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.