Jess, Cliff, Andrew, and I went into Hong Kong for the day. We first went over to Stanley, a different part of the island that is known for beautiful beaches and more of a touristy section. So there were a lot of tourist markets and cutesy restaurants. This area also houses the Murray House, one of the older buildings of Hong Kong that got moved from Central to Stanley in the 1990s. Then we headed back to Central and went to another market that had antique Chinese items. Cliff helped me bargain prices down for some of the items that I was looking at. I always hate that part of shopping but by the end of the night I was getting pretty good at it. Then we hopped on a trolley and traveled through town. We stopped at a free art museum and got a little culture. One exhibit was pictures of these families. It turned out that the photographer went to an area of China that had been hit by natural disasters where a portion of the population had been killed. After the disaster a lot of people had lost their husbands or wives and had ended up needing to remarry. Despite the cause of the remarriage, it was still viewed as improper in the culture. So these families had to go through the pain of losing their loved ones and then through the pain of not being approved of in their society for remarrying another widow. After the museum we went looking for a good view of the city and then went to dinner. We headed home shortly after, having had a very nice day trip to the city.
We went to the beer garden for the evening and the stall we were at had a kitten! She wasn't in the best shape - her fur was all matted - but she seemed well fed and was a friendly animal. She let us pick her up and kept playing with us, swatting at our fingers. We started teaching English to one of the Chinese guys and got him to at least know "cat".
I started tutoring a Senior student a couple of weeks ago and this is where she lives. If you look at the little kiddy ride on the right, the staircase up to her place is right behind that. Her family actually owns the apartment complex and runs the building. What is even more amazing is that not only was her mother born in Shenzhen (very unusual) but her grandmother was born in Shenzhen too (VERY VERY unusual). The Shenzhen that we know and love today is only 30 years old, before that it was a fishing village. So almost no one is actually from here. Most of my students were born here but their parents came from some village out in China somewhere. I really want to have a lesson with my student where she translates what her grandmother says as I ask her questions about what it used to be like here.
Go Andrew! Leah, Greg and I went to Andrew's basketball game tonight. He's been playing for his school. A lot of the Shenzhen schools ahve teacher leagues and go around town competing against other schools. If the school has a male foreign teacher (especially American) they usually get roped into playing. If you didn't know it, all male Americans can play all sports and are automatically good at them too. It was fun going out to see a sporting event and cheering for the different teams. The school that Andrew was playing against was actually Leah's school so we made sure to cheer for both teams.
I love China. I went and had dinner with Andrew and Leah tonight. We went to this jiaozi place in Andrew's neighborhood that we hadn't been to before. Jiaozi is very common and really good, especially with vinegar and spices. This plate of dumplings was 2 kuai! Less than 50 US cents. The place wasn't the cleanest in the world - while we were sitting there a cockroach climbed from the outside into the restaurant but was dealt with eventually by the waitress - but it was good food and super cheap so who cares?
Saw this in Xili on the way to the store. They are advertising the different types of meat you can get at their restaurant. Take a look at the upper left hand corner or the second from the bottom on the right.
This has been sitting on my shelf for at least two months now. My Aunt Jane asked me before I left if I could bring back some empty coke cans for her kids because they really like seeing the different designs and the written language. I was looking at this can and realized it is pretty cool seeing how different countries have the same types of things just slightly changed.
Yay for Thanksgiving (the day before)! Today was the CTLC Thanksgiving dinner. The night before I had a "China family" dinner at Jess and Marie's placec with Jess, Marie, Andrew, Cliff, Ben, Greg, and Becca. After Chinese class we had all headed out to Longgong and started cooking. We had tacos (soft and hard shells), chili, corn on the cob, homemade salsa, and then no-bake cookies and ice cream for dessert. It was wonderful! And we had a lot of fun getting the dinner ready and just had a good-feeling evening with good company. Then in the morning we all got up and started cooking our contributions for the CTLC gathering. We headed to Patrick's (one of the coordinators) schools and joined the party. The food was amazing. Everyone was instructed to bring something with them for the group and there was a large arrangment of different foods. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, bread, brownies, pasta salad, macaroni and cheese, etc. You couldn't find a more American meal. Then we went out and played Frisbee for a while on the soccer field. It felt just like home (they don't really have Frisbees in China so I brought one when I came). Afterward we headed to Jenny and Genevieve's for Jenny's birthday celebrations. For her birthday, I made her an entire game from scratch (with the help of Matt Hauser, Megan Moore and Cliff Burke). It was a trivia game with a twist. We had a lot of fun and everyone enjoyed the game.
This was the first day of the competitions for the sports meeting. Some of the events: 100 meter sprint, relays, 400 meter run, high jump, long jump, jump roping (they have this activity they do where two people are swinging the jump rope and then about 15 people line up and run through the swining rope, each person jumps over the rope right after the previous person), something like shot-put but instead you throw the ball over your head and try to send it as far behind you as possible, and the ten-person 3-legged race. I sadly missed the ten person race because I had to go to Chinese class, but I got to see some of the classes practice and they are actually really good at it! Well anyone who was not competing in an event was instructed to sit along the stands. Each class sits together and most of them had shirts made for their group so the stands are an array of colors. On Friday, Class 3 Senior 1 gave me on of their shirts! So during the competitions I went and sat with them for the day. It was a lot of fun. They were all really excited that I was there so they were all asking to take pictures with me and wanted to come practice their English while we were cheering for their classmates. It was nice to hang out with my students outside of the classroom setting.
Today was the start of our Sports Meeting! Fuat and I got to sit with all the teachers in our new track suits that we all got for free (mine is bright pink) and watch the students parade around the field. This was the same opening ceremony that I saw the previous week during practice. Since then the students have been hard at work trying to perfect their performance. THe head master felt they were not doing as good of a job as they could be so he called in a handful of Chinese soldiers last week to teach them the right way to march adn stay in formation. Hopefully he was please with the final outcome because they did a really good job. Just like the practice sessions, each grade had an event that they came out and performed for the crowd - either the morning exercises, a kung fu routine or jumping rope. This time though there was someone either on the red platform or on the track that related to the performance. For instance the kung fu group had the kung fu master first do back flips across half the field and then lead their exercise on the platform. My favorite was the jump roping. The school hired a professional jump rope group to come and perform on the track while the students were doing their routine. I was able to take some video of it, but unfortunately can't load it onto my blog.
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