A: Learning Chinese is SO much fun. I want to practice wherever I go! The only thing is... my comprehension skills are TERRIBLE! It gets me into a lot of unfortunate situations. For example, it is in the 50's here, but sunny and just downright beautiful. Coming from Utah and (somewhat) cold California (in the mountains for Christmas!), sweaters are just out of the question (unless it really adds to my outfit. Of course.). Well, all of the secretaries and Gerald always comment about it, wondering if I am cold! Haha, it's great. Well, one time, I was talking to Gerald, and Peggy came over and started talking to him. With my little bit of Chinese, I picked up that she was talking about me and not having anything warm on. I nodded my head and laughed, just taking it. Well, I must have looked very confident about what I was nodding about so Gerald asked me if I knew what she was saying. I got all red, because really, the answer was no. I said, "is she talking about coming downstairs without anything warm on?" He smiled and said, "No, well, she was saying that you are teaching the kids about spring and confusing them because it is cold, but you are wearing short sleeves!" Haha, yeah, I think if I listened carefully enough I would have gotten that, but I freaked out in my head the second I knew kind of what she was saying and just blocked out everything. Another awkward moment; I went on a bike ride with one of the teachers, Brendan, and his friend, Thomas. Brendan met him through one of his former students (it's the student's dad), and now they do language exchange. Thomas is such a nice guy. Well, he asked me, xiaojie, quing wen xianzai ji dian? (Miss, can I ask you what time it is?). I totally did not get ji dian. Even though I have known that phrase for at least a year. I just couldn't make the connection! Uhg. Frustrating, indeed. One more: we stopped to get something to eat on one of our bike rides. We got some really good...things...(no idea what it was, really), and the people just spoke really loudly and fast in Chinese. Didn't understand a word they were saying, just knew they were talking about us. That in itself was kinda awkward... I can't wait to understand people!
B: Kaitlyn and I have gone bike riding as often as we can. It is beautiful this time of year and there is always so much to see! I love it. It has to be one of my favorite things I have done here. Just the other day, I rode to Dongshi, about 45 min to an hour away. We got a delightful dinner of pork and shrimp dumplings, seaweed, tofu, some soups, and pigs ear. Yep! It was like pork flavored rubber. With cartilage. So, the flavor was great, but the texture was... questionable... But you can never get any better than pork dumplings, so it was all good!
On my rides, I have seen temples, trains, old train tracks and stations, dams, waterfalls, rivers, markets, tunnels, bridges, orchards, shops, and beautiful scenery. Love it!
C: Chinese discipline. Really, the only reason I'm okay with it is because it's a good fallback when I run out of classroom management ideas. "Do you want me to send you out to a secretary?" They behave right up. When they are bad, we are supposed to send them out to a secretary and they yell at them in Chinese or whatever the feel like. Well, my 6th grader's English grammar teacher came in on Monday and started yelling to them in Chinese. I just continued to check homework...maybe I should have stopped... I just didn't really know what was going on... well, before I knew it, she had them all line up and step out of class. I followed because, well, it is my class after all. They formed a line going into the doorway of the next room. Before I made it to the next doorway, I heard a loud, whap! whap! She was hitting each of my kids with a bamboo stick on the hands, one at a time! And I had no idea why. I respect her opinions and motives, but...I was clueless. Well, I went back in my class and watched as each of my 6th graders walked in, heads down, and sat quietly. I'm sure she is a really nice lady outside of the school, but inside, everyone knows not to mess with her!
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