Is this a trick?

I have not had access to wordpress.com for a solid five days. When I typed it in to my browser, the page took too long to load, and then gave me a “Connection timed out” message, which is code here for: aw hell no, sucka! So I did some research via PCworld.com and was about to download something to help me circumvent my problem with the internet po po, as many bloggers have done before me. Before I did this, I checked wordpress.com one last time. And all of the sudden, it was accessible again. The same sort of thing happened with youtube.com. When we first arrived, we could get it. It’s currently blocked, which is annoying. But perhaps it will be back again.

Today is Halloween. I have been dining profusely on the chocolate mother lode my family kindly sent in the mail. I’m in paradise: Peanut M&M’s, 3 Musketeers, Twix, 1000 Grand-they sent the works. There goes any perceived weight I’ve lost from cutting out dairy and wine! I don’t care; chocolate is always worth it.

I also ate pumpkin today, which is as close as I got to carving one. I call the dish pumpkin fries and wish I knew its Chinese name-something like ean huang guanan, which I’m sure is spelled completely wrong. The pumpkin in this dish is cut into strips, like french fries. The strips are tossed in egg and salt and then fried. Mark hates it; I love it. It is sweet and salty at the same time. However, the combination of chocolate and pumpkin fries is not sitting well in my stomach, as you might imagine. Not much is these days. And I’ll stop there!

As I teach, I often have a strange, disembodied feeling, like the words coming out of my mouth are not mine, but those of some wildly geeky imposter. Working people everywhere must experience the same duality, that between their “Work” and “Home” selves (Or I’m just crazy, which is entirely possible also). When your Work-self is giving a presentation, for example, perhaps your Home-self is making fun of Work-self profusely and wishing they could both just watch a movie and get drunk together instead. My Home-ju, who can be really bitchy, by the way, rolls her eyes a lot at the Work-ju counterpart. Such was the case last night, when I explained Devil’s Night and Halloween to my oral English class. Home-ju listened to Work-ju’s explanation of Halloween and determined that it sounded completely absurd. Especially when Work-ju said, “Devil’s night is for tricks, Halloween is for treats.” Who talks like that? Why don’t you just go put on a vest brightly adorned with cross-stitched pumpkins and ghosts? Home-ju is really a smart ass sometimes.

Well, anyway… I then said that, “In poor communities, Devil’s Night hi-jinks can be a real problem. Youngsters sometimes light buildings on fire and shoot guns.” I paused. Great. They already think America is violent. What have I done? “But, this is not common,” I tried to recover. Then I explained less sinister Halloween rituals: bobbing for apples, children dressing up in costumes, Trick-or-treating, and carving pumpkins. It all sounded so bizarre. I suppose most traditions sound this way, out of the context of their own culture. Just as I sound strange to myself, in this new strange, territory, that of “teacher.”

I found Chinese Sugarhill Gang, find gold

To emphasize intonation and pronunciation, I turned my oral English night class into the Chinese Sugarhill Gang.

I took it back to the old school, Rapper’s Delight style. Their eyes widened when I told them the rap they were about to learn was older than they are, and even older than me. “How old?” they asked. “It came out in 1979,” I told them. Their murmurs of disbelief indicated that 1979 equated to ancient, mysterious times. I asked in what years were they born, and found out one of my students was born in 1991! Depressed, I continued the lesson.

Here is what they learned:

now what you hear is not a test–i’m rappin to the beat
and me, the groove, and my friends are gonna try to move your feet
see i am wonder mike and i like to say hello
to the black, to the white, the red, and the brown, the purple and yellow
but first — i gotta bang bang the boogie to the boogie
say up jump the boogie to the bang bang boogie
let’s rock, you don’t stop
rock the riddle that will make your body rock
well so far youve heard my voice but i brought two friends along
and next on the mike is my man hank
come on, hank, sing that song

In other news, Mark and I think we found the exact spot where we would like to get married. Here is a hint: There’s gold in them thar hills! More on the locale later.

Here is the deal: We want a super small family wedding in California wine country, and then a casual, fun party for our extended circles back in the Chicago area, sometime in the late summer/early fall of ‘08. The latter would be a rowdy wedding blessing of sorts that will probably end up migrating to a place called Last Chance Saloon. We’ve been to several of these blessing affairs, and had an absolute blast each time. It’s a little unconventional, but, hey, so are we. I think if we can drop everything and move to China, then we will be able to plan a destination wedding from China. My family has already been extremely helpful, although I know they aren’t completely sold on Cali. I don’t blame them. Our initial research in Napa and Sonoma counties yielded venues that were grossly overpriced. Well, I suppose if I were a Vanderbilt descendent or a DAR member, and my fiance was some sort of investment banker, we’d find them reasonable. How discouraging! My mom and I have been doing overtime on Google to find an affordable, interesting venue.

So, back to the ideal spot. I found it online while Googling Amador County, California, at my friend Leslie’s suggestion. (BTW, read her blog) Amador County is near Lake Tahoe. It’s considered wine country, but without the name recognition of Napa and Sonoma. The place I found in Amador is a 145-year old spot called The St. George Hotel. It is in Volcano, California: population 100, at the base of the Sierra Nevada foothills.

Mark and I love what we’ve seen and read of the place. It exudes genuine charm,  interesting history and quirkiness, rather than elegance. A few words on elegance: I hate elegance. That is not to say that I don’t appreciate elegance, for instance, the beauty of elegant events, such as that found in others‘ weddings, or in a beautiful painting. But personally, I despise it. It fits me like womens’ jeans in China fit me: uncomfortably (too tight on my corn-and-milk-fed ass). Furthermore, elegance has no humor, and no room for mistakes. Mark and I both prefer rustic charm, though he wouldn’t be caught dead saying the phrase “rustic charm.” Within a day of being engaged, he said to me, “Julie, don’t make me wear a tux.” We are both haters of formality. I understood.

The St. George Hotel had me at “Whiskey Flat Saloon.” Its rooms have names like “Hell’s Delight” and “You bet.” If our families were to travel here for our wedding, we could together pan for gold, spelunk and tour wineries. Yes, this is the place we’d like to get hitched.

 

Later that night

Mark and I returned from the Great Wall engaged and ready to celebrate. We did not know that Saturday night would include the media and Chinese good fellas and a cultural lesson in VIP-couch etiquette.It started off normally enough. We went out to dinner at our favorite spot, which we call the Red Eagle. I’ll give you one guess as to why.

We tried to order a bottle of wine from our waitress friend, but got…something else. It was indeed wine, we found out later. Chinese wine. It is clear, and has a smell that alone could get you smashed. It tastes like liquor and burns. We tried but didn’t drink it, opting for a beer instead. We ate this wonderful dish called tu dou ji ding. (too doe chi dian) Except, you know, with accents and tones and things. It is chicken with potato and green pepper, and our top dish at the moment.

Then, it was off to a concert with pal Stone and his friends Brian and Zoey. Those are their English names; almost all the Chinese students who study English choose one for themselves. We took a cab ride (for 66 cents!) to a little bar situated under an ‘08 Olympic soccer stadium in Qinhuangdao. I was massively entertained by the bands, especially a little punk group who call themselves Canvas. The drummer is only 17 and looks 12.

VIP areas are as lame in China as they are in the US. We sat down on one such lame pleather VIP couch and struck up a conversation with some of the locals. They turned out to be the local TV station. “Can you do an interview?” they asked, cameras already in our faces. Always ready for a camera, I obliged, profusely praising the acts, etc. I called Mark my fiance for the first time on camera. Reporter: Have you been to a show like this? Ju: No, I’ve never been to a metal show, but my fiance, Mark has.

Later, as we sat on the couch an employee asked us to move, as there were actual VIPs coming in. We hopped up and continued to watch the show. The same employee was back moments later, shoving beers our way. I got out some cash, thinking I had somehow ordered them. No, these are on the house. It was a mistake to ask you to move, the employee told us.

We sat back down. Perhaps a half hour later, a dozen men who could only be described as a Chinese version of Good Fellas characters arrived. Thick fingered, well-dressed, and stone-faced, they looked intimidating despite the fact that they did shots of Budweiser of all things. We voided the VIP couch and slid out of their way. Not a minute later, the same employee was giving us two more beers, compliments of the party on the couch, who were grateful we gave up our seats for them.

VIP areas may be equally lame in US and China, but the Middle Kingdom has a leg up on bar courtesy.

Great Wall surprise

Mark and I are one step closer to living in bliss instead of sin! That’s right – my boyfriend popped the question this Saturday, Oct. 20. We are really happy and having fun rotating the word “fiance” into our daily lives. The ring was my grandma’s; my gramps gave it to her in the 40s before they eloped. I can’t wait to be married to my sidekick.

I’m not going to lie. I feared that my first reaction when Mark proposed would be an inappropriately sassy, “Like, finally. Ugh!” We’ve been dating for a rather long time, you see. But instead, genuine happiness shone through when Mark said, “Jus, you’re my best friend and my best girl. Will you marry me?”

We had been sitting on a cliff covered with wildflowers (or were they weeds? eh, who cares!) and trees. The Bohai Sea expanded beyond the trees to the front of us; the Great Wall of China curved to touch the sea in the background.

Earlier, we’d taken a bus to downtown Qinhuangdao. There, we ate at McDonald’s. This may seem unromantic to some, but you just don’t know how bad you’ve got it for Mickey D’s until it’s the only well-done American-style food for 100 miles. We savored our burger and fries, fish sandwich, McNuggets AND sundae with the vigor of a thousand bulemics. Except we relished the hundreds of grams of fat and thousands of calories with no guilt or purge. Eating disorder jokes aside, McDonalds was amazing!

High on carbs and sweet, sweet transfattastical grease, we caught a cab toward Shanghaiguan, a little town on the sea. Old Dragon Head, the mythic origin/conclusion of the Great Wall at the sea’s edge, is 4 km south of here. There is a tourist area at Old Dragon Head where you can walk on the wall. We had read that this section of the wall was reconstructed in the 80s, and Mark pondered if we would see any aqua and pink accents. We didn’t.  If I wanted to walk on something made in the 80s, I could have just told Mark to lie on the ground.  And so, skipping the admission charge (which was pricey by local standards at over $5 US ea. Even the Forbidden City was only $6), we instead hiked on a little path to the left until we found an opening in the wall to the beach.

We were so glad we did. We saw a couple taking wedding pictures and locals hunting for cockles in the low tide. There were only Chinese here; no other foreigners. We were happy not to be hounded by vendors. Only one man inquired if we would like to ride a horse, and another woman offered us shell jewelry. We walked on the beach, hopped around the tide pools and climbed some rock formations. Mark took a seat next to some local cockle-hunters (mollusk collectors) who were taking a break on a big hunk of granite and feigned fatigue. They were infinitely entertained by this. We followed another couple around a rusting gate and tried to sneak in to the tourist-trap part of the wall, but a guard waved us off and we ran away like naughty little children. Then we scampered up a steep cliff to hike through the trees at the base of the wall facing the sea. Mark popped the question while we sat down to rest on a dirt path there.

Safety Violations by the VP of Safety

My nickname is the Safety Inspector. I’m always on the look out for a violation, for instance, freaking out in Mexico when I thought my boyfriend and his brother-in-laws were swimming in ocean water that looked too deep, and was surely teeming with sharks! I am actually a junior inspector; my sister, Laura, is senior. When staying in a hotel in Chicago, for example, she feared putting Anna in the living room, because it was close to the door. And what if someone broke in and took the baby! She sees the safety violations no one else does. I learned young: as children, she would order the entire family into the basement at the hint of a storm warning or tornado watch. She is President Safety; I am her VP. But I’ve been violating my code of conduct lately in China, a land teeming with a whole new breed of violations. “Just look at these floors!” I told Mark. We had a good laugh at the lack of safety in the building where we teach. The floors there were freshly mopped. Half the lights were out, which is typical. It was a slip-and-fall waiting to happen, and there wasn’t a “Watch your step” warning in sight. Crossing the road is hazardous to one’s life here. It’s as simple as this: they are not going to stop for you. Traffic is food-chain oriented. A bus will cut off a van, a van a car, a car a pedi-cab, a pedi-cab a motorcycle, a motorcycle a scooter, a scooter a bicycle and a bicycle a pedestrian. All are swerving to avoid each other all the time, and honking as loudly and frequently as possible.
Despite my eagle eye and precautionary measures, I managed to break a decent amount of my own rules.

1. On a train trip to Beijing, I stuck my head out the window when we were parked at a station. A millisecond after I sat back down, a bullet train whizzed by and scared the heck out of me. OK, so it wouldn’t have taken my head….but typically, sticking one’s head out of train windows is just not that smart.

2. I walked into a pole while walking the streets of Beijing, with my neck craned like a stupid tourist. Not only is it a.) dumb to look like a tourist, but b.) whilst in Beijing, one really really needs to watch their step (see #3). The pole that I struck with my shin was low to the ground and meant to keep cars from driving on the sidewalks, which they do in Qinhuangdao, all the time, while honking at pedestrians.

3. While not paying attention to where my feet were going ,again, I nearly stepped on some live wires, which were laying in the middle of a busy sidewalk in Beijing.

4. Mark and I felt utterly lost at the Beijing train station. We asked a man if he spoke English, because we couldn’t find the right terminal. He shook his head yes. I handed him my tickets for inspection, and he seemed to swear at us in Chinese and shoved them back at us. I then realized this guy was probably looking for idiots like us in order to make off with some free tickets. He could have disappeared into the crowd in, like, two seconds. Luckily, we were in the wrong terminal. He didn’t want to go to Qinhuangdao. Lesson: never hand a stranger anything of value. Duh.

 

America the violent?

 I teach two-hour oral English class twice a week. After a riveting lesson on modal verbs of probability fell flat (It must have sucked) I decided to do “fun” activity: Four Corners. In it, I tell students which corner of the room represents each judgment: agree, disagree, somewhat agree and somewhat disagree. I make a statement and they walk to the corner of the room that correlates to their opinion. Then I crack my whip and make them share it. I like to make obnoxious statements, like “America is the best country in the world.” All of them disagreed or somewhat disagreed, mostly citing gun violence, such as in campus shootings. One student suggested our laws for murder weren’t tough enough, perhaps this is why we shoot each other all the time. Maybe we need laws that are more strict, more capital punishment. Another offered diplomatically, “I don’t think any country is the best country. Each country has problems, and good things. Each country is different.” Another student said, “America is the only true supernation.”

At the beginning of class, I tried to get a discussion going about student life. Like most of my discussion activities, it failed miserably. Eh, but I learned a few things. For instance, I asked, “I have read that students do not want to answer in class because they are afraid that making a mistake will cause them to lose face. Is this true?” After a few moments of awkward silence (will I ever learn?), I called on a student, who told me, “I don’t think that students fear losing face. They do not want to appear too eager, or to make other students look bad.”

Gina (her English name) a Chinese friend from the English department, does believe students fear losing face. Here is how she (wisely) dealt with it today. She assigned homework for her class: to memorize a catchy English movie line. When a lone girl volunteered to demonstrate the line, it came out as shrill, high pitched, and the entire class laughed at her, upsetting the volunteer. Gina told the class, “Thank goodness she made a mistake. If we all spoke perfect English, we would not learn. Now, who else can show me they are brave enough to make a mistake today?” Slowly, hands went up.

Relationship Games

We had lunch with Gina, a new friend from the English department, at a tiny side alley restaurant. There, we had a dish called Over the Bridge noodles. She played a few relationship games with Mark and I. Here they are:

She gave us a scenario: It is raining and there is a knock at the door. The baby is crying. The faucet is running. The clothes are outside hanging in the rain. And then the phone rings. How would you resolve this chaos?

Here is my answer: I get the baby and turn off the faucet. I answer the door (with an umbrella, of course!), answer the phone, and grab the laundry.

Mark’s answer: He answers the door, gets the baby, turns off the faucet, grabs the laundry, and answers the phone.

What our answers mean: Baby symbolizes family. Faucet symbolizes money management. Answering the door symbolizes friends. Phone symbolizes career. Clothes symbolize affairs.

The order in which we calm the chaos represents our priorities. Looks like I’ll be handling the cash. Scary!

The next scenario: You have two eggs, one cooked, one raw. Where would you choose to store each egg? A tree, water, or in the ground.

Mark said he would bury both eggs. I put the raw egg in the water and the cooked egg in the tree. Analysis: The raw egg symbolizes you before you are married. The cooked egg, you after you are married. Apparently, Mark’s choice to bury both eggs in the ground means he won’t change. The ground means you will follow your heart.

Putting the raw egg in the water means that before getting married, I am like a little girl, who craves comfort. Putting the cooked egg in the tree means that I will have high expectations for my spouse. Interesting!

First month in China

My boyfriend, Mark, and I arrived in Qinhuangdao, China a month ago. (Say it with me: Chin-hwong-dow) We left Chicago to rendezvous with my family in Michigan over folk songs and gallons of red wine. The next day, we drove to Detroit Metro, flew to Toronto, and then landed in Beijing in roughly 20 hours later. Our red wine hangovers had faded, but we were drunk as hell on lack of sleep and jetlag when we arrived. It was 4 a.m. where we were, but 4 p.m. in China, and we’d hardly slept. We found our contact, Henry, after some panic, stuffed our overpacked bags into a tiny black Audi and shot out of the underbelly of Beijing International Airport. Hello, China! Watch out for that…(fill in blank)! Our driver cut off everyone in site. Trucks, cars, semis…it really didn’t matter. I reach for a seatbelt and found none. And then, thankfully, succumbed to sleep.

Since that moment, a month packed with plenty of adjustment and confusion has passed. It was something like this:

We love it here. No, we miss pancakes. Did someone just hawk a glop of lougie on the floor by my foot? I want to hug my niece! Beijing is the most interesting place on earth. Are those fried mice? Watch out for that bus! I want to learn to speak Chinese! Oh no you didn’t. I’m tired. Let’s stay up and watch pirated DVDs all night. I thought this tea was caffeine free! No? Oh. Oops.

I tried to start a blog a few weeks earlier, with no luck. I am not sure if WordPress works all the time here, or if my posts will be blocked by the other Great (fire)Wall. I hope I’m not wasting my time as I type this. I hope to keep up with friends and family. Much has happened and much is new. I keep track of all of this in my journal, ala the 7th grade, all boring details and slight injustices included. And so, this is a filtered version of my experience here, ’cause you really don’t want to know about my stomach problems (or do you, sicko?) I’m going to keep most complaints to myself.

Besides the stomach probs, and those have been slight (no, really!) Mark and I have had an interesting and enjoyable time so far. School started at the beginning of September, but we arrived late, Sept. 20.

Here is why:

We came later in the school year because we were told initially that we would teach all frosh. The frosh all march and learn military stuff for the first month of school. When we arrived, we found our schedule actually includes freshman to juniors. Other American teachers (there are five) covered for us until we arrived in late Sept. As you can see, it is important to be flexible and ready for surprises, because things change quickly and without warning. Luckily, Mark and I are both this way. An inflexible person might avoid teaching ESL in China, because that type just might implode…(assuming it is like this at other institutions, which I don’t know).

Mark and I each teach 12 curriculum hours. We started teaching our full schedules last week, beginning Oct. 8 after the National Day week-long holiday. I also teach two oral English classes at night that students pay extra for, so I teach a big 16 hours per week. I teach special English for computer and international trade majors, and freshman listening. There are almost no resources for the foreign teachers here, so Mark and I are doing the best we can. I write on the chalkboard. A lot. As I have a habit of wearing lots of black, I am often coated in white powder by the end of class, like a sloppy crack head. To help with lesson plans, we signed up for the internet. It costs about $8 US per month.

Today, I taught my international trade majors about negotiation, using terms Mark pilfered online from MIT. They learned terms and styles, and then did an activity that Mark made up. In it, they negotiated shipment terms between two companies, a manufacturer in China and a Jeans company in the US. The first part of the activity flopped, because I made the groups (Company A and Company B) too big, so not all students were negotiating. The students are very respectful, but honest. If something is not going well, or you aren’t teaching them what they want, they’ll tell you, but they typically preface their suggestion with a compliment. Also, they always make these suggestions one-on-one. Never in front of the whole class. I like the feedback. Unfortunately, students’ accents are sometimes so thick I can hardly understand their suggestions. A girl today told me (I think) that the activity was good, but why did the manufacturer have to be from China? Or maybe she said something else. I told her that we would try different scenarios, this was just one. And that I would make the groups smaller. Problem (probably not) solved.

The next scenario I made up on the fly as they were negotiating the first one, which didn’t take as long as I thought. This scenario involved the City of Chicago vs. Union 123. City of Chicago wanted to employ the union to complete a one-year expressway project, but the two entities disagreed over salary, health insurance and the project timeline. I made the groups smaller, three vs. three. This time, the students really went at it. Sparks flew. Emotions ran high. When they ran out of English words to use, they spouted off gawd knows what in Chinese, until I yelled, “English only!” like the taskmaster I am pretending to be. Not a single group could decide on salary; only one group settled health insurance. Welcome to American-style union negotiations! Wee!