In your mouth!

*Re:Disclaimer... Okay, so I have been abnormally lazy about getting pictures, but I've also had some software trouble on my end which I am fixing. Middle of October at the latest and I will also send everything out in an email*

This week has passed rather quickly compared to the others but this is mostly because I have settled into the groove of teaching rather well. This week saw the first week when I actually needed to prepare warm up exercises instead of having a mostly scripted introduction act for the students because this week I only had classes which I had previously taught.

My schedule is actually two weeks of classes which then repeat, so I essentially have 2 classes Tuesday-Thursday and 4-5 classes on Sat and Sun with different classes every night for two weeks and then I repeat. More than that I have been widely accepted by the other teachers at work and so I have no awkwardness around them from what language barrier exists or from being unfamiliar with them.

I know now that Maggie, Sandy, Hebbe, and Vickey all are the trouble makers at work because they are simply more outgoing and playful than the other teachers. I also know which of them have boyfriends, husbands, or are single with the exception of Hebbe and the secretaries.

Nicco, my flatmate, is a pretty relaxed person and had definitely been a great help while I get set up. Along with introducing me to good places to eat and dishes in the area he has been sharing his personal interest in Economic theory with me. While I find myself agreeing with many of the assertions he makes, our conversations are laced with the almost legalese of our combined majors of Philosophy and Literature and so much of the conversation is either purely theoretical or in non committal. As such I am in no danger of becoming a Libertarian, in fact the suggestions he makes seems to be so completely grounded in an paradigm of market dynamics that I find the very basis for the beliefs flawed when they move beyond the narrow foci of supply and demand.


On a completely different note, I have a bike now. As investments go with my expected stay in LouYang it really won't benefit me enough to by one of the electric bikes or scooters. Buses are everywhere and if I truly want to go somewhere which is out of comfortable biking I can hope a bus for very cheap or take a Taxi without feeling the punch too much. The biggest feeling of elation from owning my transportation comes from not being restricted to Bus schedules anymore. From the bottom floor of my apartment to the curb of work by bicycle is about the same amount of time that the bus took me to get to the bus stop near work. In all I actually save an average of 5-10min using my Bicycle not to mention the fact that I am getting exercise if I ride for 30min to work and back.

I bought my bicycle on Friday for ~530 RMB (Yuan or Kuai). 7.5RMB=$1.00
RMB is the international designation for the People's Republic Money Bill.
Yuan is the normal Chinese word for 1 RMB, the equivalent of Dollar in English.
Kuai is the Chinese colloquial term for Yuan, it is more equivalent to Buck in English.


I bought the bike on Friday and it is a decently large framed normal city bike in a silvery gray tone. It came with two locks built into the bike itself, one locks the back wheel so that it can't turn and the other locks the handlebars at an angle so that they can't turn. The frame is pretty light and has a cargo area behind the main seat in case I buy milk or something else which is bulky and need to carry it home. The bike also came with a thumb bell and a basket on front because "In China real men have baskets on their bikes." Which Mike told me as he handled the speaking part of the purchase for me. He followed this up with, "You know, if we get you pink streamers from the handlebars you would officially that would officially be a pimp bike." He of course said this with a wide impish smile, an expression he practices frequently.

That night I rode home with some of the girls who had their electric bikes and raced them for a bit on the more open stretch of the path home easily keeping pace and occasionally outstretching them which impressed them a good deal since both of them had electric motors and pedals to get extra speed from. Still it felt good to be out an active, even if my legs ache a bit now. Between the biking an a gym membership which I had set up and now need to work into my schedule I should have no trouble getting in shape while here... well apart from how many tasty foods there are here.

Chinese roads are interesting places, they feel like some strange combination of college campus paths and the I-5. On the open straights everyone is weaving through everyone else and going as fast as they feel like (well for the bikes anyways, the cars keep pretty slow by our standards). Then randomly there will be five people in a row, taking up the either passage while they talk, all moving so slow that is is amazing they stay on the bikes at all. Overall I can normally make pretty good time on the straights, but traffic can add as much as 10 minutes to my trips (so far they have ranged from 25-40min by bike).


Now I appreciate that most of you don't read this page because the world of Chinese pedestrian traffic is all that interesting. It is mildly chaotic and likely a field day for a social scientist or anthropologist, but to your normal person there is nothing about Chinese roads that can compete with stories about the class room. This brings me to my Kid stories of the week.

Now my teaching doesn't involve weaving through oncoming traffic, something getting to work occasionally does involve, but I find it far more exciting. This week was more of week 1 of my schedule (week 2 of my blog) and as such my classes were more with the Y and R kids with several S classes but I didn't actually have class with my cute K kiddies this week. I had plenty of fun teasing my Y and R classes by getting them to use grammar in ways that they both understood and were amused by. Today I had the class which had one my cutest kids of the week two weeks ago with "Annie, I'm so cold," and they came in a close second.

I had decided to be one of them while remaining a teacher and I considered the end result a complete success because they demonstrated a very high level of understanding. I asked one of the students "Did you go to your boyfriends house yesterday?" Mostly because I knew that they find such questions very funny. From the other side of the class I heard one of my students yell out, "Teacher! We're just students we don't have boyfriends yet." But several of the students laughed and asked each other similar questions so I waited until the seemed like they were getting bored and asked one of the boys, "Did you kiss Annie last week?" at which point the same girl from before yelled out, "Ahh, Teacher so dirty." Despite this, she was laughing along with all the others.

In some of my others classes I had tried out funny sentence contests to see what they could think of using the grammar that they knew. For the most part the result was something like the insult contest in the movie hook with everyone trying to use disgusting things for humor. One of the students show himself very clever however and while motioning to his Chinese teacher, Maggie, he asked with the air of a salesman, "Do you want a girlfriend?" I myself found this not only funny because it was well presented, but it because it displayed an excellent command of his vocabulary and grammar.

But this week my cute kid winners were the "No Goodbye" kids again. I passed their class after one of theirs while both they and myself were on break and they ran out to hang on my arms or otherwise play with me. One of the little girls who is completely enamored with me came up and offered me a piece of pomegranates. After offering it to me she became impatient waiting for
me to eat it which I had intended to do after I got into my break room, she picked it out of my hand and put it in my mouth and then started rubbing my cheeks to tell me to chew it. When I told her thank you and told her that it tastes good, she ran back for another. From that point on every time I saw her she was putting a small piece in my hand a running back for more. One of the other girls saw this and thought it was funny so she kept taking them from my hand and putting them in my mouth.

Now the problem with Pomegranate is that the pieces are small and surround a sizable seed. So here I am with cheeks that are beginning to feel like chipmunks and unable to get rid of the seeds because I am surrounded by 4-5 year olds. Instead of letting them continue to feed me I stood up well out of reach of the little girl feeding me but still amassing a collection of Pomegranate in my hand from the smaller one. Then, realizing she couldn't reach my mouth even while holding the little piece between her fingers and stretching she pouted up at me and in a strong, authoritarian voice told me, "In your mouth!"

I have a Big Big Monkey!

*Disclaimer* I forgot to take pictures this week, so you will all have to keep waiting a little more. Sorry.


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So I am sure that all of you are more than a little curious about how the subject of big monkey's got brought up out here in China. I will be getting to that in a moment, but I will tell you that it is a work related story and that the two competing titles I had for this week were "No Goodbye, No Goodbye!" and "My name is Piggy!"

In Joy English schools we have four levels of classes. K classes are the smallest children, their ages can run from 4-7 and they all speak very little English. S classes are the next highest, they cover some more difficult English but mostly the difference between S and K is that S classes are learning to read and write. Y classes are where students begins learning more complex grammar and to spell more complex things. Spelling is a big part of Y classes. R classes are the highest levels of the Joy program and they deal in complex grammar and words (well for English as a Second Language that is).

"My Name is Piggy" comes from one of my K classes. I start the class by going around and asking everyone's name so that I can start to learn the children's names (I have 49 classes which range from 3 to 18 students each and see each class only once every two weeks, the rest of the time they have a Chinese teacher). I had gotten to the end of the class and a little girl dressed in black cloth pants and a black and white polka-dot shirt looks up at me and says "My name is piggy!" It turned out that this was a joke between her and the Chinese teacher because her English name for in class was Judy and Ju is the Chinese word for pig so her teacher calls her JuJu." Our new phrases for the week were "Shrug your shoulders", "Pull your ears", "Rub my back" and "Massage my neck."
With each of these phrases we teach a motion to the children to help reinforce it, in this we use verbal, visual (flashcards), and kinesthetic (movement) instruction styles. The motion for
Rub my back) was to turn to the person to their right (class in a big horseshoe) and rub that person's back. JuJu didn't have anyone's back to rub so half way through the lesson she started rubbing the teacher's desk and laughing the whole time. With one look I knew that she knew exactly what she was doing. She had the "I'm being cute and you can't stop me" face.

My next Kiddy story comes from the budding adolescents of one of my R classes. The grammar point were were working on was: "I have a ________, so I will _______." Alternately I would ask them the questions "What do you have?" "And what will you do with it?" These students were particularly playful on the day I was teaching the lesson so I got answers ranging from "I have a ball, so I will play ball" to "I have Billy (a girl pointing at one of the boys in class) so I will eat Billly."
As the class wore on, one of the boys chimmed in with the title of the week. "What do you have?" I asked him. "I have a big, big Monkey!" he said trying not to laugh while he used his hands to show just how big his Monkey was. "And what will you do with your big big Monkey?" I asked him allowing myself to laugh. "I will have it eat Vicky(their Chinese teacher)." At this point Vicky looks up and at the class. "Hey who said that?" She asks while I pantomime cooking and pointing at her and then feeding the cooking to the Monkey. While she tried to act upset she was also trying not to laugh even while the children rolled in their seats.

This week hasn't brought me many new shocks about China in general. One new thing I learned is about married life hear in Henan (our province which is similar to our state by American standards). I was talking to Vicky who has become my Chinese big sister since I got here since she is easy to talk to, likes to have fun, speaks English very well, and is married. The fact that she is married is actually important in establishing a free friendship because if I know she is attached I don't feel awkward around her. I don't have to worry about trying to woo a married woman.
Anyway, she and I were talking today and she told me that in China a couple's finances are managed by the woman even though people work. The custom here is that both husband and wife work and then the wife gets all the money. After planning out their spending and savings she gives her husband his allowance for the month. It struck me as interesting with how strongly male-dominated the west thinks every aspect of Chinese culture is. It is true that the society is very Patriarchal, but I am beginning to suspect even more than I did back home that women have a great deal of power in non apparent ways.

For the last two days I have been celebrating my birthday in various ways. Yesterday, on my birthday here in China, the teachers got me a cake. Cakes in china are sweet bread with very fluffy frosting and bits of fruit in between the sweet breads. Really they don't hold a candle to good old fashion cakes. Following that class I had a K class which simply adored me. After class they followed me into the hall on what was suppose to be my break and crowded around me. I played with them for a few more minutes but I had a very sore throat and wanted to get some tea to calm it. After a while I looked down at their darling faces, Millie in a white dress that could have been out of a western wedding; Shirley, in her red and white striped dress; Mark in his red shirt; Frank in his blue top and shorts; and Cissy in a yellow shirt, and none of them older than 5. I told them all goodbye and their bright faces dropped and they all shouted in unison, "No goodbye! No goodbye!" This was perhaps the best birthday present I can ever remember getting because it was genuine, it was not prompted, and no one at the school teaches them to say that phrase so it means that all of them thought it up themselves. They got me to stay another minute before I needed to go to their chorus of disappointed voices... I think I was smiling until I went to sleep.
Today I took a bunch of the teachers out for Chinese hot pot just like last time, but before that one of the teacher's who couldn't go convinced their K class to give me a group hug and sing me happy birthday. So today I got tackled by 11 small children who all wanted to play with me for their whole 10 minute break. Then later that night while I was being shown where a good place for Hot Pot was that was nicer than the last place we had went I admitted to Vicky that I thought all the girls at XiGong were pretty. The truth is that I think most of them are Pretty but I would never tell the one's who aren't that I don't find them such. "Its a shame everyone has a boyfriend." I said, a point which she only nodded at. Then at dinner she told everyone at the table that I had called all the teachers pretty in Chinese and I knew enough of the words to know exactly what was being said. After that Vicky turned to me with an imp like smile and asked, "So which teacher is the most pretty?"
Almost before the question was finished I looked at her and said, "Oh no. I'm to smart for that one, I know better."
Vicky's gleeful response was, "Ah you have an opinion, I'll get it later."
Really I have found a school full of Chinese sisters complete with the teasing.

I'm So Cold!

If there is one thing I have been discovering in my time here, it is that China is a land of contradictions and opposites far more than America is. China is Communist, yet the daily lives of people are more or less governed by the market as people work for wages, own businesses, hawk their wares, and save up to buy things. China is both rich and poor and the divide is startlingly clear in the city where there will be people diving by in brand new German cars while a gathering of old men sit on the corner and play chess wearing clothing that looks like it might be their only pair. China is different and yet the same. In America we envision exotic architecture, throngs of people, and bicycles while the truth is that most of the old styled buildings are only the front, many people have bicycles but many more drive or ride the bus, and people are just a natural by product of the area. What we never imagine is that in the supermarkets there will be small freezers with ice cream and advertisements featuring thin women wearing "Aberc Rombie and Titch" shirts. (If you haven't guessed the spelling is intentional).

I've had several interesting stories this week from getting a ride home on a motorbike Taxi to going out for dinner with the teachers from XiGong and playing chinese drinking games (over team and coke for me so far). One of the games didn't sound very chinese in truth, it was called "The Gun Shoots 007". To Play you need a big group. Then you go around and in chinese say "the" "gun" "shoot" "0" "0" "7" and the next person says "bang" and points at someone. That person says "Ahh" and the two people on either side of them hold up the hand closer to them. It doesn't sound that fun on paper but when you are sitting around a big hot pot with 12 young Chinese women it is far more enjoyable. (Even when you know that most if not all of them are attached).

Another amusing part of my week came from sharing some of my stories from back home with the girls at XiGong. I was telling one teacher whose English name is Maggie about my family and she wanted to know what Stefanie's job was. When I explained it a little, Maggie's face lit up and she looked very surprised, "Ohh, such a good job!" She said turning to the others and nodding at her own statement. "From now on my name is Stefanie because I want so good a job too." We laughed and the other girls continued to call her Maggie.

And all of this brings me to my cute kid story of the week and the title of this weeks blog. The Chinese saying for when something is uncanny, or eerily close to accurate, is "I've got goose bumps." When translated into English, the children learn it as "Oh, I'm so cold." While I was teaching class this morning I reached a point where I was going over a dialog between a boy and a girl. Because I was in a silly mood I decided to act out the dialog for them using changing voices and mannerisms for the boy and the girl. For the boy I dropped by voice to some low rumble and this kiddies all chortled for a while. For the girl I cupped my hands by my shoulder and pretended to act cute and then spoke in a high pitched voice. As I did this all the boys laughed and all the girls looked at their Chinese teacher, Annie, and said in unison, "Ahhh, Annie I'm sooo cold." Not knowing at the time what this meant I asked if the air conditioner was on, and they all laughed. So I introduced myself as the boy and the girl again and got the same reaction.

Oh My Scott!

As requested I have now set up a blog which I will try to maintain weekly about my experiences behind The Iron Fortune Cookie, as it were. To start off with I thought I would tell everyone a little bit about my work.

As you all know, I teach cute little Asian kiddies English and get paid for it. Joy English Schools began in Taiwan and as such has a good amount of funding for a company on the Mainland. The Joy curriculum is open enough to allow for the teachers to build on it and most of the kids are very bright.
A large number of the kids I teach are between 7 and 12 years old. They are at ages where they are still full of wonder and excitement while also still very much respecting adults. So far I have been mostly observing class and teaching parts of lessons as part of my training here, and as such I have had the ability to meet alot of the children without the stress of teaching them at the same time. It can be really exciting to walk into a room and have everyone look up at you with big eyes and yell "Ahhh!" in an excited manner.
LuoYang of the Henan (whu-nan) province is a city with a very small foreigner population and as such many of the children have never seen, let alone met, a foreigner. Once they get over their excitement, and occasionally shyness, they very much enjoy having us teach.
Even while I was observing classes I would still introduce myself and talk with the children for a few minutes. On my second day of training, one of the kiddies came up with a funny phrase. Now somehow all of the kids learn that "Oh my God" is a thing that people say when they are really surprised, though most teachers try to let them know that it is not appropriate. So one of the students heard the 'aw' in Scott and the 'aw' in God and so when I was telling them my name the little boy yelled out "Oh My Scott!"
Needless to say I liked that kid.

Many, many other things here are worthy of mentioning and not in the erudite prose I might use in a more formal context. The sheer reality of China almost calls for plain speech.

Back home people were very concerned about the level of personal liberty I would experience over here and if I would be able to cope with the difference. One of the first surprises that awaited me here was an overwhelming sense of lawlessness that covers every street (literally) and the people who populate them. The Police here will sometimes turn on the lights on their cars simply because they have nothing better to do, the only rule on the road is 'don't hit anything' and no one seems to care what they say or where they are.
As a foreigner here, I am very much protected by local laws. The treaties that China and the United States hold state that I cannot be held overnight for any reason without the consent of the US embassy, and more over there are huge penalties for any local person who commits a crime against me.
The Chinese food back home is nothing like the real thing, though some of the smaller restaurants on Convoy came close. All of the food here is full of flavors, a lot of it is very sweet since sugars are apart of many local dishes. Food here is also very cheap (as is everything else).

I will have more for my next post to the blog, so for now I leave you with your Iron Fortune:

Beware Chinese Women Who Gather In Groups, Mischief Is Sure To Follow.