I've been too busy to blog on a daily basis, but there's been enough interesting stuff going on to recap it here today.
Sunday 9/18:
Woke up early to take Lady Susu to the train station. She's heading back to Hunan for a couple weeks. Sean and I were pretty nervous that the apartment would implode and I would starve without her. Fortunately, I've stayed alive long enough to write this post. We'll meet back up over the National Holiday (10/1-10/7) in Guilin, somewhere between a winding river and beautiful mountains.
Came back and watched Bridesmaids with Sean and Ellie (a British girl who works in a school in Pu Dong). Really really funny movie by the way. See the unrated version, Kristen Wiig is fantastic at awkward/make-you-squirm comedy. Made me break out the booze a little earlier than I intended.
Jimmy - my best Shanghainese friend - came over and we went and played basketball for a couple hours. Afterwards, I hit up the street market to get Jimmy the fixings for 宫保鸡丁 (Gong Bao Ji Ding, Kung Pao Chicken). Sean cooked up tomatoes and eggs for the first time, Ellie fried some cabbage, and we finished off the leftovers from what Susu and I had cooked up the night before (when I made my dad's special New Orleans Garlic Shrimp). First successful post-Susu meal. Woohoo!
Monday 9/19:
A full day of classes with some of my better kids, nothing too notable there. Then it was cooking time.
A little background. For the past few weeks, I had been preparing for Susu's eventual departure by helping out in the kitchen. Mostly washing, chopping, skinning, mixing ingredients, etc. But once the food was in the wok, it was her show. Sean is a visual learner, so he would watch and was already starting to make his own mean noodle dish. I'm more hands on, so I had the preparation on lock down, but once the food got into the wok, I was a little panicked. The first time I tossed food in the air to mix it, half ended up on the floor... I haven't tried again since.
Sean and my first independent meal was carmelized onions and eggs (him) and chicken, peppers, and green beans (mine) plus leftover kung pao chicken. He nailed his dish, and mine was edible, if a little bland. We both survived.
Tuesday 9/20:
Long day at school. First two classes were loud and crazy. Third class was my good international class; a bunch of kids from America, Canada and Hong Kong (all of Chinese descent), so that's always fun. Fourth class is the opposite; a bunch of kids who all speak two languages, neither of which are English (such as French, Japanese, Thai, or German). But I get to teach using my Mandarin, so that's fun for me. My last class was my Senior I class, which means they are three years older than all of my other classes (who are Junior I), and instead of being crazy and loud, they are just quiet. I got two people to speak all class, so I just made them write papers - which means I have grading to do. I've got to do some work to get them speaking for this "Oral English" class.
But we had Chinese class after-school, which put me in good spirits.
Tuesday night, Sean cooked up his noodle dish and I cooked pork, onions, and hot peppers. A noted improvement from the night before.
Wednesday 9/21:
My easiest day, school wise, with only four classes. With maybe my best kids in my final two classes of the day. Feelin' good.
We go to a banquet with all the other foreign teachers, the foreign language Chinese teachers, the vice principal, and his friend a former dean from Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. A lot more fun than last year's banquet (which was in a hotel), this year we went to a sweet restaurant in the French Concession.
We go around and introduce ourselves before the ex-dean talks a little bit about how the VP founded our school. Apparently he didn't like the lack of appreciation for other cultures and languages in Shanghai, so he founded the Shanghai Foreign Language School. I know the VP a bit - we play basketball on Fridays together - but I didn't really know his story. So I asked him the question that can get most Chinese people talking: 你是哪里人？(ni shi na li ren, literally: you are where person? English: where are you from?)
He was born and raised until the age of 11 in Xi'An. He told us about how emotional Xi'An people are; there is a phrase that goes something like "when one Xi'An person meets another, their eyes are wet," and some funny experiences from that. Then his family moved out west to a more Muslim-dominated part of China. He talked about having friends and neighbors who were Muslim and not eating pork out of respect for their religion (not clear whether this is ongoing or not). He was one of the most cultured people I've met here in China; in addition to speaking Mandarin, Xi'An language (Xi'Anese?), and Shanghainese, he also speaks English well and apparently some French and Japanese. He's not bad at basketball and badminton either.
The free flowing beer and wine had reached the breaking point, so it was singing time. One Russian lady sang a folk song, which was the most beautiful I've ever heard the Russian language used (no offense to Russians, the language can be a bit harsh). She told us that the song is about a woman waiting for her husband to return home from war, but he dies and never arrives. Sounds Russian to me. Jean, our French teacher, sings a quick beautiful, romantic French song. Sakimoto, the Japanese teacher, sings a fun song, which got everyone clapping... but never quite at the same time as him (he's a riot). Then it was the Americans turn.
Sean Skinner (our school added a second foreign English teacher named Sean for confusion's sake) and I volunteered to sing but realized we had forgotten the words to America the Beautiful and This Land is Your Land, and we both thought the Star Spangled Banner was too long and excessive compared with the other teachers' songs. So we settled on God Bless America, which either one of us would have butchered, but we corrected each other as we went along to salvage the tune (I'm not a huge fan of the song ever since the Yankees started using it to ice Pedro's arm during the 7th inning stretch. But that's what I get for forgetting the other songs I guess).
All-in-all a great day and a great night.
Thursday 9/22:
Worst day of school all week. I had seven classes, including my three worst ones. Just before my sixth class, while I'm feeling exhausted, a little boy fires the chalkboard eraser at a kid in the front row (point blank range), but misses and hits a little girl in the head, sending her to the clinic. WTF. There were some bright spots during that class, but that's my most hellish class.
Then I had to miss my Chinese lesson to give an extra class to my good international class (so the Chinese English teacher could give an extra class to the remedial international class). I had them play a game and everyone had fun.
Can't remember what Sean and I cooked that night... but I vaguely remember it being good.
Then we went out to Trivia Night at Bulldog Shanghai. Sean and my team finished second, thanks to our buddy Jack correctly identifying a teenage photo of Vladimir Putin. If I'm there next Thursday (I may leave on my vacation early), our group gets free champagne!
Friday 9/23:
No school today! I had my first Chinese writing course with the lady who teaches my Tuesday/Thursday class through our school. Since I wrote about 60-70 characters over the summer with the help of the internet, she was impressed by my basic knowledge of stroke order. So I'm moving fast.
I need this in order to pass the HSK, which is the Chinese equivalent of the TOEFL. If I do well enough on that test, I can study or work in China, or translate between English and Chinese anywhere in the world. From everything I've heard, it's a daunting test. But what's the point in knowing just a little Chinese?
Afterwards, I went to the gym to play basketball, but arrived to find that they were going to play volleyball instead. No problem! After shaking off some rust, I was probably the second best player on our team. I played really well up front, but getting digs was a little tougher. I thought I had mastered it until this one woman kept serving to me with ridiculous topspin. No matter what I did, the ball spun back over my head after I hit it. Finally she hit it out-of-bounds, but that was a big difference when we lost 24-26. Lots of fun though, I hope to play again soon.
That night, we went to Jack's for potluck night. We've done a couple of these recently, where we get a group of people and everyone brings or cooks a dish. Sean did his tomato and egg dish and Ellie did cooked up cabbage again (Brits love their cabbage). I cooked up pork, peppers, and tofu. Jack bought pizza (pretty good actually, but I still funny). A delicious dinner!
We went out and met up with some folks at a small bar called The Rhumerie -- they make their own rum. Enough said.
Saturday 9/24:
Woke up and talked online with Susu, and she gave me the photos from Huang Shan and my birthday party. So I should have a post coming up with pictures one or both of those events in it. Hooray!
New Sean (the one who isn't my roommate) and Jimmy come over and the four of us play basketball for a couple hours. We win three of four games.
Kind of a lazy day punctuated by an early, but overdue, sleep.
And that's my week. I believe it's always better to be busy than idle, so this was a good week all things considered.
I'll try to get at least one more in before Guilin next week,
Stephen Scuba Lauer
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