The Power of "0"

I appreciate all of the advice (and articles!) on disciplining my little demon children. I read ALL that was sent my way. So, thank you!

This is what I did last week - I did not grade them. On the attendance sheet there is a spot to grade the class. The teachers told me that I should never give a class anything lower than an "A". But, I just could not force myself to do that after another truly frustrating class.

Sooo...

I wrote comments instead on the class' performance on the front side AND the back side of the paper. All of the kids gathered around the podium and "oohed" and "ohhhed" with every new line I wrote. They knew they were in trouble. I wrote more than I needed to since I had the audience and I wanted to reinforce how disappointed I was with the class. Basically, I gave them a "0" for the day.

Fast forward to this Monday.

The kids were great! They were quiet when I told them to (and I only had to ask once) and participated very well - it was a great class. At the end when I had to grade them, they all crowded the podium and shouted their appeals - "We very good, teacher" and "We good, quiet today, teacher".

So, I think that I have found something that will work okay for the time being, but I am always interested in finding more ways to get the evil out.

Peek-A-Boo!

Here is another bathroom post just for Jerry!

I know that there have been more than a couple of posts involving the bathroom or going to the bathroom, but hey, a lot seems to happen there and during those moments of emergency bathroom clarity!

The idea of privacy is a lot different here - like, there is no sense of it. A couple of weeks ago, when we were going to make the trip to Xumi Shan, I thought that I should probably go visit the W.C. before the car trip out there because, well, who knows what the facilities would be like out there (I have seen many disgusting squatters in my day)!

So, I went into the school where Matt's office is located to use the squatters because they are usually pretty clean. I had forgotten how, um, "open" it was in there. There are little stalls with half partitions, no doors, no curtain, not even a full partition. You back into one of the little stalls and squat - booty facing the flusher, face towards the aisle.

Well, I thought that, yes, this IS something that I can do! So I walked in, backed into a stall and dropped trow. The women next to me then peeked around the partition to chat and to check out what/how I was doing. Ohmygod! What ARE you doing lady? It is one thing to recognize that there is no privacy and just go on about one's business with great efficiency and not bother the other people. It is quite another thing to take advantage of the situation and check out other people at one of the more private of moments.

She finished up, and left. Whew! I can finally go (pee shy). Nope - Ohmygod! What ARE you doing lady (again)? She decided to come back, but this time she brought friends to check out what I was doing. So, not just peeking around the partition, but standing over me, in front of me and also staring over the partition all trying to witness me going to the bathroom.

I really didn't have much of a choice - I did have to go.

So....

They all clapped and one of the women handed me some tissues while laughing. I honestly have never held an audience captive quite like that before.

Thank God I didn't miss.

Monday Demons

Have you ever just not liked about 50 eleven year olds all at one time? No really, think about it - I'll give you time.
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So, as you might have guessed, classes this morning did not go that well. The ratio of devil children to normal/good children in my Monday morning classes is about 10:1. So, out of the 100 kids I see in the morning about 10 of them are good. With the 90 (or so) other children, I feel like I should draw a pentagram on the floor and send them back to their maker.

Honestly.

The vast majority of my kids are very sweet, friendly and will work hard in my classes. But there is just something about my Monday morning classes (let's throw in half of Thursday too) that just makes me want to wear all black and conjure the evil beast that created them.

One of the problems is that there is no way for me to discipline the bad students. Why? Well, we were told that none of the teachers discipline their students. There is no "D.R." that I can send them to and I can't send them in the hall or anything like that. Nose again the blackboard - nope, corner - nada, anything that would embarrass them - bu hao.

We were told that we can't do anything that would physically, mental or emotionally make the child feel bad about his or her self. If the child does the teacher is held responsible. If the child kills his or her self then the headmaster is fired. So, others are held responsible for how the child acts. Kind of feels like blackmail to me.

The only tools I have are to tell the class to "be quiet" (how often did you pay attention to that in school?) and make a symbol with my hands that looks like "T" which means stop. Yeah right.

So, I am appealing to all of you out there, any ideas to help exorcise my Monday demons?

Hope

So, I just bought a belt at the local grocery store. It's pretty ugly. As of this week, "hope" will no longer be the only thing holding my pants up (especially since it was starting to wear a little thin).

I got it for the English - it cracked me up in the store. Here is what my belt says:

The first line:

let's spend thenight together ruby tcesday play with fiee satisfaction COME ON i wannabe your man TELL ME Bill Wynans in anothreb lanoitsall over now Let's

The next line:

paint it! black THE TOUGOGUYS get off of hy colud iustwannamakelovetoyou the TOUGO Guys no expectations Pain

The last line:

beartof stone andhew loog old ham the lanternby the tougo guys eave you seen tournd ther! Bady! Standing in the seadgwi no mabk away bear

Ahhh...what sweet poetry! "Standing in the seagwi no mabk away bear" - simply beautiful! It just brings a tear to my eye.

Anyhow, I will post more later, but until then, "Beartof stone and hew loog old ham".

Where have all the Chinese Gone?

Remember that "cowboy" song in the '90s by Paula Cole?

ANYway....

Last week we got a pleasant surprise - both of our schools have exams at the end of the month. Why is this a good thing, you may ask? Because Matt and I don't give exams! So, we get the three testing days off (yes, they have tests all day for three days)! Unexpected five day weekend - Whoo Hoo!

We first thought that we were going to try to go to Lanzhou. But when we went to buy train tickets, they did not have any more available. Since it was an overnight train we didn't want to risk it by just buying a ticket that will get us on the train but no seat/bed AND we didn't want to lose a day by waiting until the next day SOOO...

Hello Yinchuan!

The last time we were in Yinchuan, it was more of a hectic visit and we were not able to really see anything or enjoy the city. So, we wanted to give the good ol' provincial capitol another shot. We boarded the bus in the afternoon and began the bumpy trip up to the city.

The bus let us off at the same hotel that we had stayed at before - The Gulou Hotel. It's a pretty comfortable place, clean and has most excellent showers! The first night there we had a quest - to find the pizza restaurant that we saw when we were hoofing it around the city last time. The problem was that we just couldn't remember what direction it was from the pedestrian mall. So we started to walk - past the chicken burgers at Dico's, past the mashed potatoes at KFC - we got to the corner and Matt looked right, I left and whaaa (that angel appearing sound effect) - the glowing neon sign of Napoli's was shining bright in the night sky.

We entered the restaurant and were quickly greeted by the super friendly staff. We paid for the meal up front and were a little confused as to what we were supposed to do next. We wanted pizza. We were seated at a table and we were trying to figure out how to order when we saw what we were supposed to do. Help ourselves! There was a buffet of pizza and other food that we could indulge in.

Now, I don't know if you in the States can fully appreciate this, but at the fast food restaurants that we have been to here, they clear your tray for you as soon as you finish eating. They will sometimes bring you your food. The wait staff does everything for the customer - even pour your soda from the bottle and wait to refill it when your glass is only a quarter full. So, to finally get to heap whatever you want on our plate was kind of a treat for us.

Load 'em up!

I ate like a true pig.

No, really. I kid you not.

I piled up my plate, sat down, face down close to the food and inhaled. Pizza - more importantly cheese! Breaded onion rings! french fries with real ketchup! salad (I haven't had a real salad since I left the states)! soda! pasta! minestrone soup! AND real, freshly ground espresso!

Ahhh...after 3 plates of food (I'm sure that we disgusted the wait staff with our gluttony). We were finished and needed to beach ourselves on our beds at the hotel. So, we waddled back and shut ourselves in for the rest of the evening (we watched a truly terrible movie about Korean marathon runners in LA).

The next day we went out to see some of the sights in Yinchuan. The drum tower was right across the street from our hotel (so we saw that), we walked down to the Yuhuang Ge (Yuhuang Pavilion) but it is currently under renovation, so we couldn't go in or really see it as it was covered up by scaffolding. We found the foreign language book store and picked up some teaching materials and other books there. Then we headed toward the Regional Museum and Xi Ta (Xi Pagoda).

On the way to the museum and pagoda, we decided to stop so Matt could get his hair cut. He didn't want to get it done in Guyuan because of the attention it would attract so Yinchuan was his opportunity. They took Matt up to wash his hair, while he was upstairs, the head stylist made his entrance. He whisked off his jacket and his assistant caught it. She then ran over to a silver box and unlocked it and presented him with his tools. He dramatically unrolled the bundle and whipped out his scissors.

Matt's hair cutting team all stood around the stylist and watched as he went to work on Matt's noggin. After an HOUR, he was finished and they washed Matt's hair again and then he styled it - soon to be covered by a baseball cap.

So, finally, on to the museum and pagoda. Luckily the grounds were really close from the salon (just about across the street). We paid our admission and entered the park. Eerie. We were the only ones there. No one but Matt and I (and the workers). They would unlock all of the halls just for us. We climbed up to the top of the pagoda alone. No crowds, no pushing. Strange.

When we were finished we caught a cab to the Hai Bao Ta (North Pagoda). Same thing happened. We paid our admission, went inside and we were once again alone. Alone in China?! We really, truly had the whole place to ourselves. We walked up the stairs to the top of the pagoda - no crowds. Unobstructed pictures, weird.

Mid-afternoon we decided to try to arrange a tour out to see Xixia Wangling (Mausoleums of the Western Xia). The agency we found had no English tours, so they offered to help us rent a car and driver. So, off we went! After a little bit our driver pointed out a sign for a tour we could go to sometime - to see the areas and sets that Zhang Yi Mou (Johnny Mo - for you film buffs) uses in his movies. Then he pointed at the fields - dotted across the landscape were these mudbrick piles. Beautiful!

We got to the site and were put on a golf cart that would take us out there. First, they stopped at the museum. The museum was okay and had signs in English so Matt and I were able to get something out of the exhibits, but the tour was all in Chinese. So, we finished up early and ditched the tour group. We then went to the "art exhibit". When we entered we both groaned, more bad dioramas - we just want to see the mounds! We asked around and were eventually pointed in the right direction.

We dashed out of the "art exhibit", past the stele garden and focused on getting to the mounds while the light was still good. They built a walk way up to the biggest of the mounds. Gigantic. As we walked up to the mound, Chinese fighter planes were flying in formation right above us. The contrast between the earth-colored mound and the cloudless blue sky was quite striking. We walked...ran up to the mound and stood in it's shadow, mouths open in awe and excitement. The landscape was beautiful! The Helan Shan mountain range was the backdrop to these amazing tumuli. The sun was beginning to set and we had to hurry back to meet our driver. So we said a quick goodbye and walked back to the cart.

That evening we decided to try to find a dumpling place for dinner. In the front window of the restaurant they had a bunch of people sitting at a table making dumplings as fast as possible. We stopped to watch for a little bit and, whoops, production stopped. All of the dumpling makers were watching Matt. We went inside and ordered our jin (weight measurement) of dumplings. On the way out, Matt caused another slow down in production, because, well, he's white after all.

The next morning was a bit of a kicker - etiquette is quite different here - we woke up to people yelling in the hall right in front of our door. Seriously, yelling just for the sake of yelling - there were no discernible words in what we heard. After the yelling, someone just decided to try to barge into our room and sell us water. Hey, why not? After all it's my fault because I forgot to put out the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door knob - by all means just unlock the door and come on in!

We decided to take it easy - we went DVD shopping, grocery shopping (found peanut butter), and had lunch at...Napoli's! So, nice and overly full, we boarded our bus and headed back to Guyuan.

Lovin' till it Hurts

Just a quickie -

I was thinking about an incident with my kids from the other day that was pretty funny.

I share my office with the other junior English teachers. Between classes the kids have about 10 minutes to unwind from the previous lesson. Usually, they go to the offices to ask questions or get additional help. The English teachers are all very good, but are really strict with the kids - many a time I have seen a little kid reduced to tears by one of them. They speak really quite briskly and sternly with the little ones.

So, yesterday, one of the teachers was kinda "Chinese" yelling at one of the kids and whipping her paper with a metal pointer. The girl was getting really upset. Meanwhile the line of students at that teacher's desk was getting really long. Suddenly, the teacher bellowed out for all of the kids to wait in the hall and she would call them in when she was ready. So all of the kids moved.

The children I teach are all very sweet and friendly. From the doorway there was a group of 6 boys that were waving to me (I had just seen them I little earlier in the day), smiling and mouthing "Hello, Ms. Molly/Brown". Whenever one of the Chinese teachers would look over they would duck out of sight. Then they would slowly creep back and do it again.

This went on for a couple of minutes and I was getting a kick out of them. The next time I looked over at them all six of the boys started to hug each other and were giggling. The longer I looked, the more intense the hugging and giggling became. Then the coordination problem - they attempted a big group hug while trying to wave to me at the same time and they all fell down!

The English teachers yelled a little at them for creating such a ruckus and they all scampered off to class. As soon as they left and the office door was closed, all of the teachers just cracked up and couldn't stop laughing.

Perspective: Coping with Chinese Hospitality

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change....

So, things have been going pretty well here in Guyuan. Matt and I are getting familiar with the city and have found our favorite eating places and have even picked up a few friends (even if we really can't talk to them).

Life here is generally pretty pleasant. We have a great apartment and the weather isn't too bad yet. I have not been the victim of stray mucus since that one sticky incident. Things are going rather well.

EXCEPT for the whole coping with Chinese hospitality thing.

Courage to change the things I can...

Case 1: Molly's 29th Birthday -

I know that they were trying to make it a really special event (and I can recognize the thoughtfulness) but really, a five and a half hour dinner? AND drinking games for the majority of that time when the guest of honor is a non-drinker. But I have already ranted about this so I won't go into it again.

Case 2: Come Meet My Friend -

Matt and I have decided that he is just not allowed out by himself anymore because something always happens.

Matt went to go pay our phone bill so it wouldn't get shut off (in hindsight that might not have been such a bad thing). On his way back he ran into one of the senior English teachers that he works with. The English teacher said that his friend really wanted to meet Matt and if he would be willing to go to his office. Matt agreed and they went to the traffic bureau.

There, he met with the #2 guy in charge of traffic - yes, the #2 guy in charge of traffic (hmmm...there are like 400 cars in the city)! So, they sat around there for a bit (Matt truly just sitting as they were not really speaking to him and just speaking to each other in Chinese). Finally, the moment of awe, in walks the #1 guy in charge of traffic (herein called #1TG)!

What winds up happening is I get a call (phone = trouble), it's Matt saying that the #1 guy in charge of traffic has invited us to dinner. I think it's a joke - I mean, #1TG, come on! Nope, serious, they will pick me up at the apartment. I wait. wait. wait. wait. still waiting. Phone rings - I am to meet them at the restaurant now - the English teacher says I can just hop in a cab - yeah, sure - me no speaky Chinese. So I walk to the traffic guy's dinner.

So, we're at the restaurant, I don't want beer. I want a soda. Ahhh, nice refreshing soda. I tell the English teacher that is what I want. He orders and tells me that I will be drinking fruit beer. I don't want nasty fruit beer (tastes like carbonated funk - stained band-aids), I want a Coke. No luck.

One hour...

The dice come out for drinking games.

Two hours...

Three hours...

We try to leave and were told that we can't and that it should only take us 5 minutes to prepare our lessons (we tried to use our classes as the out).

Four hours...

We really want to leave and are told to wait 20 more minutes.

Four and a half hours and we were finally permitted to go home.

The best part of the dinner was that the host, the #1TG wasn't even there for the majority of the time for his dinner!

Case 3: I want to INVITE you to dinner - Our 1st wedding anniversary -

This year we decided that we were going to celebrate our wedding anniversary early - as we were planning on being gone to Liupan Shan on the day of. So, we planned on making our precious boxes of jambalaya and red beans and rice (because we got engaged in New Orleans). But we had discovered that our phone line was not working. So we went down to China Telcom to get it worked out.

As soon as the phone was fixed and I was finishing up the anniversary feast, we get a call. Guess who? Yup, English teacher. He was calling to invite us to a dinner for one of his students. Matt told him, very nicely, that we could not because it was our anniversary and we had plans. Then English teach said, but you must, it has already been arranged. I will call you at 5:00 PM and will meet you at the gate of your apartment. Great.

So, we wait. wait. wait.

At 6:00 PM he decides to call us and say that he will be waiting for us at the gate in 5 minutes. So, we get there and wait. wait. wait. Finally, he shows up. We go to the restaurant (the same one we had just been to for the other marathon dinner). We find out that neither of us actually have this student, and really, it was more of a, "Look how important I am, I can get the foreigners to come" type of thing.

One hour...

Dice come out, drinking games commence. I get fruit beer.

Two hours...

I wave down a waitress and order a Coke directly from her. English teacher gives me a look. The children of the hosts come to say hello to their teachers. I find out that I have their son in my junior 3 special class.

Three hours...

We speak English with their kids. Matt begins the exit strategy (it is our anniversary, we must get home so I can surprise my wife).

Three and a half hours...

The dinner is far from over, but we are able to leave because, well, IT IS our wedding anniversary.

There is just something about being invited to something and being told that we have to do it.

Case 4: The Kidnapping -

Matt had been talking to the English teacher (before the traffic cop dinner) about going to Liupan Shan sometime over the weekend. We left the Saturday night dinner with the English teacher saying that he would call us about the mountain any time he felt like it.

So, around 9:50 AM he calls. Wakes us up. Tells us that we will meet him at our gate in 5 minutes. Matt says that we will need at least 15 min. English teachers says 5 min, Matt says 15 min., English teacher says okay 5 min. and hangs up.

We get ready as fast as we can and go out to the gate where we wait. wait. wait. wait. Finally, a police car pulls up to the curb and he tells us to hop in. So, off we go to the mountain, or so we think.

We pull into a driveway - perhaps picking up some other people. Nope! We get out of the car and walk into #1TG's home. There was some food out for us. We thought, okay, so a little quick nosh and then off to the mountain. Wrong! Just when I was about to pull off a piece of bread a group of about 12 kids file in. They are here to practice their English - for the next FOUR hours!

I mean, really, how much can the average adult really find to talk about with a 12-14 year old? Much less for FOUR hours and in a language that the kid is learning? I honestly wanted to poke my eyes out.

Lunch.

Finally, at 2:00 PM we leave for the mountain. Liupan Shan was really beautiful and everything, but I just am not sure that it was worth enduring the four hours of tween (y'know, not quite teen, but in-between) and teen chat at #1TG's house. We spent about 2 hours getting there and coming back.

Sensing a dinner, Matt and I decided to try to get an exit plan started in the car. So we chat about a phone call that I am expecting from my parents in the US (trying the family angle). We ask how long it will take to get back and say to them that "that will work out really well because my parents will be calling at 7 PM". Then, right after English teacher has that morsel of information I heard him talking with #1TG about going to dinner. What is wrong with this guy!

We notice that we didn't take the turn that we would need to get home. Instead, we pull into a restaurant. We say that we don't think that we will have time because I have to get home for the phone call. Blank stares. They do rush through dinner, but we don't get home until after 7 PM - too late for my fake phone call. English teacher knew this and was noticeably absent from the car that took us home (as he lives just down the alley from us).

If they would just ask us, things would generally be okay and we would be willing to spend 4 hours with kids, etc. But the demanding, the disregard for our personal plans and the bamboozling just doesn't put us in the most cooperative mood (to put it nicely).

...and the wisdom to know the difference.

So the phone can ring...there will just be no answer.