping N-Bombs all up in here.
Another funny moment that happened last week had to do with a funny translation one of the students made. Nemo has started a new thing where, before each class starts, a different student must do a short 2 minute power point presentation about something to do with western culture. The problem is that they decide to use translators for them. One girl was doing her presentation on western dessert food and included a roughly translated recipe for making a cake. As she was reading out the ingredients I noticed one of them said 1 cup of breast milk. Standing in the back of the class I burst out into laughter and tried to contain myself. No one seemed to understand why i was laughing. After the presentation was over I asked Nemo or the class if they knew why I was laughing and why breast milk was so funny. Apparently not even Nemo knew what that meant.
Well this will be fun to explain I thought.
I cupped my hands at my chest and said "you know, milk from woman"
The whole class went nuts.
By the way the Chinese word for womens breasts is "nai nai." a word I enjoy saying out loud for some reason. Something about how it rolls off the tongue.
Anyways, It's been quite awhile now since I wrote a blog. I sincerely apologize to anyone following it as I've been either too busy or too lazy. This month has been strange and interesting so far. On monday I woke up and was informed by Nemo that I would be saying the sentence of the week on the morning announcements. Once a week a different english teacher makes a new sentence and teaches it to the school while a Chinese teacher translates for them. I had not gone yet so this week was my turn. To add to the excitement, I was told It would be a special one this week because it was christmas. I would be teaching Merry Christmas but also translating for myself as well as wishing all the students and teachers a merry christmas in chinese. Also, announcements would be held outside in the field and I would be on a podium in front of the whole school again. Memories from fuzzy panda kill robot good day started to creep in as I woke up after only a few hours of sleep the night before and made my way downstairs.
Nemo sat me down and said "must practice, have 5 minutes."
Thinking still that I was just going to have to say Merry Christmas In english and Chinese, I told him it was no problem.
But then he explained the rest I was going to say.
"Wo zhu xiao peng you men he lao shi men sheng dan kuai le" meaning "I wish students and teachers a merry christmas"
was what Nemo said I would have to say. I was barely awake, yet let alone ready to be memorizing crazy chinese phrases to say in front of the entire school.
I repeated it a few times then made my way outside to where the entire school was waiting. Oh boy. This was going to be interesting.
Then, by some Christmas miracle, I got up on that stage and spoke perfect Chinese and was applauded by everyone. I guess being around the Chinese language for the last 5 months has paid off and i'm becoming more comfortable speaking it. All day my students were high-fiving me and saying "Corey! I see you morning! you Chinese very good!" I ignored the grammatical errors and thanked them. I worked the rest of the day and took a much needed nap. The night before had been equally interesting.
On sunday night, me, Chris and Shane were invited by the owner of the Wuhan Prison to play at some festival in Hangyang. We practiced up 4 crappy cover songs and headed there not knowing what to expect. We had no idea how big or what kind of festival this was, but we were totally unprepared for what would ensue.
We were met by the guy who set it all up and taken through the festival, which was in a big dark park. There were the craziest, brightest lights i've ever seen seperated by long patches of dark forest. It was very strange. We walked through the first forest part in the dark and first walked by a man on stilts, a small clown, a man dressed as a sheep, snow white and the most terrifying attempt at a batman costume i've ever seen. Now the lights, dark forest, strange costumed people and overall situation made us start believe we had been slipped some sort of hallucinogen. When we finally got to the stage we were equally confused and slightly scared. The stage was off from the festival surrounded by forest, with many bright flashing lights and a small patch in front of the stage with giant animals dancing with eachother. Not like halloween costumes, i mean mascot-sized costumes.
Picture a bunch of mascots dancing in the middle of a dark chinese forest with strange flashing lights and you get the general idea. We waited on the side of the stage and watched the show in confusion for a bit and prepared our things to go on and play.
As the band that was playing winded down all the mascots/costumed people left, along with all the people that were there with them. So now there was a lone chinese band playing to no one and we were supposed to be on next. You could literally hear crickets. Well in China its actually dogs being slaughtered off in the distance but same idea.
They pulled the guy who booked us off to the side of the stage and shortly after we were informed that the show was cancelled because no one was there anymore. We were then given 100kuai each and sent packing. Stepping out of the festival, we all walked on and wondered exactly what the hell just happened.
once again, China is a strange place.
Besides all the strangeness that has been happening this month two amazing things have happened:
1. I booked my trip to Thailand for Chinese New Year/Spring Festival
2. I found a Subway in Wuhan
I had heard only rumours of the first subway restaurant opening up in Wuhan recently and after doing research I decided to head over there one day after a class I was teaching near the area. Its about a 45 minute cab ride away from where I live but worth every Chinese RMB stashed in my nightstand. I ate it in ecstasy and bought 2 more to take home with me. I'm probably going to make a trip there once a week for sanity purposes. Rice is really starting to drive me mental.
From January 20th-February 5th I will be travelling in Thailand. I have alot to prepare for the trip including learning some basic Thai, which is even more ridiculous than chinese. But i've looked up itineraries and I will be visiting massive old buddhist temples,hiking through jungles, staying in small mountain villages, riding elephants, exploring caves and lying on some of the nicest beaches in the world. You have no idea how excited I am to have an opportunity to do something like this in my life. I want to thank my Dad again for helping me to book my flight there, which was only $386 US for the return trip.
I have a lot to look forward to in the next little while it seems. Christmas will be hard without family and friends but know that I am thinking about you all and miss you very much.
The teachers here are all going out for a nice big dinner again and exchanging presents on saturday and we also get 4 days off work. Happy times.
I will try update my blog more often and I also hope to buy a new camera soon to take more pictures, especially for my trip next month.
But until then Merry Christmas everyone!
Corey
For those who don't know already "Sheng Dan Kuai Le" is Merry Christmas in Chinese. It literally translates to "Holy Birth Happy!" which sounds mildly neanderthal but so do most literal translations of chinese words into english. "Ni Hao" (Hello) for example translates into "You, Good."
Other hilarities of the chinese language which i find amusing is the word they use for thinking. When we talk we usually throw the word umm, uhhh or likeeee and hold it a bit while we think of whatever we're going to say next. The Chinese have a word they use for that too, its "ne ge." That might look perfectly normal to you english folk but in chinese it is pronounced "nigga." Which, as you can imagine, caused some concern for me the first time i heard it. One day a student wanted to get my attention and proceeded to call out "nigga.. teacha!" and my eyes widened in shock. Now some of the teachers have already been complaining that my students come up to them and props them and say "whats up homie" (so glad i taught them that!) so I thought maybe one kid did his research and took it to the next level. But then I started hearing it everywhere. On the bus, at restaurants and in shops. I had a Chinese teacher explain to me what it meant, but still, nothing compares to a 6 year old kid dropping N-Bombs all up in here.
Another funny moment that happened last week had to do with a funny translation one of the students made. Nemo has started a new thing where, before each class starts, a different student must do a short 2 minute power point presentation about something to do with western culture. The problem is that they decide to use translators for them. One girl was doing her presentation on western dessert food and included a roughly translated recipe for making a cake. As she was reading out the ingredients I noticed one of them said 1 cup of breast milk. Standing in the back of the class I burst out into laughter and tried to contain myself. No one seemed to understand why i was laughing. After the presentation was over I asked Nemo or the class if they knew why I was laughing and why breast milk was so funny. Apparently not even Nemo knew what that meant.
Well this will be fun to explain I thought.
I cupped my hands at my chest and said "you know, milk from woman"
The whole class went nuts.
By the way the Chinese word for womens breasts is "nai nai." a word I enjoy saying out loud for some reason. Something about how it rolls off the tongue.
Anyways, It's been quite awhile now since I wrote a blog. I sincerely apologize to anyone following it as I've been either too busy or too lazy. This month has been strange and interesting so far. On monday I woke up and was informed by Nemo that I would be saying the sentence of the week on the morning announcements. Once a week a different english teacher makes a new sentence and teaches it to the school while a Chinese teacher translates for them. I had not gone yet so this week was my turn. To add to the excitement, I was told It would be a special one this week because it was christmas. I would be teaching Merry Christmas but also translating for myself as well as wishing all the students and teachers a merry christmas in chinese. Also, announcements would be held outside in the field and I would be on a podium in front of the whole school again. Memories from fuzzy panda kill robot good day started to creep in as I woke up after only a few hours of sleep the night before and made my way downstairs.
Nemo sat me down and said "must practice, have 5 minutes."
Thinking still that I was just going to have to say Merry Christmas In english and Chinese, I told him it was no problem.
But then he explained the rest I was going to say.
"Wo zhu xiao peng you men he lao shi men sheng dan kuai le" meaning "I wish students and teachers a merry christmas"
was what Nemo said I would have to say. I was barely awake, yet let alone ready to be memorizing crazy chinese phrases to say in front of the entire school.
I repeated it a few times then made my way outside to where the entire school was waiting. Oh boy. This was going to be interesting.
Then, by some Christmas miracle, I got up on that stage and spoke perfect Chinese and was applauded by everyone. I guess being around the Chinese language for the last 5 months has paid off and i'm becoming more comfortable speaking it. All day my students were high-fiving me and saying "Corey! I see you morning! you Chinese very good!" I ignored the grammatical errors and thanked them. I worked the rest of the day and took a much needed nap. The night before had been equally interesting.
On sunday night, me, Chris and Shane were invited by the owner of the Wuhan Prison to play at some festival in Hangyang. We practiced up 4 crappy cover songs and headed there not knowing what to expect. We had no idea how big or what kind of festival this was, but we were totally unprepared for what would ensue.
We were met by the guy who set it all up and taken through the festival, which was in a big dark park. There were the craziest, brightest lights i've ever seen seperated by long patches of dark forest. It was very strange. We walked through the first forest part in the dark and first walked by a man on stilts, a small clown, a man dressed as a sheep, snow white and the most terrifying attempt at a batman costume i've ever seen. Now the lights, dark forest, strange costumed people and overall situation made us start believe we had been slipped some sort of hallucinogen. When we finally got to the stage we were equally confused and slightly scared. The stage was off from the festival surrounded by forest, with many bright flashing lights and a small patch in front of the stage with giant animals dancing with eachother. Not like halloween costumes, i mean mascot-sized costumes.
Picture a bunch of mascots dancing in the middle of a dark chinese forest with strange flashing lights and you get the general idea. We waited on the side of the stage and watched the show in confusion for a bit and prepared our things to go on and play.
As the band that was playing winded down all the mascots/costumed people left, along with all the people that were there with them. So now there was a lone chinese band playing to no one and we were supposed to be on next. You could literally hear crickets. Well in China its actually dogs being slaughtered off in the distance but same idea.
They pulled the guy who booked us off to the side of the stage and shortly after we were informed that the show was cancelled because no one was there anymore. We were then given 100kuai each and sent packing. Stepping out of the festival, we all walked on and wondered exactly what the hell just happened.
once again, China is a strange place.
Besides all the strangeness that has been happening this month two amazing things have happened:
1. I booked my trip to Thailand for Chinese New Year/Spring Festival
2. I found a Subway in Wuhan
I had heard only rumours of the first subway restaurant opening up in Wuhan recently and after doing research I decided to head over there one day after a class I was teaching near the area. Its about a 45 minute cab ride away from where I live but worth every Chinese RMB stashed in my nightstand. I ate it in ecstasy and bought 2 more to take home with me. I'm probably going to make a trip there once a week for sanity purposes. Rice is really starting to drive me mental.
From January 20th-February 5th I will be travelling in Thailand. I have alot to prepare for the trip including learning some basic Thai, which is even more ridiculous than chinese. But i've looked up itineraries and I will be visiting massive old buddhist temples,hiking through jungles, staying in small mountain villages, riding elephants, exploring caves and lying on some of the nicest beaches in the world. You have no idea how excited I am to have an opportunity to do something like this in my life. I want to thank my Dad again for helping me to book my flight there, which was only $386 US for the return trip.
I have a lot to look forward to in the next little while it seems. Christmas will be hard without family and friends but know that I am thinking about you all and miss you very much.
The teachers here are all going out for a nice big dinner again and exchanging presents on saturday and we also get 4 days off work. Happy times.
I will try update my blog more often and I also hope to buy a new camera soon to take more pictures, especially for my trip next month.
But until then Merry Christmas everyone!
Corey
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
the ups, the downs and the just plain crazy!
to kick things off, here's the moment everyone's been waiting for!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/coreyinchina/5222962749/
Good day far away friends,
I have a few things to update everyone on about my crazy life here in China. First as you can see Super MJ Dance Team™ is well on its way to stardom. I was only able to upload a small part of the dance, so unfortunately you miss the best part in the middle where I get them to jump around in a circle and pretend to stab each other in the chest with knives (this is not a joke! go watch the beat it video!)
On Tuesday this week I was well into teaching my second period grade 4 class when, bursting in, came two members of the Super MJ Dance Team™ out of breath from running across the schoolyard and up four flights of stairs to find me. Also, in their haste, they both failed to realize that I do not speak Chinese and their attempted message would be hard to relay.
"Hello, small portion of Super MJ Dance Team™." I said to them as they entered the classroom.
"Relax. Breathe. What message do you bring from afar, oh young ones?"
"Dance. Principal. Michael Jackson. Corey. Oh my Gaga! Come now!"
A short note: I don't know how it started but when I first started teaching the kids would all say "Oh my god!" once in awhile when I did something crazy or gave them alot of homework. But somehow it then morphed into "Oh my Lady Gaga!" and now it has shortened to "Oh my Gaga!" They all say this all the time and it boggles my mind as well as amuses me. Back to the story...
"Oh my Gaga!" I replied. And told my co-teacher that I must leave immediately and she would have to take over the rest of the class.
The principal of our school, the principal of the main school, the headmaster, my boss and two incredibly cute dance teachers were all coming to see my progress on our performance and decide if they will put funding into it or not. We were not even remotely prepared for this. I had just taught them one other part of the dance the day before and haven't even started on the musicians yet.
I raced across the schoolyard with the two messengers and yelled "Super MJ Dance Team™ ASSEMBLE!" ran up to my room, grabbed my guitar and Joes bass he's lending me and ran down to our practice room. Nemo was waiting for me at the door and seemed equally stressed out about the situation. I told him thank you for the wonderful surprise and he proclaimed he had no idea this was happening either. We both walked in the room to see them all sitting there, headmaster smoking a cigarette (in an elementary school.. what a baller) and Super MJ Dance Team™ ready to rock.
I told them we hadn't practiced it all together yet and we're not even close to finished but they said to just do each part separately. OK then. I pulled up a chair and played through my part on my acoustic guitar, while a few of them sang. So far not bad.
After trying to impress the dance teachers with my Beat it guitar playing skills we all moved on to the main dance. It went well, besides the part in the middle they had just learnt where I was running around telling them to pretend to fight each other. They all seemed relatively satisfied with the performance and proceeded to hash out the equipment details and everything with me. Mr Li handed me a smoke and, after the fourth time trying to explain I don't smoke in elementary schools nor in front of my children, they all left.
I breathed a sigh of relief. That wasn't so bad.
Later on that day I walked in to teach my grade 5 class and noticed they had all drawn pictures of snowmen and posted them all over the classroom. How cute I thought, until upon further inspection:
One snowman was holding a handgun with a happy smile on his face and kids playing all around him.
One snowman was shooting other snowmen.
One snowman was shooting a man in the face.
One snowman was shooting Michael Jackson.
One snowman was strapped to the teeth like Rambo.
One snowman was shooting fire out of his hands and burning an entire village.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE CHILDREN! This kind of thing would never fly in my elementary school. Or any in Canada for that matter. I brought Nemo over and asked If this was okay. He said his usual "Is good!" and I stood there in wonder. Something about the whole scene seemed both totally wrong and totally awesome at the same time. Oh yes, I remembered, I'm in China. I realized this wasn't so bad. If I had been allowed back in the day I would have drawn guns on everything I made at school. That's just how boys are. It seems in Chinese schools the teachers don't have much of a problem letting children draw or act out that kind of thing. I've even jumped on the band wagon and gotten into the habit of shooting my kids once in awhile. They all do a fantastic fake death. I even walked in the classroom with a gun to a kids head once and told them all to stay back, afterwards I shot the kid and then offed myself. They all laughed hysterically, including Nemo.
What a strange, strange country this is.
Now for the good times. Last Thursday all the teachers planned to celebrate American Thanksgiving at a restaurant called Aloha. The school was even nice enough to provide us with a driver to take us there. We all met at the main school and then hopped in a van for an hour trip into Hangyang, a part of the city I have not been to yet.
Hanyang is the industrial part of town it seems and the main streets are lined with car dealerships and small factories. Packed in with all that is a very large foreign population, international schools and westernized restaurants. Many families whose parents work in industry live there and I saw my first child walking around in quite awhile who wasn't asian. We pulled up to the area and I bolted out of the van excitedly. On the water there was a big pirate ship. Amused easily, I ran over to find that it was an old restaurant on the water that had been closed down recently. There would be no pirating for me today. We then found a giant life sized chess game and my disappointment over the pirate ship quickly faded. A few of us played a quick game and then went into Aloha for our meal.
This place was amazing. It was owned by two americans who both greeted us at the door and informed us that we would all be leaving there with full bellies. We had appetizers and wine to start. Things wrapped in bacon and pastry with cream cheese, I was in heaven already and had to stop myself from filling up before the actual meal came.
And what a meal it was. Real turkey imported from America (there are no turkeys in China) real gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberries, vegetables in this cheese sauce. I almost cried to be honest.
We made a toast to good friends and good food as well as being thankful for all the times like these, while we're all so far from home and our families. I have always been appreciative of those things but this was something new. We were like a little family. I ate with a smile on my face, packed up some pumpkin pie and went home to a deep sleep, one of those after-turkey sleeps.
amazing.
Now no good moment here goes without out a sudden awakening, with China suddenly bursting back to reality. This happened, quite literally, to me Saturday morning.
I had spent the night at another teachers house. After I work my teaching job Friday night over there I usually go hang out with some of the teachers who live in that area and then just crash there.
I awoke to the sound of machine guns.
Or at least I thought it was machine guns. Only after jumping terrified off my futon and wiping away the sleep haze did I finally realize they were just fireworks. But not nice colourful kind in the sky, the ones you set off at ground level that just make alot of noise and sound like machine guns. I'm all for random explosives I thought, but then looked at the time: 7am. What in the hell was someone setting fireworks off for at 7am? Just when I thought they had ended, out of nowhere the amplified sound of an orchestra blasted through the area. I was unsure if it was a real orchestra or just some guy with a giant speaker but I really didn't care. The song played for about 1 minute and then as soon as it reached the closing crescendo came another round of fireworks. Okay, that was odd. I thought.
But then it repeated again, and again, and again. On it went throughout the morning. An orchestral song followed by loud, gunshot like fireworks. All starting at the wonderful hour of 7am on a Saturday. What's wrong with these people? I was confused and enraged beyond belief.
I asked Lyndley if she possessed a sniper rifle but alas, she did not.
I never did find out what that was all about but it ruined my day. You see China is always sort of in the middle with everything. So many great, wonderful, cultural things about it and then it all ruins your day with one asshole with fireworks, or one guy pushing you to the ground on a bus or cars flying in all directions in a traffic nightmare. Some things I think are improved and innovative while others are completely backwards and just plain crazy. I try to just take everything in the best I can and just realize it's all an adventure. Good or bad, up or down.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/coreyinchina/5222962749/
Good day far away friends,
I have a few things to update everyone on about my crazy life here in China. First as you can see Super MJ Dance Team™ is well on its way to stardom. I was only able to upload a small part of the dance, so unfortunately you miss the best part in the middle where I get them to jump around in a circle and pretend to stab each other in the chest with knives (this is not a joke! go watch the beat it video!)
On Tuesday this week I was well into teaching my second period grade 4 class when, bursting in, came two members of the Super MJ Dance Team™ out of breath from running across the schoolyard and up four flights of stairs to find me. Also, in their haste, they both failed to realize that I do not speak Chinese and their attempted message would be hard to relay.
"Hello, small portion of Super MJ Dance Team™." I said to them as they entered the classroom.
"Relax. Breathe. What message do you bring from afar, oh young ones?"
"Dance. Principal. Michael Jackson. Corey. Oh my Gaga! Come now!"
A short note: I don't know how it started but when I first started teaching the kids would all say "Oh my god!" once in awhile when I did something crazy or gave them alot of homework. But somehow it then morphed into "Oh my Lady Gaga!" and now it has shortened to "Oh my Gaga!" They all say this all the time and it boggles my mind as well as amuses me. Back to the story...
"Oh my Gaga!" I replied. And told my co-teacher that I must leave immediately and she would have to take over the rest of the class.
The principal of our school, the principal of the main school, the headmaster, my boss and two incredibly cute dance teachers were all coming to see my progress on our performance and decide if they will put funding into it or not. We were not even remotely prepared for this. I had just taught them one other part of the dance the day before and haven't even started on the musicians yet.
I raced across the schoolyard with the two messengers and yelled "Super MJ Dance Team™ ASSEMBLE!" ran up to my room, grabbed my guitar and Joes bass he's lending me and ran down to our practice room. Nemo was waiting for me at the door and seemed equally stressed out about the situation. I told him thank you for the wonderful surprise and he proclaimed he had no idea this was happening either. We both walked in the room to see them all sitting there, headmaster smoking a cigarette (in an elementary school.. what a baller) and Super MJ Dance Team™ ready to rock.
I told them we hadn't practiced it all together yet and we're not even close to finished but they said to just do each part separately. OK then. I pulled up a chair and played through my part on my acoustic guitar, while a few of them sang. So far not bad.
After trying to impress the dance teachers with my Beat it guitar playing skills we all moved on to the main dance. It went well, besides the part in the middle they had just learnt where I was running around telling them to pretend to fight each other. They all seemed relatively satisfied with the performance and proceeded to hash out the equipment details and everything with me. Mr Li handed me a smoke and, after the fourth time trying to explain I don't smoke in elementary schools nor in front of my children, they all left.
I breathed a sigh of relief. That wasn't so bad.
Later on that day I walked in to teach my grade 5 class and noticed they had all drawn pictures of snowmen and posted them all over the classroom. How cute I thought, until upon further inspection:
One snowman was holding a handgun with a happy smile on his face and kids playing all around him.
One snowman was shooting other snowmen.
One snowman was shooting a man in the face.
One snowman was shooting Michael Jackson.
One snowman was strapped to the teeth like Rambo.
One snowman was shooting fire out of his hands and burning an entire village.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE CHILDREN! This kind of thing would never fly in my elementary school. Or any in Canada for that matter. I brought Nemo over and asked If this was okay. He said his usual "Is good!" and I stood there in wonder. Something about the whole scene seemed both totally wrong and totally awesome at the same time. Oh yes, I remembered, I'm in China. I realized this wasn't so bad. If I had been allowed back in the day I would have drawn guns on everything I made at school. That's just how boys are. It seems in Chinese schools the teachers don't have much of a problem letting children draw or act out that kind of thing. I've even jumped on the band wagon and gotten into the habit of shooting my kids once in awhile. They all do a fantastic fake death. I even walked in the classroom with a gun to a kids head once and told them all to stay back, afterwards I shot the kid and then offed myself. They all laughed hysterically, including Nemo.
What a strange, strange country this is.
Now for the good times. Last Thursday all the teachers planned to celebrate American Thanksgiving at a restaurant called Aloha. The school was even nice enough to provide us with a driver to take us there. We all met at the main school and then hopped in a van for an hour trip into Hangyang, a part of the city I have not been to yet.
Hanyang is the industrial part of town it seems and the main streets are lined with car dealerships and small factories. Packed in with all that is a very large foreign population, international schools and westernized restaurants. Many families whose parents work in industry live there and I saw my first child walking around in quite awhile who wasn't asian. We pulled up to the area and I bolted out of the van excitedly. On the water there was a big pirate ship. Amused easily, I ran over to find that it was an old restaurant on the water that had been closed down recently. There would be no pirating for me today. We then found a giant life sized chess game and my disappointment over the pirate ship quickly faded. A few of us played a quick game and then went into Aloha for our meal.
This place was amazing. It was owned by two americans who both greeted us at the door and informed us that we would all be leaving there with full bellies. We had appetizers and wine to start. Things wrapped in bacon and pastry with cream cheese, I was in heaven already and had to stop myself from filling up before the actual meal came.
And what a meal it was. Real turkey imported from America (there are no turkeys in China) real gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberries, vegetables in this cheese sauce. I almost cried to be honest.
We made a toast to good friends and good food as well as being thankful for all the times like these, while we're all so far from home and our families. I have always been appreciative of those things but this was something new. We were like a little family. I ate with a smile on my face, packed up some pumpkin pie and went home to a deep sleep, one of those after-turkey sleeps.
amazing.
Now no good moment here goes without out a sudden awakening, with China suddenly bursting back to reality. This happened, quite literally, to me Saturday morning.
I had spent the night at another teachers house. After I work my teaching job Friday night over there I usually go hang out with some of the teachers who live in that area and then just crash there.
I awoke to the sound of machine guns.
Or at least I thought it was machine guns. Only after jumping terrified off my futon and wiping away the sleep haze did I finally realize they were just fireworks. But not nice colourful kind in the sky, the ones you set off at ground level that just make alot of noise and sound like machine guns. I'm all for random explosives I thought, but then looked at the time: 7am. What in the hell was someone setting fireworks off for at 7am? Just when I thought they had ended, out of nowhere the amplified sound of an orchestra blasted through the area. I was unsure if it was a real orchestra or just some guy with a giant speaker but I really didn't care. The song played for about 1 minute and then as soon as it reached the closing crescendo came another round of fireworks. Okay, that was odd. I thought.
But then it repeated again, and again, and again. On it went throughout the morning. An orchestral song followed by loud, gunshot like fireworks. All starting at the wonderful hour of 7am on a Saturday. What's wrong with these people? I was confused and enraged beyond belief.
I asked Lyndley if she possessed a sniper rifle but alas, she did not.
I never did find out what that was all about but it ruined my day. You see China is always sort of in the middle with everything. So many great, wonderful, cultural things about it and then it all ruins your day with one asshole with fireworks, or one guy pushing you to the ground on a bus or cars flying in all directions in a traffic nightmare. Some things I think are improved and innovative while others are completely backwards and just plain crazy. I try to just take everything in the best I can and just realize it's all an adventure. Good or bad, up or down.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
What happens in Changsha stays in Changsha
Ni hao friends and family.
So last weekend I safely returned from the Changsha excursion. I'm not even going to explain what partook in this city. Let's just say 11 guys and many bottles of whiskey in a foreign city for 3 days is a recipe for disaster. Mother do not worry your son was relatively behaved. I cannot say the same for some of the other teachers on the trip. But it was expected.
Changsha is a big city quite similar to Wuhan, I didn't find much difference in it besides the fact that there was a subway (the restaurant) and I ate there about four times in complete bliss.
We boarded the train after school at about 3 in the afternoon on Friday and three blurry days later we somehow all arrived home in one piece. I took no pictures of the trip but i did take a video of all of us racing through the streets on electric motorbikes yelling at each other. Unfortunately, when I checked my bag recently it seems I have lost my camera. I either left it in Changsha or it got stolen. I lose everything I own at some point or another as some of you already know. This means there will be no pictures or videos for awhile until I get a new one.
and that is all i will say about Changsha.......... It's for the best trust me.
I returned to Wuhan and went back to work. After classes on Monday it was time for my big audition for my super Michael Jackson singing, dancing team. I was surprised to see that about 40 kids showed up and I had no idea where to even start. Basically, I started pointing at people and saying "you. sing" or "you.dance" "NOW". I didn't expect so many people to show up and I knew I could only choose maybe 10 of them to be part of the show. I felt so bad telling kids they had to leave, but Nemo and Mr. Li were booting kids out the door left and right. I guess with that many people it had to be narrowed down quickly.
I ended up with about 20 kids because I couldn't choose between people, some of them just tried so hard and I couldn't stand to see the look of rejection on their faces. Some were also my students and I have to admit I was picking favourites. I was being way too nice for this.
I explained this to Mr. Li and he straight up told me "This is China, they are used to being rejected"
Oh well i guess when you put it that way....
So I had spent the short time I had before my audition scrambling some sort of mini dance routine to teach them to seperate the dancers, as a majority of the kids who showed up were girls wanting to dance. Let me reiterate that I have no experience in this whatsoever. But I learnt the first few parts of the dance from the actual music video of Beat It and proceeded to try to teach them. The ones that couldn't keep up got sent away. It actually became fun after awhile.
You, leave.
You, get the %$# out.
You, cut.
You, yea your not good enough get out.
You, your humping the air repeatedly. Awesome, but CUT.
The singers weren't too hard to pick out. I basically just picked the ones who were brave enough to sing on the spot and showed enthusiasm. Singing is all about confidence and I needed performers, not people who were going to choke on stage. Choking on stage in front of people will get you killed in China. I didn't want any kids deaths from their parents on my hands. Oh and one kid is totally a homosexual, he can sing and dance like no ones business. He's definitely in.
Funny actually, I told Nemo I wanted 6 boys and 5 girls and he pointed to the gay kid and said "but he is girl." I was speechless.
Nemo.. you clown you.
I also had to assemble a little asian rock band. I think our band name will be "Fuzzy Panda Kill Robot Good." I would be shredding the lead Van Halen guitar in Beat it, while I had to pick my drummer and keyboard player as well as figure out who is going to play bass. None of the kids had any idea what a bass even was. I found a little boy who was pretty good at guitar and strapped a bass to him. "Okay asian Paul Mccartney" I said "Now you have to play bass, no more guitar for you."
I think thats how all bass players start out. No one plays bass by pure choice. If they do, it's because they know they've killed most of their brain cells from Marijuana use. Who are they kidding? They can't play guitar. Let alone spell the word.
Corey=1 Bass players=0
After two days of tryouts and disappointed children I had picked out my super MJ team. I stood in the middle of the room and yelled "super MJ team. ASSEMBLE!"
and we started work on the choreography. With all my bosses watching I proceeded to teach my first dance class.
Why did I agree to this?
Through watching many youtube videos and dancing around my room for a few days I was able to piece together the dance from the music video. I wish you guys could see me do this thing. Hilarious.
So lately this is how I've been spending most of my days. I teach my four classes in the morning, have an hour break for lunch and then teach singing, dancing and a band for 3 hours after school. It really is alot of work. I get home and just want to relax but then I have to keep up on my marking for my classes and lesson planning. But I guess it's good that I am keeping busy and not sitting around like last month.
Today though practice was cancelled. All the teachers were called in to a meeting this afternoon and told we were going to be learning a song. Oh great, I thought, more singing. To my wondrous surprise the song we would be singing would be a chinese song. How thoughtful of them. Apparently there is a big show next month with all the schools and they want all the foreign teachers to sing a chinese song on stage for all the parents, directors and principals. What a fun idea that is.
We sat in a room for 2 hours today all attempting to sing this traditional chinese song. I rather enjoyed it actually and pondered why I didn't join the choir in highschool. Oh yes, because it was totally not cool at the time.
Then she said we would be doing another song, an english song this time. The chinese singing teacher busted out the lyrics to Take Me Home Country Road by John Denver. Interesting. I've learnt that the Chinese absolutely love this song. I played it at the bar and the whole place went insane.
Apparently we would be singing Hua Dua li Huo (or whatever the hell it is) followed by some good ole John Denver. What a beautiful set list. They flow incredibly well together.
Me, Sean and Chris all ran and got our guitars for the song and all the teachers sang it at the top of our lungs. We only needed some beers and it would have been a party.
Other than all that I haven't been doing too much else. The other day I got lost for 3 hours, that was fun. I've also recently succeeded in getting an N64 on my computer and tonight made an excursion to the computer store to buy some USB controllers. I now have a fully functional multiplayer console and the other teachers are all wanting a turn, being equally deprived of video games.
This is definitely what I need right now. Sweet sweet video games. And maybe a massage. And maybe a real beer. And maybe some fresh air. And maybe a Buffalo Chicken Sandwich from Broadways.
Oh man what have I started. I could go on for awhile.
Anyways, I will try to keep everyone updated when I can about the progress of Super MJ Team. But for now it's been a long, tedious day and I think I slept about an hour last night. I was so delusional this morning I was walking through the schoolyard propsing kids and saying "what up playa" and various other things I knew they wouldn't understand.
sleep. now
good night.
So last weekend I safely returned from the Changsha excursion. I'm not even going to explain what partook in this city. Let's just say 11 guys and many bottles of whiskey in a foreign city for 3 days is a recipe for disaster. Mother do not worry your son was relatively behaved. I cannot say the same for some of the other teachers on the trip. But it was expected.
Changsha is a big city quite similar to Wuhan, I didn't find much difference in it besides the fact that there was a subway (the restaurant) and I ate there about four times in complete bliss.
We boarded the train after school at about 3 in the afternoon on Friday and three blurry days later we somehow all arrived home in one piece. I took no pictures of the trip but i did take a video of all of us racing through the streets on electric motorbikes yelling at each other. Unfortunately, when I checked my bag recently it seems I have lost my camera. I either left it in Changsha or it got stolen. I lose everything I own at some point or another as some of you already know. This means there will be no pictures or videos for awhile until I get a new one.
and that is all i will say about Changsha.......... It's for the best trust me.
I returned to Wuhan and went back to work. After classes on Monday it was time for my big audition for my super Michael Jackson singing, dancing team. I was surprised to see that about 40 kids showed up and I had no idea where to even start. Basically, I started pointing at people and saying "you. sing" or "you.dance" "NOW". I didn't expect so many people to show up and I knew I could only choose maybe 10 of them to be part of the show. I felt so bad telling kids they had to leave, but Nemo and Mr. Li were booting kids out the door left and right. I guess with that many people it had to be narrowed down quickly.
I ended up with about 20 kids because I couldn't choose between people, some of them just tried so hard and I couldn't stand to see the look of rejection on their faces. Some were also my students and I have to admit I was picking favourites. I was being way too nice for this.
I explained this to Mr. Li and he straight up told me "This is China, they are used to being rejected"
Oh well i guess when you put it that way....
So I had spent the short time I had before my audition scrambling some sort of mini dance routine to teach them to seperate the dancers, as a majority of the kids who showed up were girls wanting to dance. Let me reiterate that I have no experience in this whatsoever. But I learnt the first few parts of the dance from the actual music video of Beat It and proceeded to try to teach them. The ones that couldn't keep up got sent away. It actually became fun after awhile.
You, leave.
You, get the %$# out.
You, cut.
You, yea your not good enough get out.
You, your humping the air repeatedly. Awesome, but CUT.
The singers weren't too hard to pick out. I basically just picked the ones who were brave enough to sing on the spot and showed enthusiasm. Singing is all about confidence and I needed performers, not people who were going to choke on stage. Choking on stage in front of people will get you killed in China. I didn't want any kids deaths from their parents on my hands. Oh and one kid is totally a homosexual, he can sing and dance like no ones business. He's definitely in.
Funny actually, I told Nemo I wanted 6 boys and 5 girls and he pointed to the gay kid and said "but he is girl." I was speechless.
Nemo.. you clown you.
I also had to assemble a little asian rock band. I think our band name will be "Fuzzy Panda Kill Robot Good." I would be shredding the lead Van Halen guitar in Beat it, while I had to pick my drummer and keyboard player as well as figure out who is going to play bass. None of the kids had any idea what a bass even was. I found a little boy who was pretty good at guitar and strapped a bass to him. "Okay asian Paul Mccartney" I said "Now you have to play bass, no more guitar for you."
I think thats how all bass players start out. No one plays bass by pure choice. If they do, it's because they know they've killed most of their brain cells from Marijuana use. Who are they kidding? They can't play guitar. Let alone spell the word.
Corey=1 Bass players=0
After two days of tryouts and disappointed children I had picked out my super MJ team. I stood in the middle of the room and yelled "super MJ team. ASSEMBLE!"
and we started work on the choreography. With all my bosses watching I proceeded to teach my first dance class.
Why did I agree to this?
Through watching many youtube videos and dancing around my room for a few days I was able to piece together the dance from the music video. I wish you guys could see me do this thing. Hilarious.
So lately this is how I've been spending most of my days. I teach my four classes in the morning, have an hour break for lunch and then teach singing, dancing and a band for 3 hours after school. It really is alot of work. I get home and just want to relax but then I have to keep up on my marking for my classes and lesson planning. But I guess it's good that I am keeping busy and not sitting around like last month.
Today though practice was cancelled. All the teachers were called in to a meeting this afternoon and told we were going to be learning a song. Oh great, I thought, more singing. To my wondrous surprise the song we would be singing would be a chinese song. How thoughtful of them. Apparently there is a big show next month with all the schools and they want all the foreign teachers to sing a chinese song on stage for all the parents, directors and principals. What a fun idea that is.
We sat in a room for 2 hours today all attempting to sing this traditional chinese song. I rather enjoyed it actually and pondered why I didn't join the choir in highschool. Oh yes, because it was totally not cool at the time.
Then she said we would be doing another song, an english song this time. The chinese singing teacher busted out the lyrics to Take Me Home Country Road by John Denver. Interesting. I've learnt that the Chinese absolutely love this song. I played it at the bar and the whole place went insane.
Apparently we would be singing Hua Dua li Huo (or whatever the hell it is) followed by some good ole John Denver. What a beautiful set list. They flow incredibly well together.
Me, Sean and Chris all ran and got our guitars for the song and all the teachers sang it at the top of our lungs. We only needed some beers and it would have been a party.
Other than all that I haven't been doing too much else. The other day I got lost for 3 hours, that was fun. I've also recently succeeded in getting an N64 on my computer and tonight made an excursion to the computer store to buy some USB controllers. I now have a fully functional multiplayer console and the other teachers are all wanting a turn, being equally deprived of video games.
This is definitely what I need right now. Sweet sweet video games. And maybe a massage. And maybe a real beer. And maybe some fresh air. And maybe a Buffalo Chicken Sandwich from Broadways.
Oh man what have I started. I could go on for awhile.
Anyways, I will try to keep everyone updated when I can about the progress of Super MJ Team. But for now it's been a long, tedious day and I think I slept about an hour last night. I was so delusional this morning I was walking through the schoolyard propsing kids and saying "what up playa" and various other things I knew they wouldn't understand.
sleep. now
good night.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
China sickness, show lessons and Michael Jackson.
Dear outside world,
I am trapped in China.
My immune system has been brutally sabotaged.
I cannot sleep, breath properly or have the energy to leave my prison cell of a room.
Mosquitos are continuing their never-ending brutal assault on me.
The world outside is terrifying, people speak a strange tongue, stare and point at you.
Try to order food and you get sea otter vagina.
Try to go get medicine and you get Rhino horn with Tiger brain super chinese remedy.
The streets are full of baby detriment and animal guts.
Soap is non-existant, the water is undrinkable and the air is an apocalyptic haze.
I feel healthier when i eat mcdonalds and breath cleaner when I smoke a cigarette. Both of which do not help the immune system, creating a vicious cycle.
This my friends, is what I call China sickness.
I've had it for almost two weeks and I am only now finally recovering, though still coughing. I have never been sick for this long in my entire life.
This week I finally went back to work after being in this room for almost a full week. I felt the beginnings of insanity but decided it was best not to pursue it. I recovered last weekend and am starting to get things in order again.
It was dreadful. Being sick here really blows. It's hard enough to do anything as it is but add having a fever, no energy and being alone on top of it and things really are difficult. Also add in my usual case of random bad luck and you have a good time. My heater randomly decided to break during the coldest week here and no one still has come by to fix it. I had been curling up in my blanket in a sweater breathing into my hands, while trying to battle the sickness. Also my water ran out and the lady also failed to deliver it for a week. Meaning I either had to walk all the way to the store or boil water in my pot which makes it taste like metal. Also the meals here are getting worse. I think the first month they eased us into things and now they are just full on trying to destroy me. Part of the reason I became sick in the first place was because of a meal I ate one day that I don't even have the stomach to explain to you right now.
But... I overcame, I persevered. I grew stronger day by day. I didn't let China bring me down.
I got back on my feet and bitch slapped mother China right in her dirty red and yellow face. All in the nick of time too. Because the day I went back to teaching, Nemo decided to inform me that I would be having my first show lessons. The parents and the directors would be coming in and watching my lesson. Watching my every move. Like an ancient Chinese on Mongolian watch.
I was terrified. My lessons that I did teach in the last few weeks have been unplanned and boring. My energy level and enthusiasm was as they say in china, "bu hao." But now I had to do the most important classes since starting this job. holy ji ba.
(by the way i've recently incorporated Mandarin into my random things I occasionally yell out. I now have multi-lingual tourettes. some would argue this an accomplishment.)
My first show lesson for the grade 5's went alright. I spent a few hours the day before scrambling through ideas. My mother saved the day as usual and sent me a bunch of pictures of the different rooms in our house from home. I created a powerpoint presentation and a lesson where I showed the students the rooms and got them to try to name everything in it. Simple, yet they got to see a real western household. Which is very different from alot of the housing here. Some of which consist of a cave-like stone structure that chills the soul. I also showed them some pictures of a Canadian winter and they went bonkers. "Whoaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!" they all yelled. I also started the lesson by speaking chinese to the parents, "baba mama, zao shang hao" I said (good morning parents), and they applauded and laughed. Always a good start. Though, the parents may or may not have enjoyed the lesson. I have no idea considering none of them speak any english and wouldn't know they difference on what i was teaching anyways. I could have been repeatedly insulting and threatening to maim their children with a smile on my face (which is my usual teaching style) and they would be none the wiser.
For my grade 4 show lesson the next day I went all out. My co-teacher Ruby told me she was very scared for the lesson because she knew I was a new teacher. This made me feel like she thought i was a horrible teacher. So I decided to mess with her a bit. I was also still not thinking clearly from my drug-induced, bedridden last two weeks.
I went into the office the day before the lesson and told her I had no idea what I wanted to do for the show lesson. No plan, no powerpoint, no ideas. I was just going to wing something and see how it went. She looked quite scared.
I went back home and got to work on what might be the greatest powerpoint presentation known to man.
There was robots and aliens. Wizards, lasers, elephants, giraffes, snakes, explosions, Yao Ming, Jackie Chan and things flying through space. I wrote a whole animated story where a robot named Zozo visited Earth and learnt how to speak about the things he saw from a powerful wizard (named Corey ofcourse.) Zozo gets attacked by evil space monsters and the only way to save Earth is to help Corey perform a powerful spell by answering a series of questions. I even recreated the whole star wars intro with music and all. I spent 6 hours on it and barely moved from my chair. I went to bed thinking this was either going to be the best lesson ever, or I may have over-done it and the parents will think I am a wacko.
Thankfully, I was not labelled a wacko by the parents and my lesson went amazing. The kids loved it and the parents were all laughing. I blew not only my co-teachers mind, but her soul as well. Remember this, nothing will make a chinese person happier than if you can make them look good in front of their boss. I left the class smiling.
I finally felt like I had proven myself as a teacher.
Afterwards the head director, Mr. Li, came up to me and asked me to come to a meeting with him. He wanted to discuss some ideas for some sort of music thing and said that was part of the reason they hired me in the first place. I was intrigued.
I went to the meeting today and left thinking I may have dug myself quite a hole. Turns out they have a big show with all the other schools in December and the school wants me to head the organization of our schools performance. Apparently, our branch has been lacking in the cool department at the yearly performances and the other schools have been making them look lame. I am their secret weapon. Or so they think.
After going back and forth with many ideas apparently I have agreed to teach a group of asian kids how to sing and dance to a Michael Jackson song. As well as organize the music. In two weeks! music okay! but yes. me. choreographing a dance. Dear god.
Now most of you know I am not the most graceful person. I come from a family of dancers and performers which helps, except for the fact that i'm on the other side of the world.
I am going to focus on the music first. On monday I get to hold auditions to find little MJ asian kids.
But first I am going to be spending this weekend in Changsha. A big city about 4 hours from here. One of the teachers at our branch is getting married in a few months so a whole bunch of us guys are going to go away for the weekend. 3 day road trip/bachelor party. Terrible things are going to happen. My next post may or not be family friendly. I hope I live to tell the tale.
I will update you all upon my return. Until then stay alert and stay safe.
Corey
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Rainy Wuhan
I believe I am about due to update everyone on my life here on the other side of the planet. I find myself finding less to write about as things get settled into a daily routine without much change. Lets start by a new list of weird stuff and observations i've seen and made this month in China!
5. It seems the students have no idea what the word Religion means. Which hampered my ability to teach the word spiritual as was required the text, but also pleased me to some extent. They have a class they take called "Moral Class" where they learn to follow the Socialist ideals and read the words of poets and Chairman Mao (the ones that aren't crazy). You wouldn't find a elementary school kid in Canada with any knowledge of socialist ideals or even all that much poetry for that matter. Wether this is a good thing or not it was strange hearing the words great socialist ideals coming from a 10 year olds mouth.
4. Muslims make the best lamb sticks. It is becoming one of my favourite snacks in Wuhan, you can find them on many corners with their little barbeques cooking lamb on sticks with spices. One of them asked me "Ni shi Muzi ma?" which afterwards i learnt meant "are you muslim?" Nemo told me he thought I was muslim because I look slightly middle eastern apparently..... news to me.
3. Chinese people HATE the Japanese. I don't even know if the word hate is strong enough. If you even mention the word to a kid they will cower in fear. I was asking my class what they are scared of most and among the spiders, snakes and their fathers, a popular answer was Japanese people. Alot of them seem unaware why they don't like them it's just one of those things that IS. The Japanese do have a long history of occupation and massacres in China, many of which they still have not apologized for. But I still find it strange the level of propaganda going around about the Japanese in general. I am even scared to even write these words here, thats how strange it all is. I will touch more on this on the essay I plan to write on cultural differences.
2. WEIRD FLAVOURED SNACK FOODS! This one point is driving me mental. The Chinese seem to have this weird fascination with mixing salty and sweet together, which i believe is a no no. You cannot find regular flavoured chips anywhere, some I have found and had the misfortune of eating are: Blueberry, Sour and hot Fish, Cucumber, Lime (but like green skittles) Mexican Tomato Chicken and Lemon Tea. Popcorn is also flavoured sweet like strawberry or other fruit. Lays needs to take the notch down on the crazy-flavoured-shit-o-meter in China. I know they are strange and little and like different things but this is wacko.
1. And the number one weird and disturbing thing i've witnessed in the last little while is the consumption of mans best friend. Which I thought was a myth before coming to China. I was bored one day and decided to memorize the Chinese word and character for dog meat, which is gou rou or 狗肉, and go on a little adventure. I rode the bus to Xudong and tried to see If I could see that on any of the restaurants on the way there. This was a terrible game. There was tons of shops on the way and I soon realized I did not need to learn the characters because there was pictures posted on the signs outside. Here I was thinking they were pet shops. I used to think oh look at that nice place that sells Golden Retrievers, such beautiful animals they are. But now seeing the character for dog meat on the banner, pet shops they were no more. I even saw a place showing a dog on a plate cooked and cut into four pieces, the little head and tail sticking out the end. I left myself pondering If I could ever eat a dog. What makes it so different from say, a pig? Is it intelligence or cuteness? Pigs are statistically proven to have a higher intelligence level than dogs. I've also seen the movie Babe. Still, years of coexistence with those wonderful animals I know I could never bring myself to do it.
I hope I haven't ruined anyones day
On to my update:
It rains so much in Wuhan I have actually questioned the existence of either Chinese weather control, or magic ancient Chinese water dragons. Either one seems a plausible explanation for the amount of rain that poors down in Wuhan. Sometime it will rain for a week straight, only to see the sunshine for a day at most. When the sunshine finally comes you realize oh yea, I'm in China and the sun barely penetrates the clouds of pollution anyways. Everything is always grey or rainy. In fact thats a good way to describe China, so many shades of grey. This, along with the language barrier, lack of western comforts and endless crowds of pushy-shovey asian people you can quickly see how easily it is for a foreigner to feel depressed or have culture shock. Luckily I've been okay so far. Theres only been one FML night i've had here and it was coming home drunk one night alone and thinking way too much. But everyone knows alcohol is a depressant as it is.
I find the key to staying sane for me has been the company of those around me, appreciation for little things and a steady schedule.
During the week I have classes from 8:40 till 12:15 here at this school. On Monday and Wednesday nights I have chinese classes. Wednesday afternoon, Friday evening and some weekends I do extra work for other schools around the city. In between all of this I am marking, creating lesson plans or keeping in touch with friends from home.
On weekends the teachers usually all get together, we are like a big family.
2 weekends ago I got to play my first show in China at a bar called Wuhan Prison, which is a really awesome little indie/folk bar in Wuchang. They put me headlining the show without even hearing me play and all the teachers came out to watch as well as a bunch of Chinese people. I borrowed someones guitar and played about 8 songs, including some of my own. They all loved it. I had the chinese people all singing wonderwall at the end and it was really great to be playing and doing what I love again.
Last weekend two of the teachers (who got engaged here in China) hosted a chili night at their apartment. It was amazing to taste western food again! There was grated cheese and garlic bread and Franks red hot sauce. I was in heaven. Like I said, being in China makes you appreciate the little things so much more. Like great friends and great food, something that seems to go unappreciated sometimes back home. But when your on the other side of the world every little moment like that you cherish, like when I had poutine and Moosehead in Shanghai and toasted Canada. Every little thing.
This week we get paid and I plan on doing a little shopping. I'm going to finally buy a guitar as well as some new clothes, as Wuhan has become terribly cold and I only brought one sweater. Although I can imagine the snow is starting to roll in back home in Canada. I told my students the size of the snowbanks in Canada and they seemed terrified. If anyone wants to send me pictures to show my kids of our snow-ridden landscape that would be cool.
Also feel free to leave comments so I know people are actually reading these!
Love and miss you all,
Corey
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