Last night was our first (of two) ALWAYS Halloween parties. It coincided with English Corner, so I did it as two one-hour "lessons." I had them watch the "This is Halloween" clip from The Nightmare Before Christmas, read them the story of Bloody Mary (Betty translated line by line as I read), had them make simple masks out of paper and taught them to demand, "TRICK OR TREAT!" and gave them some candy. The second Halloween party will be on Tuesday and involves no "classes," so I have no idea what to expect! I'll keep my mp4 of the whole 13 minute "Thriller" video at the ready.
Happy Halloween from us and Reeves! Reeves would like to spend next Halloween in his forever home. So, please share this picture of him in his tiger ears (it's also on Facebook). Last night was our first (of two) ALWAYS Halloween parties. It coincided with English Corner, so I did it as two one-hour "lessons." I had them watch the "This is Halloween" clip from The Nightmare Before Christmas, read them the story of Bloody Mary (Betty translated line by line as I read), had them make simple masks out of paper and taught them to demand, "TRICK OR TREAT!" and gave them some candy. The second Halloween party will be on Tuesday and involves no "classes," so I have no idea what to expect! I'll keep my mp4 of the whole 13 minute "Thriller" video at the ready. Tonight we'll be going out with some of the other foreigners. Have a safe and fun Halloween, you guys! What are you "being" this year?
Many of the best primary and secondary schools in the city are directly linked to Shandong University. ALWAYS runs programs with some of these schools (like they do with the No. 14 Middle School), so I went over to a kindergarten last night to teach a one hour lesson on animal vocabulary. I taught "horse, cow, elephant and tiger" to the wee kiddos. I had been told that I was going to have 40 4-5 year old students, so I was very relieved when it turned out that I only had 19. 18, if you consider that one little girl wanted nothing to do with the scary foreigner and simply cried to her main teacher the whole time. It was good fun, though if I'm being honest, I wasn't stoked to go to work on my day off. Oh well, ALWAYS is trying to be helpful by making sure I have enough hours to stay in my full time pay bracket. The kindergarten looked similar to American ones for the most part, save the crib room and trough bathroom set up: Here's me doing a TPR (Total Physical Response) vocab exercise with the kids. I used this to get them ready for some of the other study games we would play in which they would need to know the animal motions. I didn't want to use the sounds because for kids this little, it would have been a bit confusing ("Which one was the name and which one was the sound again?!?"). The video is blurry because there's something wrong with the file. I wanted to show you my TPR warm up also, but it wouldn't upload to YouTube. I hope it's just a fluke and there's nothing wrong with the camera. By the way, Reeves is doing really well. His back is getting stronger and he's swing his back legs underneath him when he scoots. He's also independently putting weight on his right rear leg (though he's not strong enough to extend it yet). He's super food motivated, so once he's more mobile, he'll be really easy to more formally train. Keep getting the word out there, folks! I appreciate all the help I've gotten so far. I'm going to try to take some Halloween themed pictures of him tomorrow to put up, so look forward to that!
Uff da! It's been a long two days. Reeves is great. He's a good boy. I'm especially impressed with how well he did with our long days on Saturday and Sunday. But, no matter how well behaved a new furry member of the family is, they take up a bit of your time. And, so, our schedule today and yesterday looked like this: 5:30am- Get up and (between the two of us) get Reeves pottied, "walked," fed and his bed flushed and dressed 7:30am- Leave for school Lunch (starts between 11am and 12pm)- Come home to let Reeves out, feed him,take care of his sore and give him a bone and to also eat lunch ourselves before returning to school at 1:30pm 8:15pm- Finish work, go to the store and come home, let Reeves out, feed him and redress his sore 9:30pm- Eat dinner, play on the internet and watch tv 11:30pm- Go to bed It's exhausting, but it's so nice having Reeves around. It's great having some purpose outside of work. Living without animals is pretty much an impossibility for Ian and I, so he's doing us as much of a favor as we're doing him. We give him a bone in the afternoon when we're leaving for our second round of teaching to give him something to do. But, he's a social eater, so he doesn't really touch it until we're home with him in the evening. His forever home will have to be one where the people are relatively available to him. He needs the presence of people to be happy. If you're looking for a companion pup, Reeves would be a good choice. This week in our Sticker 4 classes (kids around seven years old) we were talking about getting sick (headache, stomachache, fever, doctor, etc.) , so we showed them the Yo Gabba Gabba clip with Anthony Bourdain as "Doctor Tony." I teach Sticker 4 about five or six times over the course of the weekend, so the song is ricocheting around my brain. "You know we're talking 'bout the doctor, doctor!" and DJ Lance's line, "He can fix you, give you a tissue!" are on repeat between my ears. You may have seen it (Ian posted it on Facebook on Friday), but if you want to check it out, here it is. The way Bourdain delivers his last line cracks me up every time. This is Reeves, a temporary member of our family while he recovers from being hit by a car. He's had severe trauma to his back end, so we're working on getting him walking again. Right now he scoots about or we help him by holding up his back rear half with a rolled sheet. We should be getting some therapy wheels for him to use (fingers crossed). He's pretty determined to get about, so I have a lot of confidence in his outlook. He's a real love, too. He smiles and pants when you give him affection and he's fond of gently licking hands, noses and toes. As soon as he's recovered, he'll be available for adoption through the Jinan Yellow River Animal Shelter. International adoption is the goal here, so don't be afraid to fall in love with him. Transport is possible and we can make it happen for you.
So, why "Reeves"? His namesake is Christopher Reeve (altered to "Reeves" by my knack of messing up names). Christopher Reeve was largely famous for his role as Superman, but after suffering a spinal cord injury he used his fame to lobby for people with similar injuries and to push for stem cell research. In short, he was an advocate. With that spirit in mind, I decided upon "Reeves" for our little friend because I'm hoping he'll be an advocate for his fellows here in China. The animal shelter that I'm working with is desperate for an international adoption program. And, with Reeves as my wingman, I'm going to do my darndest to get them headed in that direction. Don't worry, there will be far more pictures of this little dude to gaze upon. And please share our pictures and posts. You are a big piece of this puzzle, for without networking we won't reach our goal. We don't know a lot about Reeves or even how old he is (maybe 2?), but I know he needs a loving forever home and that he will make someone a super companion. Heh, heh, get it? Mondays are like Ian and my Saturdays. It's our only true day off because we spend the rest of the week planning and teaching evening classes (well, Ian has most of the evening work). We don't always make the best of our free day, but yesterday was great. We hit the gym and then met up with our CET ("Chinese English Teacher" at ALWAYS) friend, Betty for some general hanging out. We went to Five Dragon Spring park and then had a late lunch. Betty's super fun to be around and her English is fantastic; I'm happy that we're able to hang out outside of work. The Five Dragon Spring/ Pool has a pretty cool mythology attached to it. It's said to have formed after a downpour submerged the home of Qin Qiong. Also, the spring comes from the deepest of the area's aquifers and local legend states that one cannot reach the bottom because the five magical dragons reside in the depths. After wandering the park we went to a little restaurant near city center. There were only two other patrons there, two drunk young men. They greeted us and coerced Ian into taking a shot with them. They were incredibly loud, so the three of us were joking about how alcohol "goes to your head." Well, one of the guys spoke enough English to catch little bits of what we were saying. He accused (first in Chinese, then in English for our benefit) Betty of giving us misinformation about Chinese wine culture. It turns out that Betty is pretty scrappy and not one to let something like that pass. The two of them had a heated exchanged and then we all attempted to return to our meals. Suddenly, the guys' tempers flared (for no obvious reason to the non Chinese speakers) and one of them got up, stood next to our table in a wrestling stance and nonsensically roared "ARE YOU READY?" at us. Betty held up her phone and (I assume) threatened to call the cops. The restaurant owners, an older husband and wife, came in and tried to get them to settled down. We decided to move our meal upstairs. A few minutes later, Betty told us she could hear the men telling the owners that they just wanted to talk to us. Sure enough, they showed up at the dividing door asking to come in (in English). They told Betty that they just wanted to explain and she unenthusiastically obliged. He basically just repeated that Chinese wine culture "is really nice," since he mistakenly believed that Betty had said something to the contrary. We all just nodded and said okay hoping to end the ordeal. In the end, they left before us, so we didn't have to deal with them again. It was pretty strange and definitely only happened to Betty because she was with us. I felt bad. The three of us parted ways because Betty had to meet up with a man she has no interest in dating, but a student's parent is attempting to set her up with. Ian and I had no other plans, so we decided to see a movie. We saw "Now You See Me." It was alright, but probably not something we would have paid to see stateside. The concessions aren't super strange (no squid like in Korea), but I noticed that moviegoers were allowed to bring in their own snacks without hiding them in their bags. The popcorn is caramel flavored (all the popcorn here is sweet) and mini Oreos seem to be the other main attraction. They were also selling bottles of Strawberry and Grape Sunkist along with fountain Pepsi products. We had assigned seats (which we've experienced in every other country besides America). And all the folks were super quiet in the theater and no one used their cell phones during the movie (just like in Korea and markedly different from the US and Prague). People pay $10 (US) for a ticket, so it's probably good that they actually watch the film. I guess you can buy them cheaper online, which we'll do next time. Or we'll go on Tuesday, which is half priced. Ian and I also got some drinks at a sweet shop while we were there. When Ian and I got to the gym this morning, they didn't have his bike yet. We were a little disappointed, but they told us that it would be there in the evening (so we could have picked it up before work). But, it actually came while we were still working out. Ian chose a white one. It's not quite big enough for him (by about 4 inches), so I told him that he's like a BMX'er now. Ian doesn't understand the gear system (it's weird), so we don't know how many speeds it has, but it's a clunky mountain bike. I don't know why they are popular here. You hardly see any street bikes. Just old cruisers, mountain bikes and the fold-up jobs like mine (which is a single speed). The size really limits how fast Ian can go, so it's not super great for commuting. But, who cares! Free bikes! That reminds me, I need to tighten up my basket, I nearly lost my bags out of it on the way home from work tonight. I also need to fix my rear break, only my front is working.
On that note, I'm zonked. Good night! We spent this morning at our neighborhood middle school ("#14" as they don't have names beyond their number in the district). But, first: Ian and I are now happy members at the "Black Steed Fitness Club" across the street from our school. And, as our friend Justin pointed out on Facebook, the name has slightly racial undertones and thus is awkward. The anthropomorphic horse mascot doesn't help. The gym is quite nice. It has about a dozen treadmills and ellipticals, weight machines, free weights, a spinning room, a group exercise room (with a rotating schedule with aerobics, belly dancing, etc.) and a free exercise room with a punching bad and other amenities. Lisa (our coworker) set us up with this gym, but we went in to pay for our memberships on our own. Only one staff member really speaks any English, but everyone was patient and nice (as usual) so it was no problem. Upon sign up, they do a body composition assessment. Compared to Ian's, my assessment was pretty normal. It got my "ideal weight" relatively close (especially considering racial differences in bone density and muscle mass). It wants me a bit lighter than I'm willing to ever be (I like to feel strong, not skinny), but it wasn't that off. Ian's, on the other hand, is batshit crazy. It clocked his skeleton in at about 105lbs, but insists that his ideal weight is at the 150lb mark. A quick Google search (which will probably have the police knocking on my door) tells me that Ian likely has about 70-90lbs of viscera, connective tissue and blood. Oh well, I'm sure we'll make a killing off of selling Ian's organs on the black market one by one. Our one year gym member came with bicycles! I got mine right away, but Ian's will be here tomorrow (hopefully). I have a suspicion that they don't give away bikes to men usually (more of an incentive to get women in the gym, maybe, though there were plenty of ladies belly dancing their hearts out this afternoon...). But, Lisa probably insisted that we would each need a bike when she spoke to them initially. She's all about wheeling and dealing. Then when she succeeds (and she always does) she responds like so: She's a pretty great person to have in your corner. My weird, fold-up bicycle. It collapses, which is why the tires are so small. The spokes are rainbow, but it's hard to see. I'm calling her Patricia, since that feels like an appropriate English name for a Chinese bike. And, don't worry, I didn't ride it without my helmet. Well, I rode it about 20 feet to see what the little wheels were all about. But, I walked it home from the gym. There's no way I'm commuting by bike in China (or anywhere, but especially China) without protecting the old noggin. My mama's got me well trained. Back to today. Ian and I got up before the sun (which gets easier to do as winter approaches) and headed over to Jinan No. 14 Middle School. It's in our neighborhood, so it was only about a 20-25 minute walk. I can't wait until Ian gets his bike and we can zoom everywhere. It's getting chilly in the mornings, but only in the mornings. The days and evenings are still 65-70ish. It's going to warm up again for a bit before it gets colder, too. Apparently, this has been the "coldest" fall on recent record in Jinan. To that report Ian and I said, "What fall?" I love walking in the cold morning air. I also love wearing more of my clothing. But, I digress. We were the first ones to show up at the front gate (yay us!). Our foreigness immediately caught the attention of one of the police officers on guard. He had a giant bo staff and wore a lot of protective gear, but was very friendly. I told him "Wo men laoshr." (We are teachers.), which prompted him to speak a lot of Chinese to me. I tried to explain that I really only knew how to say just that, but we inevitably handed our phone to him so that he could speak to Lisa. But, even after Billy (our principle) arrived and spoke to him, the officer was convinced he could speak to me in Chinese. I told Billy that I had told the officer that we are teachers in Chinese, but that that's all I could say. He explained is and both he and the officer had a hearty laugh. A school administrator met us outside and she hustled us through the doors. I taught three forty-five minute classes (with the vocab on the slides you saw) with a thirty minute break between the second and third lessons for "morning exercise" which included pressing on the pressure points around the eyes and stretching. The kids were great. Focused and easily engaged, even though there were forty-fifty of them in each class. The classrooms had old school chalk boards and super fancy touch screen TV's (used pretty much like a projector). Each class greeted us with smiles and applause. My PowerPoint file failed to load properly (I had saved as .pptx, and hadn't noticed), so I had to alter the beginning of my first lesson on the fly. But, Billy fixed my file and the other classes went as I had planned: I introduced myself to the class, had the students (not all, for time reasons) throw a ball around and introduce themselves ("tell me your name and two things about your family"), target language study (vocab), then a modified game of "Taboo" on the blackboard, and finally "Two Truths and a Lie: Family Edition." The kids did very well. I was especially impressed with how quickly they got the hang of "in-laws." I did have one student accidentally say her mother was a panda as her "truth," however. That was a pretty great moment. At the end of the first lesson, the students completely mobbed me and nearly trampled me. They were desperate for my phone number, so I wrote my email address on the board instead. We'll see if anyone emails me. The fantastic classes, and just the experience of teaching in a public school and feeling a bit more like a legitimate teacher, made Ian and I long for full time work in one. We'll settle for being outsourced to other schools. Hopefully, it happens somewhat often. Hello, fellow internet users, it's Ian again. I come bearing gifts of copyright infringement and shoddy craftsmanship. A few weeks ago when talking with Rob, he asked if we had seen any toy stores, or more importantly, Transformers in China. At the time we were at a complete loss as to where one would shop for non weapon related toys. But a breakthrough was made, by looking in our very own backyard we found Wal-mart. Yes, the very same Wally World we've been frequenting this past months. But behind their isles of skin whitening creams and powdered drink mixes we found, you guessed it, toys. And not just any toys TRANSFORMERS! For those you that are unfamiliar with the Hasbro line of shapeshifting action figures, get educated, they are both ridiculous and amazing. They have been around since the mid eighties, and have transformed (hehe) greatly over the years from this. To this. There are a multitude of other figures, cheap, expensive, Japanese, custom, and everything in between. But I'm not here to talk about that. I'm in China, the wild west of toy manufacturing and merchandising. Here, it is a total free for all when it comes to any goods, be it clothes, home goods, Harry Potter knock offs, and childrens' multivitamins. And I am happy to say, that they have done me proud in their rendition of "Transformers" and other large shapeshifting metallic monstrosities. I give you........ So there you have it. A lovely collection of totally ripped off and poorly mad "Transformers".
Fun fact, these are actually more realistic based solely on the excessive amount of lead used in their paint. And on that note, I am off. But I leave you with a parting gift. Not a Transformer, but still a fun example of wayward toy craftsmanship. Some weeks are easier than others. This is not one of those weeks. We should have done some of our planning for this week during our "vacation." But, alas, we did not. This week isn't so bad, really. We just have a few new classes starting, an "all branch" meeting Wednesday morning, a "movie night" English Corner of our design to run on Wednesday night, a gig at a middle school Thursday morning and our normal classes Friday-Sunday. All of this is actually less than 25 hours of technical (read: what we're paid for) for each of us, but because it's scattered like buckshot throughout the week, it's tough to fit in the hours of planning and preparation (read: the stuff we're not paid for) that are needed for a successful week. To give you an idea of what we're up to this week, I'll show you some slides that I created for my Thursday morning classes at the middle school. This isn't like our normal classes at ALWAYS. We're not using a SMART Board, just a projector and a chalk board. So, our activities (or studies and activations as they're often called in the TEFL world) will be more traditional. For this, I am glad, except for the fact that we'll have around 50 students in each class. These are PowerPoint slides and, therefore, a little different then the SMART Board slides that we use for our regular classes. Let me say, though, that I miss PowerPoint. It's a much easier program to run. SMART Notebook uses so much CPU that it takes forever to get anything done. Here are a few of my target language slides for our "family tree" themed lesson: If you were surprised to find yourself in our slides, don't be. It's kind of the nature of having a family member teaching ESL abroad. In order for students to relate to their teachers (since the cultural barrier is thick) common ground must be found. So, family photos are often used in lessons (and not just in family themed ones, either). But, outside of purposefully silly photos, I can promise that I'll always choose flattering photos. Hence our use of Facebook as a source; I figure, if it's up on Facebook, you're likely comfortable with it. Don't worry, though. It's mostly photos of us making silly faces that our students see, anyway.
Ian and I have been living a pretty quiet life lately. We spend our down time with Fringe and Downton Abbey. This week will be a bit busier, as our classes are back to normal. Plus, we have a few hours of classes at a middle school on Thursday. It'll be our first experience with public schools abroad, so I'll try to document as much of it as possible. We won't be using SMART Boards, so our lessons may actually be closer to the ones we did in our student teaching at The Language House, which pleases me immensely. I'll teach three (of the same) classes in a row and Ian will teach two. Our topic is "family tree," so we've decided to create lexis (vocabulary) lessons. Each of our classes will have 50 students, so that's pretty darn intimidating. We will each have one of our co-teachers with us, so I take comfort in that. I recently made contact with one of the shelters in town via Weibo, China's version of Twitter. I was invited to come along with one of the founders on Saturday, but I had to decline because of work. I sure hope they have a use for me during the week. Life without animals does not suit me. I'm incredibly lonely for them. I briefly considered getting a rabbit, but I don't think it's a good idea. It'd be fine while we're here (we have plenty of time), but we intend to move to Japan next year and I have no idea what our schedule will be like then. Plus, when we return to Portland in a few years I'm hoping we can adopt a dog. Two kitties and a dog will be quite a handful, so it's probably best not to add anybody in the meantime. Long story short, I'm really hoping to start fostering soon. Before I lose my mind, preferably. Maybe you're wondering about the title of this post. Maybe you think I spelled Hawai'i incorrectly. "Kawaii" is a Japanese term referring to the specific brand of cuteness you find in Asian culture (like our pal Pluto up there, Hello Kitty, or Pikachu). Kawaii culture has a lot of implications for gender roles (especially in Japan and South Korea) as well. The giggling, childlike, shrinking butterfly of a woman is a well known stereotype (of East Asian women) in the West, but Kawaii has had an effect on masculine culture as well. Most of the men my Korean students found handsome (their word) had long, feathered hair and effeminate facial features. The feminizing of both genders (on the conventional binary) is less apparent in China and I'll use that as an excuse to leave the discussion to those with a sociology background. One thing about Kawaii culture that never fails to surprise me is it's presence in situations that are generally regarded as official or serious. For example, the side of a police out post or van will likely be emblazoned with a cute little officer, his smile tiny compared to his large eyes and larger still head. His legs far too short to be of any help in an emergency. There are some new "Healthy Shandong" billboards along a wall that we pass on the walk home from school that exemplify this. Keep in mind, the intended audience for these billboards is adults. Basically, cute sells in Asia the way sex sells in the West. And if we're reducing it to that, I'd rather see Kawaii oranges than sexy chocolate. |