Happy New Year from Beijing!

Happy 2011 Everyone!

I've been back in Beijing for about two days now! I had a fabulous time at home with my family and friends and it was really hard to get back on the train to Seattle. I am so lucky to have such amazing and supportive people in my life!

I know I have some more work to do here, though.

The flight to Beijing was a bit traumatic. I knew it was going to be a rough ride when the pilot announced that it was going to be a bit rocky. There was lots of turbulence, and I am a nervous flyer to start with, so it wasn't fun. Plus, I was pretty sad.

I went into work yesterday, and I was greeted by lots of friends happy to see me, so that made me feel so much better! I passed out Christmas cards with Seattle airport key chains and brought out the fortune cookies my Mom had gotten for my friends at work. In China, they don't give out fortune cookies at the end of the meals! The Chinese local teachers were pretty fascinated by them and enjoyed them. My class for the evening had been canceled, so I got a lot of planning done for the weekend classes.

Last night, I rang in the New Year at my friends' Laura and Claire's apartment. Laura made us a big, delicious dinner and we had wine and toasted in the New Year with the Big Ben bells and sang to a Chinese version of "Old Lang Syne" right over left. I stayed and chatted until I was practically falling asleep. I celebrated that night with people from China, England and Australia. I thought that was pretty special! I came home and practically fell into bed!

My first day of the New Year has been pretty slow. I slept in and called home. Oregon needs to catch up to the New Year! Now, I need to go take care of the hurricane that is my little studio, and grade some papers while watching Cool Runnings!

A Very Roddy Christmas!

Today was a fun, but long day at work! I was just too excited. Luckily, I didn't have to teach the last session of classes for the day and got to play dress up instead to get ready for the EF Christmas party. One of the TAs played hairdresser for me!

Almost directly after the last classes of the day ended, we were ushered onto a nice bus to take us to the hotel where we had the Christmas party. It was about a forty minute bus ride, but it was merry.

We got to the hotel and it was all dressed up as beautiful, classy Winter Wonderland! It was so pretty. They had huge gingerbread houses that even had their own lights! The families were escorted into a banquet hall to start the festivities right away, but the teachers and customer relations staffs from Beijing 1, 3, and 5 led into a beautiful dining hall where we were able to have a nice Christmas buffet Chinese style. Sadly, the food wasn't that tasty, but the company was lovely.

After dinner, Stephanie, Joyce, Nick and I meandered around the hotel talking cheesy pictures. Then, we headed into the banquet hall with all the EF families.

The festivities had been rolling for maybe 30 minutes when we got in, and it was mass chaos like I had expected, but truly feel- good mass chaos. I got to chat with my students and their families as the talented show went on. It was really, really warm in the room though. The children were mostly all dressed to the nines in pretty Christmas dresses and little suits. It was too cute. Students sang songs, played musical instruments, did yo-yo tricks, and we even had a kung fu show that stole the show. The teachers from my school got to go up and sing a rousing rendition of "Jingle Bells." Most of us had microphones and we went around and let the kids sing into them for a moment like rock stars. The evening ended with lots of slender santas giving away presents to all the children. Each child received a stuffed rabbit. Next year is the year of the Rabbit according to Chinese astrology.

I had an awesome moment standing in the back of the banquet hall. I just felt really lucky to be there and truly a part of the community. I have no clue where I will be this time next year, but right now I know this where I needed to be this year.

However, I am ready to go home for a visit! I have a little bit more packing to do, hopefully be able to fall asleep for a bit, and get on an early subway train to the airport!

Thank you for reading my blog this year, dear readers! I'll see you back in the blogosphere in the New Year!

Old Grandpa Christmas's Sledge

I've been a busy, busy ELL teacher. I am all caught up with my grading and have all my lesson plans are planned for my holiday! I'm ready to go home for a holiday!

I had a fun day teaching today. I did a few Christmas activities with some of my elementary classes today. I had a class tell me what they thought about Christmas and it was adorable. One boy told me a story about old grandpa Christmas's sledge. Too cute. It's been an experience living in a place where the biggest Western holiday is not a big deal, or celebrated in such different ways.

Tomorrow's a big day in the EF world. The school is having it's first official Christmas party. They are busing all the students and their parents to a theater, along with the academic and customer relations staffs, to a theater. There, we will be watching the students' talent show. Formal dress is required. I can't wait!

Captain's Log: 1 Full Beijing Day to go!

A Sign From Oregon

It was much warmer today in Beijing! I left my apartment all bundled up to be pleasantly surprised to not be completely frozen through once I first stepped outside. I could feel people being happier as I walked to the grocery store.

I met the new local teacher that is replacing my friend Stephanie who has decided to move on to a different school. Her name is Sue and I think she will fit in quite nicely. Everyone was being pretty silly today and in good moods in the teachers' office and we didn't frighten her away! Good sign.

I had two pretty decent small star classes tonight. In my second class, the one that calls me Coco, one of the little boys was wearing a Nike sweatshirt that had the University of Oregon crest on it and the word "Oregon' spread across it. This makes my third sighting of clothing from Oregon. The first was a Steve Prefontaine tee-shirt, the second was a Duck's hat that was given out at EF's fall conference, and the third was tonight's little sweatshirt!

Tonight on the treadmill at the gym I watched from the window as a restaurant across the street was having a Christmas party or something. Everyone was dressed up like Santa!

3 Full Beijing Days to Go!

Coldest December 15th for Beijing Ever!

Baby, it's cold outside is an understatement! It is obnoxiously cold up in here! I think I'm being punished for every hot weather woe that has ever crossed my lips!

I started my day trying to get to my Chinese class! I had to wait for four trains to go by before I was pushed onto the train by some of my fellow passengers. It wasn't a pretty ride! I got to my final destination and exited out from the wrong exit! I found myself in a mall that had an Armani store! Eventually, I got myself out of the mall, and could see the EF building I needed to get to. After numerous attempts to get to the other side of the road (it took me three times to cross and a trip in an underground parking lot) I made it to the other side! I got to class only five minutes late . I would have been on time if I hadn't gotten confused with the super secret elevators that make me think that I should be in a Bond movie. I think the class is going to be at a perfect speed for me. The instructor speaks in both Mandarin and English when needed. A lot of today's vocabulary was familiar to me which was very exciting and surprising. I can now ask someone how they are! I'll see how it goes after missing two weeks during my holiday. I'll have to be doing some studying on my own. Tones are still real hard!

Then, the student became the teacher as I went to Starfish for my adult classes that I teach. I brought goodies in for my students since I won't be seeing them again until the New Year. My beginner students are doing so well. Today, they got excited because they went through my Chinese class text book and found words that they wanted me to translate for them into English. The women gave me a beautiful starfish necklace that they made. I'll treasure it!

Then, after some long waits for buses, I met Marie and Cindy in the Lama Temple Hutong to meet up with some of Cindy's high school friends... a few who had witnessed my wedding fiasco! We went out to eat at a hot pot restaurant and it was delicious! I hadn't had much to eat that day since it was a go-go-go kind of day, and it was all nice and warm. We took a cold walk to a nearby coffee shop. The coffee shop looked like it should be in South East Portland. There were local artists' works on the wall and jazz playing in the background. There was even a friendly residential dog!

Holiday Countdown: 4 Full Beijing Days to Go!

Christmas Shopping Adventures

Here's a few funny pictures from our Christmas shopping adventures.

Today, I started my day by meeting Claire at the subway to eventually meet up with Stephanie who was lovely enough to help us with some Christmas shopping. We first went to a big department store so Claire could look at some jewelry and buy some traditional cooking supplies for her dad.

Later on, the three of us met up with James and went shopping at this crazy, crazy market. The place was just packed. We dashed (as merrily as we could) through the store to help Claire get a few last minute gifts before she had to get to work. The rest of us spent the rest of the afternoon at the crazy shopping center. Any material you could imagine being made was at that center. It was fantastic and crazy and loud! Also, everyone there is really pushy... literally pushy! I had old ladies swatting at me to get out of their ways! I went to one booth to buy Christmas cards for my friends at work and people were just pushing and elbowing me out of the way! They were serious about getting those cards! It was funny, but also alarming and overwhelming being the usually polite, friendly Oregonian girl that I am. I really had to see it as an adventure!

We eventually got out the center alive with Christmas presents in hand. Today was the coldest that it has ever been since I arrived in Beijing. It was 12 degrees F when I woke up this morning! It's 16 degrees F right now close to midnight! I'm going to feel like I am in a heat wave when I come home for my holiday! Stephanie kept on reminding us that this is nothing yet! Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!

Weekend

I had a fun teaching weekend this weekend. I felt it was going to be a bit of a quirky one when I went in to set up my first class and Aiye was cleaning puke that had been drying from one of the previous evening's classes! Then, one of my students kept screaming "Merry Christmas!" into everyone's ear and gleefully giggling after each episode. EF had put up a big "Merry Christmas" cut out that people can stick their head into and take a picture with an EF nutcracker. It's caused quite a commotion!

Later on that day, in an elementary class, I turned my back to help some students and I turned around a few moments later to one of my students asleep on the floor! In China, many of the middle school students take an important test that says where they are able to attend high school. Getting into a prestigious high school is akin to getting into a good university in the U.S. It's actually probably much more important. The high school that the student gets into will determine his or her university placement. There is just so much pressure on many of these students.

Today, my favorite TB class was studying environmentalism which was really fun and easy for me to plan. I had so many ideas! I then had a parent teacher meeting class day for one of my lower level elementary classes. I really enjoy meeting the parents and learning more about their children. It really helps having a bit of background knowledge when we usually teach most classes every other week. Most of the parents request that the students need memorization homework assignments. It's one of my hardest questions to answer because EF does not include memorization into the program to be seen as more of a Western teaching style school. Chinese students learn and study by using memorization techniques. Other than that, I had a few lovely meetings with parents.

Cindy and I went to the Lama Temple Hutong for dinner. It was nice to get out of my neighborhood for a bit. I love how parts of that Hutong are so modern and other parts are old and historical. It's becoming one of my favorite spots in Beijing.

Candy Thanksgiving Dinner

I woke up to some crazy wind today! I was thinking of going into work extra early, but listening to the wind left me to some productive procrastinating. There were huge clouds of brown dust just whipping past. I watched from my window as a little preschool aged one furiously trying to not take off in flight! I bought my roundtrip Amtrack ticket from Seattle to Portland this morning. I only have ten more days until my holiday! I am so excited.

Eventually, I needed to get to work to get some lesson plans done. I felt like I was battling the wind to just cross the street. I went to the bank and paid my water bill, and it only took 2o minutes, which is a banking miracle.

Work was good today. I got a lot of lesson plans done and we had an interesting meeting. We learned that for our school's Christmas party for the kids on the 19th we are expected to dress formally and are being bused from the school to a big theater. It's going to be interesting....

I received a package from my Dad and Joanna today. They sent me a candy Thanksgiving dinner. It was an awesome surprise! I shared some of it with my friends at work. The candy fruits were the biggest hit, Joanna!

I started a new course level with a group of elementary students that I have been teaching since I arrived in May. I had them help me write a class contract, almost directly stealing from the cabin constitutions that Outdoor School does. I had the students write out our finished product on their own special sheets of paper and we all signed each other's contracts. I shook hands with all the students to make it really official. It went so well, and I was really proud of how mature they took the responsibility.

Tonight, I went out for a very late dinner with Miles, Laura and Claire at the Korean barbeque place. We decided on a "tacky" theme for our New Year's Eve party. I think it will be fun.

Horse Buggies and BMWs

My normal volunteer gig yesterday had to cancel because the women were off to a special presentation of their jewelry. I was left to my own devices. I didn't do too much, and it actually felt really restorative. I talked with Laura and my Mom, went grocery shopping, cleaned up a bit and hit the gym. I glanced out the window at the perfect moment while on the treadmill to see a horse buggy meandering in front of a BMW. Gotta just love Beijing sometimes!

Today, I went to work feeling more productive then I have in awhile. I had spent the two prior weekends either studying for a big work test and at the workshop last weekend. It was nice to have a work free weekend! I'm starting to think about getting all my lessons planned for my "substitutes" while I am home for Christmas!

Tian'anmen Square

Today marked my seventh month in Beijing! Boom!

I spent my morning and early afternoon chilling at my apartment mostly catching up on TV shows! It was fantastic.

Then, I decided to go visit Tian'anmen Square! It took a lot longer than I had anticipated by subway and I missed the flag lowering ceremony by minutes! I still had a bit of a wander. Most of the buildings that I wanted to visit, including the museum and the Forbidden Palace had already closed. I could have paid my respects to Mao, whose body is displayed in one of the buildings, but I decided to pass on that experience. I made friends at an art exhibition near the square featuring the artwork of graduate students. One was nice enough to write my name in Chinese characters! Apparently, the "lleen" part of my name means "long, happy life." I did go into the park next door called the Bei Hai Park. It looked beautiful, but it was dusk, so I didn't get to see as much of it as I wanted. I did get a few pictures of Bartholomew, though!

Then, I went to Sanlitun to do a bit of Christmas shopping. I also ate dinner at one of my favorite Western style restaurants where I got a big salad with avocados that I savored and a glass of chardonnay. It was delicious!

"It's a Book!"

My first class tonight with the Violent One was interesting. The school has decided to keep the "big kid" chairs in all the classrooms instead of moving them into the hallways or in unused classrooms during small star classes. The goal is to keep parents out of the corridors of the school and it prevents the aiyes and TA's from moving the chairs around during every break. However, it leaves the rooms much more cramped for all the running around we do with our small stars.... Plus, they are a bit distracting and dangerous for the little ones. So, that has thrown everything off a bit.

Plus, we have gotten about six new students into the class and they all have their own precious, unique personalities although sometimes they are all a bit overwhelming at times. They are rather a special small stars class. One of the new boys is super mature and thinks all the other kids are rather special. Tom is like an old man in a five-year-olds body. Then... there is Victor.

The kid's English name is Victor, but like many Chinese ELL students, the "v" sound is really, really tough, so he says his name is "Richard" but got really mad at me last week when I wrote "Richard" on the board! Today, we were learning to sight read a few classroom words. Little Victor answered everything with the response, "It's a book!" It got pretty hysterical over time. My TA was cracking up.

The rest of my day was nice, too. I finished grading and sorting out a huge stack of student work. I wrote a parent update for one of my higher level classes, and I finally cleaned out my work cupboard. I recycled a lot of papers that I have been meaning to file, but it's just not happening. It was time to start a new. I was very excited to find my Doctor McCoy button I thought I had lost a few months ago off of my coat, but it was just chilling in my cupboard. I went out for fruit tea and some snacks with Cindy and the local teacher Claire after work which was a nice way to end the work week.

I'm way excited for this weekend. I didn't get a full weekend off last weekend due to a conference, so this one will be much more appreciated!

Duck Fever in Beijing

Have you ever described the University of Oregon/ Oregon State University "civil war" to an Englishman before? It sounds really ridiculous. I tried to explain the one sporting game that would actually make me look up the score between classes today. I guess they really don't do that kind of stuff in England... of course, they really don't do American football there, either. It made me wonder if there are any other Ducks out there in Beijing today?

No big news from my weekend here. A few of the teachers taught the Thanksgiving life club lesson that I planned and they told me they enjoyed it! There are now a few lovely trees of gratitude up around the school! I was really proud of my oldest class today. I showed them a Regis and Kelly interview of Emma Watson (the young woman who plays Hermoine in the Harry Potter movies.... the girls liked that she is pursuing her degree at Brown) and had them create their own scripts of entertainment interviews. I told them they could pretend to interview anyone in the world. One group interviewed a cartoon voice actor, two did an interview on Chinese pop singers and one group pretended to interview President Obama. They all were pretty fabulous.

Most of us teachers went out to dinner to officially celebrate Cindy's birthday! A few of the other girls and I have celebrated Cindy's birthday four times now! We went to the Korean restaurant. We got into trouble because we were laughing so loud at one point, and a waitress had to ask us to keep it down.... Whoops. It was a lot of fun, though!

It's been really cold here! I live in the "windy" part of the city, and that makes it feel colder. I'm hoping we'll get some snow soon to make up for the temperatures! The pathetic fact is that I know this is just the beginning of the coldness!

Birthday Fairy

I am the birthday fairy at work and today we were going to celebrate James and Cindy's birthdays. I went to the grocery store to have a wander to see what would be an interesting treat for all of us at work and I found doughnuts! It was very exciting. I was able to get a dozen in a variety of flavors. I was also searching for something to eat for lunch and they had a big tray of microwaveable lunches. I picked up one that looked like Chinese food that I would eat at home! It was pretty good. It was a little strange eating Chinese food that reminded me of home!

We had a very, very long meeting at work today. The production manager of all of Beijing was at our school yesterday to complete the school's yearly audit. Laura talked to us about things that went well and things that didn't go so well. We all had been taken aback a bit yesterday because the production manager said that we all were not working enough hours and that most of us were only teaching enough hours to add up to a part time teacher. We told Laura we had thought that was really unfair since most of us put in a good ten to twenty hours outside of the 40 hours that we are scheduled to teach.

The only fun part of the meeting was that I had gotten everyone's permission to have a secret santa for the month of December! We are all going to leave little presents around for our secret santa. I'm pretty excited about it.

I taught a tiny class of two this evening of one of my favorite classes. We created our own future time lines and had a pretty good time.

Stephanie and Joyce had made a cake at a bakery for Cindy's birthday, and a few of us went after work to a restaurant across the street from the school. We had dinner and the wait staff were kind enough to let us light candles and everything. Cindy's dinner was on the house and they played a few different instrumental versions of "Happy Birthday" for her. It was fun to just to hang out after a rough meeting.

I'm back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello!

Sorry that I haven't been writing for a bit.  I really appreciate everyone who checked in on me!  A few weeks ago, I stopped getting Internet on my computer.  My landlord helped me discover that it wasn't the Internet connection, but my computer!

Uh oh!  Not having a working computer so far away from home is no fun. 

I spent a few long mornings at the Apple Fix-It place.  Luckily, when I looked up the hours to the Apple store in Beijing, I learned that I had to go to another place for repairs.  I spent a long taxi ride getting there with a taxi driver who had no clue where she was going and kept stopping the car to get out and ask people where she was taking this crazy foreigner.  Well... that's how I imagined their conversation going!  She eventually just dropped me off and I went around begging people with help with my Beijinger guide book in hand.  People were super helpful, and a few people called people to translate!  Eventually, I made it to the Fix It place.  

The Fix-It people were very helpful.  Luckily, there was one person who was able to translate for me.  He told me that there was something wrong with my motherboard, but if I bought a portable hard drive, saved everything I needed, I would be able to go back and have them re-install my computer.  They were nice enough to tell me where to go to buy a portable hard drive since they thought that the Mac ones were way too expensive.  It made me trust them more.

I spent one crazed Saturday night finding the mega computer parts store!  My friends at work told me how to get the subway mostly there and then told me to take a taxi the rest of the way. I was able to buy the hard drive pretty easily, and even bargained the price down, which is something I'm not good at or known to do, but the adorable Apple Fix-It dude told me to not pay more than a certain price.  I got back into another taxi after I made my purchase feeling victorious!  I asked the taxi driver to take me to the subway in Mandarin and, of course, he could not understand my awful Mandarin.  A lot of random hand gestures and clarifying went back and forth between us, and he finally said, in English, "Subway, line two!" and I was so excited that I said, "Si, senor!"  He looked at me like I was a crazy foreigner, which, I am!  It was hysterical.  You just can't make up stuff like that!  

Last Monday, I made my way back to the Apple Fix-It place and they reinstalled a new system on my computer, which I appreciated greatly.  My landlord came back over that night and after an hour of us staring at my computer and both of us phoning friends for help and translation, we got the PPOE installed again onto my computer.  I was with Internet again, but lost a lot of my applications.  

Eventually, with some help from friends at work, I now have an "American" computer again, but now set to Beijing time, and a VPN again!  I can now surf the Internet as I please!  It's amazing what they block over here.  I couldn't check most of the news sites I look at... even parts of The Oregonian were blacked out for me.  

So... the big events lately in my life.... I really missed being home for Thanksgiving.  I had to take a test in the morning of Thanksgiving and had to think in a British accent in order to attempt at getting the stress syllable questions right.  I had to memorize the phonetic chart, which was quite an undertaking!  I've been learning a lot of phonics in the last couple of weeks.  However, when I came back in that day after a little break, a package was waiting from home!  My mom sent me a microwaveable box of turkey and stuffing and potatoes.  It was pretty awesome, and had such perfect timing.  I ate my sent turkey dinner, along with some dragonfruit (had to have something Chinese in my Thanksgiving meal) and watched some "Everybody Loves Raymond" Thanksgiving episodes.  Bit of a lonely Thanksgiving, but I think it will help me appreciate being at home more during my holiday!

This past Tuesday, I ran a special workshop on free writing in late elementary and high school classes.  It was at Claire's new school, which is absolutely beautiful.  It took forever to get over there.  Marie, her boyfriend, King, and I took about two hours to get there by subway!  I am so thankful I don't have to take the subway to get to work every day!  Not having a bathroom in the school is odd, though, but there is a public restroom not that far away.  The school is in a huge mall.  We were all excited because there was a nice bakery on the first floor.  Anyways... the workshop went really well.  The only people who came to mine were people from my school and Nick's girlfriend who works at another school.  We shared some our own writing and talked about the writing we do with our students.  It was really special.  Miles taped it for me, and he showed me an edited cut of it today.   I really feel proud of it, and I hope it will be useful when I start my next job search.  

I came home that evening and had no electricity, and the banks had just closed!  I went out to run errands, and came back to read by candlelight!  My sister sent me a book about a girl who is forced to live on a pioneer farm for a summer, and it was quite fitting!

Yesterday morning, I got up early to get to the International bank to transfer some money over and to buy some electricity.  When I got home, I was so psyched to have electricity again!  I went to teach my ladies at the shelter.  My intermediate class was as lovely as ever, and my beginners are learning the parts of the body and are learning so quickly, it's pretty amazing!

That evening, I met my friend Cindy and a few of her friends to celebrate her birthday.  We had dinner at the hippie Western restaurant that I adore in the Lama Temple Hutong.  I had another yummy garden burger.  We ended the night KTVing it, and a few other girls from work were able to meet up with us!  It was a fun night!

I'll end this obnoxiously long blog with a cute story.  One of my Thursday evening classes has decided that my name is "Coco" now.  They scream with laughter over it.  Tonight, during our special welcome circle time were I ask all the children their names and "How are you?" they all said, "My name is Coco!"  with maniacal giggling following it!  They would whisper to each other, "Say Coco!" while I was asking them the question.  It was actually pretty heartwarming...

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Enjoying The Big Apple in Beijing

I met my friend Shei Shei downtown on a mission to find a very special coffee shop we had read about, but Shei Shei first took me around the silk market area. It was not really what I had expected. In my mind, I had imagined people working on sewing machines and there would be endless rows of silk, like fabric in a fabric store. It wasn't that exciting. There was about a half of a floor with silk on display, but most of it was stalls like in other big shopping centers I have been to. There was a lot of shouting, "Hey Lady..." I feel that I can't even look at anything in that kind of shopping environment.

After a bit of walking around, we were ready to get to a very special coffee shop. We walked to a big high rise building full of shops. We took the escalator up six flights to get to Central Perk. Central Perk is the coffee shop the characters from "Friends" hung out at. A man in Beijing has started his coffee shop by trying to recreate the set as closely as possible. The signs were pretty close, as was the chalk board that listed all the different coffees. Shei Shei and I had the place to ourselves and we got the big couch in front of the big screen TV that plays the show on an endless loop. We got their right as the first Thanksgiving episode began! We even got to meet the owner. The real menu was in Chinese, so Shei Shei helped me order a hot chocolate. The waiter got my order wrong and the owner chuckled, "He's my own, Rachel," and made me my hot chocolate himself, and Shei Shei's latte. It was pretty funny. I still am not feeling my best, so it was nice to just veg and watch a bunch of episodes of "Friends." As we left, a big group of friends came in and were taking pictures. It's a fun, creative little place.

Here's an article on the shop if you are interested: http://articles.cnn.com/2010-07-02/world/friends.china.central.perk_1_coffee-shop-central-perk-smelly-cat?_s=PM:WORLD

The Heat is ON!

It was beautiful, clear and cold day in Beijing as the people rejoiced in thanksgiving of the government turning the heat on! I know I did a happy dance in my apartment tonight as I turned on what was once my air conditioner that is now my heater! Love it! I had been having discussions with my friends at work about where my heat was going to come from. Colleen, do you have a radiator? No. Colleen, do you have a radiator in your bathroom? No. Colleen, don't you have any vents in your apartment near your windows? No. Colleen, does your air conditioning unit have a sunshine on it? Yes.

The sunshine worked! I now have glorious heat wafting into my little studio!

So, that's the biggest news of my day! I had an okay day at work, but still don't have as much energy due to the lurgy, which makes it tougher to run after my little small stars.

My friend, Cindy, a local teacher, came down with the lurgy today. Over tea tonight she told me that I had to tell my blog readers that just because she is Chinese does not mean she is immune to the lurgy. It's been noted, Cindy!

The Lurgy

The Lurgy. It's been going around our school for the last few weeks and I am now it's latest victim. The lurgy is just English slang for "a cold" but it sounds much more awesome. None of the local teachers have caught it yet. The local teachers are telling me to stop drinking cold water. Dude, maybe I should! (Although hot water is not refreshing after a work out... I've learned that the hard way!) They are much stronger than the Westerners!

My teaching weekend was long and mostly good. I had a great open door class on Saturday morning. The parents left the room smiling and I got to have some small (translated) chats with some of them.

One of my older classes had a special life club class. Usually, we have to teach a planned curriculum, but this month they are letting us choose our own. I did a music theme life club where we had discussions about some of their favorite musical artists. The students had to do some Internet research on their favorite artist (the caveat was that their favorite song had to be in English), present the information in front of the class, and then show a music video of their favorite songs. They were really excited about it, but unfortunately the whole class only picked three different artists: Michael Jackson, Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana. Michael Jackson's "Dangerous" was the big hit of the hour!

This morning, I taught my obnoxious parent small star class. This group of students only comes once a week for an hour and a half class and I only see them every other week. I had an open door with the class about a month ago that went very poorly. Most of the students hadn't come to the class for over the entire summer, and then they all showed up for the open door class. A few of the boys are really into pretending they have machine guns, which I understand is a really normal developmental stage for lots of boys, but it's just not something I want to encourage in a classroom! Anyway... the parents were upset by how poorly their students' behavior was in the class and have requested an American male teacher to take over the class since they had an American male teacher before I arrived. It's really disheartening to go into a classroom where the parents don't like you just based on your gender. There are a few other boys in the class that are delightful, and the girls are lovely, but really all it takes is the ring leader boy to rile them all up, speaking Chinese at lightening speed, so I have no clue what mutiny he is planning in that little head of his. Anyway... Laura has been helping me with some student management in that class, and it has been helping, but it is still not a fun way to begin a Sunday morning!

Tonight, I went out to dinner with a few friends from work who were ok with me and my lurgy. We often go to this awesome Chinese restaurant where they always politely have to remind us that it is closing time. Claire joined us later in the evening and she said the wait staff just nodded at her and took her to us! Love it!

Captain's Log: 27 Weeks!

Phonics

Nothing really exciting to report from Beijing, except that it is getting really cold, especially at night and in the mornings. I have been enjoying how the parents and grandparents wrap up their children like they are about to enter the North Pole. People have told me that it even gets funnier when Winter finally hits.

We had a long day of training today at work. Two of the other schools also came by for the training about teaching the youngest elementary aged classes since there has been a trend of really low testing scores for the age group. I do not teach any really low elementary classes, but I still took away some key points from the workshops, especially about teaching phonics. I hope that I will be able to incorporate more phonics with my little small stars and my older students.

I only had one class this evening with a mid-age elementary class. I've been teaching this class since I arrived in May, but I am finally starting to feel really comfortable with them and know their strengths and weaknesses as a class. It's a good feeling.

I've been gearing up for my open door class with one of my little small star classes. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they are going to be on their best behavior with their parents around!

The "Uh-oh" Bus Ride

I got on my normal 915 bus to get to the Starfish Center this morning to go to my volunteer teaching gig. Usually, the bus goes on for about five minutes before it starts making regular stops. Well, this bus just kept going... and going... and going! Then, it got on the freeway! Ahhhh! I called the center and told them of my predicament and they just laughed and said I had gotten on an express to the airport. I guess sometimes they forgot to add the extra character onto the number, so I had no clue! The bus went for about 40 minutes until it made a stop. I got off of that one and took a taxi to the center.

My beginner class and I made it through the entire alphabet today! It was very exciting. The hardest letters for them are "Q," "R," and "W," which are really hard for my little small stars to pronounce, too.

I made dinner for my friend Claire and I. Claire was the senior teacher at my school, but was made the Director of Studies at the new school without any bathrooms. We had a good long chat and I gave her a few of my Oprah magazines. She got a kick out of Oprah being on every cover!

Stars in the City

Work has been incredibly busy the last few weeks. I've been put in charge of designing some special Thanksgiving lessons for the older students that has to include an art craft! Suggestions are welcomed! Plus, I've been volun-telled to do another workshop for the teacher's conference in early December. Busy, busy, busy!

Last night after work, I went with Cindy and Marie to a little spa shop in the Lama Temple Hutong area to get our nails done. We got there quite late, but they stayed open for us, which was really nice. When we were walking out, I looked up, and we could see maybe fifty stars or so in the night's sky. It was spectacular! I have never seen more than 3 stars in the city at night before. It was a pretty awesome moment. Marie and I tried to tell Cindy about seeing an endless amount of stars and she kind of thought we were crazy!

My big news for today is that I bought a plane ticket to come home for a little over a week during Christmas time! I'm really excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dear Beijing

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Dear Beijing,

Congratulations! We've made it through six months together. It's been quite the adventure!

Initially, I was scared of you. I arrived both petrified and excited and so exhausted. I didn't know how to get around, where to get food or a single person for my first few days. It was frightening, but I knew I needed to give it a try.

It slowly got better. I started meeting people from EF who mentored me through the process of finding an apartment and figuring out where to eat! I relished my time at work and now I appreciate that I was just thrown into my classes with no training. It gave me some purpose to fuel me through the other aspects of my new life here. Plus, when they are not being naughty, my students are pretty wonderful.

I feel it is pretty amazing how much my feelings about you have changed. I couldn't stand the smell of you every time I walked out the door for the first few weeks, and crossing the street was a stressful event. I would get so defensive when people walked past me staring. It was hard and I missed home.

Now, though, I'm mostly really happy. I'm still a little nervous crossing the street, but it's not terrifying. I love walking around outside now and noticing so much. I love watching the senior citizen exercising in the park blocks, noticing cars that are driving on the wrong side of the road, and listening to the friendly bickering outside of the fruit and vegetable stands. I love that in one of the most International cities in the entire world, there are still horses pulling produce around. I even smile back when people stare. Let them stare! I know I can be a bit of surprise in this neighborhood, and I like to think I've stopped judging people for doing it. Of course, I have my less confidant days when it bugs me more, but it's all part of the ride.

I have a lot to thank you for. You have brought me such wonderful new friends from all around the world. If I had just stayed at home, I would have never met them, and my world would be not as colorful. I feel like I am part of a good community, and being part of a community is such a necessary aspect of my happiness. I know this experience is temporary, and I feel that makes the friendships even sweeter.

Thank you for all the beautiful places you have in this city. It's pretty spectacular to be living in a place that hosts one of the oldest recorded civilizations. I've definitely been humbled by just the history of the wonderful places I have visited.

Most importantly, thank you for bringing magic back into my life. I had been so mad that my life hadn't been going as I thought it would, that I wasn't in the place that I should be in by now. That's because I was meant to be here. It has taken me some time to internalize that fact, but I truly believe that I need to be here. I love at night when I close the curtains in my apartment and I stare into you, my adopted city, that I have such a feeling of hope and possibility. Anything or anyone could be out there waiting to walk into my life.

Cheers to us, Beijing! May the next six months be just as intriguing.

Love,

Colleen

P.S. Dear Readers,

Thank you for reading my blog and giving me such wonderful support from home. I can't even express how much it means for me to have such a caring group of people rooting me on! I'm a lucky girl.

Love,

Colleen

Mysterious Elevators

This morning, I went with James to the downtown EF main headquarters office to take our placement test for Chinese lessons. It was one of those mornings where I felt grateful that I live so close to work. We waited for three trains to pass before we made it into one crammed in like maltreated livestock. The morning commute in Beijing is pretty intense.

We made it to the center and there were no buttons to push for the elevators. We had to ask a security guard who pushed a button for us at his control panel and we had to wait for our specific number. Crazy! We made it into the testing room right on time. The test was two pages long. Luckily, the directions were in English. I could only write two words in pinyin: "thank you" and "hello." I was able to match a few English words to their pinyin words: tea, how much, teacher, beer, and little sister. (I only know mei mei because of watching "Firefly!") The second page asked us to write sentences in characters and I can't do any of that. I spent an outrageous two minutes in the testing room. The proctor was pretty surprised and said, "Ah, a true beginner!" Yup, that's me!

After we got back to our neighborhood, I went grocery shopping and I got a kick out of listening to the easy listening that the store was booming from their speakers. It was mostly Fleetwood Mac and the Carpenters! It was hysterical and it made me smile.

I only had one class this evening with one of my favorite classes. Everyone in that class is so smart. I often start some of my classes with a conversation game about their highs and lows from the week. Today, the students didn't wait for me to talk, but just started telling me about the good and bad parts of their week. It was a really sweet moment for me.

Making Up My Own Characters

I started my day taking the bus to the bank. I had been dreading going back because of the nightmare time I had last month spending three days at the bank. Luckily, I only had to wait a half hour before I was seen. It was awesome! It was a beautiful day outside today, and it was nice time to be out running errands.

I went in to work today to our staff room covered in a sea of Halloween decorations and supplies. We have everything ready to go back down to the lair. I spent my day trying to catch up on my grading! I've gotten a little behind on some of my academic administration due to the Halloween parties.

Tomorrow, I am going in for a placement test for Chinese lessons at EF's main Beijing office downtown. Miles was telling us that the test includes reading, writing and speaking. My answers are going to be utterly ridiculous since I know practically nothing! I was joking with the other teachers about how I am going to invent my own characters and tell a story about a cat and dog finding love in a subway. I aim to really "wow" my proctor into placing me into the Beginner Level!

H to O

My day was filled with subways and buses! I spent the morning getting ready for the adult classes that I teach at Starfish in the afternoons. I was able to make real lesson plans after learning where all my students are at from last week.

It wasn't so hard to get to the office today. I still had to call to ask for help about which door to go into! I accidently walked into someone else's house! Whoopsie!

There was only one student in my Intermediate class. It was really nice though, even though all my lesson plan ideas were meant for a bigger group. She told me she just wanted to practice speaking and we did. We learned a lot about one another. I watched the movie Eat, Pray, Love last night and the main character, Liz, talks about a friend of hers at the start of the movie who was a psychologist and was asked to counsel immigrants. The friend told her that even though those women went through hell, they still wanted to talk about their relationships. I found this with my student today. I know she's been through a lot to get to a better place in her life, but she still wanted to talk about boys and clothes and music. It was awesome.

I'm still feeling a little silly teaching adults the alphabet in my Beginner class, but we just have to start from the beginning. It's amazing how much we get across in just gestures to one another. I tried to teach the sentence structure "I have..."

I was starving by the time I got to my "home" subway line and decided to treat myself to an awesome dinner. I went to the Lama Temple Hutong neighborhood back to eat at the Vineyard. I had a Shirley Temple and the best garden burger ever. I went for the delux one this time that had mushrooms and more vegetables! It was awesome and tasted so good after a day of running around. I think a big reason that I like the place is because they play Ella Fitzgerald and other big band music! Even though I really enjoy Chinese food, it's nice to have "American" food once in awhile!

I came home tonight and got to work on my NanoWriMo novel! It was a nice evening to curl up in a blanket, listen to music and just write!

Hope you are enjoying the heat wave, my Portland friends!

Flower, Bat, BOOM!

The first picture is of me as a Zombie at our pub stall and the second is a group of cuties after they learned the time warp with me.

Sunday was another really busy day of teaching. I taught my oldest group of students the time warp during the last ten minutes of class. I let them watch the original version from the movie. They had fun practicing it with me. I even got them singing along and they didn't want to leave the room even though I had to go teach my next class. The long weekend is worth it to teach that group of students.

After work, I went to pick up pizzas for a few of us that wanted to get ready for our pub crawl together. We ate pizza and did our make up. Marie made up my face and Laura did my hair all crazy! It was really fun. We watched some Rocky Horror while we were getting ready.

We took two cabs over to the famous bar street that were meeting our other EF people at. Even though it was highly publicized, no other EF kids and teens teachers came. It was just us from Beijing 3 and maybe two dozen people from the Smart Schools that teach adults. It was nice to meet some of the smart school teachers. I was hoping maybe some of the boys that arrived at the same time I did would be there, but they weren't.

I got to work early the next day to meet Ryan to work on the small stars Halloween party. We were busy all day running around getting supplies to various rooms and making a much better check in process. We decided to have the teachers rotate from room to room instead of making the little ones move and having utter mass chaos. We were predicting it was going to be mass chaos anyway. I was doing face painting and it took me awhile to figure out how I could make it portable. I finally decided that I would just let the students choose between a bat and a flower. I said "Bat, flower, BOOM" to Ryan who thought it was funny. He kept explaining how the teachers would have to quickly make it through their activity quickly by emphasizing with "Bat, flower, BOOM!" It became the catch phrase of the evening!

After a pep talk to our hardworking group of TAs, eating the dumpling dinner on EF, and changing into my "hippie" costume it was go time. We had placed the children into groups based on age and I began with the tiny ones, the blue small stars, who are about two to three years-old. I do not have a blue small star class so it was fun to be with such tiny ones. I quickly gave up on the flower choice and just gave everyone bats on their faces. They got to pick the color of the bat, though. The tiny ones were much more interested in the glitter! There was glitter everywhere by the time I left that first room.

The next six rooms were all a bit of blur. I got in, put on "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" and face painted it up! It was fun seeing my students dressed up and in a new situation. The last class I went into was the oldest group of students and a few random students that we weren't given any information about. It was the craziest room. Of course, half of them were from some of my zanier classes, including the violent one and the "old soul" big Leo. There was only one TA in that room, the only male TA we have, and he looked so exhausted and stressed. Those kids were so nutso that they didn't even get to pick out the color. I quickly gave out their little prizes and certificates and sent them on their way.

The parents picked up the students pretty quickly and they were all out of there quickly compared to all the stragglers we had with the older group. We all gathered in the hall and took a deep breath. Miles kept saying, "Let's never do that again, ok?" We all gave a shout out to the TAs and started a mass clean up! Our aiyes worked so hard that day cleaning up!

Laura took some of us out for beers and a late snack afterwards were got to decompress and tell our own funny stories from the night. We even had tallied how many students were crying in the rooms that we went into! We declared the evening a success, though!

Then, I went home and slept for a long time!

Today was about re-charging a bit. I slept in, talked to my Mom for a long time, went to the gym and did some grocery shopping. It was a well appreciated day off.

P.S.- Hi Aunt Theresa and Uncle Leo! I got the present yesterday! I love it. It was such an awesome surprise. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Calm Before the Night of the Living Undead

Everyone at work was a little tired after our extravaganza last night. I talked to a few of my students that went to the party and they enjoyed it a lot, especially the prizes! It was nice to hear some feedback from our party goers.

I had really nice classes today. I read two Halloween stories in classes and they were big hits!

The teachers are all gearing up for our Zombie pub crawl tomorrow night. I'm not sure how Zombie looking I'll be getting, but I think it will be fun. We are all going to hang around school helping each other do our make-up before meeting up with the rest of the EF Beijing universe.

It's Just a Jump to the Left..

First Halloween party of my China experience is done and done!

It was a crazy busy day. Laura, Ryan and I started work around 9 trying to figure out last minute scheduling issues, designing certificates and making new shopping lists. We started decorating around noon. It felt that we had bought so much stuff, but once we put it all up, it wasn't as spectacular as I had dreamed it, but it still looked pretty good. I spent the afternoon running around making sure everyone had the right amount of supplies in their rooms and trying to figure out a check in system for the students. We had only been given their real names, not their Western names, and we couldn't really do too much with that information except to put them into groups. I put them into color coded groups and met with the TAs to give them a battle plan for the night. I just had enough time to get into my hippie "costume" before the students began to trickle in.

We had a bit of a late start with the festivities, because the checking in process wasn't as smoothed as we were hoping it would be. I had fun hanging out with the students in line checking out their costumes and practicing saying "Happy Halloween" with them. We'll have to work on that before the party for the little ones. The first fifteen minutes were designated to have the students make their own trick o' treat bags. My group was a little curious about why they had to decorate a bag, but I role modeled how to trick and treat and they got pretty excited about it, especially since I put a little stencil in their bags to try them out!

I then went to another classroom and started my station. I pre-taught a bunch of Halloween vocabulary words and then we played musical "flash cards" with them. Then, we watched the "Glee" kids perform the time warp and I taught them the dance and some of the students were able to sing along. I gave out prizes to the kids that were the most enthused with it. I had one pretty hysterical little boy go from not being excited at all to putting on his own show when he realized that there were prizes involved. I had to give one to him for the effort.

One of my groups was really late coming to see me and I was able to walk around the school a bit hearing everyone having fun. The CRs had turned off and dimmed the lights in the main hall of the school so it was a bit spooky. I had an awesome moment of relief that we actually pulled it off and the realization that I got to share a pretty awesome part of my tradition with the students and other teachers. It was a perfect night to have a bit of a magical moment. Then, my last group arrived and it was time to get to the time warp.

Ryan and I got busy cleaning up the rooms while the students were being ushered out. The funniest moment of the evening for me was when John, our EF school complex director was holding back parents in the stairwell and calling out students one at a time to meet their legal guardians that were picking them up. We had written on the tickets that parents were not allowed inside the school because we just didn't have enough room, and they took it so seriously!

There were a few bugs in our plans today, but it still turned out well. Happy Halloween weekend from Beijing, everyone!

Halloween Final Countdown...

I went into work early today to start decorating our lobby, but the boss decided she wanted us to wait until tomorrow. Uh oh... Tomorrow is going to be a long, frantic day! I did get a lot of my classes planned for the weekend, though.

Ryan came in later on the afternoon after another Halloween shopping expedition. He bought a bunch more prizes for the students. We had to cancel our pumpkin order, so I was left without a station tomorrow. I'm going to do an old fashion cake walk complete with some English Halloween vocabulary. Plus, I'm going to teach the kids how to do the time warp! Got it approved and everything. Not as awesome as painting pumpkins, but hopefully it will still be fun.

I spent the last hour before my classes started putting everything into piles and answering costume related questions from the local teachers. A few of them have never worn a Halloween costume before! I'm going as a hippie, tomorrow!

First Classes...

I went to teach my first two classes at Starfish today. It is quite the journey out there. It takes two subway transfers and two different buses. It's amazing how many people are out and about at 11:30 AM!

I made it to the last bus stop and called to ask for help on how to walk to the office. Wang Fei, who helps run the office, met me at the bus stop and walked me to the office. My first class was with three women, including Wang Fei, who are at an Intermediate level. I had a lesson plan based on their book. They haven't had an English teacher for four months so they all felt pretty rusty, but they did a fantastic job. The unit that we started was called "Love and Marriage." We talked about adjectives that describe people and the people that they would want to date or marry. It was a pretty awesome class. The women really liked the word "humble" and they all listed it as a quality they wanted in their future husbands.

My last class was a Beginner class was only for one hour. There was two women in that class. Both of their English levels are pretty low. We started with the alphabet. I felt a little weird teaching adults the alphabet and pronunciation. We got through A-G today. I taught them the sentence structure "I like..." and "I don't like..." and we used the words from the alphabet (apple, book, cat, dog, elephant, fish, girl). I learned after the lesson that one of the women in the Beginner class had only one year of education when she was a child. She has been taking classes for the last year. She did so well in class today that it surprised me!

I started to make my trip back to my neighborhood and got on the bus with a bunch of second to fourth grade students who looked at me curiously, but in a sweet way, not in the way the creepy old men look at me! They way just surprised to see me. One little girl was holding a crab and was telling it a story. It was pretty cute.

Suitcase of Surprises

You know that the people you work with are pretty awesome when they want to spend their day off at a Halloween stall in the middle of the Pearl Market helping you buy Halloween decorations! I had been there about two weeks before with Ryan and Nick, but the others hadn't been there before and they were like kids in a candy store trying on costume accessories and playing with the toys and decorations. I went around filling up shopping bags full of the list of supplies that we needed. Stephanie and Joyce were amazing bargaining with the lady of the shop. Of course, a huge line began to form as we we getting all tallied up. I am always amazed how most of the shops here do not have cash registers. Most of the people in the cue were foreigners. The shop keeper had remembered me from a few weeks ago, and told Stephanie that she would have raised the price if it was just the three of us American buying the supplies, even though the two boys can speak Chinese pretty fluently! We got out of the store after spending 3,000 RMBs of EF's money! We transferred our goodies into duffel bags, back packs, and my big plaid suitcase. Earlier that morning when I grabbed the suitcase from it's dusty corner, I noticed it wasn't as light as I was expecting it to be. I opened it up and found a vacuum pack of three Winter sweaters and my vest that I had just assumed that didn't make it here! I was so happy!

We still had more prizes and random supplies to buy for our party. We went up a few flights of stairs to a huge stationary store that sold a crazy amount of art supplies. Jean, this place would be like a beacon for you! We bought paint, paint brushes and new sets of color pens for all our small star classes! It's those little things that preschool teachers get excited about! Marie had to get to work, so James and I went back with her in a taxi with all of the bags to haul back to the school. We were met with Ryan looking joyous because he talked to the nice fruit stand people that we share the block with and they are able to sell us 100 pumpkins. We made lots of progress today.

I went and grabbed some sushi to go for dinner. As I walked home in the crisp fall weather, I thought of how pretty awesome it is that I work with such wonderful people. I remember thinking that when I left college I would never find friends that awesome again. Then, when I worked at Outdoor School, I never thought I would find another group of people that special, but I got surprised again by my cohort and then another group of Outdoor School the following year. These groups of people have been been all unique and special in their own way, but I know I'm a better person for knowing them all. Glad my luck came with me to China!

The Lair!

I forgot to write about an interesting moment that happened on Friday. Laura and John had been telling the Halloween party planning committee that our school had some Halloween decorations in the warehouse downstairs. We had been told that the electric lock had been broken and we could not get in. The building that the school is in has a downstairs basement that I have never visited. When you first step into the building from outside you have two choices of walking upstairs to the school or going downstairs. I had been told that we were not allowed to go down there.

Well, on Friday morning, one of the customer relations staff was given some new thing to break open the electric lock. Ryan, James and I went downstairs with most of the Customer Relations staff. We went down about four flights of stairs! We were way, way under ground. Once we made it to the floor, it was nothing like I expected. There were dozen of long hallways that seemed to connect somehow. All the room were tiny, like prison cells, with cots in them. I guess there are quite a few people that live here. I can't believe I ever complained about living in a dorm room! I have heard stories about people living in places like this in Beijing, but I never imagined that I was working on top of one!!! Kevin, one of the CRs, broke into our little "warehouse" which was about the size of a dorm room. While we were surfing through just piles of Halloween and Christmas decorations a woman came up to us and just started yelling in Chinese and a bunch of the other CRs started yelling back. James, Ryan and I took a little break and wandered a bit more into the lair, but didn't loose sight of all the CRs. We joked about how we should have our haunted house down here, but it would take us weeks to round up all the students. Seriously, I wouldn't want to be dropped down there by myself without at least some water! We returned back to the shouting match. The CRs gave up and told us to grab a few boxes and go. We all left there pretty quickly. I guess the lady was a landlord for the lair and we were trespassing to get our own stuff? I'm sure there's more of a story that has gotten last in translation.

I felt a little humbled after the basement lair experience. I have a new appreciation for my studio apartment.

Captain's Log: 24 Weeks!

Happy Birthday, Dad! Hope you have a fantastic day!

Halloween Countdown...

I've been pretty swamped at work the last few days. The Halloween party is taking up a lot of time. I was up late last night making entrance tickets for both parties. I sure went through a ton of Roddy stickers!

My classes have been all fun the last few days. I've tried to incorporate a Halloween arts and craft activity for all of my older classes. The students do not know much about Halloween except a vague idea of trick or treating. I've never realized that the United States is really one of the few countries that celebrates it in such a big way. We sold out all of our tickets for the "big kid" party on Friday night. I'm getting nervous about us being able to pull it off, but I'm hoping with a lot of hard work it will just fall into place like most events do.

Our boss, Laura, and our center director have been out of town all week because they are on an EF trip for all the schools' director of studies and customer relation managers. They were suppose to go on a cruise to Japan. We decided to look at where they were online on Thursday at work and learned that right before they were suppose to get on the ship something cracked the port of the boat wide open! Luckily, no one was hurt. We texted Laura to see where she was and EF got them to a resort in a city in China. I'm sure they will come back with lots of stories, but I know they must all be disappointed about not getting to see Japan. I would be sad.

Starfish

Hello!

Today I went to visit where my friend, Jennifer works. It's called Starfish and she helps mentor women who desire to get out of prostitution and make a fresh start. I went to visit to see if it would be a place that I would like to volunteer to teach and English class at. I met with the staff who are mostly women who have risen through the ranks of Starfish. Most women begin to work in the company as jewelry makers who live in a shelter a few blocks away from the office. Then, once they are a bit more settled a lot of women learn how to be accountants, work on publicity or customer relations for the company. Starfish sells its jewelry mostly in the United States, but is growing. All of the beads and stones come from China. All the jewelry is really beautiful.

Jennifer introduced me to the head office staff members and the team of women that design and create the jewelry. They were all lovely and were excited to have someone come in and teach an English class. A few were nervous because I don't speak Mandarin, which is totally understandable. I have agreed to start teaching a class on Wednesday afternoons and I'm pretty excited about it. A few of the women who are more intermediate English speakers told me that they haven't had a teacher since May and are worried that they have lost some of their skills.

The offices are located more on the outskirts of the city in a much more "rural" area. None of the streets are paved. Jennifer took me to take a look at the shelter so I could get a look at where many of my future students are living. They live in a house with a big kitchen and living room, but there are only two small bedrooms for lots of women and some of their children! It's pretty impressive. Then, Jennifer walked me over to the house where she is living with some of the founders of Starfish so I could borrow some teaching material. They live in a pretty nice house not too far away from the shelter. Jennifer has her own room and usually gets the downstairs living room area to herself. The founders of the organization are a married couple with three children and they live on the second floor, while a woman who also works for the organization lives on the third level. It was my first time being in a house since leaving Portland. I'm excited to get started next Wednesday.

Tonight, Marie came over for dinner and we got my DVD player to last through a half of a movie before it died again! My weekend felt like it went by too quickly! Back to school and Halloween planning tomorrow.

Bu fang rou

Bu fang rou. That's about all I can say in Chinese after my first language exchange class with one of the customer relations staff member, Ray, today. It means "no meat" which is a very important thing for me to say. I can also barely say "I'm hungry," "restaurant," "I want to order food" and "porridge." I'm not going to learn any of this quickly. Chinese is spoken from the front part of the mouth and most Americans speak from the back of the mouth, so it's pretty hard for me to just repeat. We went to a porridge restaurant for lunch and the people around us gave me a few amused looks as I tried to talk. Ray speaks English fluently, but would like help with some of her grammar and writing and is interested in American history, so I will be teaching her a little bit about those things. She has the harder job of this language exchange, for sure!

I spent the rest of my day off at the gym and cleaning up my apartment. My landpeople showed up tonight to collect my rent. They enjoyed saying "Hello" to Bartholomew again.

Small Stars Lock Down

I got locked in with one of my small star classes. All of our classroom doors have locks on them. I was teaching a small star lesson with the violent one when things got a bit crazy. The violent had been having a pretty good lesson when he took out a packet of something from his coat jacket. It looked like big white tums in a plastic case like one would find on a packet of day or night quill or countless other cold medicines. He was putting the packet in his mouth, and I asked him to give it to me. He refused and the TA quickly took it away from him. The violent one went crazy and started slapping the TA over and over. I decided to remove him from the classroom before he started hitting the other children and I asked the TA to get his parental unit outside. The TA left and the violent one slammed the door shut and began to play with the lock. The TA knocked to get back in and I tried to let her back in, but the violent one started hitting me over and over again so it took awhile. I couldn't open the door after several attempts. I could hear the violent one's nanny yelling at him from outside the door. I asked the TA to go get someone else to help. One of the customer relations staff came to the door and kept on asking me to try again a few times to unlock the door, but it was pointless. Luckily, the violent one realized that he was in big trouble and was now quiet and looking at his activity book like the other students were. I went through the rest of the lesson and games for 45 minutes while a bunch of people outside the door were trying everything to open the door. Luckily the students were pretty chill with it. One boy looked pretty worried that we were never going to get out and I kept saying "They'll help us," even though I'm sure he didn't understand any of that. Of course, we were in one of the rooms with no windows in the back of the school were it gets dreadfully stuffy! Fifteen minutes after class should have let out someone did the old credit card trick outside and we were freed! Luckily, the parents looked like they were quite amused with the whole ordeal and I got hugs good-bye from most of the students.

I quickly rushed into the staff room because I just had to tell someone of what I went through! Luckily, Miles was there and I spat out my story before running late to my next class which was blissfully uneventful after that last class!

Miles stuck around an extra hour to go out with a beer with me and Ryan and Marie. We found a tiny pool hall across from the restaurant we were at and played a few games, too. I feel lucky that I got to share that experience with such awesome people.

Winter?

Perhaps Mid Autumn Festival is really the middle of autumn here in Beijing. I stepped outside today and was a bit surprised. It was cold. The seasons are beginning to change so quickly. I was warned that Beijing's fall didn't last very long, but I wasn't ready to say good-bye to the lovely fall weather we have had the last few weeks. I noticed as I walked through my little suburbia that all the people who guard the apartment building were all in heavy coats. The Australians arrived to work all bundled up and all the local teachers and customer relation staff members were all in their nice Winter coats. No one told me Winter was to begin on October 17th this year!

My first class of the day was a small stars class with an open door where the parents watched the class. I felt that it was a pretty unfair representation of my teaching since two of the boys haven't been to the class in two months are were completely unruly. The parents complained that the material they are learning is too simple. I am only allowed to teach the specific small star curriculum so at least I was able to back myself with that information. I talked to my co-teacher Stephanie after the class and she told me that parents are crazy and that she doesn't even like that class. It made me feel better. I really admire professional preschool and early elementary teachers now!

My next two classes were much better. I had my oldest aged class create children's stories that they will illustrate next week and my afternoon elementary class created pretty awesome looking board games to learn instructions and prohibitions! I read them one of the Halloween books that my Mom sent and they loved it and begged me to bring more books to read to them! EF isn't really into reading to students because they are being passive (I don't believe that all... I think their brains are working pretty hard because they are not as use to being read to here), but I am going to be rebel and read to them every once in awhile!

Captain's Log: 23 Weeks!

Birthday/Halloween Care Packages!

I walked into the office today and there were two care packages waiting for me on the shelf! I was pretty excited. My Mom and Dad and Joanna sent me birthday presents and Halloween books and treats to share with my students. I'm pretty excited to share them with the kids! Thank you!

Today was a long, but productive day at work. We had a long teachers meeting and then my Halloween Party Planning Committee got together with the boss to talk about our progress. Ryan and I made flyers that are going up tomorrow and next weekend we will start selling tickets. We have so much work to do in two weeks time!

I had a parent/teachers conference for one of my elementary classes. For every class 15, the teacher is suppose to teach for one hour and then in the second hour, a TA takes over the class while they work on some assigned work while the teacher talks to the parents. I talked to six parents individually for about two hours! The parents were so excited to hear what I thought they could do to help their child succeed in learning English fluently. I had prepared suggestions for all the students, but I still felt a little unnerved by it. I felt a bit of a fraud as I've never studied how to teach ELL students and am not an expert in the least! Two of the parents and I were able to communicate in English with a little translation from Nina, one of the customer relation staff members. I had to rely on Nina for the other four parents. It was fun to match the child to the parent through their facial features. I feel that I was able to gain a little more knowledge about the students' home lives and personalities by my conversations with the parents. The parents' passion for their children's success makes me want to try harder as their teacher.

Yue Liang

The EF Kids and Teens schools fall outing started out early. I met up with some other friends from the neighborhood to fight our way through morning rush hour subway time. Going out anywhere here in Beijing in the early morning makes me appreciate having the five minute walk to work that I have here. Laura and Claire bought us all coffee and egg mcmuffins so we were pretty content as we packed in the subway trains like cattle!

We reached the meeting spot to take charter buses to the resort. It was one gigantic sea of bright pink Roddy shirts! They passed out breakfast sacks full of just dried meat products. I happily gave mine away! The bus ride was only about an hour. Each school was given a song that they had to practice and perform in the evening. My school was given a Chinese song about someones love for their romantic partner being as big as the moon. I offered to play the part as the moon in order to not butcher the Chinese so much.

We arrived at the resort and were lead to a car park area where we were going to play a few games. It took forever for the events to get set up so I had a chance to mingle with the teachers from other schools. They eventually had us group back into our schools to begin the events. The first event had ten participants. Five had to run through an obstacle course, drink a can of coke as fast as possible and then carry a team mate to end of the course. We came in second. I didn't participate in that one.

The next event was called "the tractor" where ten people were asked to stand inside of two folded banners that were pinned together and walk across the car park. The competition ended quickly when the first team ripped the two banners apart!

The third and final event was writing the first 14 numbers in Chinese characters faster than the other teams. Actually, everyone was most excited about that event and it was fun to watch. We each received a prize for "participating." I got a chicken puppet that I have donated to our limited toy bin. My friend Stephanie oddly grabbed a University of Oregon Duck mascot hat. It was clearly my mascot and had Oregon scrawled across the brim. Funny, huh?

We had a great lunch inside the main dining room of the resort. It was a huge lunch, and even with what I thought was the most endless supply of meat dishes, I still got full from all the vegetarian offerings.

We were then asked to check into our rooms. Marie and I were room buddies. We grabbed our bags off the bus and found our room. Most of the other rooms on the floor had unmade beds, but luckily, our room had been cleaned earlier. Ryan and James were in the room next door to us. As Marie and I were getting settled in we heard Ryan yelp and there was a huge hiss of water. We ran out to the hallway were Miles and James were laughing hysterically at Ryan, with a crazy look on his face, as small flood was flowing from their bathroom. Ryan had accidentally kicked and burst some sort of pipe. Marie told the group of maids on our floor what had happened, but they were being pretty chill about it all. I got a blockade of towels going as the boys continued to laugh and tease Ryan. Eventually, a handy man appeared and waded through the water and turned the water off, called it good, and left. The water had already began to escape into the bedroom part of their room and into the hallway. Ryan tried to ask for a new room but the maids told him too bad and that someone would eventually come to clean it up.

Miles determined that it was time to go, so we bounced out of the flood gates to find some fun. We eventually made our way to a bowling alley and and a billiard room. I spent some time practicing my Chinese for the song. We practiced as a big group.

We had another meal full of meat... not as much good vegetarian dishes this time. Everyone was asked to move to the the KTV room where we watched each others' performances. Laura was the MC and they had here try to get people to get up and dance to the weird German techno music between each of the performances. We couldn't let our boss down and we definitely were the only people dancing through most of our musical interludes.

Our song went much better then we thought it would. I was able to put my arms up to be the moon at the correct time. I was nervous with such a big responsibility!

After dinner, about three quarters of the group left to go spend the night back in Beijing. My school had the largest population of teachers and customer relations staff left. Marie, a few other teachers from another school, and myself found two full crates of beer hanging out in our KTV room. We got permission to take it, but seriously, we were acting like kids at Christmas. We went through the complex giving out beer. Eventually, we made it to the bowling alley were they let us drink beer and bowl at the same time.

We eventually tired of bowling and went back to our hotel building. I was able to count about twenty stars outside! It was almost magical. The boys were grateful to come back to a drier room. We found most of our customer relation staff members playing the card game Murder at the end of the hall. We brought our crates of beer and crashed their party.

Miles gleefully went around knocking on our doors at 8:30 to make sure we were all awake and excited to tell us that we were getting a free breakfast, too! Breakfast wasn't too promising for a non meat eater! We made it right on time for the buses.

I just had enough time to subway it back to the neighborhood, buy some cold vegetable noodles for lunch and shower before getting back to work. Everyone was walking around like tired zombies so it was pretty fun.

Americans at the Toy Store

This morning, Ryan, Nick and I went to a big plastic toy market across the city near the Temple of Heaven to try to figure out how much the Halloween decorations and prizes we would give out would cost. We went to one building and found a bunch of cheap toys that we want to give out as prizes and for the little ones' goody bags. We went to an adjacent market and found a stall where a woman was selling tons of decorations. I have never seen a store packed so heavily with stuff before than in China (ok, maybe with the exception of that one store on Seaside's boardwalk). We found tons of decorations and costumes and some more potential prizes. We have a big list going of what we want to get... What EF will let us get will be for another day!

We came back to the school's neighborhood and had lunch at a noodle shop that is ran by a parent of one of the student's in one of my high flyer classes. She gave us some yummy cucumber on the house and helped me order something without any meat in it with Nick's translation for the both of us.

We came back to school and everyone was in a twitter because we received an e-mail about a special team building day that all the EF Beijing Kids and Teens Schools are suppose to go to on Wednesday. Instead of it just being a one day event, we are now getting buses somewhere on a mountain with a person-made seashore and staying in a hotel. The pictures of the hotel look pretty. All the customer relation staff were warning us to bring warm clothes!

The weather was so much better today. The skies were blue and everyone outside looked just so much more happy. What an evening of rain can do here is pretty remarkable!