Saturday, August 31, 2002

 
i'm moved in to the most lovely apartment ever. :) It took all day, but now we have a beautiful setup. I went to a crazy-cool used furniture outdoor market today with collin and my chinese friend, fox. it was great... just rows and rows of shops selling really cool stuff for really cheap. I checked out new refridgerators at Carrefour earlier today and they ran 1000-3000 kuai. i picked a nice one up at this market for 230 kuai and it's just perfect. collin bought a new sofa for 130 kuai. people followed us around asking us over and over if we wanted a truck to move it, if we wanted to hire people to carry it. we bargained them down to 25 kuai for the truck and 30 kuai for the labor (yay for having a chinese friend with us!) and didn't have to lift a finger on the big stuff. I rode back to the apartment in the back bed of the pickup truck (whee!) speaking chinese with one of the moving men. collin also rode in the back bed, but he sat in the sofa and wailed "Rollin' on a River" the whole ride back. It was a beautiful day.

posted by sarah 7:11 AM

Friday, August 30, 2002

 
Sarah got an apartment! Oh, what a beautiful thing! It's lovely--brand new, hardwood floors, big open living room, a loft bedroom, two big bathrooms, a nice kitchen, and on the top (7th floor) with a nice view of... other people's apartments. :) I'm sharing it with my friend Sally, who will be just a pleasure to live with. It's a really convenient location, close to everything i need (and right near a bus stop, which will get me to everything else i need). There's no elevator, so hey! Great exercise gettin' up to that 7th floor every day!

Living in the dorms I was paying 1300 kuai/month. This place is only 1000 kuai/month, and split between two people that makes it only 500! That's what... about US$60? I'm psyched.

It's a nice arrangement because I'm not bound to the place. If I choose to relocate after Christmas, it's no big deal because Sally is happy to live there by herself--it's small enough for 1, but big enough for 2.

Signed that lease today. Movin' tomorrow. Woo!
posted by sarah 9:11 AM

Tuesday, August 27, 2002

 
My first family dinner in China... oh god, what a horror...

I have a 13-year-old student named Lucy who's very bright and always talks to me after class. This week, she invited me to her house for dumplings. I gladly accepted the invitation because I haven't yet had a "family dinner" in china. I've eaten out frequently as a guest, but never gone to someone's home and eaten the food they've prepared (the time my host sister reheated some leftovers for me and we ate on la-z-boys watching a kung fu movie doesn't count). So we set the date for Tuesday (last night) and she told me she'd meet me at the bus station.

On my way there I suddenly realized I should bring a gift (politeness! it's just not a big deal in the united states...) so I picked up a bag of grapes from a street vendor before i arrived.

She met me at the bus station with a smile and walked with me to her apartment. Her apartment, like many chinese', has a "neighborhood" on the ground level, with some old guys playing chinese chess at a table and some kids running around, and maybe a small garden tended to by someone on the first floor. The outside of the building looks like a ghetto, with external steps (poorly or not at all lit at night) that lead all the way up the building, perhaps 6 or 7 floors. On each landing, there are two apartments, one to the left and one to the right. Lucy lived on the fifth floor, in the right apartment. It always surprises me that while the buildings are nothing good to look at from the outside, the apartments inside are usually very nice.

Inside her mother greeted me in Chinese, "Hello, I welcome you to our home, please have a seat." I thanked her and handed her the bag, saying "I bought these for you." She thanked me and took them to the kitchen. Lucy asked me if I wanted something to drink and I told her water would be fine. Her mother popped her head in and asked if I'd like some chinese tea and I said "sure". They brought out a teapot and one teacup--not two or three--and i was the only one who consumed tea the entire evening. Whenever my cup was slightly less than half full, Lucy responded to the prompts of her mother and grandmother to refill my cup. When I realized what a hassle it was, I stopped drinking. Occasionally, they'd point at my teacup and remind me I should be drinking it.

They made dumplings on the table in front of me. I asked them to teach me how to pack them, and they tried, but alas, I think I botched so many that "You should sit and drink tea and rest" was their polite way of getting me out of them. They made Lucy cut up a peach for me to eat (I didn't want a peach... no one asked me if i wanted a peach...) and I sat drinking tea and eating a peach while she consumed nothing. I kept trying to get her to have some peach, but she refused. "No, I don't eat peaches, thank you."

Over and over they told me not to be polite, to eat more, to drink more.. "Don't use politeness in our home." While, of course, they were stepping out of their way to give me stuff. When it came time to eat dumplings, I figured I could make use of the few manners I'd learned in the states--wait for the host before you start eating--but those were thrown out the window as they criticized me for always not eating while they ran around doing stuff (and the mother never sat down to eat, despite me asking her to take a rest).

Mid-meal, Lucy asked me if I'd been to Xi'an to see the terracotta warriors. I said, "No, I haven't, but I've heard they're beautiful." She thought for a second, then pulled a beautiful golden (not real, i hope to god) commemorative statue of a some horses pulling a carriage. "This is from Xi'an. It's very beautiful and important. Now I give it to you."

Now what do you do in this situation? I chose the: "No, no, no, it's yours. I don't want it" approach, which only led to a near-tears face that said, "Whyyyyyy?"

"Um, it's too expensive, I don't want you to give it to me."

"Oh, it's nothing. It used to be mine. My grandfather gave it to me as a little girl. Now I give it to you."

"Um, no, really, I'm embarrassed. Please, really. I don't want to give it to me."

And she nodded (thank god!) and started to put it back, but then she made eye contact with her mother, and changed her mind. She placed it next to my bag.

And then, because they kept houding me to eat, I was full of dumplings. So I slowed to a stop on the eating, which immediately drew the question, "Why aren't you eating?!" And so I told them, "I'm full." And the argument began, and lasted a good fifteen minutes.

"You're not full!"

"Really, I am. I had the peach earlier."

"You only ate five dumplings."

"No, I ate more. See? All of those and all of these."

"No, you waited for me, and I only ate five, and I'm not full, so you're not full."

"No, really, I've eaten enough, thank you."

"Eat more!"

"No, really.."

"What's going on?"

"Mom, she says she's full."

"But you didn't have enough! Don't speak, just keep eating."

"Really, thank you, I'm full. They were very good."

"Oh, they were too salty. I've very very sorry. Oh, I'm so embarrassed."

"no! no! I loved them! they were great!"

"Oh, you should eat more of the cucumber ones. They aren't as salty."

"Thank you, but I'm full...."

and on, and on.... and when I finally convinced them that they had stuffed my poor little tummy full of dumplings, Lucy put down her chopsticks and said, "I'm full, too" and the eating ended--despite me telling her that i knew she wasn't full, as she had said so earlier.

A bit of a long story by now, so I'll cut to the end. They saw me off to the bus (despite my reassurance that i could do it myself) and put me on that bus with three things: 2 peaches, the grapes I brought ("our home has some, so you take them back to your home"), and the commemorative statue of the terracotta warriors.

It's a game--this whole politeness bullshit... And i'm losing so miserably. The fact that I can't argue back correctly without choosing offensive words is the problem. Living in the "Do what you feel and say what you mean" United States didn't prepare me for this at all.
posted by sarah 9:53 PM

Friday, August 23, 2002

 
Oh, man... Second day in a row with Celine blasting. I just don't know how to handle this. It's better than the other song they like to play loudly in here, which has the english chorus of "Yeah, she's so ugly, oh yeah, she's an ugly girl. Ooh! She's so ugly! Oh, she's an ugly girl." and then goes into chinese verses about guys hitting on women. Jeez...

Um... now they're playing "Only You" and singing along with loud swooning voices. What do you make of this?

In China, you can't walk on the grass. They have many lawns, many parks with big grassy fields, but all with fences and walls. The benches are on the sidewalks. "Please no walk on grass." Someone needs to tell China that grass is for running and playing in.

In China, people refuse to accept thank-you's. In English, when someone says "Thank you," you say, "You're welcome." You're welcome; I welcome you; you don't need to feel shy, this is what i openly give you. And people appreciate "Thank-you's" in the United States. If you don't thank someone after they've given you something, done something for you, it's considered rude. In Chinese, after you thank someone they say "Don't use thanks" or "Don't be so polite" or "There's no need". Every time I've thanked Marlboro for something she's given me she's said "No, don't say thank you! We're good friends!" "You don't say thank you to good friends!" And frequently I see people not say anything in situations where I would say 'thank you'. It disturbs me. I will not stop saying 'thank you'. I guess this is a good example of unresolvable cultural difference. "When in Rome..." my foot. I ain't budging.

I've bought matching dishes. Domesticity is hitting. Matching cups and bowls in the 2, 3, and 4 kuai dish bins at Carrefour (the 3-story Chinese zoo that resembles a walmart). And a nice note... several of the 3-kuai dishes say "Made and exclusively designed for Pier 1 Imports" on the bottom. Bet you guys are paying $15 a pop in the states for these babies. They're under 40 cents here. Ditto on the Made-in-China Liz Claireborn, Dockers, and other major brand's clothes that you can buy here for a song. I'm telling you, if you need to do some shopping, fly to china first. Yeah.
posted by sarah 10:54 PM

 
Woah. I swear I crammed about 2 or 3 days into yesterday. It started at 7:30 AM, when Dalin called me to tell me he was back from Shanghai (he'd been there for about 5 days travelling). We met a little later to talk about the trip and he gave me some interesting gifts: a bunch of little pig statues (cause i was born in the year of the pig), a box of pink ultra-slim cigarettes from london, and a cd of various MTV rappers. Yep. My dream guy. (note- sarcasm.) 'least the pigs were cute. Then he proceeded to brag about beating up a guy in the subway because the guy crowded him and swore at him. I heard that story about 5 times throughout the day...

Later went to the beach with Sally, Marlboro, Dalin, Fox (Dalin's friend/workbuddy/marlboro's friend), and another one of Marlboro's friends. It was a lot of fun--lying in the sun, eating sandwiches (lettuce, tomato, mayonaise, and bread--go sally! first real sandwich i've had in AWHILE!), and reading my Chinese Slang book out loud to each other--muy entertaining. I took off a little early (just as the rain started coming down) to go teach.

Later I went over to Luigi's to help out the guys there. A Canadian English teacher was having his birthday party and expected 200 people to come to this little outdoor restaurant. A really cool Korean girl, who's also friends with the guys, came to help as well. My job was Keg Girl. I was also known as the Beer Goddess, for the record. See, this guy hosted the party, but he refused to buy the beer or pizza, so each person had to pay a kuai for each little plastic cup of beer. I had a great time with that job--dancing around for people and doing all sorts of things to get them to buy beer. My favorite was taking on the Chinese Salesperson style: "Tonight, beer ten kuai one cup. But we old friends, so I give you good price. Lowest price. 1 kuai. That man, he pay ten kuai. You, one kuai. Buy three." I was told over and over that I should go into marketing. There were 6 or so whom I convinced to buy beer who didn't want to drink anymore. They gave the cups to me. I passed them out to the rest of the guys. It was a nice system.

THEN, Dalin, Fox, the Korean girl, and I went out to the Jazz club and watched the live band, who is perpetually the coolest band ever. To have a ten-minute version of "Hit the Road Jack" that fades into "Come on Baby Light my Fire" is truly, truly impressive. We stayed there till about 1.

THEN, we all went back to the Korean girl's place to crash (by this point my dorm had long since closed for curfew... stupid chinese university rules). She made us some great Korean food and was incredibly hospitable. She's been in China for a year, and speaks chinese but not english, so the four of us spoke in (simple) chinese all night, and it was great. I've been speaking only english for about a month because of that thing I call Dave. It was nice to break out of that.

so yeah. tonight i stay in. and stand up dalin who told me to come to luigi's tonight. cause i don't think he's so hot no more. kind of a jerk, actually--i was less and less impressed with him as the day went on. maybe there is no hope for relationship across the cultural barrier.... ah, zenmeban! (translation: whatever shall i do now?)

God, someone's blasting Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" in this internet cafe. Must...escape...
posted by sarah 1:23 AM

Tuesday, August 20, 2002

 
i had a great evening last night. yesterday afternoon, while i was cleaning the biohazardous rosebud mold out of my teapot, collin gave me a call to see how I was doing. mostly it was an "i figured you might be lonely, so what's up?" call and it made my day. a few hours later i hopped over to the jazz bar where star wars II (yes, you can already get it on dvd here) was playing and hung out with sally, collin, marlboro, a couple other amerian english teachers--billy and bart--and a korean girl named amy who speaks english like its her first language. Sally and I spent the whole evening talking, and later playing really bad (but entertaining as hell) games of foosball. She's an incredibly pleasant Australian woman who's a lot of fun to spend time with.

I'm currently on the hunt to get an apartment asap. The dorms have tight restrictions and curfews and lack kitchen and refridgerator access, not to mention the fact that a shared apartment would be a third of the price. I think i enjoy the off-campus social life far better than the chinese college life. Coming from Bard, where i could do anything I wanted, living at qingdao university feels like being in high school or middle school again--it's not going to work at all. Collin and Sally are currently looking for an apt, and if they find something big they might let me in on it. Otherwise, I'm currently seeking an apartment buddy. It looks like Amy might be interested in finding one with me--i'm not sure if we'd really be compatible flatmates, though. She seems to be far more... girly... than me.

Haha, i just used "flatmates". Spending time with british and australian speakers has messed with my slang. "Pissed" means drunk, not angry? "Fag" means cigarette?? Yesterday Sally said, "He calls me about once a fortnight" and i looked at her cross-eyed. Apparently "shite" is the proper form of "shit". After you graduate high school you go to "Uni". Those khakis you wear are "trousers," not "pants" ("pants" are underwear, you uncultured fool!). And don't get me started on the fact that the English textbooks I teach from spell "color" with a "u"...

Alright, now that my brain's working again I'll fill ya'll in on the beer festival story. See, Qingdao is where Tsingtao Beer comes from (same pronounciation, difference between old and new style romanized spelling) and Tsingtao Beer is internationally famous. So Qingdao has a beer festival every August for 2 weeks to give the people a moment to celebrate the wonders of Tsingtao Beer. The festival primarily takes place in a theme park called "The Beer City". The Beer City looks like a Disney World that sells beer instead of Mickey toys. It's absolute madness. Small children are there, riding the roller coasters and climbing the beer castles. Australian rugby teams are there wearing matching hawaiian shirts and funnelling beer into each other (hey, they became our friends for the evening). And basically everybody who's anybody is there watching the bands, the parades, the chinese women in tight beer-advertising dresses, and the beer. Dave and I went on Saturday, which was the opening night, and the place was a zoo. There were huge inflatable beer bottles, statues of angels peeing into huge kegs of beer, and massive huge-scale advertising from all the local companies and international beer brands.

"Haier" is one of the biggest companies in Qingdao. It makes all of the air conditioners, refridgerators, washing machines, etc. They have their own "Haier Road", plenty of "Haier Hotels" and all sort of bizarre advertising like that that doesn't push the products but lets the whole world know they own everything. If you click here you can see in the upper left-hand corner their mascot--a little white kid and a little chinese kid with their arms around each other. This mascot is literally everywhere in Qingdao. So at the Beer festival, they had people dancing around in inflated suits of these two kids (there were about 8 of them walking around together) Mickey-Mouse-at-Disney-World-style so you could have your pictures taken with them and hug them. So of course I ran up to two of them and posed for my picture. And then, what do you know, the Chinese one wrapped his arms around me and grabbed my breasts! So now I have this picture of me, with a totally shocked face, pushing a big nylon pillow chinese baby away from my chest. I was molested by that evil baby. And it was the Chinese one, too.

I will--i promise--find a scanner soon.
posted by sarah 10:50 PM

Sunday, August 18, 2002

 
As I write this, Dave is boarding his plane home. I've spent the morning running around with him, doing all the last-minute stuff, and it didn't really hit me till the cab ride home that... there goes the last of my american friends.... I guess I still have Collin, a New Orleans man at the jazz bar, but as far as travel buddies go, i'm solo now.

um... last week I had a beautiful date with Dalin. And saturday I went to a beer festival. Both very good stories. But... now i think you'll have to wait...

because i still have to stomach this new news.

now what?
posted by sarah 11:01 PM

Wednesday, August 14, 2002

 
Hotmail appears to be working again!!!

::wild music begins to play! streamers fall from the sky as fireworks explode overhead in celebration! elephants, tigers, and lots of crazy chinese monkeys and pandas begin a synchronized tribal dance of the indigenous peoples of algeria thanking the gods for healed servers and netspeed! sarah smiles!::

Alright, ya'll, you can use sadopp@hotmail.com again and i'm actually likely to get it this time. Rock on.

Well, aside from biting Dave's head off (he's the ideal PMS target I think), my pastimes lately have included finding yet another preschool to which I've committed to teach (actually, it's the original one, from back in june... i just.. lost the directions sort of), meeting more and more foreigners, and making dates with Dalin. Double date is on tomorrow night: me, dalin, david, and marlboro. ooooh, what fun! whee!

Dinner time. Rock on. Yeeah. I think tonight we're either finding the Japanese restaurant or the Muslim restaurant. Then tomorrow I get to cart Dave's butt around some more while we try to get him a 6-day extension on a visa that expired two days ago because mr. don't-wanna-think-ahead is a big fat stupid head. He's leaving monday though.
posted by sarah 3:53 AM

Monday, August 12, 2002

 
Hotmail still hates me but blogger seems to be operating at a (slow but) reliable level.

I've made a few observations about chinese students that i'd like to share:
1) Humor doesn't work as a teaching technique.
2) Expecting creativity of them doesn't work either.

The humor I can understand a little better. When you dont have a grasp on a language it's hard to have fun with it. I tried to study jokes with ray today and he didn't laugh once. the whole concept went right over his head.

The creativity, though, is a little more troubling. I've tried to have some students make up a person and describe them, using a plain old stick figure as the picture. I started it ("This is my friend, George. He's 20. George is Japanese. He's a policeman. He drives a Toyota. He's tall and thin. He's also very busy. He's very well today. Okay, now you try."). It really didn't take much creativity--our vocab list was pretty small. But most of them would not make up a person. They described someone they knew--an old classmate or a friend in the room. And when I asked the same thing of my 7-year-old korean girl, she just stared at the paper, lost, not responding at all to questions, and wouldnt function until i went back to book work.

An American guy I met here once told me that he feels the Chinese can't think for themselves. He cited the cultural revolution as the reason: "When you kill off an entire generation of academics and philosophers, you're going to mess people up." I think he may be right--to some extent. I don't see much creativity at all in this culture. Streets, businesses, clothing styles, and workers all seem to look and operate the same way. yes, there are exceptions, but on the whole, this culture seems to act like sheep more than any other place i've seen or heard of. And I don't think this is a government-regulated communist thing. There's just a strong aversion to being different.

While you don't frequently see public displays of affection between sexes, you do see a lot of girls holding hands with girls and even sometimes guys holding onto guys. It's a big sense-of-security thing I think, and it creeps me out.

I don't let chinese girls hold my hand. Just like I refuse to go to the public restroom with girls in the States. C'mon, girls, get a life.
posted by sarah 9:44 PM

Sunday, August 11, 2002

 
blogger and hotmail hate me. communication is lost. use sd622@bard.edu.

over and out.
posted by sarah 5:51 AM

Friday, August 09, 2002

 
Ugh. I don't know what the deal is, but hotmail's been unusably slow these past two days. Until it starts working again, try forwarding those emails to my bardmail: sd622@bard.edu. Sorry about that... as convenient as the internet is, when it stops working, it's an even bigger inconvenience.
posted by sarah 10:08 PM

Thursday, August 08, 2002

 
no magic last night. just a hell of a lot of fun at the jazz bar. Dalin, 2 of his friends, Dave, and i played cards all night--the winner of each game made the loser do something funny or embarrassing. the first time i lost, they made me dance in front of the band (it was a great tracy chapman song, so of course i stood up, shook my booty, and got the whole bar cheering for me). it became such a popular dare that the entire bar was dancing by the end of the night. it was soooo much fun. they haven't had dancing at that bar before, but maybe they will after that night.

Dalin's still the most gorgeous thing on two legs, but i think i'll check myself before diving after him. After all, i've got plans.... wanna hear them?

Alright, so in 2008 the Olympics are in China. most sports are held in beijing, but the boating will be held in qingdao. So that gives me 6 years to become fluent in Chinese and get the diner going. At 2008, i'll be a diplomatic translator host whatever for the Olympics and our diner will be pulling in sweet profits.

So that's 6 years to get some education. It starts in china, obviously, for this year and by the end I should have a pretty strong hold on it. Then i take off and go to some school somewhere in the world... maybe california or canada or beijing or ireland or some other really cool place. I'll go get that linguistics degree i've been talking about and pick Spanish back up while i'm at it (or maybe some other fun language). '06 and '07 will either be spent working/living somewhere or getting my masters--whichever seems more important at the time. After that, the Olympics.

And then it's onto the U.N.

note to self: don't get married.
posted by sarah 10:21 PM

 
Oh, the Drama hath begun.

Dave is the American boy who hangs out with me all the time. Dave and I are not romantically involved. However, Dave and I always go out to dinner together (cause who the hell else are we going to hang out with when we've just arrived in Qingdao?) and so people think we are a couple. This is not good for two reasons:
1) Dave is single and would like to find a nice Chinese girl.
2) Sarah is single and would like to find a nice Chinese boy.

Up until recently, this "cramping one's style" deal was not an issue. Now, however, Dave and Sarah have both found Chinese interests.

Sarah's fancy: Dalin (Dah-leen). Works at Luigi's Pizza (makes a damn fine foccacio bread). 20 years old. Student at Ocean University. Shoulder-length hair, tinted glasses, gorgeous face. Excellent English. Way cool. Very nice.

Dave's fancy: Marlboro. Actual English name is Barbara, but up until last night we always thought she was saying Marlboro and that made her that much cooler. Works as a bar tender at Jazz Bar. Always wears the same adorable pair of tan overalls. Excellent English. Enthusiastic. Way cool. Very nice.

Last night, Dave and I first went to Luigi's for dinner, then to the Jazz bar for a drink. While at Luigi's, Dalin sat with us (next to me) and chatted the whole time. The next night was his night off, so I invited him to come to the Jazz bar with us tonight. He and his friends will be there. He remembered my name from last time.

At the Jazz bar, Marlboro learned that we *aren't* in fact a couple. We learned that Marlboro is seeking an American boyfriend. She and Dave are currently out shopping together..... so cute.

Dave and I are both slightly suspicious that Marlboro is a lesbian and Dalin is gay. Marlboro spends more time talking to me than Dave, and Dalin slipped Dave a shoulder rub last night. Just another element of Drama for the folks back home.

Tonight will be interesting with the four of us at the Jazz Bar. Dave and I are also a bit nervous that Dalin and Marlboro are going to hook up and leave us in the dust.
posted by sarah 12:35 AM

Tuesday, August 06, 2002

 
So if you go to Pacific Sunwear or any other stylish t-shirt shop in the States these days, you see shirts with Chinese or Japanese characters on them. And people buy them, frequently, without knowing what they mean. I always figured they said things like "I'm a stupid American" on them so I never touched them. I also figured the United States was the only place where people would be so stupid as to buy t-shirts without knowing what they mean.

China, however, has shown me that this is not true! Here, even though they're all "learning" english and should know what they mean, people buy the most bizzarre english t-shirts. A few off the top of my head:

"MILKFED MILKFED MILKFED"
"That Smells Smell"
"Three trees are very tall."
"Good Looking--they are pleasant people."
"To all the things on earth"
"Drance"
"BLUE--Say it with colours." (also comes in every other major color)
"Sunshine"
"Am I attractive? Tell me your impression."

Then you have shirts with a lot of writing on them, that end up being sections of bad poetry or completely misspelled paragraphs, often punctuated with a 72-point word at the bottom that says "LOVE" or "JUNK" or "FAMOUS".

I bought a notebook that looks really plain, but has the coolest writing on the front ever. It says:

NOTE
BOOK
this rare notebook is just for you.

Our finest quality paper
ensures a smooth surface that
is a pleasure to write on.

This is the most comfortable
notebook you have ever run into.

You will feel like writing
with it all the time.
posted by sarah 10:01 PM

Monday, August 05, 2002

 
Hypothetical possibility: Opening an American Diner in Qingdao. My classmates had talked about it back in June and the thought still lingers in my day-to-day outings. The french guy opened that french bar.... that italian guy is opening a new italian restaurant this week.... why not?

It'll be 24-hours and we'll find a way to serve bottomless cups of coffee for cheap (haven't seen cheap coffee yet in china, but big bulk imports have got to be possible, right?). Greasy egg dishes, homefries, sandwhiches, burgers, toast, wraps, whatever--it'll be American. As many American waitstaff as possible, but english-speaking chinese in American dresses will do. Menu in English and Chinese. Possibly put the waitstaff on rollerskates. Will be a bar (as well as still a restaurant) at night with live music as often as possible. During the day, all-american music. Think 50's, 60's, 70's... some rock, blues, and jazz.

why this will work: there are two major universities and a moderate foreigner population in Qingdao. The target customers will be easy to find. Also, there's such a huge interest in America that it will be instantly "cool". If we can manage to keep down prices, it will be really popular. And the atmosphere will be as english-speaking as possible, which will be a big draw.

what we need: a chinese friend to co-own it (legally necessary), a location, some research on the acquiring of cheap coffee and other foodstuffs, someone with business/diner knowledge, some americans who want something cool to do, and startup capital.

if anyone has any interest or contributing ideas, emails would be appreciated: sadopp@hotmail.com.

and remember, coming to china was once just a silly idea....
posted by sarah 11:08 PM

 
Okay, China and I kissed and made up. We never could fight for very long--we're just too happy with each other. As an apology gift, China gave me a year-long visa and a residency permit today. It was real nice of China to do that.

It still stands that the passive-aggressive chinese way bothers me to no end, but the chinese have some real cool things, too--like super-cute kids that are psyched to learn a new language. Today I taught a 7-year-old Korean girl who's already fluent in Korean and Chinese, and was way more advanced than i expected in English. Teaching her is going to be a lot of fun (and the family is the sweetest family i've ever met) and it will be three times a week.

Yesterday i mentioned that i didn't know if i was teaching or going to a meeting yesterday. I ended up teaching. Fortunately, they wanted only half an hour of me, and on the bus i had thrown together a few ideas in my head, so it went smoothly. i really, really wasn't expecting that i'd be teaching. a great game for kids, though: teaching "up" and "down". you just say up and down a whole bunch of times, simon-says-style but without the catch, and make them jump all over. by the end, they knew their up and down. damn right they did. 4-year-olds are easily entertained.

and then, another class today, which i was sure WOULD be teaching but ended up just being a meeting (what's up with this?) had some real cool kids in it. it's organized by my host sister's uncle (guess that makes him my host uncle. hereafter referred to as such.) and consists of about 6 or so kids, all 11 to 13. different intelligence levels but a lot of fun to chat with. the youngest is the smartest. i think we'll be doing 2 hour classes on sundays. we played that name-game you always do at camp: "my name is sarah and i like soup." "her name is sarah and she likes soup. my name is kit and i like kites." and so on. they enjoyed it.

i've met three study-english students in china so far that are either the best for their age or claim to be. And all three of their English names are Jenny. Would anyone care to psychoanalyze this?

off teaching, let's talk about the foreigner culture i'm getting into here. I've talked about Luigi's pizza more than once, but i've also discovered a Jazz Bar and a French Bar, which are awesome places to meet more foreigners and hang out. Qingdao's a big city (i've heard it's 7 million but haven't verified that), but because the foreigner population is small, we all seem to know each other. Dave and I met Collin and Sally, two english teachers, at Luigi's one night. David, the owner of the french bar, was also there. Collin told us about the jazz bar and we went there a few nights later. Collin and Sally were both there. Anna, a German girl who lives in the dorms near me, took Dave and I to the french bar last night, and Sally was there. David, the owner, told us about another italian restaurant that's opening tonight, so Anna, Dave, and I are going to go check it out for dinner. David will probably be there. It's weird, running into the same cool people all over.

And at the Jazz bar, there's a chinese blues band that plays every fri and sat. now. We heard them this saturday and they were incredible. They played Tracy Chapman, and "Day-O" (that was hillarious), and the Beatles, and all sorts of crazy stuff. You never know what you'll find in china... you really really don't.

So a quick roster of the teaching jobs:
Ray -- 18-yr-old student who studies in Canada -- 3 hrs a week
2 Preschools -- same owners, kids age 4-6 -- 2 hours a week
Jenny -- 7-yr-old Korean girl -- 3 hours a week
Host Uncle's friends -- about 6 kids age 11-14 --2 hours a week

also, on the to-be-determined list, we have:
a 30-yr-old business woman who wants to study english
a school that wants to overwork and underpay me
friends of a guy in the int'l programs office whom i haven't heard from in a week
posted by sarah 2:45 AM

Sunday, August 04, 2002

 
china can go hide in a box for all i care today. i think we're fighting--me and china. she doesn't understand my needs. she's not there for me lately. always wants to go out with her friends and leaves me at home to find dinner in bare cupboards. always pretending to care about me and then going off with someone else to talk behind my back. it used to be so beautiful--we'd run through fields together, skipping and picking wildflowers, back when it was just me and china, but now, i don't know what happened...

alright, let me bitch. first of all, i'm sick. i picked up a cold last week and i don't have any idea how. it's hot as an oven out there and i haven't been stressed out at all. i think i might blame the over abundance of freezing air conditioners. and what am i taking for this illness? well, my host mother recommended that i take chinese medicine--these funky granules you dissolve in hot water and drink three times a day. the most bitter, gross thing ever. and is it helping? not that i've seen yet. still sick. yep, still sick.

and in the midst of my spacey, runny nose, blocked ear canal, sinus pressure agony, i'm have all sorts of meetings about work. this work thing is nuts. i've established that my host mother is pretty crazy--all about polite facades and pulling strings and passive-aggressive actions that seem to benefit only the most random of people. she took me into a school the other day, telling me they wanted someone to teach twice a week for a hundred kuai an hour, but during the meeting i learned they wanted someone for five days a week and for half the pay. i politely tried to explain that i wasn't what they were looking for, but negotiations ensued, they had no one else, and finally my host mother agreed that i would work a trial week, at three days a week. right. we still need to have a talk about this one.

and through the grapevine, information gets shifted here. one of my favorite teachers from my summer session here tells me she has a friend who wants tutoring. she tells me she wants 7 days a week, an hour a day (i think great, 700 kuai for one-on-one tutoring is a nice deal) and invites me out to lunch today to meet the girl. my teacher tells me this girl is very intelligent, very special, and very very interested in learning english. it turns out to be my teacher's husband's boss's daughter. the daughter doesn't show up to the dinner. she actually has no desire at all to learn chinese. the father just thinks she does, and gloats about her, but actually he's so busy he knows nothing about his daughter and just puts pressure on her. so i sit through this two hour long lunch with my wonderful teacher, her awkward husband, and his boss who speaks the most unintelligible chinese i've heard. the boss tells stories about work and everyone else sympathizes. and most of the time, i just stare, and suppress sneezes, and wait for the hours to pass. every once in awhile, my teacher translates for me. the food was good. the rest sucked. and that's 700 kuai i was banking on that i have to go find somewhere else.

and now, i'm heading off to meet with the preschool people (the ones i taught for once before i went travelling). and to be honest, i have no idea if i'm teaching a class or discussing when i will teach. because for some reason, the people here tend not to tell me these things. the last time i thought i was having a meeting it turned into a lesson. so i'm trying to plan a back-up lesson, just in case i'm teaching, but i don't even know what kids i'll have.

and i'm not even going to get into the people i have to meet with tomorrow.

if there's one thing i can't stand about china it's the politeness. the manners. the women here are beautiful, but you wouldn't want to spend much time with them--they play these politeness games that you're sure to lose at. cunning questions that you can't answer right, the expectation that you'll pretend to not want something when you want it, the insisting that someone else has something when you really don't want them to have it... the expectation that you know exactly what's between the lines, and that you'll act accordingly. if you take too much food, if you order the wrong thing, if you sit in the wrong seat, if you tap the tip of your glass above the tip of your host's glass during a toast, if you smoke, if you don't smoke, if you drink, if you don't drink... it doesn't matter. you're wrong.

take the bitching with a grain of salt. i'm sick, remember. *cough cough* see? and there aint no chicken soup to be had.

oh wait, no. today i had soup with chunks of solidified chicken blood, chicken liver, chicken stomach, and chicken intestines. does that count? but my teacher thought it was gross so i couldn't eat the whole thing, but the men were eating it so i couldn't not try it, so i had to take a bite here, a bite there, agree to her that it was odd, nod to them that it was alright, and discreetly put it aside.
posted by sarah 12:05 AM

Thursday, August 01, 2002

 
playing with layout. you like?
archives right now are causing big problems, so you'll have to deal with having it all in one place.
posted by sarah 12:34 AM