I did Japanese because the Chinese do not like the Japanese at all. They all went crazy as I wrote Japanese up on the board and started shouting out negative terms. They also brought up Japanese cartoons which they all seem to love, ironically. They would also say things like short and small eyes and uses chopsticks. I was thinking to myself "Have you guys looked in a mirror recently?"
After doing stereotypes for about ten minutes the real fun began. During training in Shenzhen I learned a really fun game called Upset the Fruit Basket. I'll quickly describe how to play it just so everyone knows. Everyone stands in a circle and one person is in the middle. The person in the middle will say "I like people who..." They could finish that sentence with any sort of description such as I like people who are wearing boots, I like people who live in China etc etc etc. If they'd said I like people wearing boots all the people in the circle wearing boots would have to run and find a new spot. The last one to find a spot is in the middle and has to say "I like people who..." Easy enough right? If you're a native English speaker easy enough apparently. I was planning on having my class just move their desks and playing it inside. I did that with my first class and it didn't turn out too well. First of all they moved their desks and I got trapped at the front of the room. So naturally I climbed on top of a desk and jumped to the other side. It was insane seeing the cell phones come flying out to take pictures of the crazy white girl jumping on desks. I got to the other side (With no injuries I might add) and realized we still had about the same amount of room after the desks were moved as before. There was no way I'd be able to fit a circle of 56 kids in this room. After thinking quick I said "Everybody move the desks back we're going outside!" This was met with lots of blank stares. Eventually I got them to understand that even though it was February and not exactly the ideal temperature for outside games I still expected them to head outside to play. It took me another fifteen minutes to explain the game so that they'd get it enough to be able to play something like the game.
In my second to last class it was raining so we went into the gym instead. We started as a circle but eventually became one line of girls and one line of boys that ran to the middle and then back to where they started (I tried super hard to get them to mix and mingle a little bit but somehow they always made it back to a group of boys and a group of girls. One of my classes I made them stand boy girl boy girl and I thought some of them were going to burst into tears. (Never did that again). One of the boys suggested that I had the students run all the way across instead of to the middle. It wasn't exactly the safest thing to do but I obliged because it was a funny thing to do. The Chinese are super competitive which made things even more funny. Really I thought I was going to wet my pants a couple times I was laughing so hard. One of my classes started pushing each other to the ground. The students would run straight at each other and the boys would bee line it while the girls were left to dodge the massive groups of boys. One time I ran across turned around to run back and started heading right for a wall of larger Chinese boys. It was terrifying.
I loved to yell things like people who are Chinese, people who have black hair, people who wear glasses etc. because they would all start screaming and take off running. One time right after I yelled I like people who are Chinese the other students starting yelling things for the girl in the middle. Now, my Chinese is not good but there is one word that I have picked up quite easily: Meiguo. It means America. They started telling the girl in the middle to say say I like people who are American. I then proceeded to wow my students by saying "Hey! I know what that means!" Needless to say I dodged that bullet.
My students also liked to single people out. They'd look to see what certain people were wearing or even shout out their names. The one I probably should have put a stop to but it's just more of a culture thing was "I like people who are fat." The Chinese are very blunt about that kind of stuff and so I just let that one go. No one ever was visibly offended. One of my classes said "I like people who are black" and then went up to a boy that was just a darker Asian. I did call that one out. I told them no one in this room was black and that he had to do it again.
My last class worked themselves really hard. At the end most of the boys had started taking off layers. Just as a reminder that never happens in China. Ever. Especially not this time of year. At the very end of the class some were lying on the floor just panting. One of the kids in the middle called out one of the boys lying on the floor and instead of getting up and running the boy started pushing himself on his stomach to the other side.
Alyssa has been super sick this week. I went and helped her with her classes on Tuesday like I normally do and she was just completely miserable. The kids were just going wild because Orange wasn't in the class. Orange's son has been really sick so she was with him. One of the things the teachers do to get the kids attention is yell 1,2,3 in Chinese and the kids yell back 4,5,6. So I decided to try it. For the most part it worked well. The kids were quiet for about 5 seconds but they didn't yell 4,5,6. I wowed them with my amazing Chinese skills and got them to listen for a minute. It was hilarious to see that.
On Monday night Josh came over to our school so we could go to a cute little restaurant across from our school that had waffles (Alyssa was too sick to come with us). The three of us (Josh, Andy, and I) went over to the restaurant and pointed at the picture of the waffles. Apparently they don't actually sell waffles there they just have pictures. False advertising? I think so. We left feeling a little upset and even more disappointed. But it turned out for the better. Now that it's getting a little warmer there are more street food vendors, which is the best place to buy food. We found some really good flat bread and little cakes that tasted like short bread. The flat bread was super delicious though. It was dough rolled out and then the guy spread some herbs on it, rubbed butter and sesame seeds on it and then cooked it in what looked like a giant tortilla maker. Then the girl cuts it into fourths rubs a semi spicy smear on it and cuts the fourths into little pieces that you eat. Oh it was so good. I've been there a couple more times to eat. We also got this wrap thing that I don't even know how to describe. It was also good, but I liked the flat bread stuff better. It had some sort of meat in it. It kind of had the texture of chicken but it was curly...I don't know. The meat that made me the most suspicious was the red meat (No it wasn't raw. I checked). It is like nothing I've ever had before and I'm not sure I really want to know what it was.
There was a really important day that just happened. International pancake day. We decided to try our hand at making pancakes. We looked up some recipes online but it's hard to find baking powder when you can't read Chinese. We ended up just making them with water, flour, eggs, sugar and salt. We tried to make them over a burner but that didn't work. Turns out you can make pancakes in the microwave! I would not recommend this to anyone who has ANY other means of making pancakes. It was out of sheer desperation that we did this. The Chinese dip everything in sweet condensed milk so we decided to do the same with pancakes. It turned out beautifully! I'm definitely doing that in the states it's so tasty. In conclusion: Pancakes in the microwave not an extremely good substitute. Pancakes with sweet condensed milk an extremely good substitute for syrup.
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