My co-worker Debra picked up some fliers about the One-Way Ticket bar and brought them to school. I’m not sure why the One-Way is having a grand opening party, since we’ve been there before, but we’re not exactly a crowd to argue with free drinks.
I’m a bit annoyed that men get free Yantai beer while women get free soda… but apparently transgenders get a 15% discount on everything.
Of course, we’re still going! It’s the One-Way Ticket!
Just letting you know that my article on MMORPGs and relationships is now on WomenGamers.com
Just this morning I was saying to my mom that my blog is less about my struggles in China and more about my student adventures. But don’t worry! China doesn’t want me to have writers’ block!
The secretaries at my school are really not so bad. Sure, they practice a little creative recycling, and they’re a bit inclined to nod until I stop talking and they can go back to their QQ. But they’re not alone. All office employees in China make sure they never tell you anything in case it comes back to haunt them.
One of the secretaries stopped me when I was coming to into school and told me that maybe I should pay my electric bill today.
“Ok, how much is it?” I asked.
“Maybe I don’t know.”
“Where do I pay it?” In China, you take your bills and your cash to a local payment office, where they tell you the person you need to stamp your reciept isn’t here and maybe you should come back another day.
“Maybe I don’t know.”
“Then what should I do?”
“Maybe I don’t know.”
“I guess I’ll ask < office manager > when she comes back.”
“If you do not pay soon, your electricity will be shut off.”
“When will that happen?”
“Maybe I don’t know.”
Welcome to China, where an average day can quickly become my own personal text-based-adventure-game hell.
In China, you really can’t get away from the Friendlies. They’re on t-shirts, hats, sneakers, pins, backpacks, keychains, earrings and necklaces. They’ve been made into charms, toys and giant paper-mache effigies at the airport. Back when we had CCTV9 in Kaifaqu, I couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing the Friendlies skipping though the air on the CCTV Olympic countdown.
Their names are Bei-bei (the blue one), Jing-jing (the panda), Huan-huan (red), Ying-ying(yellow) and Nini (green), which spells out Bei jing huan ying ni, Beijing welcomes you. For months I thought Huan-huan was actually ??, Fire Fire, because he’s red and my Chinese needs a little work. He’s supposed to represent the Olympic torch, so besides thinking huan and huo are the same word, it’s a pretty reasonable mistake.
The yellow one is supposed to be this Tibetan antelope thingy.
But as China Rises says, the Friendlies are no more, it’s been changed to Fuwa. China Daily tells us why:
“Firstly, Friendly is somewhat an ambiguous name, which could refer both to friendly people and friendly matches,” a Dr. Li from Lanzhou University was quoted as saying on the site. “Secondly, the term Friendlies has a similar pronunciation to ‘friendless’ and thirdly, the spelling of Friendlies could be split as ‘friend lies’.” (Do they mean on knockoff products?)
Laura Fitch, a Canadian who works in China as news editor, welcomed the change, saying the name Friendlies sounds a “a little bit childish” and “doesn’t really have a meaning.”
Right. One Man Bandwidth has already pointed out that the Olympics are supposed to be about friendly people AND friendly matches. He also mentions that Fuwa sounds a little childish and doesn’t have an English meaning.
I hope this means that my Friendlies keychains are now collectors’ items!
If the Beijing Olympics committee members are bored (and with everything on or ahead of schedule, why wouldn’t they be?) and looking to make changes, might I suggest a new Paraolympics mascot? Perhaps one that doesn’t look like a psychedelic cow?
I played a cool game with my preteen kids yesterday. I don’t know if I’ve written about them before. Their office nickname is The Drips, and their hobbies are plagiarism, monosyllabic answers and blank stares. Last week, 7 out of 8 kids insisted I’d never assigned any homework, but the eighth student had done the assignment and blew their whole story. And, Zorro was watching my class that day to learn about teaching teens, so he got to see my student sell out his friends for a watermelon Jolly Rancher. Yeah.
Anyway, I played a cool game with The Drips. The object of No Yes No is to make other people say Yes or No without saying it yourself. Each student asks the other students questions, and if the answer is Yes or No, the asker gets one point and then answerer (askee?) loses one. I did it by writing points on the whiteboard but if I did it again, I’d give the kids pennies or candies as tokens. We started asking in a circle until the kids got the hang of it, and then it was more freeform.
It was great to see my kids struggling to think of other responses, and even better when they started to trap each other, first with knee-jerk questions like “Are you ugly?” and “Do you like Jimmy?” but then with “Really?” and “Is that true?” For some of them, it was more talking than I’d seen all semester.
It’s always hard to explain living in China. The guys at Talk Talk China have started a quest for a perfect metaphor to describe ex-pat life.
Last night, Zorro and I set out separately, cellphones in hand, on a scavenger hunt through Kaifaqu, looking for a street vendor selling bananas. Once we found them, we met up at the New Hut restaurant, because we know that to get the dishes we see on the menu, we need to bring the ingredients ourselves.
That’s life in Yantai.
If you haven’t already seen it, go watch the World Of WarCraft South Park episode. South Park usually walks the fine line between hilarious and mind-blowingly stupid, and this one is definitely on the right side.
Grocery shopping in February: AM I REALLY SUPPOSED TO EAT THIS?
Grocery shopping in May: Niu nai ma? Milk, yeah?
Grocery shopping in August: Cao mei suan nai zai nali? Where’s the strawberry yogurt?
Grocery shopping in October: Wo kan bu dong, qing wen, bo lou pian you mei you bai tang? I’m illiterate, could you tell me if this is dried pineapple or candied?
As part of my quest to make my students more creative, my elementary-age kids played a little boardgame in class today. Basically, you race through the board, landing on squares and saying what time you do various activities, like going to school, going to sleep, eating breakfast, etc. I explained the rules, split the kids into trios to play, and handed out dice and counters.
Most groups got regular six-sided dice, but I gave my slower kids a D10, and my fast workers a D4 so they’d all finish around the same time.
When I took this photo, I was mentally composing a moving post about watching the change of seasons on the Yantai beach, and the weather returning to the winter weather that I saw when I arrived, and how I’ve had almost a year in China. I was going to tie it into the weird dual homesickness I’ve feeling as my time here draws to a close.
But Zorro saw what I was photographing and he called it:
