I saw a baby poop on the floor of the hospital....

It's another Monday after another long work weekend, and we're all
relieved because open classes are over. This is when the parents can
come and watch the classes.

It's stressful and nerve -wracking, and sort of weird because the kids
are definitely different with parents sitting in on the class. This is
the 3rd weekend of open classes I've done since I've worked here.
Sometimes the parents who speak English try to make comments about
your class, or ask the Chinese staff to relay a suggestion. Some of my
parents are English teachers or very good English speakers so that
makes it even more intense.

I was also recovering from a sinus infection last week, so I've spent
lots of time resting and lesson planning and drinking Chinese herbal
medicine I got from the hospital. The Chinese hospital is not
someplace I'd suggest going. Not that anyone would want to, I'm sure.
It wasn't so bad this time- I got seen quickly and got effective meds,
so I guess I can't complain. The Chinese hospital is just insane by
Western (or even Hong Kong) standards. Incredibly crowded, dirty, and
little to no privacy. And then , when I'm feeling my worst, everyone
is staring and pointing at the "laowai" (foreigner).

One strange thing to the foreigner is that babies here in GY wear
pants with a hole in the back and just pee/poop in the street. Or in
the hospital, which is where my title comes from.

Now I'm really restless after staying in my sick room, so hopefully
I'll be doing something exciting soon.

I can't believe it's almost May. Happy May Day to everyone from Bryn Mawr!

ESL Teaching Resources

Here are a few of the resources I've collected. Partly for myself, but
who knows? Maybe they'll help someone!

1. Make your own traceable worksheet (great for the younger age
groups): http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/manuscript/javascripts/_my8linestext.htm

2. Worksheets and Flashcards (for younger ages, especially good for
seasonal): http://bogglesworldesl.com/

3. Flashcard games. I know Garry would sometimes write down a list of
games on a card to carry around for every class:
http://www.eslkidstuff.com/flashcardgamesframe.htm

4. For my reading and writing class, there is no book (nothing at
all). I have to make my own lessons. Especially since my class has
students who take classes with other teachers, I don't want to repeat
lessons from the ESL websites they use. I've found the NY Times Lesson
Plans very helpful: learning.blogs.nytimes.com

5. Scholastic had some good things for my RW class. I used their
worksheets with my mystery lessons:
http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/lessonplans.jsp

Qingyan II and Lots of Dumplings

A couple of weeks ago, Matt and I got bored of Guiyang and decided to
go to Qingyan ancient town, which I went to with my Chinese teachers a
few months ago. We managed to find the right buses on our own,
somehow, and got there within the hour. It wasn't as crowded as last
time I went, although there was a group of foreign tourists there-
some old French people, which was the most foreigners I'd seen since
vacation.

We skipped on the famous pig's feet of Qingyan, which are everywhere
there, but I did get the strangely delicious rose flavored pudding
that I had last time. We did some shopping (okay, Matt watched me do
some shopping), and I showed off my archery skills. Qingyan has a nice
change of scenery from the city- it's more country fields and karst
mountains.

Last Tuesday, Huang Min and Maosi, our bosses, decided to have all the
Chinese and foreign staff over to their apartment for dinner. Huang
Min was making dumplings. Their house is outside of the city in a more
suburban area I haven't been to before. Anyways, it was pretty fun to
hang out with everyone from school. and then more dumplings...

For our Chinese lesson last Thursday Yang Haiying taught Maja and I
how to cook dumplings. First we went shopping for the ingredients.
This is one of the those things where shopping is incredibly different
than America. We bought the vegetables down a little alleyway, which
led us to a huge underground building full of fresh meat, which is
where we bought the pork. We bought the dough pre-made so if I try to
recreate this at home I'm going to have to figure out how to make the
dough.

Then we cooked at the cafe area in the school. We made pork and spring
onion and pork and cabbage dumplings. They turned out pretty well, I
think. Hopefully I can bring a bit of Chinese cooking skills home with
me.

This week is open classes, which means parents can come and watch. So
all we have to do is survive this week

Restless

I have been getting restless. We tried to plan some kind of weekend
getaway but it fell through. I am planning on some kind of trip soon
though. Things are getting too routine around here, which I never
like. My schedule makes it a bit more difficult to travel then the
others, since I have class on Wednesday. Still, I could go away late
Sunday night or early Monday and return by Wednesday afternoon in time
to teach. There are a few places close by- Anshun and Zunyi are a
couple of hours away by bus. Chongqing is a city that's about 6 hours
by bus. I'm also looking into flying, especially if no one else can
get it together, I might just go myself. Kunming, the capital of
Yunnan, is about a two hour flight away, and Chengdu is about one hour
away by plane.

Otherwise, things will be a bit stressful: we have to write mid-term
progress reports already for our students, then we have open classes
where the parents come to watch. This weekend, a few of my classes
were filmed. I guess they are going to put some videos on the school
website.

I will leave you with the music of Akbar Abliz:
http://www.myspace.com/akbarabliz. He is from Xinjiang and does a lot
of fusion with traditional Xinjiang music/rock/flamenco which I think
is pretty cool. I really like folk music fusion with rock, or with
other types of folk music. At one of our Xinjiang restaurants here,
they like to watch music videos on their computer which sound much
more Middle Eastern than Chinese to my ears. Xinjiang culture is
pretty inresting and the food, at least from my sampling here, is
fantastic.

Megan's Guiyang Tips

Not very many people have Guiyang as a travel destination, but who
knows? Maybe someone is coming here and they'll stumble across this.
At any rate, I've been collecting the weird Guiyang tidbits to share.

1. If you don't like spicy food the first thing you should learn to
say in Chinese is "bu la jiao" (which sounds more like "boo la jow (as
in ow!)"). These chilies are a different kind of spicy, and they tend
to use lots here.
2. The buses here are 1 kuai, so get your single bills ready. And be
prepared to stand on a jerky, crowded, squeaky bus.
3. When you ask a local when rush hour is, they say something like
"between 7 am and 10 am, and between 4 pm and 11 pm." Which seems
insane right? My experience is getting a taxi between 5-6 pm never
seems to work out. The taxi drivers won't pick you up if they're
changing shifts either.
4. Be careful what meats you eat- you might accidentally eat dog one day.
5. Locals here drink beer out of shot glasses. Another important
Chinese word- "gambei" (or gawm bay) means "Bottoms up!" or "down it."
If people seem to be shouting angrily at each other they're probably
playing a drinking game. They love drinking games here- especially
number/dice games.
6. In the city it's incredibly noisy with nonstop horn honking, metal
clanking, music, fireworks...you name it. And yes this often includes
late into the night and/or early morning hours.
7. That grey gooey substance in those "special Guiyang noodles" your
Chinese friends are always buying you is coagulated blood.
8. If you get on a mini bus and you are standing, you will probably
have to duck whenever you pass an intersection with police.
9. Those glass pyramids aren't the Louvre but the underground
Wal-mart. Sidenote: Strangely enough I'm now used to Wal-Mart with
piles of frozen chicken feet on sale (or were those duck feet?) and
samples of tea on the way in.
10. Baijiu, the local specialty liquor (famous brand: Maotai, from
Guizhou province), tastes about as close to rubbing alcohol as you can
get. According to Wikipedia, during Nixon's state visit Henry
Kissinger said "if we drink enough Maotai we can solve anything." That
explains a lot actually....
11. Hang around Guiyang long enough and you might say something like
my friend Chris said, "I now not only eat brain but I know how I like
my brain cooked."
12. Look for Xinjiang restaurants and you must try handmade noodles,
and some "naan" bread. Don't forget that Xingjiang people are Muslim
and so you can't buy alcoholic beverages at their restaurants, and no
pork.
13. Try one of the bean hot pots. It's almost like Mexican food in
some weird way,
mixing your beans and rice and soup.

That's all for now. Someday maybe I'll put together more of a travel
guide. It's sadly lacking. After about a week in Guiyang I felt I
could write a better guide than the Lonely Planet one.