What do Thanksgiving, the past 3 weeks and Shanghai have in common?

They all happened when I didn't have a good connection and therefore couldn't make an update.  Sad day.  Actually, I only have a decent connection now because I'm bumming off a friend.  A very kind, generous, and more technologically endowed friend.  So, none of my pics are on this computer.  Word on the street is my connection should be restored sometime this week.  I'm not holding my breath.  Anyhow, all that to say: Yes, I'm still alive.  Things are going well.  I hope to post more when things are properly restored.

Chalkboard Tuesday

Ah, if only all my college students would come to know the importance of learning.

Chalkboard Tuesday

Really complicated version of tic tac toe?

MidTerms, Glorious MidTerms

Giving and grading exams can be a lot of work.  The school requires the final exam for my lecture courses to have 5 sections, so I thought I'd give my students a taste of what that will look like on their midterms.

I walked into one class and this was on the blackboard:

Indeed.

Considering I have about 500 or so students, it's really in my the students' (It's all about the students.  Really.) best interest to design a test that won't take an infinite amount of time to grade...so short, simple answers it is!  Some of my favorites are below.

As opposed to all those immoral born Americans.

Oh, yes.  The good ol' days of feudalism.

My favorite vacation spot, hands down.

Sounds legit.

King Henry VIII's Religious Reformation - "To bring people to be perfect and build a warmly country."  Divorcing that pesky wife in favor of his mistress was just a bonus.

Think the Brits know?

Confucius, a strong pillar of Western culture.

Feeding people to lions, using them as torches...epitome of human rights, no?

Times were rough for Confucianists in post-colonial America.

I don't care if he's dead, he's the only acceptable candidate!

No, wait...there's one more!

My hand got away from me before I even realized while grading this one.

Appreciate your honesty.

Great news, Mom!

Those Romans were so forward thinking.

Maybe according to Thomas Hobbes.  (A little Enlightenment philosophy humor...anyone? Anyone??)

No, and it's not the state penitentiary either.

Yes, his desire to render himself useless simply could not be quenched.

I also had several answers to that last question stating that King Henry VIII wished to "devoice" his wife.  Call me a sucker, but I gave them credit - whether they intended to write "divorce," were referring to sending the first wife to a nunnery, or were referring to cutting off the second wife's head, it was certainly all an effective means of devoicing the women into a nice, quiet submission.

Chalkboard Tuesday

Your guess is as good as mine.

Chalkboard Tuesday

Huh.  Turns out math is just as "easy" for me to understand in Chinese as it is in English.

On the Mend

Well, it was a pretty rough 24 hours, but now (in the following 24 hours) I've been successfully able to keep down a full glass of gatorade, a piece of toast and glass of ginger tea.  So, I'm calling it - I'm going to go ahead and say I'm on the road to recovery.  It only took me about an hour and a half to eat the piece of toast!

All the same, thank goodness!  Although I know the docs here are quick to give out IV drips for just about anything that ails you, I was certainly not anxious to be poked with a needle of unknown origin.  One paragraph in particular from Peter Hessler's River Town comes to mind when I think of local hospital needles.  (It's a great book that I recommend for anyone interested in what life can be like for foreign teachers in China - though written fifteen years ago, his university's in the same municipality as ours.)

Anyhow, I'm off to try and conquer more toast.

"It's the Black Lung, Pop"

Laundry dried, but not put away.  Bed warmer left on all day.  Schedule cleared.  Constant streaming of absurd 90's sitcoms on Netflix.  Inauguration of the cozy Christmas socks my sister sent last year.  Toilet and toilet-side bucket disinfected more times in 24 hours than in the normal course of the entire year.  There can be only one reasonable explanation for all of this - illness.

Ok, so it's not the black lung.  It's more likely some kind of violent stomach bug.  Seriously though, if this thing were a convicted felon, the warden would totally place him in solitary for the duration of his sentence.  Hopefully my immune system's already on that.  For now, I'm fighting just to swallow a little liquid every couple of hours.  Honestly, I am a bit concerned about becoming too dehydrated because our town's not exactly known for its stellar medical care or facilities.

Frankly, the only thing I'd know how to explain to a doctor here would be that I don't feel comfortable (to put it mildly), I have pain (yep, just in general), that I have NOT caught a cold, and that my "cough" has...stuff.  A lot of stuff.  (You're welcome.)  Yet another reason I need to buckle down on my language studies, eh.

This summer I did my best to prepare by basically packing a corner Walgreens worth of goods from the states, but even the pretty, pink Pepto tablets refuse to stay where Procter & Gamble intended.  In the last two hours, I have successfully ingested about 1 oz of gatorade (thanks for that foresight, Dad!) and 1 ginger chew (pilfered from my dear roommate).  Strangely enough, the thing I've missed the most is having a bathtub that I could curl up next to and cool my forehead against while laying on the tiled floor.  Well, that and feeling normal, though the two hardly go hand in hand.

All that to say, if any of you are reading this and would like to ask for a little healthfulness and protection from our Father, it would not go unappreciated!  Likewise, I hope you are healthy and happy to the fullest.

Mr. Ed

One of the best things about my job is getting to have amazing, if not entirely puzzling, conversations with both my students and the locals on a regular basis.  One of our friends, Edward, has now won the prestige of an entire post dedicated to him due to his own unpredictable witticisms.  On two separate occasions he has made me laugh so long and hard that tears were literally streaming down my face as I attempted to hold my splitting sides together.

A little background, Edward is perhaps the nicest, most keqi (a Chinese word indicating an excess of politeness...frankly, almost too much) guy I think I've ever met.  And I'm from the South, y'all.  He is considerate to a fault, incredibly diplomatic in approaching perceived problems, and prides himself on being a fashionable dresser.  Overall, a pretty put-together guy.  As such, I think it's fair to say we've all grown accustomed to a certain standard of speech, etiquette, etc, etc from him.  So, you can imagine my surprise when he and a couple of students were visiting our apartment one evening and he cut off the conversation to say, "Ok, but let's get serious guys.  How about we take off our shirts and tell you about the real reason we're here?"  Uh, I'm sorry, WHAT?

Needless to say, my jaw completely dropped as I looked around to the other faces present as if to confirm what I'd just heard.  The only thought I was capable of was "WHAT is HAPPENING?!?"  It turns out that Arianne totally understood he was making a Friends reference and found it brilliant.  The shock of it all took a little longer for me get over and was only exacerbated when Edward was ruffled by what he deemed a total overreaction from those of us still cackling.  He tried to calmly repeat himself, but what came out instead was a rather flustered "Ok, seriously guys.  Let's just take off your shirts and tell you why we're here."  I'm sorry, that will not be happening, good sir.  Definitely one of my all time favorite moments here.

Last night, some friends were over and the topic of the recent sports meet came up.  Edward had participated in the long jump and triple jump, winning second in the latter.  He was explaining that the school's prizes were pretty weak (20RMB for 1st place (about $3USD), 16RMB for 2nd, and so on) compared to his high school meets.  He fondly recalled the high school prizes as such:

"Oh yes, first prize was a p-n."
"A what?"
"Well, not a pen...you cook with it...a pan."
"...for...a high school boy??"
"Yes."
"Oh. Ok.  What was second prize?"
"A mattress."
"I'm sorry...a...mattress, is it?  A pan and a mattress??"
"Yes.  They were very good quality."

The conversation went on to envision the flourish with which the presiding officials would have presented the champions with such illustrious gifts.  Ah, I guess money really would pale in comparison.

Thursday

Thursday morning I woke up at about 7 o'clock, grudgingly and repeatedly hitting the snooze until about 7:30.  When I was finally able to extricate myself from the warm cocoon of sheets, I dug around for my solid red t-shirt, made a quick decision overriding the choice of mildly-inappropriate-for-the-day's-tasks-but-oh-so-comfortable black yoga pants with the much-more-suitable black trousers, and shuffled out the door.

I made it to the designated meeting spot almost exactly on time and marveled at the ingenuity of the boys - they had all opted to wear a long-sleeved tee under their mandatory red t-shirts due to the chilly, November morning.  Not willing to simply resign myself to the cold, I decided to run back to my apartment and do the same.  I was then only 5 minutes late - so, still early by some cultural standards.

We formed up into the (almost) lines we were told, attempted to match our steps left-right-left! to the shouts of yi-er-yi! and practiced shouting something in Chinese, relatively unknown and untranslated.  (Little did I know how much later in life my marching band skills would come in handy.)  One of the newest foreign teachers nervously joked about hoping no pictures made it online due to fears of the US revoking his passport.  I'm pretty sure that fear slightly worsened when the only little blonde-haired, blue-eyed, two year old beauty in town started waving China's flag from atop her daddy's shoulders, much to the joy and admiration of the crowds, natch.

The weather was surprisingly clear for CQ.

As we marched onto the track surrounding the field, we were greeted with shouts, cheers, and excited waves from the overflowing stands.  When passing by the stage holding all the high officials and university leaders, we were instructed to turn our heads to the right, in their direction, as a means of salute greeting while continuing to march walk forward.  From there, we circled around to join all the other departments on the field and listened as the highest officials began the ceremonial events for which they (blissfully!) cancelled two days of class - a school-wide sports meet.

Stage hosting officials, surrounded by red lanterns/banners.

As the field was cleared, it was soon filled with hundreds performing traditional tai chi exercises to usher in the spirit of the events.  Almost all the other foreign teachers were then (for the first time) told they'd be participating in the basketball shooting competition starting...in five minutes.  I guess they'd already determined my level of sportiness from the games of ultimate frisbee in which I usually secure my team's loss.

Tai chi performers.

After the morning events, it was off to lunch, followed by a quick nap before Chinese class.  The evening was filled with the usual 2 hours of English Corner and a student followed us home to regale us with stories about her life growing up in the countryside.  All in all, a pretty typical day.