As you all know, this is the week before Halloween, however, my students had no idea. So this week in class, I have been teaching my students about Halloween. Part of the lesson includes a viewing of the 1983 music video of Michael Jackson's "Thriller." While Americans find this video to be amusing and mostly think of it as an awesome dance, my Chinese students found the video to be quite frightening. My favorite part of class was actually near the end of the Thriller video, when all the students were on edge, huddled together....I slammed my book on my desk as loud as I could, and nearly every student screamed and jumped a foot in the air. I think some of them were a little mad at me for scaring them, but it was definitely worth it. While they spent the next ten minutes trying to calm down, I spent it laughing. After this, I gave them the assignment of writing their own ghost stories. Here I will include some of my favorites.
"A pretty girl was walking outside alone in the evening when a man followed the tracks of her. So she made her way to a graveyard and stood in front of a tombstone saying, 'Daddy, I'm back. Please open the door.' The man was so scared that he run away immediately. As the girl was laughing loudly for her good idea, she noticed an old man wandering in front of a tomb. So she went over and asked: ‘Excuse me. It’s already late at night, and what are you doing here?’ The old man said slowly: ‘Well, my son has carved my name wrongly on the tombstone, so I went out to correct it.’ Of course, the girl almost fainted.”
“Once there was a mother who was to give birth to a baby. After a few minutes, finally the baby was born. He was not a baby, but a little monster whose head was that big and grey, whose teeth were that sharp and big, whose crying was that scary. And he kept drinking his mother’s blood. The doctors were so frightened that they decided to kill the baby. But he ran away. Few days later, the doctors in that operation were killed one by one, but the head of the baby became biger and biger. He was always cryi8ng and his mouth was full of blood.”
“Long long ago, there was a butcher who killed pigs and sold them. He usually hug a pig on a peach tree in his yard and used a sharp knife to kill it. The blood of the pigs drop down into the soil. Many souls of pigs gathered under the tree and formed a large ghost; they hated the butcher very much. So the tree is covered with anger. One day, a man who researched in ghost saw the tree. He thought there would be something bad happen to the butcher. But the butcher ingnored his warning. Then a rainy night came. It rained heavily and the thunder and lighting sounded horrible. The large ghost came out and into the room. The butcher was waken up by the noise. He scared to death at the sight of the ghost.”
“In my hometown there was a couple, they are all killed in a terrible accident. I am sorry to say that there was a baby of 8 month in the woman’s stomach. So the terrible accident destoryed the whole family. It’s said that a man owed much money from the couple. But he made it a seret after they died. He never planed to give the money to their parents. So one day when the man on his way home at dawn, he saw a woman cry heavily and her hair is long also not held. When the woman looked up at him, he almost scared to death, the girl is the dead woman. The woman keep crying without saying anything and the man became sick after that time. And he didn’t pull through until he paid the money to the couple’s parents.”
Even after all of this, my favorite part is yet to come. As class ended and I dismissed the students, one girl walked up to me excitedly and handed me a piece of paper. She said, “here is a thank you note for you!” Here is what her thank you note said:
“I feel very happy in this class. You always try your best to speak loudly and clearly, though you’ll be much more tired in that way. The Halloween is coming, but you can’t spend it with your family, what a pity. I appriate your well teaching. Thank you! Wish you a happy Halloween Day!”
Seriously, there are no people in the world sweeter (or stranger) than my little students.
Oct 27, 2009
Oct 25, 2009
Fail.
No matter how many times we fail, we continue to expect success. Yesterday, we went to the bank in China. It took 3 hours. One reason was that when we got to bank, here is what we found instead of the bank:
On the plus side, our sense of irony is developing quite nicely.
On the plus side, our sense of irony is developing quite nicely.
Oct 10, 2009
Feng Huang Phoenix
Last week was our fall vacation, and we made good use of it by visiting a city called Feng Huang, which means phoenix. As the story goes, in ancient times a beautiful phoenix was flying throughout China, and as it flew over this city, it thought it was so beautiful that it stopped to stay a while. So then the city was named FengHuang after the bird. Stories aside, it was an enchanting ancient city; one of the few cities in China that is still full of the traditional architecture and is less effected by the modernization which is widespread in other parts of China. Before we moved here, we had the idea that all the cities in China would be like this one; unfortunately, we were mistaken. It was great to spend a few days experiencing the China we had always imagined: curved rooftops, silk vendors, red lanterns, canal boats, and pointed straw hats.
However, experiencing real China also means traveling in the middle of the night, riding on loud and dirty trains, and trying to sleep on merciless rigidly hard beds. We left on Monday at midnight to “sleep” on an overnight train. Seven hours of traveling and zero hours of sleep later, we arrived in Jishou, a city an hour away from our destination. We climbed on a bus at 7:30 am and tried to sleep for an hour before arriving in FengHuang. When we finally made it to FengHuang, we checked into our hotel and took a nap before exploring the city. The next day was wonderful, the next night of sleep was awful. We are beginning to think that sleeping on the sidewalk would be more comfortable than sleeping on a Chinese bed. The Chinese say that hard beds are good for your back; I say they are good for sleep deprivation torture. After two or three hours in one of those beds, I would be ready to spill any secret in exchange for a little sleep. Although we were doggedly exhausted for most of the trip, we still had a really good time and bought plenty of souvenirs to share with our friends when we return to America. Actually, shopping for souvenirs is one of the main reasons we decided to visit FengHuang; we spent the majority of our time bartering prices with the local vendors. At 4:30 on Thursday morning, we got up to prepare for our departure. We caught a taxi at 5 am and put five people in the car that was meant for four and rode an hour to the next city to catch our train. Our train left at 7 am, and we tried our best to sleep until we finally collapsed into our apartments at 4 that afternoon. And now I have rambled on enough. Unfortunately, we are still having photo troubles, so I can only post one picture:
This is the view of FengHuang at night
I would love to post a dozen more pictures, but unfortunately I can’t. Instead, I will give you a link to our new photo site where you can see as many pictures as you like of our life in China, including more pictures of our trip to FengHuang:
http://picasaweb.google.com/elizabethopheim
However, experiencing real China also means traveling in the middle of the night, riding on loud and dirty trains, and trying to sleep on merciless rigidly hard beds. We left on Monday at midnight to “sleep” on an overnight train. Seven hours of traveling and zero hours of sleep later, we arrived in Jishou, a city an hour away from our destination. We climbed on a bus at 7:30 am and tried to sleep for an hour before arriving in FengHuang. When we finally made it to FengHuang, we checked into our hotel and took a nap before exploring the city. The next day was wonderful, the next night of sleep was awful. We are beginning to think that sleeping on the sidewalk would be more comfortable than sleeping on a Chinese bed. The Chinese say that hard beds are good for your back; I say they are good for sleep deprivation torture. After two or three hours in one of those beds, I would be ready to spill any secret in exchange for a little sleep. Although we were doggedly exhausted for most of the trip, we still had a really good time and bought plenty of souvenirs to share with our friends when we return to America. Actually, shopping for souvenirs is one of the main reasons we decided to visit FengHuang; we spent the majority of our time bartering prices with the local vendors. At 4:30 on Thursday morning, we got up to prepare for our departure. We caught a taxi at 5 am and put five people in the car that was meant for four and rode an hour to the next city to catch our train. Our train left at 7 am, and we tried our best to sleep until we finally collapsed into our apartments at 4 that afternoon. And now I have rambled on enough. Unfortunately, we are still having photo troubles, so I can only post one picture:
This is the view of FengHuang at night
I would love to post a dozen more pictures, but unfortunately I can’t. Instead, I will give you a link to our new photo site where you can see as many pictures as you like of our life in China, including more pictures of our trip to FengHuang:
http://picasaweb.google.com/elizabethopheim
Oct 2, 2009
National Day and Moon Cakes
It’s been almost a month since our last blog update, so I do feel guilty for not updating as much as I should. Even still, I feel like there isn’t much to say. Our first vacation started yesterday — Chinese national day and Mid-Autumn Festival combine to give us a weeklong break. Before the break, we had both begun our classes and met almost all of our new students.
In the 4 weeks we’ve been here, we have had the chance to reconnect with many of our old friends whom we spent a lot of time with last year. A few of them are really showing some promise and we have very high hopes for them. We are currently in the process of trying to schedule regular times to be with them to encourage their growth. We have met several new students but haven’t had much time to establish friendships with them. Soon we will be spending more and more time with them and we will undoubtedly be busier than we can manage in no time.
So, we are taking advantage of our holiday and resting for a few days. Chinese National Day was October 1st...it’s comparable to the American fourth of July. In 1949, the People’s Republic of China was founded, when the communist army defeated the Japanese who were controlling China at the time. Our students, and all Chinese, are very very proud of their country and its independence from foreign control, so this holiday is very important to them. What’s more, this year is the 60 year anniversary, so it makes it all the more special. There has been no shortage of firecrackers going off, especially in the mornings. The second holiday is Mid-Autumn Festival, October 3rd. As far as we can tell, this is like a harvest festival that celebrates the moon...Chinese people will eat “moon cakes” and try to catch a glimpse of the moon that night. (This is not always an easy task, as our area of China is nearly always cloudy.) As for moon cakes, I am one who will abstain this year...most foreigners find them disgusting. There are different types of moon cakes, but the most common kind is a pastry filled with lotus root and the yolk of a hard-boiled egg. For Chinese people, these are both times to celebrate, but for foreigners like us, it is a time to travel! We plan to rest for the first few days of our break, and then travel for a few days. I’m sure after we return, I will have pictures to share, but as of now, I am unable to put pictures up because of the internet restrictions in China. Hopefully next week I can find away around this unfortunate censorship situation. Instead, I will simply offer a link to a picture of a moon cake to tide you over:
http://www.snpfood.com/images/01_2005/mooncake.jpg
In the 4 weeks we’ve been here, we have had the chance to reconnect with many of our old friends whom we spent a lot of time with last year. A few of them are really showing some promise and we have very high hopes for them. We are currently in the process of trying to schedule regular times to be with them to encourage their growth. We have met several new students but haven’t had much time to establish friendships with them. Soon we will be spending more and more time with them and we will undoubtedly be busier than we can manage in no time.
So, we are taking advantage of our holiday and resting for a few days. Chinese National Day was October 1st...it’s comparable to the American fourth of July. In 1949, the People’s Republic of China was founded, when the communist army defeated the Japanese who were controlling China at the time. Our students, and all Chinese, are very very proud of their country and its independence from foreign control, so this holiday is very important to them. What’s more, this year is the 60 year anniversary, so it makes it all the more special. There has been no shortage of firecrackers going off, especially in the mornings. The second holiday is Mid-Autumn Festival, October 3rd. As far as we can tell, this is like a harvest festival that celebrates the moon...Chinese people will eat “moon cakes” and try to catch a glimpse of the moon that night. (This is not always an easy task, as our area of China is nearly always cloudy.) As for moon cakes, I am one who will abstain this year...most foreigners find them disgusting. There are different types of moon cakes, but the most common kind is a pastry filled with lotus root and the yolk of a hard-boiled egg. For Chinese people, these are both times to celebrate, but for foreigners like us, it is a time to travel! We plan to rest for the first few days of our break, and then travel for a few days. I’m sure after we return, I will have pictures to share, but as of now, I am unable to put pictures up because of the internet restrictions in China. Hopefully next week I can find away around this unfortunate censorship situation. Instead, I will simply offer a link to a picture of a moon cake to tide you over:
http://www.snpfood.com/images/01_2005/mooncake.jpg
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