Students Arrive

The students have arrived, and I am concerned about what class I will be in. We took our placement tests today, and I must admit though long it was ridiculously easy. I am, however, a bit concerned as to whether or not I will have anyone else in my level. When we were having our lecture from the local Police Bureau on what to do and what not to do, the officer would first speak Chinese and then the RD would translate. When she paused for a moment for questions about passports, I questioned her about something she had just said and told a short story about Sam and how she had been asked by policemen on the street for her passport and hukou. The problem was, I did this all in Chinese instead of going through the Resident Director. When I spoke Chinese, murmurs went through the room and it was clear that none of the other students had understood me. Whenever I speak with the students I can tell that the aren't at my level, and they all think/thought I was another Resident Director here. If I am in a level by myself I will be very sad.

I did, however, get to lead the tours today. Which turned out to be a good thing, because the roommates that had come a day early to lead the tours definitely did not speak enough English to lead the tour properly. Most of the people wanted to go with me when we split into two groups, and it was sad to see the other two Chinese roommates go off with only a few students while I took a huge group. I showed them around to different places, namely the gym. I definitely hit the gym and got to negotiate a group discount rate with the boss, I felt like a badass just bargaining for it, very professional. I'll give you one example of the bad english skills of the Chinese roommate that had come with me. When we got the big department store, we again split into two groups, I took the people who wanted to buy cell phones and cell phone plans up to do that while she took students to the supermarket. Why she chose the easier task I don't know, but before we split off we exchanged phone numbers in case either of us had a problem. She had a problem however, she called me just as we were finishing up buying all the phones and asked where I was. She sounded panicked, and asked me to come down to the supermarket because she had a problem. I rushed downstairs, literally ran down the escalator. The problem? A student wanted to buy a soap dish. He didn't know how to say it in Chinese (or much else in Chinese), and she had no idea what soap dish was in English. For some reason she thought it was urgent and that he really needed his soap dish. Don't worry, the situation was resolved, we found him a soap dish.

Aside from that, I had fun doing the tour guide, and later on I got to co-host the discussion about roommates in China with the resident director. It really is like I am working here, I love it. My teachers all say my accent has changed though. They say I speak a lot better, but I sound very southern now. Oh well. They also say I have lost weight, one of the teachers didn't recognize me since I apparently left last year with more hair and not being as skinny, then when she saw my name on my test as I turned it in looked at me, then at the paper, then at me and yelled my name - disrupting all the other students testing.

Also got a warm welcome from the cafeteria guys I used to play basketball against, and got to play a little 2 on 2 with them today.

Also, I don't know if I wrote about our favorite past-time in Hangzhou before but I am writing it (possibly again) here. We loved to go out the main gate on our way to the gym because there was this bridge with a speed bump at the end of it. When we got to the bottom of the bridge, we would look up at the bikes coming downhill hopelessly fast straight at the speed bump. Normally they would see white people and stare at us, not noticed the speed bump waiting to destroy their crotches and future children. We would derive so much joy out of seeing guys rack themselves, and I thought I had left that behind in Hangzhou. Tonight, however, I discovered that one of the potholes is hard to see in the dark, and one guy on a motor scooter nailed it. It is fantastic, when something like that happens the whole world slows down like the Matrix. First you see him collide, and his face contorts with the expression of, "Oh no! What have I done! My children!". Then, midway through the jump, they realize they have a back wheel, and you can see their face change as they futilely attempt to swerve or rise up and avoid the impending second hit, but their body is still in shock from the initial impact, and they are helpless as they collide again. It is the single most hilarious series of faces in the history of Chinese facial expressions. And that is the mental image I will leave you with.

Back in My Comfort Zone

Yesterday while I was asleep the door opened, and in walked Sam's roommates back from vacation. They had no problem with me staying a bit longer, but it felt cramped and I felt like I was imposing on them, so I decided to make some phone calls and see if CET would let me into the dorms early despite denying me earlier. Much to my surprise, they let me move in early for a still undetermined price per night. Somewhere between 100 and 280 RMB a night, they'll have me pay money later when they decide.

Thus today I went to the gym and then visited my old favorite restaurant for dinner:老边饺子 (laobianjiaozi - don't translate it in a translater). As soon as I walked in I was swarmed by all the servers who remembered me, and I had to tell explain why I was back and tell stories of Hangzhou. It was a fantastic welcome, and even better they still have all the good food from before. This is the place that got me hooked on jiaozi(dumplings), and I insist they have the best in all of Beijing. They are also the origination of my green bean obsession with 干边四季豆 (ganbiansijidou) and 干扁豆角(ganbiandoujiao). I got some 糖酥里脊 (tangsuliji), or sweet and sour pork/chicken as you may know it. It is a bit different here in China, and whether I get pork or chicken seems to depend on the place I go, the name doesn't change for some reason. I also got the latter of the aforementioned green bean dishes, and some rice. I will be going back with a friend for their dynamite dumplings because there is so much variety to choose from I'll need the help eating it.

Also, I am not posting or talking about the field hockey game for two reasons. One, China lost and it was very depressing. Second, why on earth is field hockey an olympic sport but football isn't. Synchronized swimming, field hockey, and ribbon dancing (Rhythm Gymnastics is a nice word for it) should not be Olympic activities. Period.

So there is that. Now: soccer pictures.

First, a video of them building the olympic stage. I thought it was hilarious because when they started they seemed to have no idea what they were doing and changed formation a few times. They then brought out too many blocks and had to turn around and carry them back. Fantastic organization.


This is the tasty meat dish I mentioned earlier.

And these are the green beans. This differs from the other variety in that it has a very strong cilantro like effect, I am not sure what exactly the green vegetable added to give it that taste is.


Simply a picture of the three teams about to board the newly constructed stage. Notice who is in the middle. Oh yeah, not you Brazil, you cry on your lower platform. They actually did cry, I don't know if you can see it in the picture.


Okay one picture from the field hockey game, Ron and I dressed up undercover to fool the Chinese into thinking we are one of them.



I found this funny, the Diabetes Hospital No. 01, implying there are more around Beijing. I feel like America needs some of these.


This is a picture I got with the first few people who lined up to take pictures with me. I insisted I document the moment. Symphony X, ice cream, soda, flag, goofy face, forearms larger around than that guys neck. I am leaking America.


CAPRI SUN. THIS HAS MADE ME SO HAPPY. This, and jollypong. Mmm Korean snackfood, it comes with its own mini plastic shovel so you can get fatter faster. Koreans do it right, cheez-its need a shovel.




And last but not least... for those of you who enjoy Battlestar Galactica...CYLON COFFEE! AHHH:

Redeem Team

REDEEMED!

People in China are going crazy over this game.

美国加油！

Went to see America vs Brazil in the womens soccer finals yesterday and it was so amazing. I sang the national anthem loudly before the game, and even louder and more proudly after the gold medal was secured. I have never before cared about soccer or had much interest in watching it, but once you watch your own country playing live for a gold medal all that changes. It seemed like most of the Chinese were pro-Brazil, making the stadium make-up approximately 2/3 in favor of Brazil. It was just indescribable, I will do a picture dump tomorrow after I watch the field hockey finals tonight. China will be in those finals, this should be absolutely insane.

Before the game Ron and I went and haggled to buy large American flags to drape over ourselves and wear to the game. The result of wearing those flags were lots of Chinese people lining up to take pictures with me. Last year when I came to China I never experienced this type of treatment, so I must admit it caught me a bit off guard. I misunderstood the first people that came to have pictures taken with me, I thought they wanted me to take a picture for them not with them. After I understood I wanted a picture with them, too, after all it was just as novelty for me as it was for them being my first time being blindly adored as a foreigner before. A bit later we also had two Chinese guys come and try and buy one of our American flags. They explained in Chinese that they loved America and really wanted to buy a flag to wave during the game, but Ron and I were both willing to sell ours and definitely didn't want to try and profit of our own nation's flag. It was really weird sensation of pride having them want to bear our flag.

I previously made the assertion that everyone in China viewed locker room time as get naked and talk time, but after my time in Hangzhou I must revise my statement to say that this behavior seems to be uniquely Beijing. I never experienced in Hangzhou the strange phenomenon I have seen at both gyms in Beijing where as soon as they have entered the locker room men strip naked and start conversations about everything. You can even hear loud jovial conversations coming from the shower rooms. I still can't get accustomed to just stripping down and carrying on conversations with strangers.

Phelps is a Big Deal

Despite China winning lots of gold medals, Michael Phelps and our basketball team is totally stealing the show. With Yao Ming and the basketball team struggling and Liu Xiang the hurdler out with an injury, we are China's heroes. It is pretty much hilarious.

In a related note:

Into the Unknown

Today I begin on a trek with my friend to her home (老家 how else to translate that) in 石家庄市 (Shijiazhuang City) in 深泽县 (Shenze Xian). She was one of the roommates in Hangzhou, and we became good enough friends at that time that she invited me to come visit her during the school break when she returned home since it is just outside Beijing. She has spent the last few days in Beijing, and this morning we are going to buy bus tickets to ride there together. We were going to stay up all night and watch the flag raising ceremony in the morning (complete with music and scary troops!), but she didn't make it past 3 AM. I still haven't slept since sleeping for under 4 hours does me no good, so I am currently wired on caffeine and anxiety about traveling to rural China. She thinks I won't be able to get accustomed to the life their, and is impressed that I am trying to stay for a few days rather than just 1. We'll see how this goes, I am returning on my own so it is simply a matter of how long I am willing to endure whatever it is I face out there.

I am ready to get stared at. The journey begins.

Edit : the journey ended on the way there. I was exhausted from the all night the night before and collapsed on the bus ride there. I scared the high hell out of some Chinese people even though I was only down for like 10 seconds apparently.

Sometimes I Get Bored

I have been busy out of my mind entertaining guests the last few days, I've had to schedule all my lunches and dinners. I did manage to find some time in there to spend some money on Olympic tickets, so I will be going to see the Women's Soccer Finals and the Women's Field Hockey Finals. The latter won't be very exciting, but I figured after I went to one event I would want to go to others just for the yelling and screaming and cheering part.

I got bored the other day and perused the emoticons available to me on the phone I bought in China. Some of them are weird and seem to have no use, like the snowboarder and snail. Then there are some that I think are hilarious, like Dolly Parton or - even better - Ronald Reagan. 7:^] Why does a Chinese phone have a Ronald Reagan emoticon? Why don't American phones have them? When do I have a chance in text messages to be discussing Ronald Reagan and then send the appropriate text message with my post? When in China do I have that opportunity? "The way China is running these olympics is totally trickle down supply side economics 7:^]" or "Them Russians in Georgia think the cold war is over, they are so wrong 7:^]". God I love China.

Went to the Zoo yesterday. PANDAS! Panda videos! Enjoy. Video problems, post it later I guess.

Ramblings of Beijing Madman

And now for random, unconnected thoughts from Beijing to catch you up on the last busy week.
Each class level chose one student to give a speech at the graduation dinner, and I was elected by our class to deliver ours. The problem was, I partly forgot and partly didn't have time to prepare, and when they called me up I had to do some fantastic improvising. I tossed my camera to my friend hoping he would take a picture, not realizing that he would instead video tape the entire thing. So we have evidence, it actually happened. The speech went well, apparently I spoke quite fluently and impressively because I was swarmed afterwards by some recruiters. They had come to pass out flyers to anyone interested in teaching English, and after hearing my speech and discovering from my teachers I was going to Beijing they attacked.
And to continue the trend of being swarmed by Chinese people interested in knowing what I think, the next morning JJ and I got interviewed by the paper for the Olympics. We told them all about how we felt about Yao Ming and basketball, and as a result I got my name in the headline on page A17: "Foreign Student Chris Marco Says". Except it is in Chinese, of course. I have a copy of the paper, and it can be seen online here at http://jrzb.zjol.com.cn/html/2008-08/09/content_3426638.htm. I am pretty much famous in China now, all 25 people who made it to the 17th page without falling asleep now know who I am. I'm kind of a big deal.
Spent some time in the night market with JJ and Bob helping them find presents before they left. I had lots of fun putting them in awkward situations. I didn't want to buy anything, so whenever a lady asked if I needed help I told them that I had no idea what to buy, but my friend Bob was looking for the perfect gift for his girlfriend and could really use some help. A few times this backfired because they became fascinated with me speaking Chinese and forgot to sell things, but most of the time it worked, and I not only got to shop in peace but also got the entertainment of sales people smelling blood in the water and circling him to sell the perfect rose scented Chinese warrior tea doll.
I said my sad goodbyes, but it still really hasn't sunk in yet that I've left Hangzhou. I miss it already, though I think I miss the routine I'd gotten used to more than I actually miss the city. The people I genuinely miss, but I don't have much time to mourn them while trying to juggle all the friends who want to eat lunch or dinner with me now that I'm back in Beijing. I managed to get two people who knew each other to go out with me at once today, but for the most part I've had to schedule lunches and dinners for the next few days to show all my friends I truly didn't forget about them while in that big, strange country known as America.
Before I got to Hangzhou, though, I had to make it through the airport alive. The airport itself wasn't too hard, but once we were on the plane we didn't taxi, we just sat for half an hour. We got a message about 15 minutes in that "the plane had been delayed because of the plane delay," which if you didn't understand the Chinese before it is hilariously confusing. Luckily I was paying attention, and we had basically been delayed because other delayed flights needed to use the runway and that all flights were getting pushed back, but I delighted in the delay due to delay anyways. The flight itself wasn't bad, aside from drinking way too much orange juice and talking to the Chinese family next to me while eyeing the line for the bathroom, squirming and frightening them.
The first night in Beijing we went out to a bar near the foreign quarter to eat and watch the olympics. The girl I'm staying with's boyfriend was with us, and since he has some long term friendship going with the bar we got free food and drinks all night. It was the first of many free things I've had since getting to Beijing, everyone keeps treating me to everything it is overwhelming. In any case, I had the Ceasar salad, which was terrible. I followed it up with the nachos, which while bad by American standards had jalapenos and guacamole (most likely both from cans) and thus was fantastic. Eventually the game started, and though the nimble Chinese and their 3 pointers kept up for awhile, the game quickly got out of hand in favor of the large scary foreigners. It was at that time I realized I was the only one in the bar that was for the American team. The other foreigners were European that from conversations I overheard apparently equated American basketball success with American hegemony, and the majority of the bar were Chinese people. I was betting with the Chinese girl to my left what the gaps at the end of the quarters would be, and I felt really bad when the gap I guessed was only half the size of the actual margin. We got out of the bar pretty fast fearing some type of vengeful anti-American basketball mob.
Today I went with my gym friends from before to their new gym to get a membership. They apparently have a new place they work at, and I got a really good deal on a membership card. I got double the time I got in Hangzhou for literally 2/3 the price, creating a fraction my brain can no longer handle. We went out to lunch at a nearby restaurant for fish round two. Last time I went out to eat with them I ended up biting into the bony, crunchy tail of a fish thinking that it was edible and intended for consumption. Yes, dumb. This time they ordered fish with no bones. Looks like we are both learning.
I am so excited about the food in Beijing. The restaurants I all love are still here, and I can't wait to get my fill of dumplings and fried pig stomach and peppers and green beans and oh I am excited.
It has been very weird wandering some of the familiar streets. With the exception of some little things the streets I frequented before haven't changed at all, they are outside of Olympic jurisdiction and maintain all the charms and quirks from before. I am excited to be back in Beijing.

Last Week of Hangzhou Class

My elbow has been continuing to bother me, and since I'd rather have elbow pain than lift less than 300 pounds, I've gone on a quest to find Icy Hot. Bob has jumped on board with me as he needs something to take out the pain in his dislocated shoulder. He dislocated it a week or two ago during the basketball game, but he claims it isn't as serious as the times before when he has had to have surgery to repair it, and is thus working out still and doing less weight. It was fantastic, for the first week he just had his arm in a sling and did squats on the smith press using one arm to stabilize it. In any case, the two of us who apparently can't listen to the obvious signs are bodies are giving us have been dragging JJ with us in search of stores with medicines to offer us. The first thing Bob found was some type of Tiger Balm, which smells terrible and doesn't seem to have much effect on his shoulder. I opted not to use it. Today, in a moment of desperation, I decided to wander into a Chinese pharmacy since our bus was taking a while to arrive. I explained my problem, and the pharmacist showed me to two items. The first was something she insisted was the perfect fit for my problem, and the other was something else that might help and have the same basic function. I looked at the first one, not really understanding the Chinese or English list of ingredients, and thus moved on to examining the second. What was the second one? Lidocaine, 利多卡因. I may be mistaken, but I was fairly certain that lidocaine required a prescription. Needless to say we bought the spray on lidocaine, and Bob is trying it on his shoulder tonight. This country is fantastic, maybe if this doesn't work we can find horse steroids or something.

Everyone around me is getting so excited and talking about the last week of class and how they are almost ready to go home, and I am having trouble relating to them. I still have months to go, so I feel kind of weird being the only one continuing. On a related note, I need to decide if I want to take a plane or train to Beijing. I originally wanted to do the train, but I realized that with a train ride that long I'm destined to end up sitting next to 'that guy' who wants to talk to the American the entire ride. We had voting last week for "Most likely to...", and while I don't think anyone voted for me as "most likely to kill a Chinese person" before, if they saw me on a train after a few hours in that environment I might be the winning candidate. I am not sure how much trouble it is getting a plane ticket though, so I am still trying to decide.