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!

Banking Madness, Lunch with a fellow Quaker, and a Birthday Dinner All Under a Nasty, Nasty Layer of Smog

This smog grew worse over the weekend. Today, right after we finished a meeting at work, we looked out the window on the sky was a yellow-orange-end-of-the-world kind of color. I kept asking the local teachers if this was normal. Stephanie told me that this was normal for winter time. I just can't imagine living your whole life thinking smog like that is normal. I guess local Beijingers can't imagine having their sky look differently.

Yesterday, I spent most of the day at the bank waiting to transfer money. I waited for three hours and then left to meet my friend Jennifer who I went to Franklin High School with. She had been doing training for the organization that she works for all summer so it was nice to catch up with her. She works really, really hard for the people in her care and makes my life here seem so ridiculously easy!

I went back to the bank and waited another two and a half hours until I was seen. The bank closed at five, but luckily, they will see anyone who has made it into the building before five, which is pretty awesome. They stopped rolling the numbers on the screen and I got pretty lost for when it was my turn. Luckily, a nice couple next to me helped me out. The woman had been sitting next to me-real close- and was reading over my book over my shoulder for about half an hour. I said "hello" in Chinese, she said "hello" in English and that was about as far as our conversation went. I was the last customer out of the bank that day and I was lead out by the security officer through a few crazy hallways outside of the complex.

Today, I talked to my Mom and sis for a little bit before work at ten. All the students were at school making up for the holiday, so we had a training day about writing parent updates. I also got a chance to catch up on some of my grading and administration type work.

We left work to go to a Chinese restaurant for my birthday dinner in the pouring rain. I'm so excited to have rain, but from the looks of the smog over the past few days, I know that there is tons of grossness in those innocent looking raindrops. We had a good dinner, but someone started a heavy discussion about global warming that wasn't a cherry conversation, but interesting to hear from so many perspectives. One of my friends got a rough phone call from home which put a little damper on the festivities. Claire and Laura showed up quite a bit later when it was really started to pour. We ordered another round of beers and tried to wait out the rain. Eventually, we gave up and raced home. It was a birthday dinner that I will never forget.

Captain's Log: 22 Weeks

Toxic

So there's really no such thing as a smog alert in Beijing, but today it would be like Code Toxic or something like that if there was one. It was so nasty outside and it felt like I was just walking through it. I was one of the first ones into work today and it was a little funny watching all the other teachers walk in just grossed out by the status of our sky, but a little sad, too.

I went back to the International Bank today and waited for two hours as the line went from A037 to A047. I had ticket number A107. I should have just walked right out earlier when I saw someone being carried out on a stretcher. The crowd was restless and bank workers were constantly shouting things in Chinese to the waiting customers. I had suspected I would be waiting at least an hour today due to the recent week of holidays, but I had not expected it to be that slow. At least I had a good book to read. I shall try again tomorrow.

The American teachers at work today had our first big meeting about the Halloween party we are in charge of. We are going to have one night for the little small stars and another night for the older students. All that time in Octobers past as an RA and a Program Leader at Outdoor School working on Halloween parties and Haunted House in orderly chaos have given me an advantage here. I'm excited to show the students, many who have never celebrated Halloween before, a fun time! It's going to be a lot of work for the next few weeks though.

Boom! Five Months

I woke up today celebrating being here in China for five months and was greeted by a truly disgusting skyline. Not sure what was going out there in Beijing, but the pollution was as bad as the few ridiculously humid, hot days we had in July. It was really sad because we've had a few truly beautiful and clear days over the National Day holiday.

My classes all went well. I taught a small star class that I just started teaching last month, but I have not taught it in the last few weeks because of all the holidays. The students there today were all new to me and their parents were very interested in me and were anxious to hear from me how their student did in class. It was nice to start with a positive, hopeful conversation with these parents.

I had one of my favorite classes today that is composed of all young women in eighth grade or high school. They are so delightful and the two hours just flies with them. I worry that I don't always get through enough grammar with them because I get caught up just talking to them. They told me that my birthday being the number 6 is very lucky in Chinese culture. It means that my life will be like a river. I liked that.

My last class was a bit more demanding. We were working on a reading from their text books and I asked the students to underline any words that they did not know. There were only four of them that day and a few started glancing at the book, but most of them told me all of the words. Then, I asked what the word "entrance" was and no one could tell me! We took a little field trip to the computers and I showed the students how to use dictionary.com online to look up English definitions. They were upset that I wouldn't let them look up the words in Chinese, but were soon starting to look up words that were not in their text books!

I went to the gym after work and got the light turned off on me again since they are opened shorter hours this week because of the holiday. I still had 20 minutes until the gym officially closed so I just kept going by the light of the treadmill and my ipod!

Hello 28

My birthday was pretty uneventful today, but I appreciated being in a new place. I really appreciated being able to go to a job that I really like, unlike last year where I was driving around forever to find a place to nanny out, getting lost, and having to deal with a stressed out parent.

The attendance in my classes were very low due to the holiday. All the students in China go back to school on Friday to start making up for their days off of school. My last class of the day is a higher level class that has Grace in it. Today was lovely because it was just Grace, another younger boy around her age and one of the older girls. It was nice to see the older student just relax and enjoy talking and completing activities with the two younger students and letting herself be a little silly. I enjoy all of the students in this class, but it was nice to see a few of them enjoying class in a new way.

Good-Bye 27

Today was the last day of my National Day holiday break. It was so awesome to have five days off in a row. I haven't had that much time off of work since I can't even remember! Of course, this is the first time in my life I've had a truly steady job since I graduated from U of O.

I attempted to do some International banking today, but when I got to the bank, I learned that it was close for some sort of revamping of their computer system. I took the opportunity to enjoy a green tea latte at Starbucks and read some of the book that I brought along with me. I was able to pick out five different languages while I was reading: Mandarin, Korean, French, Spanish and English!

I tried to go to work to do some lesson planning, but no one was there even though I had been told it was going to be open. I have a few of my text books at home, but not all, so tomorrow will be a little hectic! I went to the gym to resign up for another month which is often a huge production that takes about five people and a lot of crazy gestures and stamping of random papers! The gym had been closed the last four days, but it was completely empty except for me and the dude that sells some crazy protein drink powder.

I went back to the new grocery store and picked up a can of Spanish olives, a few cans of garbonzo beans and tempeh! I also found what looked like real soy milk! Most of the soy milk here is in bags and is usually grape or blueberry or strawberry flavor. I've been buying what I think is low fat cow's milk, but the date stamped on it is from the day it was brought to the store, so having soy milk is a nice alternative.

Not the most interesting way to end my twenty-seventh year, but still a good day!

Spa Day!

I went to a hot springs/spa/resort place today with a few friends from work. It was just north outside of Beijing. It was lovely to get a little bit outside of the city. The spa and hot springs resort is a place where people can go for the day or stay at their hotel. We each bought a day pass where we had access to all the hot springs and pools, saunas and a massage. They even gave us bright orange towels and robes to wear! It was lovely day outside roaming around the different hot springs and pools. Laura and I tried to go into a hot springs pool that was suppose to be good for your heart and circulation, but it smelled so awful, that we didn't last too long. We went to a few others that were lovely, though. The back massage was fantastic, too. They had a big Olympic size pool to swim laps in, which I was interested in, but I learned that you must wear a swimming cap in any public pool in Beijing, and I don't own one yet. We were able to stay there from 11 to 3. I would highly recommend it to any visitors in the Beijing area! We were able to catch a regular bus back to our neighborhood and ate a late lunch/early dinner at Papa John's pizza which was very yummy. Even after two showers, I still smell very herbal!

Tonight, I went out with a few other teachers to karaoke or KTV. There was only four of us, but we still rocked it for a few hours this evening!

Quiet Weekend

Not too much to report on from this weekend after my festive National Day. It felt really odd to not be at work during a true "weekend." I spent yesterday cleaning up my dirty apartment. I even dusted! I also cooked up enough food for a few meals. I caught up on a few television shows from home, too.

Today, I went over to investigate the new mall in my neighborhood. It's truly a huge monstrosity of a building and looks like it should be in outer space. I explored all seven floors, but wasn't too interested in any of the shops. There was a huge grand opening that I missed out on last week while I was sick. There is a tiny grocery store in the basement that carries olives and black beans! Yum! I then took the subway to Sanlitun for a pedicure and bought a few movies to watch. It was a bit of a restorative weekend.

Captain's Log: 21 Weeks!

Happy National Day!

Happy National Day! I spent my first National Day crashing a wedding. My friend Cindy invited me to a wedding for a couple she met in high school. I have been hoping to see a wedding here and wasn't about to miss the opportunity.

The wedding was in a beautiful hotel event room. We got there really early and sat at a table with friends of Cindy's from high school that were all lovely and I was able to chat with a few of her friends. There was already a big spread of snacks and drinks out on the table. They also showed a slide show of the couple's professional wedding photos and there were hundreds of them!

In China, you have to apply with the government to get married, and after that, there is no need for a ceremony and if you do have a ceremony, you can plan it any way that you want. They had a MC that led the event. The couple shared vows, thanked their parents with a traditional sharing of the same tea mug, and poured champagne over a fountain of glasses. I didn't understand a word, but I got what was going on. The flower girl who brought up the rings in the middle of the ceremony got the most wildest of the moments of cheering.

Toward the end of the ceremony, they asked all the single ladies to come to the front for the bouquet "toss." Instead of tossing the bouquet, all the single ladies grab a piece of string from the bouquet and tug. The girl with the string tied to the entire bouquet wins. Before we started the "toss" the MC was quite amused by me. He started asking me questions in Chinese that I didn't understand and shoved a microphone into my face. I just replied with what I thought was the last word that he had said. The room went silent and then the giggling began. I guess the MC asked me what kind of Asian man did I want to marry and I answered "Japanese." I had no clue. Cindy was laughing uncontrollably next to me. I didn't even win the "toss" but I will never live that moment down! I even got to be in one of the official group shots with the bride and groom. I will always be remembered as that white girl at the wedding who likes Japanese men!

Then, we had a fantastic lunch. The food just kept appearing at our table! There was a ton of meat, but there was still enough vegetables for me to get plenty full. The bride changed from a Western white dress into a traditional red Chinese wedding dress that I thought was much more beautiful than her white dress. The bride and groom go to every table for a toast. The best man and woman follow along with trays of candy or cigarettes. The bride then goes to each person, accepts their monetary gift, and then feeds the guest a piece of candy or a cigarette. We left after our table toasted the bride and groom and gave them their gifts.

Cindy, her friend, Grace, and I went to shop in the same Hutong neighborhood that we had been to the night before. I had hummus and toast while waiting for our appointment to get our nails done. The hummus was yummy and my nails turned out awesome. Next, we went to Cindy's grandparents' apartment to pick up a cake they had ordered for Cindy's dad. It was fun to meet her grandparents even though we could not talk to one another.

Then, Grace and her mom had invited Cindy and me over to their apartment for dinner. Her mom cooked us a delicious meal and I felt so spoiled being the guest at their house. Grace's mom was so concerned that I am a "vegetarian" in Beijing and kept putting food into my bowl! She was really sweet.

Finally, Cindy told me it was time to go. Her dad was ready for his cake and her parents wanted to meet me. I enjoyed meeting them, and Cindy translated a bit for me while we had cake. They cracked up when Cindy told them about my wedding incident.

It was a great day. I feel so spoiled!