I saw the strangest thing one day outside of my classroom window as I was day dreaming my day away and had to get a picture of it. If you remember from a previous post of mine, there is a big track outside of my 5th story window and a massive area of grass is in its interior. Well, that is where these four fine ladies are sitting. At least, I think they are women. It is hard to tell from where I took the picture. I had seen them early in the week, but I didn’t know exactly what they were doing until later. It struck me as I stood by the window watching them very slowly transform the field.

These ladies, as it turns out, are Human Lawn Mowers. That is not an exaggeration, at least not really. What they do is this: They sit on these itty bitty stools that you can sorta see in the picture, if you look closey, and they pick the tall pieces of grass and weeds that they can reach. They take these pieces, put them into small baskets until they get full, and then put it in that wheely thing you see and roll it away. Your guess is as good as mine on where they take it from there, but unless it is some special kind of grass, it probably goes straight into a trash can.

These women did little sections of the entire field for a good long week, if not longer, until the field looked nice and trimmed. I’m not kidding. They really did. And the craziest thing is that when they were all done – the field actually looked better than when they started. I have seen exactly one lawn mower since I came to China almost two months ago and it took 3 people to operate it. It was as though they had never used it before. I think that is one of the things I miss – the sound of lawn mowers on a Saturday or Sunday morning. There isn’t a lot of grass here in China, and if you happen to come across any, you are more than likely not allowed to sit or walk on it. You can look at it all you want to – but the instant your foot touches a single blade – you may get a whistle blown at you. I’m sorta lucky, though. I can go to the primary school right beside my school and sit on their little patch of grass all I want to and the only thing bad that will happen to me is a weird stare from some of the staff members.

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I still have a billion pictures I want to post, but I’ve been too tired and depressed to post or talk about them. Hopefully, I will get in a better mood so that I can tell you about what all Phil and I have done. There are still several pictures from Shanghai and some new pictures that I just took of an Ancient Paper Making Village. My readership has dwindled this week and I don’t know why – maybe it is the lack of posting. Or maybe my blog just sucks. I am hoping for the first one. I would hate to think that this blog sucks. That would make me more depressed.

If you think of any way to make middle school students behave, please feel free to post your insights. They are really starting to drive me insane. For Halloween, I am going to buy all of them Devil Horns. Maybe a pitch fork for the really bad ones.

When Tim’s parents came to visit him about two weeks ago, Phil and I went to see how their hotel accommodations were. They were staying in a four star hotel that was trying to become a 5 star. It is located right at the foot of the hill that leads to our apartment and the school where Phil teaches. We eye it constantly and jokingly say that we are going to stay there one night just to say we did. Who knows, we may actually do it. It would only cost us about $69.00 to do so. How often can you say that you stayed in the lap of luxury for $69.00 . . . not very often would be my guess. It it is a very nice hotel with a staff that is constantly on your heels to see if you have any needs. Even better – some of the staff can speak English. But anyway, I digress.

We went to see what their rooms were like because Phil’s parents are probably going to come visit us as well before we leave and we wanted to make sure it was suitable for them. Before we got on the elevator(one of man’s greatest inventions – thank you Mr. Otis) I asked Tim what floor his parents were staying on. I was thinking to myself that it couldn’t be the 13th – because hotels don’t have . . . and that is where I stopped in my thought process because I suddenly remembered that I was no longer in the States and that the fear of the number 13 was some 7,000 miles away. But I went ahead and asked Tim anyway, expecting any number but the 13th to roll off his tongue.

“They are on the 13th,” he said.
I laughed. “Your joking?”
“Nope.”
“They really put them on the 13th floor?”
“Yeah, why is . . .(lightbulb) oh, yeah, I almost forgot about that.”

I thought it was funny, but of course, stupid things like that always make me giggle. It may have been some cruel joke put on by the hotel staff because they knew they were Americans but it was probably just a random occurrence. I like the cruel joke idea better.

The hotel room ended up being pretty nice with a good view of the city from their window. The beds were actually sorta soft. In China, hard beds are the norm and they suck, but these weren’t half bad. The room itself wasn’t as big as I expected for a 4 star hotel. It was about the same size as a normal cheap room back in the States, but it was nice. The room came equipped with a western toilet(hooray) and a bathtub(double hooray). It was the first bathtub that I have seen since we got to China almost 2 months ago. I so wanted to hop in and take a long hot bath so bad. That would have felt so good. More reasons why we really should go there and stay a night.

In China, and this is the reason for this post, they have similar superstitions to ours. For instance, we fear the number 13 because we think it is bad luck, although I couldn’t tell you why, and I doubt any number of people could either. As far as I know, the Chinese could care less about the number 13. It doesn’t mean jack-diddley to them, but the the numbers 4 and 14 sure do.

The pronunciation of the number 4 and the word “die” sound very, very similar. So much in fact, that the Chinese avoid it as much as humanly possible. Like our 13, they don’t like to stay on the 4th floor of buildings and they really don’t like days, months or years that contain the number either. It’s just plain unlucky. The same goes for the number 14. It sounds a lot like the words “must die” and so they avoid it, too. If an apartment building has a 4th or 14th floor – the apartments on that particular floor are usually cheaper. I wouldn’t mind living on a unlucky floor if it meant I could save some money. But then again, I am a cheap bastard. Heh. I’m already unlucky naturally, so maybe the unluckiness would cancel each other out or something.

I don’t find these particular superstitions odd, but I’m still not quiet used to the idea of a lucky hairy mole, lucky long pinky nail, or a lucky cricket. Hopefully, I will make it through the rest of the day for I do have a lucky cricket to ward off the unlucky 13th day of October.

Heh, I’ll tell you about the two additions to our little family later. Gloria and Edwardo, our new pet crickets, are super annoying, but cute – so they are forgiven any wrong doing.

Have a Happy Friday the 13th.

Without any further delay, let me take you back to the week we spent in Shanghai. Like all things you enjoy, it went by a little too fast. Phil and I will need to go back in order to see the rest of it. We were only able to see a portion of the city.

Once Phil started feeling a little better, we decided to venture out into the massive city. And that is no exaggeration. Shanghai is something like 8 times bigger than New York City and has an unofficial population of 20 million. Although, if you asked anyone important, you might hear a much lower number like 14 million. Apparently, there are a lot of illegal immigrants here and they all live as squatters in the apartment buildings that are constantly being constructed.

Our first stop – food. We had been taking advantage of the western food that Shanghai had to offer. There are no McDonalds or Pizza Huts in Fuyang – only KFCs, so we tried to stock pile as many Big Mac’s and pepperoni pizzas that we could fit into our tummies. It was good to eat the yummy fast food fatness, but we could only eat so much of it. A Big Mack or a piece a pizza for every meal can make you wish for Chicken Feet and Snails . . . . okay, maybe not, but you get my point.

Shanghai is a lot easier to get around, in that I mean it is easier to order food because a lot more people speak English here. A lot more people. Almost every restaurant we went into had a English menu or had a server that knew some English. It made life so much easier. In Fuyang, we have to do something I call “Point and Pray”. In Shanghai, we knew pretty much what we were getting right off the bat. The first picture I have included came from a restaurant called Laava restaurant. Weird name, I know. I don’t know if they meant Lava as is hot molten lava or some other strange word I can’t think of. But we were hungry, so we didn’t care what clever name that had picked for their restaurant.

When we walked in, all of the tables were empty. I took this as a bad sign at first, but since I hadn’t seen any other places to eat – we decided to stay. The wait staff didn’t notice we were there for a few seconds because they were all asleep. Yes. Asleep. They were all curled up in the booths or had their heads down on the table. It must have been a very slow day. There was one woman standing behind the counter mindlessly cleaning a glass with a rag. She seemed out of it as well until she looked up at us. She nearly dropped the glass in excitement that she had some one to wait on. She immediately put the glass down, nearly dropping it in her happiness, and brought us a menu. She only spoke Chinese, but it didn’t matter because the menu was in English – so I was happy. An English menu is like a small piece of Heaven. She didn’t seat us right away, which I found weird, so Phil and I decided to order standing up. I ended up getting some Fried Rice and Phil got some Japanese Curry. It was one of the first meals we had had at a restaurant that we liked and knew what we were eating. I wanted to take a picture, and I did, but Phil thought I was insane for taking a picture of my half eaten plate of food. Do note that they had forks for us to use. We’ve gotten pretty used to chopsticks, but it is nice to use what you are used to every once in a while.

After lunch, we decided to visit my second home, Wal-Mart. Going here was one of our top priorities. I know that we are weird, but Wal-Mart is supposed to have everything and we needed to stock up on some things that we couldn’t get back in Fuyang. In order to get to Wal-Mart, we had to take a 20 minute subway ride, and then take another 20 minute walk – stopping every few blocks to ask someone in Chinese were it was. People slowly pointed us in the right direction and soon we saw a familiar sign. I was so happy that I did a little dance in the street. A Wal-Mart Dance of Joy.

It wasn’t quiet like I thought it would be. Mostly, it was just the name that was familiar to us. Other than that, the inside looked a lot like the other grocery stores that we have been to. The RT Mart, that we visit a lot back in Fuyang, is actually bigger and better. It wasn’t until we got to the second floor that we felt like we were in a Wal-Mart. It smelled like a Wal-Mart if that makes any sense and it had more of a design like one, too, except the departments were a lot smaller. I had to take a picture of the sign for the escalator. I felt a little funny holding up my camera to get it. I’m sure some of the Chinese customers thought I was nuts, but I thought that it was funny. The travelator. Heh. I want to know who translates this stuff for them.

Going to grocery stores in China makes me cry. Why you ask? Why? I’ll tell you. Every time that I go to buy fruit or vegetables, I have to walk past the live turtle, eel and crab section. In every grocery store, they have them. Some times they have the turtles in bags, which really makes me sad, but to see them sitting there waiting to bought and eaten totally just ruins my day. I know that it is no different than our Lobsters back home, but I don’t like seeing that either. It is one thing picking out a ripe apple or good looking carrot, but I know I will never be okay with trying to find the best turtle to cook for dinner. And even though I really don’t care that much for Eels, I still feel really bad for them, too. Poor little guys. I know that I have been severed eel a few times. Hopefully, I haven’t been given turtle, but there is no real way to tell. I watched a Chinese family try to pick out a turtle one day. They picked up one and looked as though were sizing it up against the other ones available. Of course, they wanted to get the one that had the most meat on its body and would taste the best with a side of cow stomach. I wish I was lying when I said they ate cow stomach, but I’m not. Why do the Chinese have to have such weird food taste? Why can’t they be meat and potato kind of people?

I promise I have not forgotten about our Shanghai trip, but I wanted to post some pictures that I have been meaning to get on here for sometime now.

For instance, dinner one night at our lovely school. I am sorry that this picture isn’t any better than it is, but you’ll at least get the idea of how awkward it was to have this on my plate. I didn’t eat it. I couldn’t. My soul would have blinked out of existence if any of it had touched my lips.

Chicken Feet and Snails

The food in China is unlike anything I have ever had to eat. And this picture isn’t even the worst of it. The Chinese eat anything and everything that they can get their little hands on. They don’t waste a single inch of anything. I mean, look at this poor chicken here. They are eating his feet for crying out loud! When you order chicken back in the the good ole US of A, you usually get pieces of boneless chicken that don’t even look like it came from something that used to cluck and scratch it’s three toed foot in the ground looking for bits of food. That is not so in China. In fact, it is quiet the opposite. When you order chicken here, that is what you get – chicken . . . an entire chicken. Everything between the head and those three toed feet. The Chinese basically take a chicken, skin it, boil it, lay it down on a cutting board, hack it all to hell with a butcher’s knife, and then lay it on a plate for you to eat. Sometimes, you have an eye staring back at you. I think it’s pretty damn creepy. I don’t order chicken anymore. The whole brain thing really turned me off. Same goes for the duck dish you can order. It just isn’t right.

Something a little more on the normal side. I was walking home from school one day, when I saw this mother and these two kids sitting on her lap. I am going to assume that only one of them is hers because of the one child policy, but then again, she could be a freaking billionaire and be able to afford the heavy fine for having more than just the one child. Who knows really. She didn’t want me to take her picture at first, but I asked again and she relented. The kids as you can tell were not very happy. I’m not sure if they were fussy because I was a strange white woman snapping their picture or if they were just tired and wanted a nap. Either way, I wanted to snap a moment of the life of real Chinese people. So I did.

This is part of the street that I used to walk on Monday through Friday. Now I drive it, or well ride it. I used to walk from the bus stop next to the Xinhua Bookstore(a pretty nice bookstore similar to Barnes and Noble) to Yong Xing Middle School(it’s a good 10-15 minute walk and it sucks) because the woman in charge of me insisted that their wasn’t a bus that could take me anywhere near my home. What a fibber. I found out today there is a bus that stops right in front of the school and that it will take me to the Xinhua Bookstore where I can get on another bus that will take me almost to my doorstep. Goodness, what a mouth full. Hey, at least now I don’t have walk as far anymore. I did enough walking when I worked at Bermex. This picture by the way is right beside the bus station that takes people to and from Hangzhou everyday. All of those cars on the right are various taxi drivers. When I walk past them, they all try to convince me to get in. I’m glad that I don’t have to deal with that anymore.

The Fuchun River. People actually go swimming in it. And that almost scares me more than the whole chicken feet and snails bit. From this picture, it looks peaceful and serene, but it is anything but that. I am surprised that fish live in it. I mean, I guess it could be worse, but I sure as heck wouldn’t go tubbing down it like I would the Congeree or Saluda River back home. Ah, talking about them brings back memories . . . if you are reading this and have any idea what I am talking about – I miss you. The river isn’t all that bad I guess. It is nice to sit by on the grass – some of the only grass here in Fuyang. And the view of it from our balcony is nice, too.

Like America, China flies their flags everywhere, too. I once saw some sort of village that had a China flag on each and every building there. A lot of the apartment complexes here have them flying on the roofs. This flag in this picture is Yong Xing’s flag. And the building in the back is yet another set of apartment buildings being built. The one thing that I have noticed is that China is constantly under construction no matter where you go. The sounds of hammering are never far off. You are lucky if you don’t have to wake up to it every morning. We don’t have any construction going on around here. Just the school bells and the sounds of kids shuffling up to our six floor windows.

I had hoped that a week long vacation would have some how cured my little devils of their rotten behavior. After my first class this morning, I realized that a 10 month vacation couldn’t have helped these children. No matter how much things change, some things always remain the same I guess. My kids are and will always be …

LITTLE DEVILS

To give you a taste of their devil behavior, I will tell you a little story. I met with two teachers today that had previously taught at Yong Xing Middle School. I am still trying to figure out why they came back for a visit. Apparently, they had a good experience which baffles me more than the fact that they came back to say hi to the staff. But anyway, what one of the teachers told me was this – One day while teaching, he thought he smelled some smoke. At first, he didn’t think anything of it, but soon it was more than obvious that the smoke was indeed coming from his classroom. A student had found some random matches in the room and thought it would be fun to light a fire, so he did. The guy said the trouble maker had the biggest smile on his face when he approached him. He picked the kid up and moved him away from the fire and then beat the fire out. I think these kids need a taste of Battle Royal. That should cure them. Or make them worse. I don’t know which.

The kids were so bad today for a fellow teacher of mine that she just walked out when she couldn’t get them to behave, listen, or remain quiet. I am pretty sure that those students are going to get chewed out for their behavior. And because she walked out, I am sure that the Chinese teachers are now starting to see the wretchedness of their students. I had Bella, the teacher in charge of helping us out, asking me which classes were the worst and I had a hard time picking just a few. The truth is that they are all about the same. Each class usually has one or two students that care and maybe one student that is way smarter than his classmates, but the others are just horrible, rotten, little devils. Maybe by the time I leave they will all be wearing halos and white robes. One can only hope. Heh.

We stayed at a hostel for the week we were in Shanghai. I had never stayed in one before, and didn’t know what to expect. I always had visions of dirty, cheap places where you roomed with 8 other travelers you didn’t know. This was not the case with Koala International Youth Hostel. Phil and I booked a room for ourselves with a private bath and a small kitchenette. It also came with cable TV and internet access in the room. The one thing that was right about my vision of hostels was that it was cheap. It cost Phil and I a total of $144.00 for the both of us for 5 nights or roughly 990 yuan. It was a very good deal.

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Here is the view of our bathroom. The big yellow thing is the shower and the white thing on the wall is the hot water heater. In China, it is very normal to have a shower like this one. Even in our apartment, our shower consists of the wall and the floor. The hostel did give us a shower curtain though – which we used for an entirely different reason. The door to this particular bathroom is one big sliding glass door. Yep. A glass door. One that you can see through. So, Phil took the shower curtain and rigged it up so that you wouldn’t have to watch other people sitting on the pot. I’m glad Phil and I know each other pretty well – or else it would have been 10 times more embarrassing to go to the bathroom. The glass door nor the curtain could keep out the sounds. I’ll leave that to your imagination. Another good thing was that we got a western toilet. Squatting to use the bathroom, to sum it all up, just plain sucks. Also, if you use a public bathroom, you should always bring your own toilet paper. If you don’t – you could find yourself in trouble. This is also a norm of China. Holes in the floors and no toilet paper to wipe your bum. Nice visual huh?

And our little kitchen. I was surprised to find a microwave, a refrigerator, a table, and a pot to boil the ever so famous China water. It was more than I expected really. The refrigerator appeared to be brand new. When I tried to plug it in though, I hit my head on the door handle of our front door. I still have a bump from that. It hurt so bad that two little tears roll down my face. Thank goodness I have a hard head, or else I may have knocked myself out.

This was the view from our second story window. All of those high rises are apartment buildings. They are everywhere in Shanghai. And I mean everywhere. There are like 14 million people living here and it is 8 times larger than New York. Do note the blue sky in the background. It only drizzled that first day, but after that we had pretty good weather the week that we were there.

Once upon a time I went to Lisbon, Portugal and I rode the metro there during five o’clock traffic. That was a bad idea, and I will never do that again. Every time that we got on the Shanghai metro, which was pretty easy to maneuver once we got used to it, I had moments of terror – thinking that I may have a repeat of Lisbon all over again. I shutter now just thinking of it.

I’ll will post more pictures later, but I have a lesson plan to write for my little devils tomorrow. Ugg. I am not looking forward to teaching again.

Ah. Shanghai. Where do I begin?

Like usually there is so much to talk about, but I’m tired and can’t think of all of what I want to say. I didn’t take as many pictures as maybe I should have, but that just leaves me with more of a reason to go back to Shanghai one weekend. Heh. I could probably spend several weekends there and still not see everything there is to see. Shanghai is huge and spread out. Every street corner has something to behold. Well, I won’t keep you waiting. Here are some of the pictures that I took.

As luck seems to always have it – Phil was sick the day we departed Fuyang for Shanghai. Joy. He was hacking up all kinds of green goodness, but still managed to get all of his stuff together so we could make it to the train station in Hangzhou on time. This is a picture from the back of the bus we took on the way to Hangzhou from Fuyang. The bus, like every other bus, was bumpy for the entire hour we spent on it. I am beginning to think that buses here don’t have shocks because you feel even the tiniest bump.

We got to Hangzhou fine. That was the easy part of the trip. Getting to the train station was almost easier because all I had to do was hand the cabby the paper that Ruby(some random Chinese woman) had written on for us last week. It had the name of the station on it. He took off, and before long we were there. Then came the hard part. We had to try to buy return tickets by ourselves without a Chinese helper. With my phrase book I wrote down in the worst Chinese ever that I wanted 2 soft seat tickets from Shanghai to Hangzhou on the 7th of October in the afternoon. It went pretty smoothly, almost too smoothly, and I would find out later why. She handed me the tickets, I glanced them over, and deemed them correct. But they weren’t. And I didn’t figure it out until we were in the waiting room for our train. My eyes had been deceived! Everything that I wanted was on the train ticket except for one minute and very important detail. That little detail was that the ticket said from Hangzhou to Shanghai and not Shanghai to Hangzhou. 96Y down the tubes, but oh hell, at least it was only the equivalent to $12. It could have been worse. We got on the train anyway, hoping that we could fix the problem once we got to Shanghai. I can totally see why Eric, a guy who came to China the year before us, brought a Chinese friend along with him on his long distance travels.

Poor sick Philby. He didn’t enjoy his trip on the train to Shanghai. I wasn’t feeling all to great at this point either, but Phil was a lot worse off than I. Doesn’t he just look so sad in this pictures? He’s seen better days for sure.

Shanghai Train Station is a freaking maze to get out of. Or at least it was for us. I don’t remember seeing a single exit sign that actually led to an honest to God exit. We eventually had to go through an entrance door and that was fun because we had to push up stream through 100 anxious Chinese people who wanted to get IN the train station. It was a moment of LET US OUT LET US OUT vs LET US IN LET US IN(please see the movie Clue to understand this.) And then we had to try to find a taxi who could find Xikang Road where our hostel was. That was an adventure as well, one that got me all frustrated. All I wanted to do was get to the hostel so that we could go and find some food, but no taxi driver wanted to spend any time on us and when we finally got one to stop – it took a good while to finally get him to understand where we wanted to go. It took a bit longer for him figure out which end of the Xikang it was on. Did I mention that it was raining? No, I didn’t think so.

Here is one last picture of the train station before I head to bed. I will post more pictures and tell more stories of our week later, but I be a tired woman, and I need my beauty sleep. I was still sitting in my seat when I took this photo. I don’t know why I took it – it is just a man walking slowly down the platform. I wonder what he was thinking at that precise moment in time.

I check my stats on my blog every once in a while to see who is coming to it and how they found out it exists.

I had to laugh earlier when I checked out the list of search words peopled used to get to my little blog in the last month. The search words usually have nothing to do with my blog at all. The are just so random that when they type it in my link appears somewhere near the top of the list. Thinking that my blog may be what they are looking for, they click on it only to find that it isn’t what they wanted at all. Hence all the people that come and don’t don’t even stay for a blasted second.

What made me laugh was this: Keyword= Chinese teacher throws student out window

I have joked many times about throwing my students out the window. I have even day dreamed about doing it. Maybe one day I will get so frustrated that I will actually go through with it. But the fact that someone searched for it means that someone somewhere did it. Or word has spread about the punishments I prefer to have in my class. Ah, if only it was so. Heh.

But yeah, I thought I would share it with you. It made me laugh. Maybe it made you laugh, too.

I did some searching and this is what I found. Indeed, someone really did do it. Wow.

Click here to read the gruesome details.

On every floor of my school there is an area where you can find a chalk board. The students love to write messages and draw pictures on them. I never know what they are writing for the obvious fact that it is in Chinese, but I imagine it is like a bulletin of sorts. The things that they write or draw have purpose and order – it isn’t chaotic or anything. They would appear to have themes.

The thing I like to look at most is the art work the students do. The first picture that I have posted is of a cartoon character that we call Naruto back home. He seems to be pretty popular here. The cool thing about their art work is that they don’t just draw the picture – the push the chalk into the board until it forms a raised bump and then a lot of little bumps form a section and the sections become a picture. It is hard to just wipe off. You have to scrape it pretty hard.

To give you an idea of what the pushed chalk looks like, I took a close up of another drawing some of the kids did. I will show the big picture and then the close up version. I can’t figure out what it is. It almost looks like a stop light, but I haven’t ever seen one quite like it. Maybe some of you will know.

Exhibit A – Weird Stop Light Thingy

See what I mean about not knowing exactly what it is. It sorta looks like a traffic light, but I’m not exactly sure.

Exhibit B – Close up of Weird Stop Light Thingy

Sorta looks like ground meat got slapped on the board. Interesting.

Exhibit C – The Writing on The Wall

God only knows what it means.

I saw this walking home the other day, and had to stop to take a picture. He probably thought I was nuts, but oh well, I got the picture didn’t I?

Back home if you see anyone trying to fix a power line there is always a big truck with a man sitting in a bucket and that bucket is on an arm extending upwards toward the power line.

Not in China.

I don’t know how the Chinese man got onto the power lines. I didn’t see a truck, a latter, or a stool, but he was there – sitting as pretty as he pleased on a little strip of wood that was tied to the wires. As he sat there he kept tugging on another wire that I figure he was adding to the present wires, but heck, he could have been doing anything. I was a meter reader, not an electrician. I just thought it was interesting to see how another country fixes problems like these. You would never, and I mean ever, see a SCEG employee doing this. No sir. Not in a million years. Can you imagine the lawsuits that would arise? I can.

I won’t ever know how the man got down either because after I snapped my picture, I scurried off. I know that China is developed in a lot of ways, but when I see things like this, and I see them more often than you think I would, I wonder how far back China is – in the sense of becoming a developed country. I guess China has a way to go in cities like Fuyang. Shanghai has to be more developed than this, right? I would hope so.