Christmas in Santai, 2007
Have had some pretty obscure Christmases over the years, some of the more notable ones include learning how to belly-dance in Turkey, and having an underwater Christmas party while scuba diving in the Red Sea ( that one was a wee bit traumatic, as I distinctly recall, since I was working as chef on the diving boat at the time, and had to prepare a 4 course meal, never having cooked a turkey myself before!) However, that challenge, as do all challenges, did pass, and I lived to tell the tale. As did all the guests who ate what I cooked, fortunately!
For those of you who have been following these tales of mine, the most recent challenge that had been causing me sleepless nights, the teachers’ training conference that I had to lead, was a success. I spent far too much time in preparation, I suspect, as I pretty much had the whole 5 hour presentation memorized by the time I had to give it. With my extremely limited computer knowledge, I nevertheless did manage to put together a powerpoint presentation, with a great deal of help from one of the teachers in our school.
I was most worried that I’d run out of things to say, as 5 hours is a really long time to talk, so had all sorts of “just in case” topics to ad lib with if the need should arise. Ad-libbed so well in fact, that I actually had more than enough information, and didn’t quite finish all my subjects. However, it seemed to go pretty well, they laughed in the right places, and stayed awake for the whole 5 hours, which I figure is a good sign! I consider it also a fortunate thing that there was a large desk to stand behind so they couldn’t see my knees knocking, and reckon I fooled them into thinking I was supremely confident!
It never ceases to amaze me, though, that for someone who always tried desperately to be sick on the days we had to give speeches in school, that I have spent so much of the past years public speaking! And it still terrifies me….wonder if you ever get over that horrible feeling of one’s stomach being hollow and hands shaking so much, I forever bless the wonderful soul who invented the clip-on microphone, so no one knows by watching the mike grasped in sweaty palms quake!
Anyway. It’s over, it went well, and I hope I never have to do it again. With my luck, next time it’ll be a national assembly I have to address.
So, Christmas. It lasted for about 2 weeks this year, as I taught a “Christmas” class to my students, and since I’ve so many classes, I didn’t start or finish til well before and after the actual holiday. The kids seemed to like the class though. Started off by telling them a bit about the traditions, stories behind Christmas, complete with tales of Sinterklaas and Zwaart Piet, no less! Then showed them two 5 minute video clips of Mr Bean’s Christmas. They went over well, slapstick humour is perfect for adolescents, and of course there’s no real dialogue, it’s all body language, so there was no stress factor for the slower students to try to understand what was happening. Then put together a slide-show of Christmas pictures from home : lots of snow, pictures of family, that sort of thing, mixed in with pictures from the internet of Christmas symbols: hololy, mistletoe, stockings, Santa Claus, interspersed with shots of Christmas around the world, St Lucia with candles on her head, Christmas crackers, etc. Went over well, so much so, that the classes I missed during my two day Christmas holiday asked to have the classes rescheduled so they could see it too. The school was nice to give me both the 24th and 25th off, so I went down to Chengdu. Earlier in the day, I spent some time wandering around the Wenshuo Street area doing some bits and pieces of Christmas shopping, and then met up with a few friends for lunch and gossip before meeting again to have Christmas dinner with friends there, an American friend of mine, who is teaching in a primary school there, her 4 year old daughter, and her mother who’d come over to visit for the holiday. A fun couple of days, then back to school to continue my Christmas class lectures on Boxing Day! The students and teachers have all been great. My table at home was loaded with cards, letters and gifts from students and teachers…have a look at the pictures! The teachers of Senior 1, the level in which I teach the majority of my classes, had gotten together to buy me a beautiful silver and jade necklace. The kids gave me all sorts of things: two hand-knitted scarves from some of my girl students, a wooden music box, various sizes of the red Auspicious Knot for good luck, a lime-green feathery wind chime, fluffy pink socks,
A stuffed panda that came complete with batteries (and sings an extremely loud pop song!), a packet of REAL (!) ground coffee beans, a carved wooden frog with a stick which when rubbed down the corrugations on its back, sounds like it’s croaking…and all sorts of hand folded origami flowers, animals and stars. One class, bless ‘em, got together to make a necklace of 74 little origami stars, one for each student. You can see Marco in the photo wearing it! Was invited out for multiple Christmas dinners, and on the Friday following Christmas, went out for Christmas/ New Year dinner with all the school English teachers! Loads of fun, we so rarely have time, as all the teachers are so busy here, especially now with the exams coming up. Dinner was a hot-pot style Chicken soup, a bubbling broth full of Chunks of chicken and vegetables, that kept being refilled. Have a look at the photos, to see some of the teachers that I work with!
After dinner, most of us went to a karaoke club, with soundproof rooms lined with couches and a large TV set hooked up to a computer, so we could sing our hearts out, a glorious mixture of English and Chinese songs. Again, you all know what my voice is like, the mixture of Endhoven/Ouwehand genes not being overly conducive to melody, however, it was fun just to hang out and laugh together. The teachers in our school are really very friendly, and it was nice to have time away from work to talk together.
Then back to Chengdu the next day, to help a few friends with some translation they are doing for a book, and to sort out my train ticket for Xining. Not long now before the Spring festival holiday begins – early for me, as I can leave once the kids start exams – and off I go to travel and visit friends in Qinghai. Looking forward to a bit of travelling again….So that is it for the 2007 blogs…unless something wildly exciting happens before I go, the next blog will be a travel story! So have a Happy New Year everyone,
Best wishes and prayers for peace and happiness in 2008.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Xiping epic, part one...will get the rest up ASAP!
Just back from the trip out to Xiping town, an hours drive away from Santai, on winding semi-paved roads through some beautiful countryside, the verdant hills of Sichuan rising on either side as we wended our way past terraced slopes with fields of rice and all sorts of vegetables. It reminded me of India in many ways, the smell of woodsmoke drifting on the air, and chickens and dogs in the road, but even more so passing through the villages. Though the older, more traditional homes here are have roofs of black tile instead of thatch, they also nestle among the hillsides as though they’d grown up from the very earth, in contrast with the more “modern” block-style houses of cement and cinder block.
As the others in the car chattered away in Chinese (one good thing about not speaking a language is that you can tune out and noone is offended, or expects you to keep up the conversation, which is always nice on trips when I’d far rather be looking out the window!), I was at liberty to look out the window. It’d would be wonderful to bring an easel and paints out into the villages, and try to catch the mist-wreathed old houses with their mud bricks and tiled roofs half hidden by stands of bamboo, with ropes of yellow corn cobs hung to dry under the eaves, woven baskets standing along the wall, and bright green patches of garden vegetables beside the front door. Of course, one would have to bring an invisibility cloak a la JK Rowling as well, in order to get any actual painting done, as foreigners are scarce in these parts, and most villagers have never seen a foreigner before.
I was invited to Xiping by the headmaster of a private English tutorial school there. She had contacted me through the teachers at the junior school I teach at on Saturdays in Santai, and talked me into giving an “exhibition” class to young kids. I agreed rather reluctantly, I have to admit, teaching little kids is still not my best thing in the world, and I grew more concerned as time went on before this event was to occur, and each time I asked how many kids, the number went up, until it ended up I was to teach 200. And I was never terribly clear about exactly how long or what I was to do: was told it was outside…it sounded worse and worse, but as it happened, I was pleasantly surprised.
After my morning classes on Saturday, we drove out to Xiping, and arrived to a crowd of kids who swarmed the car to greet me, bless them! They are all village kids, who’d never seen someone from another country, and were extremely cute and friendly, more than happy to practise what English they knew! I had multiple kids hanging off each arm, chattering away the questions they had learnt. Met the other teachers of the school, all young-ish girls in their twenties: Laurie, Sissy and Michelle. Most Chinese kids are given English names in their junior schools, and it does make it easier to remember at least some of them!
After an hour or so, I was taken to have a walk through the old part of the town, with its ancient cobbled streets, and traditional wooden houses with front walls that dismantled! They are made up of boards that slot into a rack at top and bottom of the wall, so open into shop fronts during the day, and can be closed up at night. You can see it in the photo I’ve put up, with the old people sitting out in the street watching the world – and a foreigner!- go by.
We stopped by an old man selling what looked like wicker-work baskets, he had such a contagious grin, I wanted to stop and have a look at his baskets. They turned out to be traditional coal-burners to warm your hands and feet. One of the teachers, Laurie had gone with us to act as translator, and she told me that only older people use them nowadays, but the craft of making them continues. Have a look at the photo on the side!
I also stopped and talked to a woman making brooms, rakes and ladders out of bamboo.
We walked down the uneven cobbled street, the wooden houses pretty much unchanged from hundreds of years ago, and the photographer with us, Oscar, who works for Santai TV and was filming “A foreigner’s view of Xiping!!!” pointed out the eaves, built entirely out of interlocking wood pieces, and no nails. Through Laurie’s translation, he told me that such houses could withstand even earthquakes, and were much stronger than the more modern buildings of concrete.
We all went out for dinner that night, the ubiquitous hotpot of course, but this time of freshly caught and killed fish. Very fresh…there was a big tank out front, with a chef balancing precariously on a board over the water wielding a large net. I have to admit to being too squeamish to watch the catching and killing…oh the days of vegetarianism…!
There is a certain knack to eating a fish hotpot, which I have yet to master. Chunks of fish are thrown into the bubbling spices and oil, complete with bones, and the Chinese seem able to put the entire piece into their mouth, move it around a bit, and spit out a pile of bones. It took me much longer…spitting out bone by bone, and trying really hard not to swallow any. This is, as you can perhaps imagine, really difficult to do gracefully! Fortunately, the Chinese are also very good at allowing one too keep face, and carried on their conversation regardless of my facial contortions! After dinner, I was to spend the night in the teachers’ flat. The three girls had a room each, but it was not nearly as nice as my “foreigner” flat, with its tiled floor and posh furniture. They had bare cement floors, a rudimentary kitchen with water-stained walls, and it was cold!!! But they were really friendly, set up an electric blanket for me, and made me very much at home. They were up in the wee hours, getting ready for the pageant, and left for school early. I and Laurie left at the more sensible hour or 7am, and went off to the school office, she to dash about madly like the others getting everything ready, me to sit nursing my hot soy milk and watching the kids getting made up assembly-line style. Two teachers had a pile of make up on the table, and were liberally be-daubing the kids one after the other with lipstick on mouth and cheeks. A few of the girls who were dancers had their ponytails bound with red ribbons to stick out from either side of their head, Pippi Longstocking style. Looked a bit like Christmas TV antennas to me, but they seemed quite pleased with the result!
Part 2…
So once all the kids were bedecked and bejeweled to everyone’s satisfaction, they were all herded into a long procession, at the head of which was unfurled a large red banner with all kinds of Chinese writing on it, and my name emblazoned in white letters! Have absolutely no idea what it said, but assume optimistically it was something good! It would have been funny if I was marching happily off to my doom surrounded by smiling kids and a sign proclaiming my imminent demise…! At any rate, we proceeded with great aplomb down the road in the drizzle of rain which had, typically of any such event, begun the moment we set off. Crowds gathered to watch our progress, traffic was halted as we sauntered gaily across the street, to the stage set up near the market place…the aroma of singed feathers wafting over us as we passed a group of women roasting chickens in large clay ovens.
The programme started late, as all events tend to, as the sound system acted up, the large helium banner collapsed, and various child actors took some time to locate. All crises were eventually overcome, and those of us in the shivering, slightly damp audience were treated to a progamme extraordinaire of songs, dances and short drama. The kids sang “It’s a small world” with great enthusiasm to even greater applause, and performed an extremely unique rendition of Snow White, which seemed to include some elements of Goldilocks (“someone’s been sleeping in MY bed..”), and the three musketeers ( the “prince” was garbed in a flowing cape (a red curtain) and was wielding a sword which he flourished with abandon, so dramatically in fact, that it was nearly impossible to make out what he was saying!
Then I was sent up on stage, the token foreigner,( like shops in India who hire elephants or dancing bears to perform and attract custom) to sing an English song with the other English teachers. Honestly, I don’t think I have ever sung publicly so much in my life since I began teaching ESL. There is a very good reason for this, of course, as all of you who know what my voice is like are well aware! Ah well, it seemed to amuse the crowd, at any rate. Later on, I was sent up again to “teach” about 200 kids. It was more entertainment than anything else, my job was to “attract interest” so I played a rousing game of Simon says, sang “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes” at great volume and danced the Hokey Pokey. Made a complete fool of myself in general, but it seemed to do the trick.
Afterwards, I was interviewed live for Santai television…pretty much an advertisement for the schools, you know, “how do you like the students?” “What do you think of our school?” with the standard glowing responses pre-set.
Then the teachers, school leaders and I headed off for lunch, a veritable feast, with the usual assortment of odd meat bits… dogs ears, duck tongues, pickled chicken feet and turtle soup, complete with an actual broiled turtle sitting in it, shell cracked so one could dig out the meat….I have to admit, that though some was put in my dish, I did actually cover it up with bits of cabbage and not eat it…!
After lunch, it was back to Santai, another beautiful drive, which since I have already described it once, will refrain from inflicting another description on you. Back in time to meet up with one of my students, a boy who calls himself J. Really nice kid, is helping me to learn Chinese, with great enthusiasm for all my badly-pronounced responses. After two hours chatting with him in a tea-shop, returned to school for a few more hours of prepping for my Christmas-themed classes this week. Am telling the kids a bit about Christmas, complete with stories of Sinterklaas and Black Piet, mistletoe and Christmas crackers…By the end of this year, these kids will know more about the world and its customs than most other Chinese kids their age, I suspect. After that, am showing them a 10 minute video clip of Mr Bean’s Christmas…they love the humour….and then a slide show of Christmas pictures from my last Christmas home, lots of pictures of my family and Christmas decorations, also pictures from Christmas round the world, St Lucia in Sweden, The Sphinx wearing a Santa hat, that sort of thing. They really love the pictures, especially of family and our house in Canada. Lots of work to prepare all that, but it has
been a resounding success. Several of the kids have told me they have laughed more since I arrived than in all their previous school years. Don’t know if that’s a good thing?!!!
A few more bits and pieces of note…went with a friend of mine, Jing Rong, for a wander
round town, and visited a school for deaf kids. They were really cute, and it was great to communicate with them through chalk drawings on the pavement! Lots of smiles all round! Am planning to go back again, once the teacher’s conference is over, and I have free time to call my own once more…
As the others in the car chattered away in Chinese (one good thing about not speaking a language is that you can tune out and noone is offended, or expects you to keep up the conversation, which is always nice on trips when I’d far rather be looking out the window!), I was at liberty to look out the window. It’d would be wonderful to bring an easel and paints out into the villages, and try to catch the mist-wreathed old houses with their mud bricks and tiled roofs half hidden by stands of bamboo, with ropes of yellow corn cobs hung to dry under the eaves, woven baskets standing along the wall, and bright green patches of garden vegetables beside the front door. Of course, one would have to bring an invisibility cloak a la JK Rowling as well, in order to get any actual painting done, as foreigners are scarce in these parts, and most villagers have never seen a foreigner before.
I was invited to Xiping by the headmaster of a private English tutorial school there. She had contacted me through the teachers at the junior school I teach at on Saturdays in Santai, and talked me into giving an “exhibition” class to young kids. I agreed rather reluctantly, I have to admit, teaching little kids is still not my best thing in the world, and I grew more concerned as time went on before this event was to occur, and each time I asked how many kids, the number went up, until it ended up I was to teach 200. And I was never terribly clear about exactly how long or what I was to do: was told it was outside…it sounded worse and worse, but as it happened, I was pleasantly surprised.
After my morning classes on Saturday, we drove out to Xiping, and arrived to a crowd of kids who swarmed the car to greet me, bless them! They are all village kids, who’d never seen someone from another country, and were extremely cute and friendly, more than happy to practise what English they knew! I had multiple kids hanging off each arm, chattering away the questions they had learnt. Met the other teachers of the school, all young-ish girls in their twenties: Laurie, Sissy and Michelle. Most Chinese kids are given English names in their junior schools, and it does make it easier to remember at least some of them!
After an hour or so, I was taken to have a walk through the old part of the town, with its ancient cobbled streets, and traditional wooden houses with front walls that dismantled! They are made up of boards that slot into a rack at top and bottom of the wall, so open into shop fronts during the day, and can be closed up at night. You can see it in the photo I’ve put up, with the old people sitting out in the street watching the world – and a foreigner!- go by.
We stopped by an old man selling what looked like wicker-work baskets, he had such a contagious grin, I wanted to stop and have a look at his baskets. They turned out to be traditional coal-burners to warm your hands and feet. One of the teachers, Laurie had gone with us to act as translator, and she told me that only older people use them nowadays, but the craft of making them continues. Have a look at the photo on the side!
I also stopped and talked to a woman making brooms, rakes and ladders out of bamboo.
We walked down the uneven cobbled street, the wooden houses pretty much unchanged from hundreds of years ago, and the photographer with us, Oscar, who works for Santai TV and was filming “A foreigner’s view of Xiping!!!” pointed out the eaves, built entirely out of interlocking wood pieces, and no nails. Through Laurie’s translation, he told me that such houses could withstand even earthquakes, and were much stronger than the more modern buildings of concrete.
We all went out for dinner that night, the ubiquitous hotpot of course, but this time of freshly caught and killed fish. Very fresh…there was a big tank out front, with a chef balancing precariously on a board over the water wielding a large net. I have to admit to being too squeamish to watch the catching and killing…oh the days of vegetarianism…!
There is a certain knack to eating a fish hotpot, which I have yet to master. Chunks of fish are thrown into the bubbling spices and oil, complete with bones, and the Chinese seem able to put the entire piece into their mouth, move it around a bit, and spit out a pile of bones. It took me much longer…spitting out bone by bone, and trying really hard not to swallow any. This is, as you can perhaps imagine, really difficult to do gracefully! Fortunately, the Chinese are also very good at allowing one too keep face, and carried on their conversation regardless of my facial contortions! After dinner, I was to spend the night in the teachers’ flat. The three girls had a room each, but it was not nearly as nice as my “foreigner” flat, with its tiled floor and posh furniture. They had bare cement floors, a rudimentary kitchen with water-stained walls, and it was cold!!! But they were really friendly, set up an electric blanket for me, and made me very much at home. They were up in the wee hours, getting ready for the pageant, and left for school early. I and Laurie left at the more sensible hour or 7am, and went off to the school office, she to dash about madly like the others getting everything ready, me to sit nursing my hot soy milk and watching the kids getting made up assembly-line style. Two teachers had a pile of make up on the table, and were liberally be-daubing the kids one after the other with lipstick on mouth and cheeks. A few of the girls who were dancers had their ponytails bound with red ribbons to stick out from either side of their head, Pippi Longstocking style. Looked a bit like Christmas TV antennas to me, but they seemed quite pleased with the result!
Part 2…
So once all the kids were bedecked and bejeweled to everyone’s satisfaction, they were all herded into a long procession, at the head of which was unfurled a large red banner with all kinds of Chinese writing on it, and my name emblazoned in white letters! Have absolutely no idea what it said, but assume optimistically it was something good! It would have been funny if I was marching happily off to my doom surrounded by smiling kids and a sign proclaiming my imminent demise…! At any rate, we proceeded with great aplomb down the road in the drizzle of rain which had, typically of any such event, begun the moment we set off. Crowds gathered to watch our progress, traffic was halted as we sauntered gaily across the street, to the stage set up near the market place…the aroma of singed feathers wafting over us as we passed a group of women roasting chickens in large clay ovens.
The programme started late, as all events tend to, as the sound system acted up, the large helium banner collapsed, and various child actors took some time to locate. All crises were eventually overcome, and those of us in the shivering, slightly damp audience were treated to a progamme extraordinaire of songs, dances and short drama. The kids sang “It’s a small world” with great enthusiasm to even greater applause, and performed an extremely unique rendition of Snow White, which seemed to include some elements of Goldilocks (“someone’s been sleeping in MY bed..”), and the three musketeers ( the “prince” was garbed in a flowing cape (a red curtain) and was wielding a sword which he flourished with abandon, so dramatically in fact, that it was nearly impossible to make out what he was saying!
Then I was sent up on stage, the token foreigner,( like shops in India who hire elephants or dancing bears to perform and attract custom) to sing an English song with the other English teachers. Honestly, I don’t think I have ever sung publicly so much in my life since I began teaching ESL. There is a very good reason for this, of course, as all of you who know what my voice is like are well aware! Ah well, it seemed to amuse the crowd, at any rate. Later on, I was sent up again to “teach” about 200 kids. It was more entertainment than anything else, my job was to “attract interest” so I played a rousing game of Simon says, sang “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes” at great volume and danced the Hokey Pokey. Made a complete fool of myself in general, but it seemed to do the trick.
Afterwards, I was interviewed live for Santai television…pretty much an advertisement for the schools, you know, “how do you like the students?” “What do you think of our school?” with the standard glowing responses pre-set.
Then the teachers, school leaders and I headed off for lunch, a veritable feast, with the usual assortment of odd meat bits… dogs ears, duck tongues, pickled chicken feet and turtle soup, complete with an actual broiled turtle sitting in it, shell cracked so one could dig out the meat….I have to admit, that though some was put in my dish, I did actually cover it up with bits of cabbage and not eat it…!
After lunch, it was back to Santai, another beautiful drive, which since I have already described it once, will refrain from inflicting another description on you. Back in time to meet up with one of my students, a boy who calls himself J. Really nice kid, is helping me to learn Chinese, with great enthusiasm for all my badly-pronounced responses. After two hours chatting with him in a tea-shop, returned to school for a few more hours of prepping for my Christmas-themed classes this week. Am telling the kids a bit about Christmas, complete with stories of Sinterklaas and Black Piet, mistletoe and Christmas crackers…By the end of this year, these kids will know more about the world and its customs than most other Chinese kids their age, I suspect. After that, am showing them a 10 minute video clip of Mr Bean’s Christmas…they love the humour….and then a slide show of Christmas pictures from my last Christmas home, lots of pictures of my family and Christmas decorations, also pictures from Christmas round the world, St Lucia in Sweden, The Sphinx wearing a Santa hat, that sort of thing. They really love the pictures, especially of family and our house in Canada. Lots of work to prepare all that, but it has
been a resounding success. Several of the kids have told me they have laughed more since I arrived than in all their previous school years. Don’t know if that’s a good thing?!!!
A few more bits and pieces of note…went with a friend of mine, Jing Rong, for a wander
round town, and visited a school for deaf kids. They were really cute, and it was great to communicate with them through chalk drawings on the pavement! Lots of smiles all round! Am planning to go back again, once the teacher’s conference is over, and I have free time to call my own once more…
Monday, December 3, 2007
Late November to Dec 3rd 2007....
Yet another couple weeks have flown by, and I’ve been getting complaints as to the lack of news, so here it be!
Classes continue to go well, individual students are beginning to stand out from the throng, and I even have quite a few names down. Most Sunday afternoons I spend with one group of students or another, and last Sunday I went off with a group of girls to paly badminton and volleyball at a sports ground on the outskirts of town. Well, theoretically we went to play, in reality we played for about an hour, and sat chatting for two! I think having a female foreigner in the school has been particularly good for the girl students,
As they are really shy in class, but off by ourselves, they chat up a storm, something that they were less able to do with the previous male teachers. Makes a change for me too from teaching in the monastery where my whole world was male.
This past weekend though, I took off and went to Chengdu to meet up with an old student and friend who came down from Xining to visit me en route to Beijing. Lhungrik was probably my best student in Dharamsala, and it’d been about 10 years since we’d met, so
it was lovely to catch up on all the latest gossip in each other’s lives, and to hear about mutual friends. Who’s doing what, with whom, and where! I left Santai after classes on Friday morning, and stayed in Chengdu til Sunday afternoon. It was a weekend full of coincidences as well, met a guy called Jamyang, a friend of Lhungrik’s, who, after chatting for a while, turned out to have met me in India, and had been a roommate of one of my best friends in the school.
The small world phenomenon continued as I met an American girl called Yeshi Dolma, whom I’d met in ’99 in Majnu ka Tilla (Delhi) when I’d been there making masks for the monastery, and ran into her on the street, newly arrived and lost as to where to go or stay. Helped her out, we had breakfast together, saw her off onto the bus to D’sala, and never heard from her again til this weekend. Met some other friends as well, Nyima, who’d been in Loseling years ago, and who knew several of my friends, and a few foreigners, Lisa and Fiona.
Wandered around Chengdu with Lhungrik and Jamyang, amusing ourselves with some lifelike statues of tourists, and chatting endlessly the entire way, until it was time to go back Sunday afternoon. Still enjoy the bus ride to and from Santai to Chengdu. As Sunday was relatively clear, and the sun was actually visible for a change, several shops had tall racks of noodles hanging to dry in the sun, and outside every teashop were groups of people soaking up the sun’s feeble rays and playing cards or mah jong.
As I’ve had more comments on the culinary delights I’ve mentioned in my blog than anything else, I figure I’d better keep them up to date. One of my latest ventures was deep fried chicken feet soaked in chilli sauce. During the course of wandering with some students, this was their idea of a snack, and I couldn’t refuse, bless them. Not one of my favourite dishes though, I have to admit. A bit like eating sticks covered in hot sauce.
Have been out for several more hotpot dinners, (huoguo) and though I have stopped asking what kind of meat I’m eating, there were several suspiciously tentacle-ish looking bits at the last one, and I was told that another bit, with a rubbery texture and lots of short spikes on it was the stomach lining of a cow. Ah well. At least I never get sick from anything I eat and most of it is pretty tasty! The pictures alongside of the hotpot dinner are from a party for the teachers of the school where I teach on Saturdays. The girl sitting on my right I’ve given the English name Kerry, as she calls herself my little sister!
The Saturday classes are still pretty chaotic, as I’m not at all experienced teaching little kids. My strategy now is to run them ragged until they have to sit still! Problem is, that I’m absolutely knackered by the end of the class as well…
And on that note, I’ve ended up getting myself into yet another event that I know I’m going to regret. Not only am I still preparing frantically to be the guest speaker leading a teacher’s conference on December 22, but I also agreed for some unfathomable reason to do a class demonstration for a junior school in Xiping, a town some distance from Santai. It was only after agreeing that I found out it was to be an exhibition class for the parents and other teachers to attend, and is to be a class of 100 primary students. Madness.
100 highschool or adult students, no worries, but primary kids!
And it’s December already. Hard to believe that all of you out there are preparing for Christmas, when it couldn’t feel less like it here. Having said that, there are the occasional signs of it around, more in Chengdu than here in Santai of course. In Chengdu, many of the bigger shops were decorated with Christmas trees and wreaths. I don’t think we even have a day off for it here, though I might go to Mianyang for Christmas with some of the foreigners there. See how things evolve. I am looking forward to travelling north to Xining for the New Year in mid January/February.
Classes continue to go well, individual students are beginning to stand out from the throng, and I even have quite a few names down. Most Sunday afternoons I spend with one group of students or another, and last Sunday I went off with a group of girls to paly badminton and volleyball at a sports ground on the outskirts of town. Well, theoretically we went to play, in reality we played for about an hour, and sat chatting for two! I think having a female foreigner in the school has been particularly good for the girl students,
As they are really shy in class, but off by ourselves, they chat up a storm, something that they were less able to do with the previous male teachers. Makes a change for me too from teaching in the monastery where my whole world was male.
This past weekend though, I took off and went to Chengdu to meet up with an old student and friend who came down from Xining to visit me en route to Beijing. Lhungrik was probably my best student in Dharamsala, and it’d been about 10 years since we’d met, so
it was lovely to catch up on all the latest gossip in each other’s lives, and to hear about mutual friends. Who’s doing what, with whom, and where! I left Santai after classes on Friday morning, and stayed in Chengdu til Sunday afternoon. It was a weekend full of coincidences as well, met a guy called Jamyang, a friend of Lhungrik’s, who, after chatting for a while, turned out to have met me in India, and had been a roommate of one of my best friends in the school.
The small world phenomenon continued as I met an American girl called Yeshi Dolma, whom I’d met in ’99 in Majnu ka Tilla (Delhi) when I’d been there making masks for the monastery, and ran into her on the street, newly arrived and lost as to where to go or stay. Helped her out, we had breakfast together, saw her off onto the bus to D’sala, and never heard from her again til this weekend. Met some other friends as well, Nyima, who’d been in Loseling years ago, and who knew several of my friends, and a few foreigners, Lisa and Fiona.
Wandered around Chengdu with Lhungrik and Jamyang, amusing ourselves with some lifelike statues of tourists, and chatting endlessly the entire way, until it was time to go back Sunday afternoon. Still enjoy the bus ride to and from Santai to Chengdu. As Sunday was relatively clear, and the sun was actually visible for a change, several shops had tall racks of noodles hanging to dry in the sun, and outside every teashop were groups of people soaking up the sun’s feeble rays and playing cards or mah jong.
As I’ve had more comments on the culinary delights I’ve mentioned in my blog than anything else, I figure I’d better keep them up to date. One of my latest ventures was deep fried chicken feet soaked in chilli sauce. During the course of wandering with some students, this was their idea of a snack, and I couldn’t refuse, bless them. Not one of my favourite dishes though, I have to admit. A bit like eating sticks covered in hot sauce.
Have been out for several more hotpot dinners, (huoguo) and though I have stopped asking what kind of meat I’m eating, there were several suspiciously tentacle-ish looking bits at the last one, and I was told that another bit, with a rubbery texture and lots of short spikes on it was the stomach lining of a cow. Ah well. At least I never get sick from anything I eat and most of it is pretty tasty! The pictures alongside of the hotpot dinner are from a party for the teachers of the school where I teach on Saturdays. The girl sitting on my right I’ve given the English name Kerry, as she calls herself my little sister!
The Saturday classes are still pretty chaotic, as I’m not at all experienced teaching little kids. My strategy now is to run them ragged until they have to sit still! Problem is, that I’m absolutely knackered by the end of the class as well…
And on that note, I’ve ended up getting myself into yet another event that I know I’m going to regret. Not only am I still preparing frantically to be the guest speaker leading a teacher’s conference on December 22, but I also agreed for some unfathomable reason to do a class demonstration for a junior school in Xiping, a town some distance from Santai. It was only after agreeing that I found out it was to be an exhibition class for the parents and other teachers to attend, and is to be a class of 100 primary students. Madness.
100 highschool or adult students, no worries, but primary kids!
And it’s December already. Hard to believe that all of you out there are preparing for Christmas, when it couldn’t feel less like it here. Having said that, there are the occasional signs of it around, more in Chengdu than here in Santai of course. In Chengdu, many of the bigger shops were decorated with Christmas trees and wreaths. I don’t think we even have a day off for it here, though I might go to Mianyang for Christmas with some of the foreigners there. See how things evolve. I am looking forward to travelling north to Xining for the New Year in mid January/February.
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