The End

I’m stressed out about potentially getting kicked out of China. No job yet and my visa is up on January 20th. Ugh ugh ugh ugh. Ok moving on.

I have three days of classes this week, then a couple of days off for New Years (which I will be celebrating in Shanghai), then its exam week and my time in Zhangjiagang is over. As my time is winding down, I’m getting a little nostalgic. One big change that I will have to adjust to in Shanghai is the commute. To work, to bars, to anywhere. That city is ginormous. The problem with finding a job is that I want to live in a specific, central part of town, and I don’t want to spend three hours of my day commuting to and from work. I want to have a centrally located apartment that Steph and I can entertain (throw borrels) in. Here in ZJG nothing is further than a 25 minute bike ride away. And my classes are a five minute walk through campus. I’m also going to miss the EF teachers, but they say they’ll come visit.

I’ll also miss my kids. Even though there are 600 of them, I still can recognize all of them and know the names of a bunch. My favorite student is Angela. She is my fangirl and she is hilarious. When she sees me on campus she screams “RACHEL! Look at me! Look at me!!!!!” And when I do, she just waves and smiles a huge smile. I want to show you a picture of how adorable she is, but my camera broke and I have no idea how to get it fixed.

Last week was the last real class I’ll have with some of my students because of the New Year’s holiday and at the end of class they all rushed me with paper and pen in hand for my contact info like I was famous. I really hope that I get some adolescent Chinese pen pals out of this experience but I sort of doubt it.

The day before Christmas the school put on a big production and I had to sing a Christmas song with the other English teachers. I found out what the song was a few hours before the performance and I totally didn’t know the words so I just smiled and moved my mouth a little while staring into the crowd of maybe a thousand Chinese students all looking up at me. They had all dragged their chairs-with-attached-desks out onto the big plaza in front of the school. That’s pretty impressive considering some of their classrooms are 6 floors up.

The best part of the show was this one dance that all of the biggest troublemaker boys (read: favorites) that I teach performed. It was like the dance in Napoleon Dynamite only a million times better. There are a limited amount of silly dance moves that we Americans are familiar with: the robot, the vogue, the worm, etc. This dance introduced me to an entirely different set of hilarious dance moves. I talked to my students afterwards because I really wanted to learn the dance. Lucky for me, there is a video online. Sadly, these kids didn’t come up with the routine themselves. A group of postal workers in some random city did! Here is a link so you can all learn the dance at home and we can break out into a spontaneous choreographed dance at the next wedding/Bar Mitzvah/street fight we go to like I’ve always wanted (I secretly wish real life was a musical).

After the show, the kids all had “Christmas parties” in each of their classrooms. They performed plays, watched movies, sang karaoke, and got hopped up on sugar. The other teachers and I all went around to our classrooms to wish them Merry Christmas and say hello. The kids were so sweet when I came in and so happy to see me. They gave me little presents like stuffed animals and a ton of candy--most of which I gave back to them the next couple of days as prizes for the games we played.

The backup plan if I don't find a job that will get me a work visa is to fly to Hong Kong and purchase a tourist visa. That will buy some more time for me to get a work visa which I'll need if I want to go to Tibet which I really want to be able to do.

Happy New Years everyone! I'm looking forward to 2009.

Rachel

Christmas in China

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas here in Zhangjiagang. That may come as a surprise to some--that China does Christmas--but in fact, it does. A Christmas with no relation to Christ. Just Santa Claus, lights, and trees. And, for a few Western-wannabe-families, gifts. All of the department stores are decorated. It’s kind of like Cinco de Mayo for college students. It’s an excuse for us (or rather, them….ahhh that’s still weird) to drink tequila and eat queso dip. Except in China’s case its decorate fake plastic trees and put strangely ubiquitous and thin Santas-playing-saxophones out front.


Last week I was making myself some dinner before I biked to my tutee’s house and my coworker, Candice, walks into the kitchen and tells me to cancel my tutoring because of a mandatory Christmas banquet with the mayor of Zhangjiagang that all three of us teachers had to go to in twenty minutes. Oh and there was a crate of apples for me in the front office. So I canceled, lugged my crate back to my apartment, and hopped in a teacher’s car with Candice and Mary Beth to head to the Guo Mao hotel, the same hotel where the Korean service is held, for the banquet. The teacher drops us off and heads home and the three of us sit alone at a big table in a room full of big tables. All of the most prominent businessmen in town were there. After every fifteen-person table in the room was occupied, the organizers of the event finally came and sat down with us. There was lobster! And performers. Jugglers, singers, dancers, Chinese opera--this man danced and somehow changed his mask over and over without actually holding any masks. His hand would slide over his face and there would be a new one. And a Chinese man in sunglasses came out and played “Careless Whisper” on sax. It was so awesome I had to text myself a reminder so I could laugh about it again in the morning. (create message. send to: me. careless whisper.) It would have been better if he’d been in a santa suit.

There was also a raffle and when they asked for volunteers to read off the numbers, of course I volunteered. I didn’t win anything though, but the prize at the door was an electric ceramic teapot. And a little stuffed cow. I gave my cow away though. So crate of apples+teapot=successful day of freebies! And I found a 100 quai bill in my camera case while photographing the events at the banquet! Still not really sure why it was mandatory that we went. I guess they wanted some white faces there.

Look at the ridiculous lobster display. One on every table and there were probably 40 tables.

Then this weekend I got really horrible food poisoning and didn’t leave my room for 48 hours. On Monday I did nothing, Tuesday I went to the bar, last night I went to an EF house party. Not much else to report. It’s still cold. They leave all of the windows open in the classrooms and there is no heat so that’s getting kind of old. Also, now when I bike I have to wear gloves so when a good song comes on my ipod I have to turn up the music by rubbing my nose around the little circle. The other day I was running late for tutoring so I had to substitute some wool socks for gloves because I couldn’t find the gloves in time. So I gave something for everyone to be staring out besides the color of my skin when I was making my way down the street with my floppy sock-hands rubbing a square of shiny metal on my face with my tongue sticking out because its really hard to coordinate biking and rubbing an ipod on your face just the right way.

Rachel

What I want to be when I grow up

I got the manicure last week.  My nails are neon pink with little white flowers that have glittery silver centers.  They are so beautiful and tacky and it only cost me 4 American dollars to get a hand-painted design that took a full hour to complete.  It was a good time killer but I’m still on the lookout for any nail fungus.  When I first biked past this particular nail salon I thought it looked legit, but once I was inside I realized it truly wasn’t.  It was filthy and all of the implements were sitting naked in glass cups, not swimming in blue cleaning fluid like they are in America.  

Oh and I also realized once inside that most of the clientele were prostitutes who worked in two brothels that flanked the salon.  They were really loud and joking around, not like typical Chinese women, and they all were done up to the nines, many of them with white faces—not geisha style but just foundation that was a couple of shades off.  I don’t get the appeal.  Whitening creams are everywhere for women trying to bleach their faces.  When I was in the convenience store I somehow managed to communicate to a saleslady that I was looking for some makeup to cover blemishes and she was trying to push this kind with face whitening on me and I was like do I LOOK like I need that?  In nighttime pictures with flash I am nose-less and glowing.

The brothels here are everywhere and somewhat inconspicuous, much different than what I experienced in Amsterdam with clearly demarcated zones and a red light just in case the half-nude woman standing in the window wasn’t a clear enough indication.  The two brothels on this road, a non-sketchy road with a big shoe store across the street and the town’s main grocery store a block away, were rooms with storefront windows and filled with couches with bored looking women sitting or standing around talking, eating sunflower seeds, or doing their nails.  In the back there is a curtained off room.  The women aren’t wearing anything out of the ordinary usually.  No fishnet tights or wacky wigs.  Just a sweater and jeans.  Sometimes a dress.

When I wanted to get a massage last week I was afraid to go into the parlors I passed because I didn’t know which ones were fronts and which ones were legitimate.  These are the trickier forms of brothels.  It was late at night after a tutoring session that ran long and I really needed to get the tension that had built up in my neck from slouching on my couch watching DVDs or typing with my computer in my lap (like I am doing now).  If I had mistakenly gone to a brothel, I still would have gotten a massage but it would have been a crappy one.  I had my eye out for the blind massage place.  Yeah, it’s kind of weird, but blind people in China often work as masseurs.  I had a massage by a blind person during orientation week at one of these places and it was a little creepy.  It was my first massage ever and I had just gotten to China so I didn’t realize what his signals (for me to turn over, to lie down, where to move my arms) meant and I would try to talk to him in English and use hand motions that he could not see and he couldn’t recognize that I was talking to him in the first place and not, you know, one of my English speaking friends, because he couldn’t understand me or see me looking and speaking at him.

The blind massage place in Zhangjiagang in called “Blindy Brothers Massage.”  I couldn’t find it last Thursday night but I must because I have got to find out what’s going on with that.  Do they have some hereditary disease?  Or was it like when Laura accidentally poked out the windows in my dollhouse when she was little and so I, in cold blood, poked out the windows in her dollhouse when she got one for Hanukah the next year? But with each other’s eyes?  I just think its kind of quirky to have a family business based on a physical handicap.

So I couldn’t find that place and I was afraid of the other massage places/brothels so I went to the one place that I knew was legit, One Tea One Foot.  Unfortunately this is a foot massage place that only includes a little neck action at the end.  I was curious to find out what a foot massage was like.  Some of the EF teachers in town love them.  The massage was for an hour and twenty minutes and after about five I realized that foot massages are not for me.  My feet are so sensitive and I kept on grimacing as he pummeled them.  Even now I am making a face and curling my toes.  Ouch.  Somehow, after thirty minutes of this torture that I paid for, I convinced the guy to give me a full body massage for the remaining 50 minutes and it was amazing.  He beat the crap out of me.  When I left the tension was gone but the skin on my neck and back was sensitive to the touch.  Cheap massages are definitely something China has going for it.  The best part about this particular place is that afterwards they let you pass out for as long as you want in your lazy boy chair.

This past weekend I got to see my cousin Billy.  It was so nice to see him!  On Saturday night I got to meet some of his friends from when he lived in Shanghai and catch of glimpse of what life is like for thirty-something expats.  I’ve mostly been hanging around the twenty-something crowd, all relatively new to Shanghai and China, but these guys have been here for years.  That won’t be me I’m pretty sure.  Moving to Shanghai is really going to shake things up, but I think I’m going to come home in the summer.  On the bus ride back to Zhangjiagang this weekend I read through a free English magazine for expats in Shanghai and I couldn’t believe all of the fun stuff that is going on and available to do there.  Everyone keeps saying that I’ll be a better person for living in this small town.  I’m not really sure how or why, but I do know that I am totally ready to leave it.  Only 4 weeks left!

By the way I think I’ve figured out what my true calling is.  I used to secretly think that is was to be a cult leader—if not the face then at least the right hand man, or woman rather.  But the success of this weeks’ lesson with my kids (where they race each other to the board and erase vocabulary words) has changed my career trajectory.  I’m pretty sure I was put on this earth to be a gameshow host.  Now listen, I love and respect the Bob Barkers and Chuck Woolerys of the world, but I’m going to declare it right here: the idea of a female president is all well and good, but true equality will be reached when there is a female gameshow host on prime time television.  Meredith Viera doesn’t count.  I want to be the sleazy kind of gameshow host that people make t-shirts for.

Next week Mary Beth and I are going to tag team and teach our classes together.  Fifty kids, 2 teachers, 225 square feet.  Should be exciting.

 

Rachel

P.S. Did the title make you think that at first I was going to say I wanted to be a prostitute and then a massage artist before I hit you with gameshow host?  No?  Ok.

Winter time

It’s been awhile. It has gotten to be winter all of a sudden and there is no heating in the classroom and my room’s heating isn’t all that good so the only thing I want to do when I’m in my room is lie on my couch under blankets and watch dvds. Ugh and the part that’s even worse than the weather and the damp cold that makes my toes freeze even though I wear really thick socks is the CHANTING. Each morning every high schooler must run a government-mandated two miles around the track. Recently, the younger kids have taken up these morning runs too. And the path they take goes right past my window at 9 am sharp. It takes a full ten minutes for the primary students to pass. I looked out the window the other day and saw the river of children with their female homeroom teachers running alongside in their high heeled boots looking miserable so I really can’t complain about my obnoxious daily wake-up chant. Even though it’s up to them to wear the proper footwear. But Chinese women love their high heels; I’ve seen women climbing mountains in stilettos.

One thing that did get me warm in the past several weeks was the heated floor pad at the apartment of a Korean kid I was tutoring. It was so nice that I forgot myself a little and sprawled out even though I was wearing a dress. It is traditional for Koreans to have heated floors that they will sit or lie on, especially in the family room. When I settle down into my own place I will definitely invest in one of those. Stephanie bought a heated blanket, but I’m a little scared of buying my own because I worry it would either result in my apartment building burning down or searing off my flesh in the middle of the night.

What is keeping me warm right now is a big grandpa wool sweater that I bought off the street in Shanghai this past weekend. Somehow in the middle of bargaining with the twenty-something boy who was selling these sweaters dumped half-hazardly on a plastic tarp a crowd of approximately 75-100 older Chinese men gathered around us. Ok, it may have been that the guy was really funny and I was being loud and joking around and I made him take off the sweater he was wearing so I could see if I wanted to buy it. And at one point he started breaking out kung fu moves. I think the crowd that I helped him gather around his little sweater kiosk allowed me to bargain him down from 70 yuan to 30. I washed my sketchy street sweater before I put it on today, and even though I used a lot of Tide detergent is still smells like pine-sol and China.

The way that people will just decide to sell things in random places is remarkable to me. For example, I had been looking for a blanket and so I bought one at the supermarket. Then, the next day as I was biking down the road, a man stopped his bicycle in a parking lot and ripped open the garbage bags stacked on a cart in the back to reveal a bunch of blankets. And people just rushed up to him and started buying blankets. I guess I am just used to needing something and then setting out to buy it instead of just waiting to stumbling onto someone selling it. Especially something practical like blankets. When I am biking home late at night there is always no one out and the city is completely quiet except once there was this random guy selling tube socks on a street corner with a couple of people in pajamas buying them up.

Oh, and before we stumbled onto this street lined with sweaters for sale, we had intended to go to the creepy cricket/animal market to show it to Stephanie’s friend from NYU that was in town but it was CLOSED. And a building that already had about a story and a half built was in its place. The way that they can build up things and tear stuff down is fascinating to me. I figure its because they don’t have to go through the whole hassle of permits and whatever we have in place in the states. Within my first month of living in Zhangjiagang, the old bus station, built of plaster and cement blocks, was closed and the new one of glass and steel took its place. They built a wall around the old one and they just hack at it and whenever I bike past, sandy bits of building fly into my eyes and mouth. I would be afraid of asbestos poisoning, but I doubt they ever try to fireproof anything here. Though they probably should with people setting off fireworks everywhere and at all hours of the day. There is this one scary construction site that hasn’t been worked on in a while. They tore down the old structure and now it is just rubble with a makeshift wall around it. Once I peeked in and there was a family just living in the wreckage. I’m still fascinated by the 1st world and 3rd world coexisting. China’s rise just seems to be happening so fast and sometimes it seems like its all just built on stilts.

Anyways, I finally found a Chinese tutor and I have had two private lessons so far. It really helps. I can already pick up on the words I learn in the conversations that I hear around me. My tutor’s name is Nancy and she used to work with English First, the other organization in town that employs English speakers, as a classroom assistant. Her English is pretty good. I still have to move my head in order to pitch the tones of words correctly. (For example, when the tone goes down and then back up for a syllable, while I say it I have to awkwardly move my chin down and then up.)

I finally got a haircut. I went into this legitimate looking place and they sat me down in the chair in front of the mirror and started spritzing at my hair while adding shampoo and lathered me up right there, nowhere near a sink. She started “massaging” my scalp--which actually meant scratching her nails up and down my head while gathering my hair into a giant rat’s nest at the top. I didn’t realize, but in addition or maybe because of my hair falling out at an alarming rate, my scalp is super sensitive. It got even worse when she rinsed out the shampoo (after sitting me down next to a sink after the “massage”) and tried to disentangle the giant rat’s nest she had just created. She had to enlist the help of another stylist. They were throwing hair to the floor by the fistful. Then after she and the other person got through all of the knots together and the second guy gave me a little trim, he started to blow dry my hair without a brush or any conditioner and gave me a knot-infested ‘fro. There was a lot of miscommunication and it was after tutoring and so I was tired but it ended up turning out fine. I have an hour and a half to kill downtown every Tuesday between when I tutor and when I meet the English First people at the ex-pat bar so that’s what I did last week and it sort of sucked but at least I don’t have split ends anymore! This week I am going to get a manicure.

Thanksgiving was last week and it was a little sad to be away from America, specifically American food. I did get a group together to go eat lunch at the fancy French restaurant in town and so we got to eat something non-Chinese and have a meal with friends. I made some classes draw turkey hands. These kids have never seen or eaten turkey, but it was the one thing that they knew about Thanksgiving until I taught them about the pilgrims etc. One class even started chanting “Turkey! Turkey! Turkey!” when I walked in. So last week was thanksgiving bingo and the week before that I made them fill out a questionnaire in groups with questions like “who in your group has the biggest feet?” and “name all of the musical instruments you can” in addition to questions for my own amusement like “name three things you think Rachel might like.” My favorite list of three was “handsome men, lovely jewelry, squirrels.” For the record, I absolutely hate squirrels and I am just now realizing I haven’t seen any in China or pigeons for that matter. I did see a kitten under a pile of bags in a garbage can and it freaked me out and I didn’t do anything about it. Am I a bad person? This week I am teaching body parts and the best thing to come out of it so far is I found out what the literal Chinese translation of thumb is…..big mother finger.

Not many pictures this week because I have been forgetting to take my camera places with me. The worst was forgetting to take it to Suzhou, this beautiful city that Zhangjiagang is technically a suburb of even though it is a two hour bus ride away. There was this area of town that was actually declared a historical district, something I’ve never seen before in China, and it was full of cute stores with traditional Chinese gifts lining canals. We stumbled onto this secondhand store full of Chinese memorabilia like stamps, postcards, old ticket stubs and magazines. It was pretty neat.

Here is a photo of the old town that I didn't take.

Oh here is one picture I took this past weekend of a crazy Chinese cat/Christmas tree that blew bubbles that I played in:

Here is a tower of books at the bookstore in town that I had to photograph to resist the extremely strong urge I had to knock them all down:



This is a night guard looking lovingly at the cricket he keeps in his pocket for luck. It was so loud we thought it was a noisemaker and then he brought this enormous jarred cricket from his pocket.

Laundry day at school.

That’s all for today. Happy Birthday Mom!

-Rachel