I taught about superstitions. Afterwards, I split them into girls and boys and had a debate. The girls were arguing that Big Foot was real and the boys were arguing that Big Foot was not real. At first it was really hard to get them to open up. I had to push them a lot. I found that if I threatened to make the losing team sing and dance they were more willing to talk. My favorite was when the girls lost one round and I made them sing Row Row Row Your Boat and made up some dance moves for them. I was laughing so hard, it was hilarious! At the merrily merrily merrily merrily part I had them go crazy and act...well you know...merry. I demonstrated it for them once and the whole class just went wild. All the girls were staring at me with expressions that said "You want me to do what?!" and the boys were dying of laughter.
My first class we had a lot of time left at the end so I decided to throw in the Loch Ness Monster. They did the same thing but I had them switch sides. This is where things got good. They understood better what was going on so they were able to participate better. In my first class the boys said they thought the Loch Ness Monster was a dinosaur. I thought that was really creative and gave them lots of points for it. But then in every single one of my classes the boys brought up Nessie being a dinosaur. I was kind of wondering if they coordinated that...Thursday night there was a huge election going on at my school so they moved my Thursday night class to Wednesday afternoon. That class was a hoot. One boy stood up and said "I know the Loch Ness Monster is real! I have seen him!" I gave him a funny look and said "Oh really? You've been to Scotland and seen Nessie?" He got this huge grin and said "Yes! He is right here!" He pointed at the boy sitting next to him and I started laughing. I started laughing even harder when the boy sitting next to him pulled his hood up and lunged at the other boy taking him down. Oh my goodness it was hilarious! I went up to the board and gave them 100 points. It wasn't exactly a logical reason and no one would believe that but it was funny! The girls started getting upset and yelling protests. Then one girl raised her hand and said "I had a dream. And in my dream I was told that Nessie is not real." Ah yes the prophetic dream! Well that one made me laugh too so I gave them 101 points! That class had a lot of fun with the lesson.
In my first class I was only giving one point per reason (I learned that it was more fun to debate about how many points to pass out and they would get more into it). One of the girls gave a really good reason so I decided to give her two points. Well the boys did not like that. One of the boys stood up and started giving me what I thought was going to be a really good reason of why Big Foot was not real but he concluded by saying "And that is why the girls should not get two points." Needless to say I did not give the boys points for the reason. In one of my classes a boy stood up and started reading about the Loch Ness Monster out of one of his books. It was good so I gave him a couple points. Next time I came to the boy side he stood up looked around a little and showed me the book he had been reading out of. Turns out he wasn't reading out of his book but his smart phone. He'd looked up on the Internet about the Loch Ness Monster. He was showing me a picture he'd found online. One girl got up and said the picture might not be trustworthy because of photo shop and it wasn't a very good photo anyway. Then she proceeded to say that cell phones were not allowed in class and that if he pulled it out again she'd tell the teacher. Wasn't sure how to react to that so I decided to laugh and that got us through that awkward moment. :)
My last class would have been perfect had it not been for just one small tiny glitch. I use my computer during class (I make cute little power points). Normally the internet here you have to plug into. For some reason though I had one bar of internet. I noticed it before I started teaching but assumed it'd disappear and I'd be without internet again. We were debating about Big Foot when I heard that cute little ring that means someone is skyping you via video call. I turn around face the board to see that I'm getting a call from, Brian Austin. My whole class started laughing and going "Oooh! Who's Brian?!" I rejected the call quickly messaged him and said I was in class and told the class he's an English teacher in Nanjing. I was thinking later that I should have accepted the call and had Brian say hi. That would have been fun but I was so flustered and surprised about getting a call at all that it didn't occur to me.
My last class did the best though. All my other classes I really had to pull answers out of them but this class did an actually debate! They would stand up without me coming to their side and saying "Why should I believe you and not them?" They got really indignant about it and actually had a good debate. I couldn't choose a winning side because they did so well! We ran out of time in that class and that hadn't happened before.
One of the American foods I miss the most is popcorn. Anyone who has ever lived with me or watched movies with me can tell you it's a staple of life for me. The other day I was at the store with Alyssa and we found popcorn that was labeled American style popcorn. We both got super excited and bought a bag. We popped it that night and ate it while watching Kung Fu Panda. I liked it but Alyssa thought it was disgusting (Still can' t decided why they thought it was American style). At first we thought that Alyssa had burned the popcorn because it was kind of that blackish brown burnt color. I tried a piece and discovered it wasn't burnt, it was chocolate. It was like kettle corn...kind of. I probably won't buy a ton of it but I enjoyed eating it (And I got to eat Alyssa's bag the next night because she hated it!!).
On Thursday morning a student at my school name Pine came into my office to give me a box of Dove chocolate. A really nice box of chocolate. Like the kind you would give your significant other on Valentines day (No, he is not suggesting anything that's just how the Chinese are). It had a bunch of different flavors. One was white chocolate with flecks of strawberry. Super good! Another boy gave Andy and I this green clove stuff that's a delicacy in China (When people say it's a delicacy that always makes me nervous). I haven't tried it yet but I'm planning on putting it in my porridge one of these mornings.
Friday I taught with Alyssa. Her last class was SO bad! We couldn't get anything done. That's the hard part about teaching younger kids. They dont' speak any English so when there isn't a Chinese teacher there things don't go so well. We always split them up into rows and give points to the quiet rows and take away points from the loud rows, they love competition here. One of the kids brought me up some paper snowflake thingys so I gave his row a point. Bad bad bad idea. I was suddenly surrounded by little Chinese kids giving me little gifts. They brought all sorts of crazy stuff! Pencils, bookmarks, candy, a little cake it was ridiculous!
Friday afternoon Josh and I left for Shanghai. We took a bus to Zhenjiang and then took the train to Shanghai from there. We got tickets for the 7:09 bus to be safe and got there around 4:30. We ran over to the SG (The supermarket that's everywhere here) and grabbed some snacks for the train ride. We also found something really amazing there. A chocolate donut. It actually tasted like a donut. And the chocolate like chocolate. And it was only 1.80 yuan. Best 1.80 spent. We ran over to KFC for dinner. Josh decided it was too expensive (It was like 8 yuan which is a little more than a US dollar) and ran to the SG again so I was sitting by myself. I was looking around at all the other people when I saw a white guy sitting down. I never see white people I don't know so naturally I started staring at him. We made eye contact and he did a double take. We both laughed at ourselves for our behavior and he came and sat by me. He was from France, spoke pretty good English and he was living in China. His company moved him here in October. He was very nice though and it was interesting to talk to him. He doesn't like snails by the way. I asked.
The train ride was about 3 hours long. We took a K train. The trains here have letters. No letter is the slowest, then K, then D, then G. K was a lot cheaper so that's why we took it. We made it to our hostel around 11:30. We stayed in an 8 bed room. There were two other Chinese people in the same room (I was really surprised by this. I thought we would have seen more white people there). They had hot tap water at the hostel! It was amazing! I was sad I didn't bring a towel so I could wash my face. It would have been a nice change. The beds were really soft too! I got in bed thinking this would be a great night and then the Chinese man fell asleep and I realized I would not be sleeping that night. I can't even describe properly the snoring that went on that night. I'm amazed that he didn't wake himself up! It just wasn't natural. Josh was in the bunk under mine and during the night I leaned down planning on making some comment about this man. I didn't even have to say anything, as soon as I popped down Josh and I burst out laughing. The quiet kind of course!
The next morning Josh and I took a subway to East Nanjing Road, a huge road filled with shops of every kind. We met up with Katie, Brian, Alicyn, and Aaron (There wasn't room for all of us at the same hostel) and wandered around Shanghai for the rest of the day. We went to the Bund and wandered around for a couple hours. We also took a ferry across the river that was pretty fun. Alicyn really had to use the toilet but there weren't any so it was kind of a miserable trip for her. Of course we didn't make it any easier with our water jokes. It obviously was an emergency for her because the first toilet we found not only was a squatter but a trench squatter (All the squatters I've used flush). We found some touristy things to do but none of us felt like spending the money to do them. One was really cool though. It's like the Space Needle in Seattle but it was super cloudy so we wanted to wait and come when it was clear. We're going back for a conference at the end of March and flying out of Shanghai so we'll have other opportunities to go up there.
We did find something really exciting in Shanghai though. A seven eleven. We had to stop there and check it out. I bought a stuffed bun called maundu (I think that's how you spell it. Don't quote me on that). It was really good. Not sure what it was stuffed with but as long as it tastes good who cares right?
One of the weirdest things for me about Shanghai was all the foreigners there. We must have seen 50 at least! And we all got so excited everytime. Obviously the foreigners we passed either lived in Shanghai so it wasn't a big deal for them or they were just tourists. The best part is when we saw a black man at a restaurant. You never see black people here. Ever.
That night I had one of the best dinners of my life. Pizza Hut. It is quite different from Pizza Huts anywhere else in the world, having pizza on the menu was basically an after thought. They have steak, chicken, beef, pastas, onion rings and lots of other things you would never think of going to Pizza Hut for. We ordered a stuffed crust pizza and thought we were just getting green peppers, olives, cheese and ham but it had mushrooms and corn on it as well. That's another strange thing about China. They put corn on pizza. Really strange but it was alright. I hadn't realized how much I missed cheese until that second in time. Oh man it was so good. It was just Brian, Aaron and I so we got 2 1/3 pieces each. There was a couple with a son who was probably 3 or 4 sitting next to us. They ordered these funny chicken things and got a mini pizza. Like what we'd consider a personal pizza in the US. They didn't finish the chicken and took more than half the pizza home as leftovers. The three of us on the other hand got the largest size and basically licked the plate clean of cheese. The weirdest thing happened after that. The pizza did not agree with my stomach and I felt a little protest going on. It didn't understand why I wasn't eating rice!
We spent the rest of the night on East Nanjing road and did some shopping. Josh got an awesome sweater (And by awesome I mean something you'd probably wear to an ugly sweater party) and while he was trying it on a Chinese teenage boy came up and asked the sales lady helping us where he could find the sweater. He ended up buying it in a different color and wearing it out of the store. It was hilarious.
Shanghai is so beautiful at night! Everything lights up and it's just amazing. We wandered around for a while until we froze and decided to head back. On the way back we found a little shop and bought some souvenirs. Josh and I just barely made it to the subway in time to catch the last one back to the hostel. Our hostel was right by the subway station which was very convenient.
Josh and I slept much better that night because we were both so exhausted from not sleeping and being on our feet all day long. The Chinese man was still snoring unnaturally but I was able to doze off for longer amounts of time.
The next morning Josh and I took the subway to meet our friends at where church was. They called and told us they'd texted us the wrong stop two stops after we'd passed the stop we should have gotten off at. So we had to transfer subways and managed to get to the right spot. We beat the others there so Josh and I wandered around the shops right outside the subway station. We found a bakery and decided to go in and find something for breakfast. We found it. A chocolate donut covered with chocolate shavings and powdered sugar for 3.50 yuan. Needless to say we bought those. Best purchase I'd made all morning. We meet up with the others and attempted to find church. That didn't go well. We ended up stopping at a desereted park and having a short devotional before heading back. Brian was super jealous about the donuts Josh and I ate so we stopped by the bakery again so they could get some stuff. I bought a bun that looked like a hot dog bun (Didn't taste a thing like a hot dog bun) that had whipped cream stuffed in the middle and fresh strawberries on top of that. It was delicious as well. Alicyn, Aaron, Josh and I decided to go straight to the railway station and head back. Brian and Katie stayed for the acrobat show at 7:30 that night. The last bus from Zhenjiang to Yangzhong leaves a 7:45 so obviously that wasn't an option for Josh and I.
The train ride was pretty uneventful and we were able to get bus tickets without a problem. I was honestly waiting for something to happen because nothing ever works out like that in China. We said goodbye to Alicyn and Aaron and went downstairs to catch our bus. We randomly ran into two other boys from China Horizons that teach in Yangzhou. The only thing I don't like about Yangzhong is how much it sounds like Yangzhou (Yangzhong is Yaong Joan and Yangzhou is Yaong Joe), everyone gets them confused. So we had a moment of panic where each of us thought we were going to the wrong city and I was thinking "Ah yes. I knew things were going too well." But we both bought tickets to the right city so our panic was for nothing. Carlos and Chasen told Josh and I that the church we were trying to find in Shanghai wasn't a ten minute walk like the Internet said but a ten minute taxi ride so we felt better about not being able to find that.
Josh and I made it home without a hitch. It was really strange because Shanghai was so beautiful and a lot of fun but I felt homesick. Not homesick for Utah but for Yangzhong. I was so excited because I'm finally used to my life here! It was a great feeling. That night I made cup of soup, cream of chicken, ate a roll I bought at the bakery in Shanghai and had some leftover strawberry oreos (My new favorite flavor of oreo) while watching the Little Mermaid. It was almost a fairly normal meal except I ate my soup out of a mug that says lovely bear all over it. Basically each week in China tops the last week in China.
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