Yesterday Zorro and I were walking by the beach, and we saw what the boardwalk area looks like in the off-season.
Do you see Mickey and Minnie on the window? It’s Yantai Disneyland!
Who needs seatbelts?
I know a deserted amusement park would be a great place for a horror movie, but not this one! See, it’s a garlic-themed amusement park, so vampires couldn’t come in. Don’t you feel safer?
Zorro expressing his opinion of this park.
A few months ago, Jay sent me a huge box of Magic cards. I had a brief dream of setting up a Yantai Magic league, but that was quickly squashed by scheduling problems. My Chinese students were already overscheduled with necessary classes and sports training, starting school at seven AM and finishing around nine PM. There simply isn’t time for a Magic tournament.
Still, I’ve given out a lot of introductory sets to my students. Bonus packs, I promised, would come to those who aced spelling tests. (This was so effective that Stephen would greet the announcement of a spelling test with a little happy shout). I gave Young a pack of Magic cards and told him to find a friend and play the intro game and report back to me.
And he didn’t do it.
Yes, the homework was to play a game and he didn’t do it.
I know that he might not have had enough time, he might not have been able to convince his mom and dad that the lao wai lao shi actually told him to play a game, etc., etc., but I’m starting to think he just wasn’t comfortable with a weird assignment. Young’s my focus right now, but my other classes often respond the same way to unusual requests. Write each word 5 times, yes, but write a story, blank stare.
What if I could actually teach creativity? I’m already in parental trouble because my students aren’t bringing home lists of vocabulary memorization, so why not? What will it take to get creative discussions instead of passive lumps?
Zorro and I go to New Hut Place pretty often, at least once a week. Their menu lists a sugar-fried banana dish that we always try to order. At least once a week, we are told that they have no bananas. China residents, insert the embarassed giggle as you see fit, and after a few weeks of this, change it from the usual I’m-sorry giggle to the one that really means we’re losing face and embarassing all concerned by continuing to order from the menu. If this sounds a bit harsh, then I’ll add that they did cook us sugar-fried potatoes to make up for the lack of bananas.
Zorro finally decided that he wanted to bananas enough to make them happen. He claims it was a result of talking with my dad (after I begged my dad to please not talk exclusively about Zorro’s hometown newspaper), but he brought his own bananas and asked the chef to please cook them for us. The staff laughed and teased us about really really wanting that dish, but they did prepare it.
BYOB — it’s not just for beer anymore.
I can’t imagine the health codes an American chef would be breaking by cooking a customer’s ingredients, but then I don’t know how long a US restaurant could stay open without having the dishes on their menu.
The bananas were totally worth it. They were delicious, but maybe it was also the sweet taste of thwarting a mei you.
I have a one-on-one student, let’s call him Young. He started with me a few weeks ago, his mom specifically requested a female teacher “to help him catch up” because he was “falling a bit behind” in Zorro’s English classes. Euphemisms, it seems, are universal, and I got him because of my success with difficult teens. His mom also gave me a thick stack of Xeroxed vocabulary words she wants her son to memorize. The problem is that the words are intangibles like culture and experience, while Young is stumped by questions like “What page is this?”
Today he received his first passing grade in my class!
This would be an exciting landmark, except that we also did a spoken activity. I asked him what he does at a school, park, shop, cafe, library, hospital, etc. and he responded each time with a violent action. I fight boys in the park. Patients die in the hospital. I kill the mean boys in school. It was really disturbing but I tried not to give a reaction in case he was just screwing around with the new teacher.
It’s a matter of time before Young acts out in some way. I don’t know if it’s going to be metal music and regrettable fashion choices, or actual violence. Young lost the friends he had in Korea when he moved in Yantai, and his homelife is not the greatest, either.
I was in high school before Columbine, so maladjusted teens were not seen as potential attackers. Or maybe that’s just my veiw as a former maladusted teen. My boyfriends all wore trenchcoats and I wrote bitter poetry when we broke up. I also spent a lot of time wearing all black and sitting on my programming teacher’s desk, complaining that no one really understands me.
I’m not sure if I’m worried that I don’t understand Young or worried that I do.
On my parents’ last night in Yantai, I took them to the New Hut Place for dinner. This is a local restaurant, famous for being exactly halfway between Zorro’s house and mine, that passes the Tupperware Rule (Tupperware Rule: If there are dirty Tupperwares full of sealife from the Protazonic Era, I’m not eating inside). You sit on bamboo benches and a screen separates each group from the other diners. I guess I’ve been here too long — I think it’s a great place but I don’t have any pictures.
There isn’t any English or pinyin or pictures on the menu, so I totally impressed my folks with my Chinese ordering skills! Little do they know that Zorro and I eat there about once a week and we always order the same thing! Haha!
This morning, we went to the Yantai Airport so they could get on a really early flight to Beijing and then home to New Jersey. I’ll see my folks again at Christmas, but I was still sad to say goodbye.
But at least now I can drink from the bottle and put it back in the fridge again.
Dear Montclair Art Museum Staff,
My mom wants you to know that she only touched this statue after my dad, Zorro and I begged her to and tried to convince her that her hands are doing way less damage than the rain and air pollution. But she hopped off a second later with a guilty look, refusing to take another one EVEN THOUGH I TOLD her that the flash made a glaring thing on the apple.
So, please, enjoy the main attractions of Yantai (apples, cherries and taking pictures of foreigners) and don’t send a conservationist hit squad after her.
Meg
The National Day holiday is a time for Chinese to rest and to visit scenic places. Although usually not both at once.
(Sorry that all my posts are backdated photos. My parents are visiting and I want to see them!)
It’s weird weird weird to have my parents in Yantai. The adult-daughter (or is it adult/daughter?) thing is still new to me, and being the navigator, planner, translater and responsible party is just so weird.
I need new vocabulary to have my parents here. I don’t know how to say “diet Coke” because I never drink it. Sure, I can get coffees, iced tea, find bathrooms, take taxis, buy tickets, and generally get myself around, but it’s weird to have my parents relying on me, and my (extremely limited) Chinese skills. It’s also weird to explain strange methods to my parents, and try to make them comfortable in China.
And I need new vocabulary to continue this post without saying “weird, weird, weird”.
