Santa in Kaifeng

These photos are of Adam, who bought a Santa suit for 100 yuan and walked around downtown Kaifeng with an entourage of foreigners.

I am enjoying having a working camera again (which is borrowed from Adam).

Looking Forward by Looking Back

I'm including another one of my Asian Studies Senior Seminar papers.  The winter break is coming up, and I've been trying to decide where to go.  I had thought that I'd explore China, but these last few weeks they only places I want to go to are Beijing and Harbin.  I also have started to feel a little tired, in a way that I remember feeling tired of everything around this time two years ago in Japan.  So, I think I'm going to visit Japan this break.  Though it is certainly not written in stone.  This piece talks about the end of the semester in Japan, and coming back.

Pine Trees at Uji, Kyoto

Walk from Train Station to Kansai Gaidai Dorms

Listening Practice:  An Outsider's Role in Japan

            After one semester in Japan, I felt a bit overwhelmed.  My language skills seemed to be deteriorating, instead of getting better.  Most of the study abroad students I knew were returning home for spring semester.  And I had the eerie but unconfirmed suspicion that my host family was glad that I was leaving them.  I was beginning to wonder if I had gained anything from the experience of being abroad.

            Ironically, it wasn't until I left Japan that I began to feel at home there.

            For two weeks during winter break I traveled outside Japan.  The experience was incredible, but I will not elaborate on it here.  I will leave it that I saw a side of Asia that is not as organized as Japan is.  I found out what it was like to be unable to speak any of the native language.  It is with this context that I was able to view my return to Japan.

            On the first night back I caught the slowest of the Shinkansen and rode from Fukuoka to Osaka.    By the time I arrived in Osaka it was 11:30 at night.  The local train I would have needed to catch to get to the dorms would shut down for the night before I could get there.  With my leftover money I went and caught a cab.

            Osaka is known for being more casual and more open than most of Japan.  People speak more informally and are more comfortable with foreigners.  The cab driver that night was definitely from Osaka.  After I told him the destination and we agreed on the price, he used the casual short verb form.  He didn't try to use English except once in a great while when I didn't understand something he said, and even when he did, he would shift almost immediately back into Japanese.  Over the course of the two hour cab ride we talked about food, American/Japanese stereotypes, and China as a world power.  Out of all the people I talked to in nine months in Japan, that cab driver that night remains by far my favorite conversation partner.

            As spring semester went on I found myself fitting into a new role.  While first semester I tried to be a part of a family, second semester I tried to be myself and explore.  I eavesdropped more, and smiled more.  I have come away with some interesting conversations, from a brief history of a fire bombed neighborhood in Tokyo to drinking habits of working men in Sapporo.  I found a role in listening to others rather than in speaking or doing.  Perhaps I shouldn't have been so surprised.  I am much more of a listener in English as well.

Classwork

I don't really get to share what I do in class in that much detail, so I thought I'd share something I had my conversation class do for homework.  I asked each class to write a response to, 'If you could clone one significant figure, who would it be and why?'  Here are the results.  I did not include descriptions next to the names, but if you post a comment, I will fill you in. I am pleased to say I recognized all of the former Premiers and Presidents of China, and none of the popular singers or actors or writers.  I know these ones now though, because each student described their person in their assignment.

Person                           Class 1              Class 2              Class 3              Class 4                  Total

Zhou Enlai                      IV                     II                       III                     IV                          13

Oscar Wilde                   I                                                                                                          1

No One                          I                       I                                                 I                               1

Bai Fangli                       I                                                                                                          1

Steve Jobs                     I                        I                         I                                                       3

Oneself                         VIII                    IV                   VI                       III                           21

Confucius                      I                        I                        II                         II                            6

Albert Einstein               III                      I                         I                                                       5

Tracy McGrady             I                                                                                                           1

Friend                            I                                                                                                           1

Michael Jackson            II                       I                                                     I                            4

Audrey Hepburn            I                                                                                                            1

Deng Xiaopeng             III                                                I                         IV                            8

Mother Teresa                I                                                                                                           1

Issac Newton                 I                                                 I                                                         2

Mother                          II                                                 I                                                        3

Father                           II                                                                               I                           3

Cao Xueqin                   II                                                                               I                          3

Cheung                         I                                                                                                            1

Yuan Longping                                       I                                                        I                         2

Jackie Chan                                            I                                                                                   1

Zhu Rongji                                              I                                                                                   1

Ren Changxia                                          I                                                        I                        2

Wu Zetian                                               I                                                                                  1

Girls Generation                                      I                                                                                   1

JJ Lin                                                     I                                                                                    1

Grandparent                                            I                             II                                                   3

Sanmao                                                   I                                                                                  1

Garfield                                                   I                                                                                  1

Bill Gates                                               II                                                        I                         3

Mr Bean                                                  I                                                                                  1

Su Shi                                                      I                                                                                  1

Cat                                                          I                                                                                  1

Taylor Swift                                             I                                                                                  1

Oprah Winfrey                                         I                                                                                  1

Mao Zedong                                            I                                                                                  1

Li Bai                                                       I                                                       I                          2

Liu Bingshan                                                                             I                                                  1

Michael Jordan                                                                         I                                                  1

Dogs                                                                                        I                                                  1

Lin Dan                                                                                    I                                                  1

Alex Del Piero                                                                          I                                                  1

Yu Minhong                                                                              I                                                 1

Florence Nightingale                                                                  I                                                 1

Leonardo Da Vinci                                                                    I                                                 1

Babies who have died                                                               I                                                  1

Doraemon                                                                                 I                                                 1

Boyfriend                                                                                  I                                                  1

Martin Luther King Jr.                                                                                        I                        1

Helen Keller                                                                                                      II                        2

Jolin                                                                                                                    I                        1

Another Perspective

As you may have noticed, I am not the only one here in China.  Ben has been linking all of our blogs together, so I thought I would do the same too.  On the left hand side of the screen are Eaaf, Adam, and Ben's blogs.  If you are interested, we all are seeing some of the same stuff every day, but we tend to write about very different stuff.

Unorganized Days

I forget often to mention daily life.  When I first got here everything was so new, that there wasn't enough time to write about everything.  Now, with day to day stuff is not so new it doesn't seem important anymore.  But that doesn't change how different it is from back home, so I can elaborate now.

Most mornings I get up, have instant oatmeal or yogurt for breakfast.  Both are sold at almost all supermarkets and are easy to come by.  I also have instant coffee, which is also incredibly easy to get, lemon tea with honey, which is delicious, or hot cocoa, a recent acquisition from a new shopping center that opened this last week which has imported foods.  If I have class, I then load up my bag with the relevant text book, my homework folder, lesson plan or notes, and a thermos of lemon tea.  I place the bag in my bicycle basket then ride about three minutes to get to the building my first class is in.  During that three minute ride I might pass any of the following: people taking wedding photos in a rented suite and dress, people playing 'gate ball' something similar to croquet, someone with a trash collection cart with a large straw broom attached, cars, bikes, electric bikes, students walking.  For the last five, you may think these things happen adjacent to each other, but in fact, they all happen in the same place - on the road/side walk where I am riding.

I then teach class.  If I am in the North Foreign Language Building, during breaks if I stand on the balcony I can hear someone playing a flute.  I have yet to figure out where exactly the mysterious flute player is, only that he/she is there most mornings I am there.  Though the individual rooms are heated, the inside courtyard is not, so if I leave the classroom I must make sure I'm bundled up.  If I am in the Comprehensive Building, during breaks I often go to the stairwell where the sound of students reciting lessons, speeches, and practicing pronunciations in Chinese, English, German, and Japanese, creates a dull roar that almost cannot be heard from outside.  The bathrooms in both buildings are similar.  They are squatting toilets that are open, so that all five other occupants plus those waiting for their turn, could potentially see you at work.  There is a trough that is flushed every so often - at least once an hour.  The Foreign Language Building has a mirror by the sink, but otherwise the two buildings are the same in this respect.  There is a blue sheet with the character 女, for woman, or 男, for man, blocking the inside from view by the opposite sex.

Lunch and dinner tend to be very similar and are based entirely on my mood at the time.  Outside South Gate, there are a variety of restaurants that serve a variety of dishes on rice or noodles.  Outside East Gate are most restaurants, though perhaps owing to the fact I usually go there with students, the restaurants seem to be more specialized in specific kinds of noodle dishes.  Outside West Gate are a few restaurants, but the main appeal is the variety of stalls that sell a wide selection of foods - Korean sushi, egg and ham in steamed bread, egg vegetables and sausage in a piece of bread that looks like a tortilla, fried chicken, stinky tofu, fried balls of pumpkin dough, choose your own noodle soup.

Some days if I have time and am feeling adventurous, I go out from the campus area.  Sometimes I am with other people and we show each other stuff we have heard about.  Sometimes I am by myself, usually on my bicycle testing myself to go farther than I've been before.  Traffic is crazy, but I have come to feel no longer controlled by my fear of it.

And then at the end of the day I sleep, but depending on the time I can still hear people walking around outside, old people exercising, or fireworks at Millennium park.

Unorganized Thoughts and Updates!

This here is a little bit of an amalgam of thoughts and stories and bits and pieces of things that I originally wrote out while my reading class was taking a test.  For reasons I won't go into, the notebook I wrote it in is now in someone else's room and though I have every intention of retrieving it soon, I would like to update before doing so.


First, I would like to tell everyone that we had a real Thanksgiving in Kaifeng China.  Ben ordered a turkey off of taobao (a cross between amazon and e-bay), but otherwise most of the ingredients we collected here.  We had mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, steamed broccoli, carrot pennies, stuffing, gravy, bread, and baked apples.  We invited one of the Australian teachers, the German teacher, and the Japanese teacher and his wife as well as several Chinese students and one of the translators who works for the international affairs office.  It was quite delicious.

In other news, it is that wonderful time of the year when professors start working on finals and students start studying for them.  We have about three weeks or so till the end of the semester.  Conversation finals start early so that everyone will have enough time to have oral conversations.  Ben and I have worked together to design our final and it looks pretty, I think.

My confidence about my Chinese oscillates between being very proud to slightly embarrassed.  However, I am certain that my ability has definitely been improving steadily.  Occasionally I wonder if I studied the wrong language in college, or in high school, but it is too late.  And in all honesty, with the workout Japanese grammar gives your brain, I feel like there's not much grammatically that can intimidate me.  (The exception is Russian.  Scares the Dejesus out me.  Strangely, I still insist to myself that French would be impossible to learn.  Guess I'm going to draw the line somewhere.  Spanish however would be fun to go back and work on....)  That was a bit of a tangent.  But back to Chinese!  I am studying for about two hours a week with a student of mine, and that keeps me somewhat honest even during these intensive weeks when I spend a good deal of time reading and writing things or otherwise working.  The more time I spend working, the more time I spend using English.  And when I'm exhausted from said work, I relax by reading or watching things in English.  It is a vicious cycle.  But, my TV works fine and I have watched Chinese TV if not regularly then enough that I can talk to people about 那是我妈码 (That's my mom!), a reality show where young men go on and answer questions about their mothers' preferences and traits.  And Mona, or 豪杰(Haojie) keeps me honest by giving me and quizzing me on vocabulary and grammar.

I have been eating lunch with my students more regularly, and I am quite enjoying it.  I feel in need of a break from teaching, but the actual classes are going well.  My conversation class, which at the beginning of the semester I had no clue how to run much less make active and fun, have gone quite well the last few weeks.  I am proud of where I am now, though I somewhat wish I could go back and start the class from the beginning without the bumbling and missteps I made the first month or so of the semester.  But that was the price of growth. I know I am going to be teaching the same students next semester, though it is currently up in the air as to what I will be teaching them.

It is cold out, though not enough for snow. We had a flurry about a week ago, but no more.

This was surprisingly organized.  I did not expect it to be so.
Oh, one final note: I have been talking to my Reading classes about Native Speakers and bad grammar.  What it means about a person or character if they make certain grammar mistakes.  You can call this a conversation about dialects, or classes.  The thing I want them to remember is simply one's education level.  If someone has poor grammar and speaking skills it is assumed that they are not educated.  So, on their test I had a set of 10 sentences, which they had to mark as being said by someone well or poorly educated.  All the sentences were taken from Pirates of the Caribbean.  I'm quite pleased by how it turned out.