sometimes surveys are fun

Three names you go by:

Strawberry
Strawberry
Strawberry
(As I so eloquently said to my twin when she used my REAL name on a comment on someone's blog: "it's "strawberry" you dipshit, I use an effing pen name on the internet to keep my precious identity secret. gawd.")

Three things you like about yourself:

My fabulous new Pob (that's the terminology for the Posh bob) hair cut
I'm making a conscious effort to eliminate negativity in my life
I read a lot of books

Three things you dislike/hate about yourself:

Sometimes I'm too nice to people to the point where I feel like I'm being taking advantage of
Sleep is a huge priority in my life
I interrupt people a lot if a conversation is exciting to me, and most are

Three parts of your heritage:

Italian
Irish
Korean (I WISH!)

Three things that scare you:

Indecision
Stepping in puddles
Being coughed on

Three of your everyday essentials:

Kindle
Coffee
Watch

Three things you are wearing right now:

My #1 favorite t-shirt that is nearly a decade old
Red velour zip-up hoodie
Yoga pants

Three of your favourite bands/artists (at the moment):

Dave Matthews
Jewel
Death Cab for Cutie

Three of your favourite songs at present:

Love Ridden - Fiona Apple
Crooked Teeth - Death Cab for Cutie
Who Will Save Your Soul - Jewel

Three things you want to do in the next 12 months:

See Mount Everest
Live in the Now
Complete my thesis

Three things you want in a relationship (love is a given):

Enjoys cooking
Likes to laugh
Lots of date nights

Two truths and a lie:

I am obsessed with banana chips and pretty much anything banana flavored
I think you're a cool person
I changed my major four times

Three physical things about the opposite sex that appeal to you:

Mustaches
Good teeth
Nice hair

Three things you just can't do:

Watch Saved By the Bell
Understand people who like South Park more than Family Guy
Not laugh when something is funny, trying to stifle it only makes it louder

Three of your favorite hobbies:

The three Bs:
Baking
Blogging
Being the bomb

Three things you want to do really badly right now:

Have my tailor make about a dozen new dresses
Watch Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Talk to my friggin parents

Three careers you're considering:

Housewife
Writer/glorified housewife
Stay at home mom minus the mom part

Three places you want to go on vacation:

Thailand
Guatemala
Virgin Islands

Three kids names:

Scarlett
Rhett
Leonardo DiCaprio, Jr.

Three things you want to do before you die:

Live in France again
Write a book (shocking...a blogger who wants to write a book before they die? Unheard of.)
Feel satisfied

i swear i didn't forget! it just...slipped...my mind...

I feel like such a man. I forgot my own anniversary with China! How is that even possible? I mean, I remember people's birthdays who I haven't even spoken to in five years!

Argh. I'm such a failure.

I hope I can find it in me to forgive me. Happy Three Monthiversary, baby, sorry I'm two days late. I'll make it up to me, I promise.

happy thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving was never important to me in America (blasphemy, I know), and it's definitely not important to me in China, but I do believe in the whole giving thanks thing, so I figured I would use this opportunity and mention some things I am thankful for.

- cats (specifically of the LOL variety)

- Korean boys

- the pet shop down the street

- enlightenment

- hearing "maybe" fifty times a day

- mustaches

- trail mix

- care packages from my family

- tiaras

- banana chips

- GChat

- the fabric market

- my Treo 650

- being a citizen of The World

- best friend prices

- hair cuts

What are YOU thankful for?

hey mr. postman

I thought only United States Postal Service employees got disgruntled. Not so, as I have learned now that I am so worldly and living in China. Postal employees of all nationalities, shapes, colors, and smells can indeed be disgruntled. And indeed it is over the same inane crap they get upset about in the States.

I'm the type of girl who loves stickers and glitter and pink ink pens. Who knew, right? Well, apparently there is some kind of sticker law in the world of the postal employee who was waiting on me tonight in which stickers are forbidden, and he expected me to peel off every single one of my perfectly placed postcard stickers (which had adorable commentary, I might add) just so he could scan the things through his automatic stamper and not have to give me a physical stamp.


This could not be, I thought to myself as I sadly ripped a glorious blue shimmery kitten from my Aunt Mary and Uncle Frank's postcard. There has to be another way.

Me:"Um, do you have stamps?"
Him: *blank stare through his long emo bangs that he kept sweeping to the side to show off his eyeliner*
Me: "Um, y'know, a stamp, a real stamp, to put on the post card. Like this *lllLLlllllLl pantamiming the action of licking a stamp and making the accompanying noise*"

He huffed and puffed about actually being expected to perform a job duty, but lo and behold, there was an entire treasure trove of stamps! WTF, man! Why were you holding out on me? So he gives me one for one postcard, but I have 6 postcards, so I ask for more and he shakes his head no. And I say "No I need more" then at this point I might have stomped my feet a little bit like a child and whined, but that's neither here nor there. So he gets his beloved stamp treasure chest back out and throws the stamps in my face to mock me or something, who knows.

Then, I went tit for tat with this fella and whipped out 10 MORE postcards (stickered to the max) that all needed stamps. HA! Take that Mr. Stingy Post Man! What are you gonna do NOW? He threw more stamps at me while the security guard laughed and then waved me over to another desk to lick them all so he wouldn't have to look at me any more.

some definitions, by strawberry

In light of one of my more recent posts re: loving a former Korean student, I found it necessary to define a few things for my readers. These are mostly taken from the only reliable dictionary I know of, which is urbandictionary.com. My comments are in italics.

tongue in cheek:
When someone speaks tongue-in-cheek, that means they're joking and kidding.
AKA 80% of the posts I write.

cougar:
A 40+ year old female who is on the "hunt" for a much younger, energetic, willing-to-do-anything male. The cougar can frequently be seen in a padded bra, cleavage exposed, propped up against a swanky bar in San Francisco (or other cities) waiting, watching, calculating; gearing up to sink her claws into an innocent young and strapping buck who happens to cross her path.
Gimme a few more decades, I'll get there, boys.

strawberry: Equal parts pink princess, redhead, zen master, domestic diva, bitch, sensitive young lady and straight thuggin' gangster. She'll wear a crazy hat or tiara to your party, laugh a ton, mingle, share some homemade goodies with the crowd, then hurry home to talk crap about you all on her blog.
Nuff said.

cradle robber:

A person who taps people significantly younger than he/she is. If X is the older person's age then they are a cradle robber if they date a person who is less than half of their age plus 7 years. But for this function to work, X must be greater than or equal to 18. I'm not sure I agree with that whole "must be greater than or equal to 18 part", but a decent definition nonetheless. Anyway, I hope these definitions cleared up a few things for you. If you have any more questions that need answering, holla!

ohmigawd whaaaaaat

I rarely call my family anymore. I like to think that it's because I'm soooo busy here doing fabulous things, but it's mostly because there's a 16 hour time difference. And I rarely have phone cards. But I got one today, so I figured might as well give the house a ring and see what's new in the land of red, white, and blue.

My dad was home and in the middle of making dinner for my little sister and some friends. The idea of that alone cracks me up because my dad is a crazy chef. He likes to play "survivor" whenever my mom is out of town which means he can't buy anything at the store (usually he will make an exception for milk--but only milk) and has to only eat things we have in the house. Thankfully for him my mom keeps a pretty stocked pantry and freezer section, not to mention he is the least picky eater in the world. Example: My parents went out for Chinese one scorching summer day for lunch, couldn't finish their meal so they got a doggy bag which they proceeded to forget in the back of the car for a few days. My dad notices the restaurant leftovers after a couple of days have passed, and instead of thinking "Oh, gross, this should be thrown away" he put it in the microwave and ate it for dinner! He subsequently got food poisoning, but affirms to this day that it wasn't because the food was disgustingly old and nasty from being in a hot car for half a week, but that he didn't heat it long enough.

Anyway, so my dad was making dinner and we talked a little bit about my trip to Korea and how teaching has been going and the whole living in China thing. Then my sister (hereafter known as Meimei which means little sister in Chinese) starts to make a big stink about talking to me, which is totally weird since I haven't talked to her in about 2 months out of pure disinterest on her part (Me on the phone with my mom: "Does Meimei wanna talk?" Mom: "Meimei, do you want to talk to your sister?" Meimei: "Nah, I'm watching America's Next Top Model"). I was curious what she could possibly want to talk to me about. Cute Korean boys? Something panda related? Sending her some delicious Pocky? Well, she got on the phone, and we had the following earth-shattering conversation:

Meimei: "Ohmigawd. Sister. Whaaaaaaaat? How come I'm not in your top 8? Put me in your top 8."

Strawberry: "Huh? Dude, you just friended me."

Meimei: "Yeah, but still. Put me in your top 8. Ok, here's dad."

reason enough to move to south korea

I hadn't even been in South Korea for more than 12 hours when God gave me a sign that I am meant to live here. Forget that I'm not a very religious person. This was a sign. From above.

My first full day here, November 11th, 11/11, is Pepero Day! Pepero Day is sort of the Korean version of Valentine's Day, except instead of roses and conversation hearts, people give and receive boxes of Pepero. Supposedly, the holiday originated in 1994 as a marketing scheme from the Lotte corporation which manufactures Pepero, the popular thin straw-like wafers dipped in chocolate (the exact same thing as the Japanese snack "Pocky").


Every convenience store in the city had huge Pepero Day displays with a large variety of Pepero treats to choose from. My favorite was the giant box of oversized Pepero about as thick as an adult's thumb and 12 inches tall. Total nom! They also had crazy Pepero formations you could buy, the most popular being a giant heart.

Koreans are way more into holidays than the Chinese, it's fabulous. They even have an amusement park in Seoul that is holiday-themed, and the rides/attractions change according to the season.

One of Romy's students had to leave our school and move back to Seoul with his family. The details of why are sort of shady, but he e-mailed her offering to show us around and is on his way to meet us at the hostel now, so I'm stoked. He and his BFF Shin used to play against me and Romy in doubles table tennis, though, so it will be sad next week when Shin has to find a new partner, but I'm happy to have a tour guide for the evening.

Now that he's not a student, anything goes, right? Is that how it works? I'm still new to this whole "teaching" and "being appropriate" thing.

seoul sister

I'm off to Seoul, South Korea for a week! Lots of updates (with photographs hopefully) when I return.

sort of like flag football

Whenever I'm thrown into a new social situation, I always try my best to really put myself out there and get to know as many people as I can in a truly genuine way. This isn't always possible of course, and when it's not possible, I like to come up with little games I play in my head. Not like "tic tac toe" or "hide and seek"....more like...social experiments. But even that doesn't describe it really.

Let me give an example. My sophomore year of college I was taking a general ed Western Civ course with a sorority sister and there was this dude in there that totally intrigued us. Usually he came to class clad in a full-on business suit, but other days he wore pajamas. No matter the outfit, he always skateboarded. This guy was a mystery. He was so much of a mystery that we didn't even know his name.

So we made it our little semester project to get to know him, and since I was the ballsy-er of the two of us, I made the first move by asking him if he wanted to work on a group term paper together. He did. We learned his name (Gary), found out that he was a 9th year senior or something, was married to a waitress at Applebee's, and basically was a total douche. He brought us chocolates in the shape of nipples for our first meeting on the term paper. He insisted his wife made them, which made the whole thing even more bizarre. There was a lot of laughing that evening, and not the "with you" kind, it was more the "at you" kind, but he was so clueless I'm sure he just thought we found him hilariously entertaining and fun to be around.

Flash forward four years to 2008 to Shanghai. The location and people may have changed, but the game is still the same. Red flags? Bring 'em on. I'll completely ignore them then make it my personal goal to change them. Perhaps I'll eventually learn that people don't change, but for now it's still slightly amusing to me to meet kooky people and try to figure them out. We'll see how long the amusement lasts until it becomes complete annoyance, with Gary it lasted two weeks. He was much more interesting when he was a mystery.

you win some, you lose some

Won: Obama for presidency (can I get a "hell, yes!"?).

Lost: My favorite non-student (he's in Romy's class) MOVED TO SOUTH KOREA. I'm so sad. I didn't even get to say goodbye.

But.

Silver lining.

Romy and I are going to South Korea on Monday for six days! And the student e-mailed her asking our travel details so he could meet us and show us around! Score. I'm still sad, though. Romy and I used to play doubles with him and his BFF in Romy's table tennis class, now who will we play? Le sigh, this sucks.

vote OR DIE

To date, that is my favorite voting slogan ever. It totally powns "rock the vote". Who cares about rocking the vote when there is the possibility of DEATH?

Anyway, all you American peeps that read StrawberrySays better go vote today because I'm all the way in BFChina and I voted. So you have no excuse.

VOTE OR I WILL KILL YOU.

Ok, I like that slogan the best.

at least it's imported

Can you overdose on colby jack cheese? I feel like my body is having a serious reaction to eating cheese for the first time in 10 weeks.

Also, what is the deal with this melamine thing? The news here is horrible so ya'll probably know more about it than I do. I just know that I don't drink soy milk anymore and now I hear that it's in egg and poultry products, too! Which is just perfect since the one Chinese dish I don't hate is fried eggs and tomatoes on rice. Lame.

Friday night I'm spending the night at a student's house with Romy. It's for one of our grad school assignments (an ethnographic research course, the assignment being to spend the night with a Chinese family) and it should be pretty interesting. My student e-mailed me earlier asking me if Chinese dinner and breakfast were okay because her mom wanted to know what to cook...then she told me her mom was going to make us homemade baozi balls! Total score. Too bad the student is already a straight A overachiever, or I would totally give her some extra credit for this.

I still haven't figured out how to post pictures ever since my internet started acting shady. Perhaps Big Brother has his eye on me. I need to stroll over to Coffee Bean and steal their wireless internet and check out the sitch soon.

moments in teaching

I think I'm going to have a new "segment" on StrawberrySays called Moments in Teaching where I will share funny moments from my teaching experiences, whenever something strikes me enough to remember it (the days go by so fast I have a hard time remembering much).

For my 12th grade essay writing class I have my students keep a journal which I have them write in every class period from a prompt of my choosing. Usually I try to do fun stuff like "If you could invent anything new what would it be and why?" but sometimes I aim for entries that are a little more serious and revealing like "What is the greatest lesson you have learned in life?".

I collect their journals every 10 entries or so and read them over for spelling and grammar errors, and also just to get a sense of their writing style and the things they write about.

Well, it's been super fun reading them (though time consuming) and so far my favorite spelling mistake is "relationchip". How cute is that? Relationchip. I want one of those, it sounds wonderful.

dolla dolla bills, ya'll

Man, I think I'm coming down with a case of the Shanghai Cough. Damn this air pollution and my sensitive lungs.

Today on the subway I saw a young Chinese man vomit violently into a trash can, it was pretty awesome. I almost felt sorry for the fella, but you KNOW he had a friggin' awesome night, so why feel sorry? I have yet to get that out of control here, but hey, I still have another 9 months at least. It could definitely happen.

Before coming to China I was in a very zen place in my life. Things just seemed to be working in my favor and I was very much at peace with...well, pretty much everything. I was also going through a big cleansing period, getting rid of a ton of stuff that I had been holding on to for years without really having a reason why. The blog Unclutterer played a pivotal role in this period of my life, and I felt more and more empowered with each garbage bag full of old classroom notebooks to recycle and each tub of clothing to give away. I wanted to simplify my life, get rid of all the junk, strip away the layers of uselessness and get down to the real deal.

And then I moved to arguably the most capitalist country in the world, err, excuse me, the most "socialist with Chinese characteristics" country in the world. Those characteristics of course including buying as much stuff as you can and slapping some kind of name brand logo on it.

I made a conscious effort to not bring a lot of clothes here because I wanted to minimize my wardrobe to a few essential pieces. Then, I got here and realized "Hey, this is Shanghai, the Paris of Asia, not some rural farm town". So after about one week with my minimalist wardrobe, I had my mom ship me a few things from home and went on a shopping spree at H&M. And had 3 coats and 6 dresses hand-tailored at the fabric market.

What have I learned from this? I don't know. Perhaps the Chinese proverb "Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness" explains it. The Chinese are a very materialistic people, so why fight against that and distance myself from the culture when I can keep doing what I do best, which is spending money? Ya, I couldn't think of any reasons, either.

boo!

I'm stealing this idea from Frank.

So if I were to come trick and/or treating to your house, what would you give me?

By the way, I would have looked like this, condom lollipop optional.

Sadly, the Halloween celebration in China is completely Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday...WEAK WEAK WEAK! (Ah, I love a good play on words).

there was wood everywhere, too

"We're always lucky," I said and like a fool I did not knock on wood. There was wood everywhere in that apartment to knock on too.
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

My life suddenly became a lot more hectic and crazy recently, hence the brief pause in Chinese misadventures from Miss Strawberry. Don't worry, I've been having a ton of them so I have lots to catch you up on.

Isn't it annoying when life gets in the way of blogging? I hate that.

18 million people? really?

Shanghai's population would be impossible to ever really pin point to an exact number because of the quality of the government census bureau (very low) and the constantly shifting rural population moving here from small towns and villages. In any event, there's a crap load of people here, on the low end I've heard 16 million, on the high end I've heard 20 million...I think 18 million sounds about right.

So, you'd think it would be impossible to ever just happen upon a person you know, wouldn't you? A couple of weeks ago I was on the other side of town and ran into a classmate in the subway. Not that weird I guess, but what are the odds of that? Then yesterday I was getting into a cab coming back from a trip to Ikea and Fox was on his way to the subway and I saw him, too!

THEN, and this is the part that is weird to me, I was walking to meet up with Romy at Starbucks (she had made a fabulous Chinese friend and wanted to share him with me) and I see a guy wearing a college sweatshirt from MY alma mater!!! I was so excited! He was going to an ATM to take out some money, but I ran up to him anyway (he probably thought he was being mugged) and tapped him on the shoulder and pretty much made a fool of myself blabbing on and on about our university. I think in the end he thought it was pretty cool to run into a fellow Tiger, but not nearly as cool as I did.

time flies when you're having fun

Happy Two Monthiversary to me!

Oh, p.s., I'm not dead. In case any of you thought that was a possibility.

computer issues

Blogger has been hating on StrawberrySays.com recently and hasn't been letting me upload any of my photos which is totally lame since I've been taking some super sweet Shanghai pictures as of late. I'm not sure if this is a Chinese government thing (likely) or an issue with my Gateway (equally as likely), but hopefully I can get it figured out tomorrow while I'm supposed to be lesson planning during my free time.

In less boring news, I've been having a great time introducing myself as "Meow Meow" to people. Euro/American ex pats are usually totally dumb about it and try to get into some argument with me about how that's not my real name, but Chinese people are all so sweet and even make their best effort to not laugh for fear of offending me. I was talking to a vendor today and told her my Chinese name was "Lin Meow Meow" and she stifled a giggle fit and told me "Oh, such a pretty name!"

Damn right it's pretty. Pretty friggin' awesome.

working on my fitness

I've been wanting to join a gym in Shanghai since I got here, but dragged my feet on following through with it because...well, I don't really have a reason. I guess my reason is I'm lazy. Which is why I wanted to join the gym, to y'know, not be lazy.

I knew that the foreign teachers last year all joined a gym that was "close by" but no one ever told me exactly WHERE it was, so I kept using that as my excuse to not workout. Oh, I don't know where the gym is, guess I can't run 3 miles today. I'll just eat this entire package of oreos instead.

Well, two of my co-workers joined a gym last week and told me where it was, so I really had no excuse to not check it out. I was still feeling a little hazy from last night, but I thought I should start off the day with some productivity so I went by the gym at about 9 to check it out.

When I got there a guy told me to come back at "shi dian" (10 o'clock), putting his index fingers together in the shape of an X which is how they hand signal the number. This put a damper on my whole productivity thing, but I went back to my room, made a few phone calls, bought some stuff from Carrefour, then went back to the gym to talk to whoever I was supposed to be waiting for.

I didn't really need to be sold on the gym. It's the only gym close by, I need to work out, convincing me wasn't necessary. But, the guy gave me an awkward tour of the gym anyway. A friend of his decided to tag along and laugh at him every time he spoke to me in English. I can't decide if this made the experience more awkward or less awkward, but it was definitely entertaining.

I ran into one of my students which was great since I was hungover and looked like crap. I heard from Fox that the kid puked in class the other day (after drinking a bunch during lunch to get the courage to talk to a girl, so he said), so it's not like he has anything to judge me over, but it was still weird seeing him. Now I know how all my teachers felt when I would see them outside of school. It's kind of nice, like "Oh hey, I know you" but also kind of lame like "Oh hey, don't come talk to me because it's my day off and Miss Strawberry probably still smells like the white russians she was drinking less than 5 hours ago".

My tour finished up, then another friend joined my tour guide and talked to me about prices. It was a little overwhelming sitting with three Chinese dudes that were all talking to each other, then me, then laughing at each other speaking English, then shouting across the room, then laughing nervously at me, then talking to each other. Somehow they managed to convey to me that it was going to be 3,000 yuan for a year. THREE THOUSAND! That's two weeks salary for me. Even when you convert it to USD, it's outrageous. I wasn't really in the mood to bargain with them, so I just said it was too much and left, but I'm going to try again tomorrow and hopefully I can get them down to 2,000 which is far less ridiculous of a price to be paying.

quote of the day

"I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow." Scarlett O'Hara, Gone With the Wind

That pretty much sums up my life here in China.

oh, internet

Oh dang. I love when people post things on the internet, then regret it and try to take it back. THERE'S NO TAKING IT BACK ONCE IT'S FLOATING AROUND CYBER SPACE.

Shortly after I posted about Holly taking it to her Myspace re: getting the boot (or is it slipper?) from Hef, she deleted her post. Well, lucky me for knowing how to CTRL + C and CTRL + V.

For those interested, this is what Holly had to say last night, I'm assuming it was written in a sugar high stupor post Ben&Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie overload (everything seems like a good idea after you've eaten a pint of ice cream):

"What’s Going on . . . .
Current mood: :( lonely

Hef and I will always be friends . . . I do have my own place, but I am still at the Mansion, too, right now . . . I'm too busy to move! hahaha . . . Bridget, Kendra and I are all still best friends and plan on doing several projects together in the future . . . even though Bridget is in Europe right now and I am sad and lonely without her . . .

You will see how it all happens in Season 5 . . . Sunday nights on E! . . . How lame, I just turned that into the most shameless plug ever . . . lol!

Love-Holly"

I'm diggin' the ellipses, Holly. And ya right, everyone hates Kendra.

man, even bunnies get dissed

IS NOTHING IN THIS WORLD SACRED???

Of course, I'd heard the rumors. But I didn't want to believe. I guess there's no denying it now.

The "girls next door" broke up with Hef. So lame.

Good thing I'm friends with Holly on Myspace, or I would have been totally out of the loop.

new chinese name

My Chinese friend Philips spent so long coming up with a bunch of options for me for my Chinese name, and all his hard work means nothing now because I've adopted a new name. LiKou (beautiful red), the name Philips thought suited me best, just wasn't doing it for me. NiKe (pretty stone of jade), the name my Chinese professor gave me, was missing something. I felt like I needed a name that truly embodied my personality. I was thinking about the Chinese word for "Strawberry", but that seemed sort of lame.

Then. It hit me.

You ready for it?

Meow Meow.

That's right, my Chinese name is "Meow Meow". "Lin Meow Meow" if you want to be official about it. I can't wait to get business cards made. Oh schnap.

I'm glad "meow" sounds the same in Mandarin as it does in English. Interesting fact revealed to me by my high school student crush (don't worry, I'm keeping it professional, yo. He's not even my student): in Korea cats say "ya-oung, ya-oung" instead of "meow meow". Good thing I'm not in Korea because "ya-oung" wouldn't cut it for me.

This is sort of what my name looks like in Chinese characters:
I say "sort of" because they look more like cave drawings than Chinese there, but I can barely write Chinese characters with a pen and paper, much less with a mouse on Microsoft Paint.

I feel like you have to be pretty hard up to go out on a Monday night, but I'm tempted to throw caution to the wind and just do it so I can introduce myself to people. Hi, my name is Meow Meow. "Your name is what?" Meow Meow. "Meow Meow?" Yeah, y'know, like a cat says. "That's your name?" Uh huh.

I haven't been this excited about anything in a while.

hopefully people bought them as pets

A friend of mine took this picture later the same day in front of Ikea where I had seen the box o' puppies:

Several are missing from when I was there, I hope they went to good homes. There are a surprising number of pet owners here in Shanghai, so it's not totally doubtful.

One of the favorite dog breeds here in China? No, not the pug...the pomeranian! Isn't that adorable? There's a Chinese man who lives around here who always walks his Tater Tot look alike in Thumb Plaza sans leash. I usually just follow him around and snicker to myself while fantasizing about petting the dog, but finally on Friday night I mustered up the courage and asked the guy to pet it.

And by "asked" I mean I smiled really big and then pointed to the dog and made a petting motion with my hand. The guy seemed cool with me petting it, I'm hoping maybe I can form some kind of friendship with him so I can play with his dog all the time.

example of why i hate most surveys

If your lover betrayed you with someone of their own sex, what would your reaction be?
"I totally knew it."

What would you do with a billion dollars?
Two chicks at the same time. Er, wait.

Will you fall in love with your best friend?
My best friend is a girl, so no. But, I am a firm believer that men and women can have platonic relationships, even if When Harry Met Sally insists otherwise.

Which is more exciting while already in a relationship: coveting someone else or being coveted by someone?
It's always exciting to get compliments.

How long do you intend to wait for someone you love?
5 minutes.

If the person you secretly like is gay, what will you do?
Gay boyfriend, gay boyfriend, I don't really mind that you are queer. Gay boyfriend, gay boyfriend, I never feel lonely when you are near.

If you could root for one useless cause, what would it be?
For Delta Gamma to adopt a fraternity animal, and for that animal to be the pomeranian.

What takes you down the fastest?
Champagne.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years time?
Interesting question. Hopefully I'm on my way to becoming the next Martha Stewart by then.

What’s your fear?
Falling down stairs.

If you fall in love with two people simultaneously who will you pick?
Dave Matthews.

Would you give all in a relationship?
Define "all".

Do you prefer being single or in a relationship?
There's pros and cons to both. But if I'm in love with someone, I'd prefer to be in a relationship. As Chris Rock says, "married and bored, single and lonely".

an exercise in vanity

I've always really like those blogs of people who take one picture of themselves every day and show their progression through the seasons and temperatures and fashion styles.

I'm thinking about doing that here on Strawberry Says, but I want your opinion. Should I go the traditional mug-shot route of most personal photographers, or should I have a picture of China not me? Or is this idea too stupid to even do at all? Vote until next week!

captain obvious to the rescue!

I do appreciate my friends and family back home being concerned for my safety here in China. I do. Really.

But.

Well, this New York Times article has sparked a noticeable flux in my inbox and Facebook wall posts. Apparently the Chinese government monitors Skype conversations for politically sensitive words.

Is this really news to anyone?

Wouldn't this kind of be like some "investigators" in the United States writing an expose on airlines using racial profiling during security searches. Isn't that just common knowledge? I wouldn't call this Skype article anything mindblowing, except in the sense that it is mindblowingly obvious.

And anyway, I hate politics so I'm not at risk for any hardcore Chinese snooping.

whisk me away

There's a chocolate cafe here in Shanghai called Whisk. I've never been there, but some friends brought me and Romy some chocolate chip cookies from there a few weeks ago and they were seriously the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever had. Even better than my grammy's chocolate chip cookies (though I will deny ever saying this if anyone ever tells her).

Today was just one of those days. Y'know, those days when you just need a damn chocolate chip cookie.

So I decided to take a little solo adventure through Shanghai in search of Whisk and it's to die for pastries.

I should have written down the address, or maybe even looked it up. But instead, I relied on my memory of a vague conversation Romy had with a mutual friend discussing where it was. How difficult could it be to find? I thought to myself as I exited the subway in the middle of nowhere.

After several texts to my friends who had been there before and a frantic call to Romy, I still had no clue where I was or where Whisk could be so I decided just to walk around and look for it. For an hour.

Long story short, I couldn't find it. Actually, that's the entire story. So I guess it's not really as long as it is stupid.

When Steven Speilberg's film ET came out in 1982 my father was living in Alaska working on the pipeline in Prudhoe Bay while my mother stayed back in California. He really wanted to see the movie and asked my mom to wait for him to visit until she saw it so they could see it together for the first time. I guess my mom didn't think he really cared that much, so she saw it with some friends anyway and when he found out he told her he would never see ET ever. He was that mad about it.

The movie was re-released in 2002 to celebrate its 20th anniversary, and having been told this story by my mother I asked my dad if he would go see it with me (he was unaware that I knew his history with the movie). I'll never see that movie, he curtly replied. And he hasn't.

In much the same way, I'll never go to Whisk. My friends absolutely love it and I know they will try to get me to go some time in the next year that I'm going to be here, but nope, it's not going to happen. I tried too hard to find it and was left hungry, empty handed, and with 15RMB less in my wallet from the cost of transportation.

And to think, I was actually going to risk my health and buy a carton of milk to go with the friggin' cookies.

forget beating around the bush

I should create some sort of running list of "Things I Was Told About China Before Moving Here That Are Not True". Included on this list would be: 1. you can find anything in China (you cannot find berries of any kind, sunscreen without bleach, halloween costumes, sliced lunch meat, authentic anything, or tampons) 2. practically everyone knows English (negative on that one) and 3. the Chinese are a very indirect people (a vendor grabbing me by the arm and saying "lady, that's crazy price!" seems pretty direct to me).

My favorite thing so far that has proved all those advice-givers wrong are the beggars on the street. I understand that if someone is a beggar, they probably aren't following the same set of social rules that other Chinese follow, but I have still been pretty surprised by the directness of people on the street. Yesterday in front of Carrefour a beggar woman approached me and Romy and demanded, "Give me money." We didn't, but I sorta admired her for getting straight to the point.

puppies can be surprisingly not cute

Today is National Day in China. The PRC was founded on October 1st in 1949, so every year the Chinese people get a whole week off (at least us teachers do) to celebrate the glory that is Communism.

Celebrations for me usually include eating cake and spending money. Cake is hard to find here (good cake, at least), so I just settled for spending money and went shopping in the fabric district. I bought a few scarves and ordered some custom-tailored clothes and then headed over to Ikea to look around and relax.

Well, turns out it's impossible to relax when everyone else in Shanghai also decides to go to Ikea at the same time. I'm not sure if it was the feeling of being crammed in a relatively small space with a ton of people or something I ate earlier in the day, but my stomach started killing me so I made a bee-line for the metro to head back to my apartment.

As I was hurrying across the street, trying to navigate the sea of bikes, cars, and people, an old Chinese man threw a box right in front of me. The top popped off from the force of the fall and revealed two dozen small puppies crawling on top of each other.

Normally, there isn't anything I'd rather have thrown in front of me than a little puppy. In this case, though, the sight was absolutely horrifying. Even assuming that the old man was selling them as pets, it was so sad to see a bunch of puppies stuffed together in a tiny box. Who knows how long they had been like that or were going to have to stay in the box together.

I guess I shouldn't expect much in terms of animal rights from a country that doesn't even believe in human rights.

life lesson #2

If someone asks you, "Not to put you on the spot or anything, but what did you think of my art?" they are both putting you on the spot and expect your answer to include one of the following words: "impressive", "life-changing", "amazing", or "awe-inspiring."

The people that ask this question, however, never produce art of that caliber.

working my magic

My La Lohan peace sign flashin' tactics worked! I totally won over the ladies at the Korean market with my Celeb-like "I don't need your bullshit...but make sure you check out my gorgeous hair as I walk away in a huff" attitude the other night.

Last night Romy and I made the short trip (1/2 a block) to the Korean market to buy some beverages. Sure, they might have burned me with the phone card thing, but I'm not a girl to hold grudges and we also really wanted to drink, so we went there.

Well, talk about celebrity treatment! We were there with our friend Fox, who is also American and teaches at the same high school as we do, and the three of us bought 2 drinks each. Before we took our drinks from the counter, though, the women insisted on giving me and Romy some Sunchips for free!

Fox didn't get anything. Boo hoo.

Free chips? I mean, come on, how legit is that? They tasted more like Top Ramen than Sunchips, but I am all about getting free stuff even if it's not 100% delicious. After they opened our bottles for us, they also gave Romy their bottle opener that has the Korean market logo on it and stuff. They're going to be our new BFFs, just wait.

ya, i'm cool off that, thanks

I went to my usual Korean market yesterday to purchase an international phone card. They cost 30RMB and I can usually get at least an hour of conversation time from each one, so it's a pretty decent price.

Or "best friend price" as Romy and I like to say to the vendors at the clothing market.

Well, for some reason they were completely out, but instead of just saying that, they tried to pawn some partially used one off on me. It was out of its wrapping, the security code was all worn away, I'm sure it didn't even have any minutes on it.

So what's a girl to do? I flashed the Lindsay Lohan signature peace sign, said "Later", flipped my hair and left.

a chinese monthiversary

WOW. I've been here a whole month! I can't believe it.

To celebrate, we all went out to Cefiore which is an American fro yo place HERE in Shanghai. Mmmmm. It was the most perfect way to celebrate a monthiversary ever.

Here's to many more monthiversarys to come! *raises her waffle covered in original tart fro yo, chocolate chips, granola, and chocolate sauce* Here, here! To life, to love, to eating fro yo around the world!

paradise on earth, or something

There's an old Chinese proverb that goes "Up in heaven is paradise, down on earth is Hangzhou". I'm not sure I agree with that. For one, I read that on a postcard that I bought in Hangzhou, so it might be a little biased. Secondly, I also read that about ANOTHER city in China called Suzhou, which is also near Shanghai. Third, it was so humid and hot that it felt more like the opposite of paradise. Especially since we inadvertently went on a 3 hour vertical hike up the largest mountain in the city with only 1 bottle of water. Oops.

That being said, my trip to Hangzhou was a lot of fun. Hangzhou is about an hour and a half outside of Shanghai, and the difference in landscape is extraordinary. Shanghai is often described as a concrete jungle; Hangzhou is straight up just a jungle.

I went to Hangzhou last weekend with Romy and our mutual friend Penny. Penny is in our graduate program, too, and a blonde, so we got a ton of attention. It's funny because Chinese people kept coming up to us and asking "Oh, didn't I just meet you at so-and-so a place an hour ago?" We'd tell them no, and they'd explain how the people they met looked just like us. I bet to the Chinese all us American girls start looking the same after a while.

We stayed at a hostel called "4 eyes backpackers" which was pretty nice. Actually, it wasn't really, but they had a cat that had recently had kittens so it seemed a lot nicer than it was, simply from the kitten presence. Here's me and momma kitteh, and yes, I came all the way to China to take pictures with cats.


I was surprised the hostel had the number 4 in their name because I have always heard that the Chinese consider it unlucky, but I also ate a dish that was described as "the fry Chinese make egg on chive" at the restaurant down the street (Penny had "the eggplant explodes in sauce"), so it could have just been some sort of translation error. Maybe they meant glasses?

dreaming of christmas time

Yesterday I had chestnuts (yes, roasting over an open fire) for the first time. In the middle of a busy intersection in Shanghai, no less.

Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either. But neither does 85% of the stuff that happens to me in this country. I've just learned to go with the flow. Or to at least pretend to be going with the flow.

The chestnut vendors are all over the place and they all have scales where they weigh out your nuts and then point to the price for you to pay. I only wanted one chestnut, really, but the vendor insisted on filling my little bag even though I kept say no and pantomiming that I wanted him to put some back. I'm sure if I actually knew enough Chinese to tell him "I only want a little" it wouldn't have made much of a difference. For all I know there could be a minimum order or something.

Everything in China is a big production. I can understand why a lot of the other teachers here never leave their rooms. Shanghai is a scary place sometimes. Like at 6PM when the subway is over-packed with sweaty men wearing their shirts up over their bellies who rub against you as they exit.

China is definitely not a place to expect personal space. Ever.

What I mean by "big production", though, is that the smallest task takes forever and sometimes never even happens. I was without a cell phone (quelle horreur!) for four days because I couldn't figure out how to convey that I just needed a sim card for a phone I already owned (even when I brought the phone in they didn't get it).

But I don't expect the Chinese to "get" me. I don't expect them to bend over backwards for a silly, redheaded American who always says "xie xie" (thank you) after bumping into them with her cart in the grocery store when what she means to say is "duibuqi" (sorry). I don't even expect them to be patient with me when I try to speak to them in horribly pronounced Chinese (they always are, though).

I do expect, however, to not have to come up with a game plan every time I want to eat dinner. Or buy fruit at the market. Or mail some postcards at the post office. "Where do you want to eat?" brings shivers up my spine. "Do you want to take the bus?" is nauseating. "Which air freshener do you think will smell best?" gives me a headache.

These are all questions I ask myself, mind you. I'm not even trying to speak Chinese and they stress me out.

I think it's just a side effect of traveling. Everything seems more important and more stressful than it really is. Because, honestly, who really cares if I get the citrus or lavender Glade Plug-In?

I got the citrus, by the way.

the fox says..."boooooo"

I just signed into iGoogle and saw this:


I've had my little Asian fox theme for months now, but have never seen ghosts before! How cute that they're all going to eat Mr. Fox's steamed bun ancestral offering.

tmi at its finest

The Chinese are an interesting bunch.

Sit next to American on a 5 hour flight from Sacramento to Kansas City, and by the end of it you'll know their families financial situation, where their children attend college and what they are studying, and all about how the death of their grandmother when they were 14 years old deeply impacted their life and has made it difficult for them to truly love anyone.

Sit next to a Chinese person, and if they happen to know English, they might tell you about a great movie they saw recently or a funny anecdote about a vacation they took three years ago, but they're not going to open up like Americans do.

I've never been one to become BFFs with people on planes (I prefer to sleep, thank you), but in the words of Fight Club's Tyler Durden, the United States is a nation of people that love single serving anything: sugar, cream, butter, ketchup, floss, or a friend. The microwave Cordon Bleu hobby kit. Shampoo-conditioner combos, sample-packaged mouthwash, tiny bars of soap. The people I meet on each flight? They're single-serving friends. It's like having a real relationship, only with none of the commitment of ever having to see the person again.

And yet, ask an American how their day is going or how their weekend was, and you will undoubtedly get a generic "Fine" from pretty much everyone. A response of "Oh, it was fun but I didn't get much sleep" is considered an in-depth answer.

In China, do not ever ask "How was your weekend?" unless you REALLY want to know how that person's weekend was. I'm not just talking a simple "Oh, it was actually pretty crappy" description, I'm talking full on details that you, an American, would no more share with an acquittance than you would your toothbrush. In other words, it would never happen.

During the ten minute break between my ESL class I went to meet Romy, and while walking through the hall I caught her speaking to one of the Chinese teachers. On her way to meet me (she was about 10 feet away from me at this point) she casually ask the teacher how her weekend was. The conversation went something like this:

Romy: Oh, hi, how was your weekend? (starts to turn and walk away at this point, expecting a one word answer like "Okay")
Teacher: It was really bad, my mom got really sick and I had to take care of her.
Romy: (Turns to face the teacher again, caught off guard from the actual response to her question) Oh, no! But she's feeling better now, isn't she?
Teacher: Yeah, I think so. She had really bad diarrhea and I had to take her to the hospital and they had to put an IV in her arm and everything.
Romy: Blah blah blah.
Teacher: Blah blah blah gross detail blah another gross detail blah blah diarrhea blah vomit.
Romy: Blah blah.

At that point I stopped listening because I was so shocked that the word "diarrhea" was actually being uttered in real life, outside of a doctor's office, between two people that have never even spoken to each other before that I couldn't even pay attention to anything following the "rhea".

I guess it's not that shocking when you consider that Chinese people regularly hawk loogeys in public and potty train their children on the street.

say it ain't so

Since most of you haven't been in the wilderness of China for the past two days like me, I'm assuming that most of you know about Travis Barker and DJ AM's horrible, horrible plane crash.

I feel so bad for Travis and his family. He was so amazingly nice to me when I met him back in July (or June, whenever that was). I really hope he pulls through and makes a full recovery.

happy every day!

Chinese companies love using winks in their logos. I have no idea what the significance of this is (if any) or why it's so popular, but of course I love it.

Whenever my sorority took "silly" pictures during Bid Day, I usually rocked the wink. Totally silly of me. And, good practice for my time in China it seems.

Happy Lemon is a mini bubble tea shop in the plaza near my school. It's logo is this little lemon looking girl head that's winking. Obviously, I'm all over it.

My NEW goal for my time in China? Forget trying to learn Chinese or making Chinese friends. My newest ambition is to try everything on Happy Lemon's menu once. Reach for the stars, right?

what doesn't kill us

I do this thing when I travel or take trips places. This very annoying, inconvenient thing.

I don't know what comes over me, but I suddenly want to be this chic-er, better dressed version of myself when I think of spending an extended period of time abroad. So, to expedite the process, I only bring chic, uncomfortable clothing.

Beggars can't be choosers, right?

So if I only bring one t-shirt and more than a dozen fashionable work blouses, I'll be forced to wear the fashionable work blouses, right?

Wrong. I'll just wear the one t-shirt every day and curse myself for being so lame and not packing more.

Of course, when I was packing to move to a country where it used to be common practice to bind women's feet, my size 10 self thought "Yeah, I'll only bring pumps and heels because then I'll be sure to always be cute! All the time! No matter what!"

Ya, well, walking for hours in black leather pumps in weather that is 78 degrees but "feels like 107" according to weather.com because of the humidity is not a combination that automatically brings "cute" to mind. It does, however, bring to mind the words "blister" and "backache".

Needless to say, I have been relying way too heavily on the two pairs of three dollar Old Navy flip flops I thankfully had the presence of mind to pack. I brought 10 pairs of shoes and all of them are heels, save the no-traction death-trap flip flops.

The thing that bugs me the most is that I literally had several pairs of sturdy Reef sandals in my hands ready to be put in my suitcase, but I put them away, deluding myself into believing that in China I would become that girl that wears heels everywhere.

Y'know, that girl that doesn't exist in real life. Like Carrie Bradshaw. Or a happy French woman (yeah, they wear heels everywhere, but have you ever seen one of them smile?).

So I've been surviving so far with my cheap-o shower sandals. But barely. All the flooring here is made out of cheap wanna-be marble, my guess is because it is cheaper than concrete. Well, slippery tiling and rain pretty much mean that I have to waddle everywhere for fear of falling on my ass. That is, when I'm not actually falling on my ass. Behold, my bruise (and the one t-shirt I brought to China):

It is actually much worse than it looks, I assure you. The entire right side of my body is still sore from my total full-body fall two days ago. I probably broke something, who knows. But so far it's not life threatening, hence not worth a trip to the scary Chinese doctor.

move over mid-autumn festival

Forget mooncake! It's all about the "American Food Fair"!

I walked into Carrefour today to do a little Monday morning grocery shopping, and what did my stars-and-stripes deprived eyes behold but a fabulous American Food Fair display filled with such American treats as Jello pudding, pancake mix, and vanilla frosting! Hellz. Yes.

I didn't actually buy anything, but it felt good to see lots of American products that I could buy if I really wanted to. I did give in and buy some frozen American entrees, but they were super on sale (6RMB each!) so I didn't feel as guilty as I would if I had purchased that delicious looking box of Corn Flakes for 35RMB.

I bought a DVD off the street for the first time yesterday. Everyone has always told me you can find any DVD ever made on the streets of China. I'm not sure if that's true, but I bought Wall-E for less than 1 US dollar. I've already watched it twice.

a nation of bobs

Romy and I were walking around Puxi the other day, just checking out the sights and doing a little shopping (for some cute chopsticks, mostly). Despite what everyone told me, there aren't that many white people in Shanghai. Sure, they're around somewhere, but it's pretty much like looking for a white needle in a haystack full of Asians. I feel like Romy and I stand out wherever we go, if not because we're very clearly white chicks, then because we very clearly do not speak Chinese.

Sometimes I hear an American speaking English in a crowd and I think "Sweet! Someone I can have a conversation with" other times I think "Gawd, I hope that dude doesn't try to talk to us". My reaction to hearing native-speaking English is based on a lot of factors, but for guys it mostly comes down to the Frat Factor. If you're that douche bag who everyone tried to avoid at your fraternity house, then I do not want to talk to you. Guys like that get to China and suddenly they become someone people not only don't avoid, but actually make an effort to talk to!

Why? Because, as Romy would say, they're a "Bob". Best of the bunch. Ex-pat circumstances eventually lead to a lowering of standards. You can't have the same expectations for friends or significant others as you would at home, because there is simply not a big enough population to choose from. There aren't many Americans here, so if a Bob is even remotely entertaining or fun to be around, they will find acceptance with pretty much any ex-pat community because it's slim pickins out there, so "I guess you'll do".

Romy and I were wandering around the streets of East Nanjing road, when suddenly I overheard some American dude say to another American dude "I'm totally falling in love with China." I stopped to glance in a nearby shop, and to let the Dude Crew pass so I could see the person who said such a tool-y thing. He was wearing a polo with the collar popped, of course.

You're not falling in love with China, you're falling in love with the fact that in China people actually think you're cool.

i'm looking for my leopard, where can he be?

Someone please help Mr. Kitty find his leopard!!


Just in case that stops working (as Youtube videos so famously like to do), the static link can be found here.

china time

I finally figured out how to switch my blog over to China time. It wasn't something that was difficult or anything, I just never thought about it except when I was away from my computer. But now it's done so my post times will actually reflect the time of day which I write them, not half a day before.

Also, if I read your blog/have read it in the past and you haven't received any comments from me recently, it's because China is full of haters who don't want me to look at any websites that I actually enjoy reading. Cnn.com is amazingly never blocked, too bad I hate any sort of real news.

I have everyone on my "Strawberry's Faves" list saved in my Google Reader so I'm able to read your posts, I just haven't figured out how to comment on posts from the Google Reader platform. Is this possible? Anyone? Beuller? Beuller?

The few times any of you HAVE received comments from me, it's because I'm accessing your site from a proxy server which is actually a huge pain in the ass. I can't even access my OWN website without using a proxy server, which is why I haven't been replying to a lot of comments on my own blog. I really appreciate all the comments, though!

I've been trying to access my site via proxy at least once a week to reply to everyone, but China only lets you use one proxy site for so long until they block that, too, so I'm kind of hitting a "Great wall", so to speak. At least I can still get on Blogger.com to post.

What sites they choose to block and not block totally make no sense to me. Like, for example, the fact that icanhascheezburger.com is blocked is both very upsetting and very perplexing. Is there anything politically subversive about a cat saying "kthxbye"? I'd have to go with a resounding "No" on that one.

And yet, some government official somewhere thinks lolcats are socially sensitive enough that they need to be hidden from everyone in China. The saddest thing about it is the Chinese don't even know what a plethora of hilarity they're missing out on. Yeah, I'm ending a sentence with a preposition. Suck it.

local celebrity

I've been in China nearly two weeks. It's weird because in some ways that's such a short amount of time, but I feel as if it was ages ago that I was running through the airport in San Francisco silently praying that I wouldn't miss my flight. Well, I made it, and so far I'm surviving.

It's been so hectic getting acclimated to the 15-hour time difference, creating a schedule for my graduate courses, and thinking of lessons for the three different classes I'm teaching, so I've barely had time to relax much less sight see. This weekend I thought I'd go crazy if I stayed on campus so Romy and I took a trip to the Bund.

The Bund is a district in Shanghai, I think. I mean, I don't really know how to describe it, I just know what it is. A lot of tourists go there and take pictures. It's basically just a wharf overlooking a bunch of cool looking buildings that line the Huangpu River. It looks like this:

Romy and I took a lot of pictures of each other with the river and city skyline in the background, since that's pretty much the only thing to do at the Bund. Some guy came up to us and asked, "Can I take picture?" and we assumed he meant take a picture of the two of us since we were unable to get any together, but I'm weary of handing off my camera to strangers so I said no and he started to laugh nervously and then apologized, when Romy realized he wanted to take a picture with me, not for me.

So I laughed and said sure. It happened once more before we left the wharf, I'm toying with the idea of charging 5RMB a photo or something, y'know, for a little "mad money". The Naked Cowboy gets away with it in New York, why can't I do the same thing in China? I could be the Naked Cowgirl of Shanghai, only not naked. And not a cowgirl.

My friend Penny who is also a blond American got asked to hold someone's baby while they took a picture of her. I'm keeping my fingers crosses someone asks me that, because that's just awesome.

life lesson #1

If someone begins a sentence with the words "I don't mean to be rude, but..." or "I don't mean to be mean, but..." they are about to be rude and/or mean.

supporting child labor in every country

Since all the products at American Walmarts are made by small children in China, do Walmarts IN China get their products from here, too, or are they supplied by another developing country that's being exploited for its cheap labor?

I have no idea. My guess would be that it all still comes from China, but since all the product labels are in Chinese I couldn't say for sure.

Either way, I went to Walmart today with my friend Romy (she's the "Romy" to my "Michele") and it was fabulous. It reminded me a lot of home, just seeing that giant yellow smiley face and all the signs for "rollbacks". I don't even shop at Walmart in the States, but shopping at Walmart here in China comforted me.

Something that's always interesting when you're visiting (or living, in my case) somewhere foreign is how many mistakes you make from simply not knowing the language. So far I haven't really built up the courage to attempt full-on conversations with locals or anything, so it's not language mistakes yet. For the time being, it's mostly accidental purchases. Like purchasing sweet sliced bread instead of regular white bread. Or salty, sour-seasoned dried orange peels instead of "dried plums" like the package indicated.

It's really just a trial and error thing until I learn more than two characters (ni and hao, which are never on product labels anyway). Everything is an adventure in China, even grocery shopping! Every day I go in with my list of things to buy, wondering what little surprises I might encounter. For example, did you know that they don't sell ANY sunscreen in China? It's true. For as much as Chinese women like to walk around with parasols to protect their skin from UV rays, they don't have entire aisles devoted to sunscreen like in the United States. I found one bottle, after look at four stores, and it was 80RMB, which is super expensive, especially since it was only 2 ounces.

They have a wider selection (maybe four or five brands to choose from) of sunblock that doubles as a skin whitener, but putting bleach on my skin is 1. not necessary for me 2. not something I want to experiment with here in China.

the most important thing

A colleague of mine (I'm so important now being in China and all that I have colleagues, not co-workers) came in today after teaching 12th grade International Relations and told me how much the students liked me.

"Oh really?" I asked, hoping he'd give me more details.
"Yeah, they all said you were super nice."
"Anything else?"
"They all thought you were really pretty."
"Well, that's the most important thing, isn't it?"

anyone can be a poet

Even Michael Phelps! Who I just happen to be in a fake relationship with on facebook. How effing SWEET is that?

Today in my 8th grade class we discussed four short poems. I thought they were all pretty boring, but I had given my students homework on them so I didn't want to just throw the whole lesson plan out and do something new. They seemed to like them, which is ultimately the most important thing when you're teaching I suppose. But in the future, I'm going to steer clear of poetry.

I feel like poetry is one of those things you either love or hate. And I hate it. So, trying to explain something that I hate to people that don't know anything about it wasn't the most enjoyable way to spend 80 minutes of my life.

I've only been a teacher for three days, so I can't exactly "wing it" yet if I start discussing something then want to switch to another topic. To buy some time while I thought of a way to make the material fun, I threw them a hand-out and had them work in groups for 15 minutes. Thank God for group work.

I don't know how it happened, but suddenly, out of nowhere, a creative on-topic activity just came to me. It was like, the angel of English literature for junior high flew down from the heavens and presented me with the best idea ever. Well, maybe not ever, but the best idea I've had so far in terms of teaching.

I read the four poems again out loud then asked my students which poem sounded the most like a song they might hear on the radio. One student mentioned poem #1, another poem #2, and so I had the class vote. Once a consensus was reached I gave them instructions to re-write the poem as if it were a song they might hear on the radio. They could choose to mimic the style of the poem, the theme, or just use a word that was in the poem. They also had to choose a singer that would sing the song.

The class is comprised of four boys and four girls and so far they've wanted to stay separated by gender and I've let them since it's their first week and I'm still trying to feel them out in terms of their abilities and willingness to participate. The girls were super excited and immediately started buzzing about what their song lyrics would be.

The boys...were less excited. Well, that's not exactly right, they had plenty to SAY about the assignment, but they weren't really producing much (/anything) so I had to push them a little more by telling them they wouldn't be excused for lunch until it was completed. That was all the motivation they needed.

They had trouble deciding on a singer, so I told them they could choose any famous person, and in true Olympic spirit they chose Michael Phelps. Adorable, right?

This is the original poem, by Shel Silverstein:
"Forgotten Language"
Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly
in my bed.
Once I heard and answered all the questions
of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow,
Once I spoke the language of the flowers...
How did it go?
How did it go?

Their version, by Michael Phelps:
"Yo"
Once I spoke the language of the fish.
Once I understood each word the octopus said.
Once I made friends with a white shark.
And shared my gold medal with the
big whale.
Once I swam 100km with the dolphin.

let the teaching begin

I don't want to jinx myself since I haven't had my 12th graders yet, so I'll refrain from making any generalizations about the students until after my class with the older kids tomorrow morning. But let's just say that I survived, so that's something.

I introduced myself briefly to the 12th graders today before my school had a big welcoming ceremony for the entire international division. It all happened so fast I can't really make any kind of judgments about them, except that there are some native-born Americans in the class. And they at least seemed to think I was cute, even if they didn't care about what I was saying.

I fibbed a little and said I was San Francisco since most Chinese people know where that is, and really, I'm close enough.

During the welcoming ceremony they called out the name of each foreign teacher and we had to stand up and sort of wave to the auditorium. All the students clapped after each teacher stood up, but they totally started hooting and hollering for me. It was kind of embarrassing, but I have to admit, it was mostly flattering.

I swear, it's all about the blond hair here. It totally sets me apart from 95% of the Americans. I'm hoping to use it to my advantage in my classrooms. Y'know, the boys think I'm cute so they'll be more inclined to behave better because they want to impress me. Either that, or they'll be total monsters as a way of "getting my attention".

My eighth graders were pretty nice, and paid attention most of the time. There's 9 of them and 3 of them know absolutely no English, which I wasn't prepared for. I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to lesson plan for such a wide range of English comprehension (extremely limited to fluent). We'll see how it goes.

We played a fun icebreaking game at the beginning of class. I had each person choose a food that started with the same first letter as their name, then we stood in a circle and each person had to introduce themselves in a clock-wise fashion, with each person having to say the names of the person (or people) that went before them. It was a great way to learn everyone's names really fast.

I find it so much easier to remember names if I associate them with something else. Lettuce Lisa...who could forget that? My favorite was Spaghetti Sean. Or Caramel Cindy. I don't know! The food choices were all so cute!

lots more pencils, lots more books, lots more students' dirty looks

Today is my first day of teaching, wish me...something, anything. I don't even care if it's "luck" at this point.

Hooray for 2-hour morning assemblies that cancel my 1st period 12th grade class! But I still have a bunch of 8th graders to contend with post-lunch.

Where's my lucky rabbit's foot when I need it?

now, turn your head and then cough

In order to get a Chinese visa to live or work in China, you have to turn in a bunch of paperwork, pay a big fee, and get a physical examination in the United States before you arrive. Oh, and apparently you ALSO need to get a physical examination when you get to China.

Do you remember getting a physical exam for high school or junior high? Probably not. In the United States they're pretty uneventful experiences, for my most recent one my doctor glanced at my chart, did a quick exam of my lungs with a stethoscope, took a quick look at my throat and ears, then signed me off as healthy and ready to work.

Not so in China.

Chinese physicals are much more intense than any kind of medical ANYTHING I've had done in the United States. I'm a pretty healthy girl, so I don't have a ton of experience in hospitals, but trust me, my Chinese hospital experience takes the cake.

To start things off, we had to leave the school at 6:45 in the morning. I'm still pretty out of it from the 15 hour time difference between here and home, anxious about teaching, and feel like a child because of the whole not being able to speak the host language thing, so I was pretty much a walking zombie when we got to the hospital, which was a good hour van ride away.

All eleven foreign teachers I'm working with were required to go through the physical examination. We handed someone at the front desk our passports, were given a form to fill out and a slip of paper with a number, then pointed in the direction of a waiting area.

In the waiting area numbers were called out slowly and we had to go into a little room where a webcam sat on the desk taking our photograph as the assistant grabbed our forms from us and inputed them into the system.

This whole time none of us have any idea what's going on, since none of us speak Chinese and no one there spoke English.

We all have to go change into gowns, which is where it got interesting. We put our belongings into small lockers, and then preceded to be pushed and shoved from one room to the next with no explanation at all. If hospitals could be assembly lines, this hospital would be the model to which all other hospitals aspired to be like. Each room had a different purpose, and each patient was seen for about 2 minutes maximum by each "doctor". Who even knows what kind of degrees these people had.

I had to have about half a dozen different procedures done, and it was all done so quickly that I didn't even have time to protest. I stood on this metal thing, that apparently took my weight and height through some kind of laser beam, but I didn't see or feel anything so I really don't know how it all worked.

Next, I was pushed into this dark room with one single light in the far corner. The being pushed thing was the most unnerving aspect of it all (at least initially), because it made me feel completely out of control of what was going on. I had a chest x-ray, but at the time didn't realize that was what was going on until the guy shoved my chest against the machine and shouted something in Chinese in my ear.

Then I had to get blood taken. I'm not even going to mention the statistics on dirty needles in China to you, but I had no choice so I did it. They looked clean to me, and it seemed like they were using new needles each time, but who knows what they did with the needles afterward or if they re-used them from day to day or what.

Next was an eye exam which was pretty standard. Every room was so big with just a small desk and a doctor sitting there. For some reason it reminded me of Saw in terms of the overall ambiance of the place (dark, grimy, full of shadows). It's never a good sign to be reminded of a horror movie when you're at the doctor. After testing my sight, the doctor shoved a light up my nose and then aggressively pointed for me to leave.

I sat in the hall with a bunch of other bewildered foreigners for a few minutes, waiting for the ultrasound room to be free. Both men and women had to get ultrasounds of their stomachs and lower abdomens. Good news people, I'm not pregnant! No actually, I still don't know what they were looking for and what they found, and I'll probably never know.

After being poked to the point of bruising by the ultrasound technician, I had to get an EKG. The EKG machine was very archaic looking (like everything else in the hospital) and instead of plastic sensors everything had little metal suction cups on it. Very strange.

Finally, I had my "general examination" which consisted of a woman nurse rubbing on my stomach then asking "You have surgery???" I was kinda confused as to whether she meant EVER, or if I was to have surgery sometime later that day, so I just went with "No".

After that, I was pulled back into the changing area, where I put my clothes back on and prayed that they used clean needles.

Note to self: don't get sick here.

mooncakes: NOT "out of this world'

I had to use some sort of space pun in the title of this post, and "out of this world" was the only thing my jet-lagged brain could think of.

On the 15th day of the 8th lunar month (usually September) of the Chinese calendar there is a festival known as the Mid-Autumn festival or Moon festival. I actually don't know too much about it, but I hear lanterns are somehow involved as well as the consumption of a Chinese pastry known as a mooncake.

Pastry you say? Cake you say? I'm totally in! I had to try one of these things, because 1. it's so Chinese and 2. there's a giant display of about 100 different mooncake varieties in the Carrefour (French version of Walmart here in Shanghai) where I shop.

Verdict: nasty. I lived in France for 9 months and became a total fatty from over consumption of pastries and bread, so I'm somewhat of an expert when it comes to the deliciousness of baked goods. If you can bake it, I've probably eaten it. More than once. I've sworn to never go down that road again (fat does not equal fabulous, in case you were confused), so it's probably a good thing that I absolutely hated the little mooncake thing.

I'm surprised that anything with the word "cake" in it could actually taste bad, but the Chinese pulled it off! They're also pretty pricey, the cheapest one was about 8RMB. I could buy a whole bowl of noodles at a sit down restaurant for that price. I took one bite and tossed it in the trash.

But I did try it, and that has to count for something.