One of the teachers gave a big presentation at a convention that was going on this week. She ended up taking my Monday class which I was pretty bummed about. I already teach way less than I'd like and that meant I wouldn't have class again until Wednesday. But I understood why she wanted my class so I gave it to her. Tuesday came around, I went and helped Alyssa with her little demon children (But very very cute demon children who tend to be cuter outside the classroom than in). One of her classes we took outside to play duck duck goose. Well, actually cat cat dog because they knew what those animals were. We split into two groups which naturally turned out to be boys and girls. I took the girls and Alyssa got the boys. Trying to explain the rules of this simple game to Chinese children who barely speak any sort of English is very difficult. I finally got them to get in a circle and then they grabbed hands and starting running around me. Yeah that was weird. Eventually Orange came over and explained to them how to play the game. They loved it! They would giggle and scream and shout out names of people to pick. I loved it because sometimes they'd start yelling "Laoshi! Laoshi!" Which is teacher in Chinese and look at me and start giggling again. Tuesday afternoon Orange took the four of us to brush training. It was super dee duper hard! There's a lot more to writing with a brush than just drawing lines. I succeeded in drawing a couple straight lines and one character that means king. One day I want to do my name but I don't think I'm quite up to that one yet.
I went home for dinner and ate with one of the teachers I share an office with. She is super nice and apparently didn't think I ate enough for dinner because she took me to the bottom floor and got me fried chicken and a tasty bun filled with egg cream filling. During dinner she told me that my students would have exams all day Wednesday and Thursday so I wouldn't have to teach my classes. I don't know who I felt more sorry for. Myself because now I didn't get to teach like I wanted to, or my students who had exams for the next two days straight.
In the package my mom sent me was a special gift for Spring and Apple. She'd taken a picture of the three of us that I sent her and made cute scrapbook pages out of them for each of us. During dinner break I ran over to their classroom to see if they could come to my dormitory after class and pick it up. They weren't going to be able to make it but said they had time to go right now. We turned to go super quick and saw a man coming down the hall towards us, turns out this was their math teacher. Instead of going back to class and coming to get their gift later like I thought they would they asked their math teacher if they could run to my dormitory really quick. Well I'm assuming that's what happened, it all occurred in Chinese so I really can't be sure. He stared at me for a few seconds and gave me kind of a weird look and I just stood there pretending like I knew what was going on and that this wasn't a really awkward situation. He eventually told them they could come with me and we ran really quick to get it. I hope I never run into this math teacher ever again. Apple and Spring really liked the gift so that kind of made up for the awkward situation they put me in.
Wednesday Orange invited me to their school for a special ceremony. They'd picked the top ten teachers from the primary school and they were giving them awards. Lots of representatives from Yangzhong were going to be there. It was pretty boring for me though because I don't speak Chinese and they didn't use any of the words I know. Which isn't surprising since I mostly know foods...They had movies for each of the teachers and those were pretty fun to watch. Turns out it's more fun to make up what's going on in movies than actually to know what's going on.
The ceremony went long so I wasn't able to make it back to my place in time for dinner. Alyssa and I decided to go to our favorite restaurant and get dumplings and eggplant (There are lots of foods that I love in China that I would never eat in America. Eggplant is one of them). We'd met up with all the foreign teachers in Yangzhong Monday night at this restaurant for a little unofficial FHE but it's so delicious that we go there lots. We normally sit at a large round table with the spinning top but since it was just the two of us we sat at one of the small four seater tables. While we were eating a group of men came in. They'd been there on Monday when we ate and they acted out to us that they remembered seeing us. One of the guys spoke VERY little English (Mostly he'd just shout Hello). They went and sat at our usual table and after a few minutes gestured that they wanted us to come sit with them. In America we would have asked for boxes gotten the check and booked it out of the restaurant never to return without a man. In China we picked up our dishes and moved to their table. Dinner in China is a very social event and there is lots of toasting that goes on, mostly because these guys were drinking alcohol. They offered us their drink and when we refused offered us every other kind of alcohol the restaurant provided. They finally settled on aloe milk (Sounds disgusting right? That's for sunburns not consuming as a beverage. It's actually super delicious, I'd had it before at hot pot with Cassy and a fine substitute for alcohol). They really liked spicy food and made us try every dish they ordered. They also really liked green stuff which I can only force down with rice and we were out of rice. I had one bite of everything and then called it good. They'd ordered kung pao chicken which was super tasty and I had more than one bite of that. The Chinese have a very low tolerance for alcohol and they were drinking really strong stuff. When one of the guys started trying to take his clothes off (Which wasn't that huge of a deal considering everyone has fifty layers on) we decided it was time to head out of there. They ended up paying for our meal which was fantastic! (Side note from Arielle's mom: Arielle is VERY CHEAP!)
On Thursday Alyssa called to say the teachers at her school were having a little party where they would sing and dance and wanted to know if we wanted to come. The plus side? Dinner was served afterwards. I was really excited about it until Alyssa rounded the corner holding a flute and said that the school wanted me to perform a song. Panic Mode!! Every song I knew went flying out of my head, I was lucky I remembered how to even hold the flute I was so shocked. We went to Orange's office and found a simple version of Fur Elise to play. Unfortunately (Or fortunately I haven't quite decided yet) the Internet wasn't working very well and all the copies we printed were blurry and not playable. I told them next time I'd come better prepared, so prepared that I'd know what activities to skip. They had a drawing at the party and I ended up winning a set of headphones. I got my picture taken and everything! It was exciting. The most exciting part is I was able to figure out that they'd called my number in Chinese before Orange translated it into English. They wanted Alyssa and I to sing a song but they didn't really have songs in English. I was actually a little bummed about that one. Singing with someone else would have been fun, playing my flute was a more scary ordeal. Instead of us singing Orange's son Starling sang Twinkle Twinkle in Chinese. It was so adorable!
Thursday was International Women's Day and Alyssa's school gave her a cake. We got rid of the boys and devoured the delicious goodness. It was a white cake with whip cream frosting, fruit on the top and a banana pudding in the middle. The best part of the cake? I guess the Chinese eat cake with chopsticks. It was pretty fun actually. One of the trickier things I've eaten with chopsticks but fun all the same.
One of the third year students at my school made it past the first part of the exam for Tsinghua University the number one university in China. It's a huge honor for the school and for the student. Last year not one of the students at the school made it this far. When Cassy was telling me about it she said this school is like the Harvard of America. The next exam was an oral exam and the high school suspected that the people giving the oral English exam would be foreigners so they wanted her to talk to Andy and I so she would be used to talking to foreigners. On Friday morning we met with her in the Teacher's Reading Room. The school provided us with questions that the university would be asking. I was quite surprised by some of the topics they touched. Some of the questions were: Are you happy to be the only child? Do you think you would be happy to be a housewife? Nowadays some college students cohabit outside the campus. What is your opinion? I found them to be strange but we asked them all the same. She doesn't want to be a housewife and she doesn't think students should cohabit just in case you were curious. I didn't even want to touch the only child one though...She was really sweet and I hope that she does make it in. She works really hard. Her teacher came and talked to us and told us that she is not attending her classes until her exam (She will go to Beijing on the 14th and the exam is the 17th and 18th) so she can read all day and expand her vocabulary. The Chinese are very serious about education.
This weekend I will spend Friday in Yangzhong and leave for Nanjing Saturday morning for the Relief Society Birthday Social. Alyssa and I are staying at a lady in the wards house. It should be a lot of fun!
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