Intermediate Thoughts

I know I have yet to send a real blog post for the last multiple weeks, but this I send with random thoughts as I’m between holidays.

Christmas was spent in sunny Sanya, the southernmost point in China, known as the “Hawaii of China”.  I reclined on the beach, drank from coconuts, and ate freshly caught fish.  It being the holiday season, I embraced the line from Eat Pray Love of “I have no interest in being obese, but I’m done with the guilt.”  The guilt of worrying about the extra 5 pounds or (thanks to my genes) the extremely pale skin.  Rock on Scandinavians and other northern Europeans! 

 

For New Year’s I’m off to Nan Jing, which means “Southern Capital.”  A Chinese friend from college is back in China and I’ll visit her to bring in the solar new year.

 

Other random thoughts—my holiday season has just been doubled in length by moving to China.  I, like many others, embrace the holiday spirit of indulging in chocolates and cakes without regret.  Now in China, as the Western season winds down, the Chinese gears up for another month preparing for the Spring Festival—the Chinese New Year—on February 2^nd.  However, it’s likely a nice break from the past 4 years of resolving in January to eat healthier and exercise more.  I’m in the 90% that don’t sustain that resolution to the end of the year.  That’s ok.  The food is delicious!

 

Also, I’ve finally found a decent way of intensely engaging my students on a regular basis.  We watch 30 minutes of a movie and the students each have to write answers to five questions about the movie.  If they achieve a set percent score, we will continue the movie on the following day.  They are genuinely concerned about continuing the movie and, as a result, use their English, practicing subject-verb agreement, pronoun usage, and dependent clause formation.  Plus, it is a way to better teach to the middle, as I am regularly biased towards teaching the honors students. 

 

However, to make the questions for these movies means I have a lot of outside class work to do.  I have now seen these movies four times this week.  And let me tell you, Iron Man is not a great movie.

 

Below some pictures from the Christmas Concert, another long story to share:

 

Thanksgiving in China...does that happen?

This is officially the second Thanksgiving that I have spent out of the country and, as always, I'll find a substitute for the holiday.  Fortunately, China is the biggest market for KFC (Yum! Enterprises).

 

So I did just that.  On Thanksgiving day I went to KFC and ordered the largest meal I could find--the bucket of both regular and extra crispy.  It came with three pops, so I assume that meant it's supposed to feed three people?  Well, like Pizza Hut, they're terribly wrong on their estimates, because I cleaned that bucket up in true Thanksgiving tradition.

The following day, Friday, the school took all the foreign teachers and our Chinese counterparts (those who work with our program) to a collective dinner for Thanksgiving.  Granted, I'm the only American at my school, so the other teachers had to ask for some clarification, but I enjoyed it.  I think they also intended it to be a Christmas celebration too? 

Many say that schools will take their new teachers out to a fancy dinner in order to build the relationship--you do something for me, I do something for you.  If they take the first step with a fancy dinner, then they may leverage it later for extra work.  Fortunately, Sean and I already put in a month of teaching twice as many classes as we should have, so it's going to take a lot more one-night dinners before they can leverage anything against us. 

 

Thus began my holiday season.  Next was to deck my apartment out in Christmas style.

Fortunately, most Christmas decorations are made in China, so I bought them for the cost without
shipping and import tariffs built in.  

I figured, if Zhengzhou doesn't have any snow on the ground, I can still have my White Christmas.

The Chinese characters are pronounced "Sheng dan kuai le" meaning "Merry Christmas."   And, yes, that is a 3-foot silver bow behind me.  It's ridiculously huge; I love it.

With Thanksgiving past, it is clearly the beginning of the Christmas season!

Later Days,
Rick