Cinderella

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Meg

Stick and I had some last minute errands to run (camera batteries, closed-toe walking shoes, snacks, etc.) before our trip to Hohhot, so we took the bus to the local shopping mall. The market was a disaster with hordes of National Day shoppers.

Actually, the whole thing reminded me of Christmas Eve in the states. There was a festive atmosphere and nice seasonal decorations, but I just wanted to get home before I was crushed by a swarm of frenzied holiday consumers.

I found the shoes I wanted, and began to dig through the pile left by the swarm of shoppers. Chinese shoe sizes are sort of a mystery to me… I pulled off the sandal I was wearing, and found that I’m a 245, but the shelf by the women’s shoes was marked with 20.3 I started to pull slippers off the rack and compare to my sandal, when Stick decided he was tired of shoe-shopping.

“This one’s your size,” Stick said, reaching into the pile and pulling out a perfect pair of black 245 slippers.

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Blogspot Unblocked?

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Meg

If you’re reading this through an RSS reader in China, check and see if Blogspot has become magically unblocked in your area, too!

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Booking A Hotel

Posted on September 30, 2007 by Meg

I understand that grammar and punctuation are optional on the internet, but isn’t forbidding the use of punctuation taking it a bit too far?

eLong.net is breaking this English teacher’s heart.
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Hohhot, here we come!

Posted on September 30, 2007 by Meg

Stick and I decided to go to Inner Mongolia for a few days for the National Day holidays. Stick, being the wonderful boyfriend that he is, responded to “Wanna visit Mongolia?” much the way he responded to “Wanna move to China?” (“Ok… Can I bring my computer?”)

Posting may be sporadic because I’m not sure how much ‘net access I’ll have and how much time we’ll want to spend uploading photos during our trip.

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Mr. and Mrs. Pancake

Posted on September 29, 2007 by Meg

This is where Stick and I go for lunch most days. All the delights of crispy egg pancakes, and one of the cleanest carts I’ve seen.
They also have an amazing, superfast pancake-making rhythm. Mrs. Pancake rolls the dough, then Mr. Pancake fries it with an egg while Mrs. Pancake takes the last fried pancake and fills it with lettuce and sauce, and Mr. Pancake takes the money.
I kind of wanted to take more pictures, but Mr. and Mrs. Pancake have been really nice about not treating us like tourists or zoo animals, so I didn’t want to act like a tourist and treat them like zoo animals.
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Non-Standard

Posted on September 29, 2007 by Meg

I asked my TA a Chinese-language question this morning, and she managed to suppress her laughter long enough to answer me. My Chinese is pretty bad, the tones trip me up, and also I learned to speak in Yantai, and Yantai-hua is annoyingly different from standard Mandarin.

Great, I know just a few words, and when I say them, I sound like a hick.

“Sometimes, in the rural areas, the Chinese is not very good,” my TA said. “It’s…” she paused to think of the word. “Substandard.”

I would have gone with “nonstandard,” but substandard works. Yes, that’s exactly how one would describe my Chinese.

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One of everything, please.

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Meg
The cocktails menu at the Beijing Outback Steakhouse and me.

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International Trade Relations

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Meg

We went out for a wonderful payday dinner of Western food, but after dinner, Christina began to feel ill, so we decided to grab an immediate cab home. Unfortunately, we came out of the Outback Steakhouse in the ritzy Sun Dong’An shopping area, and the cabbies were quoting really outrageous figures to take us back. One of them suggested 100 RMB to go home, and when I said that was too expensive, he asked me to say a price.

“60 kwai,” I said.

“10,” he responded.

“No, no, you’ve got it all wrong. You say the higher numbers, I say the lower numbers,”

I don’t think he understood my English but my confused look must have conveyed my message, because he amended his statement.

“10 Euro.”

“Honey! He thinks we’re European!” I told Stick. We’re usually mistaken for Brits* when we’re traveling… I like to think it’s the good manners, but it’s probably the bad teeth.

“If I had 10 Euro,” Stick said, “I’d buy that taxi and drive you home myself.”

We decided to take the subway back.

*Stick finds this statement misleading and so I would like to state that neither of us thinks that the UK has given up the pound and adopted the Euro.

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Meeting Of Minds

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Meg

It’s sort of an expat joke that the only information determined at a Chinese meeting is the time and place of the next meeting. I think I even saw that on of those “You know you live in China, when…” lists. I was just in an hour-long meeting at which the only thing determined was that we are meeting again at the same time and same place next week to discuss… something.

It was actually a charicature of a Chinese meeting. I got to school at 9:38 for a 9:40 meeting, and I was the only person in the assigned room. My mindset was more Hurray! I can drink cold water without being reminded that it’s bad for my health! than Where is everybody? Then the level 1 TAs and Christina, the other American teacher, showed up, and then surprise! so did the director of the English department, and then the foreign-teacher liason.

Our first order of business was making sure everyone knew that we were meeting today. Yes, really. We were all intensely questioned on when and where and from who we found out about the top secret resistance organization first grade teachers’ planning meeting.

Christina’s TA doesn’t quite speak English, which put poor Christina in a weird position when the TA insisted that she’d told Christina about the meeting far in advance and Christina, shocked and unprepared, tried to explain that this was dropped on her at 9:39 this morning.

Our second order of business was making sure that everyone had their lesson plans to discuss. Another drastic failure, because Christina hadn’t written a week’s worth of lessons in 60 seconds, and the Chinese teachers weren’t told they were meant to bring suggested lesson plans for our classes. (My TAs and I all thought that we’d be chatting about the keeping all the first grade classes on the same level)

Fortunately, the detailed questioning took so long that we ran out of time before anyone could see that my lesson plans were sort of in draft form.

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Further Progress of the Tienanmen Flowers

Posted on September 27, 2007 by Meg

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