ohmyladygaga

A couple nights ago we celebrated mum's birthday with a night on the town. The plan was to enjoy happy hour and tapas at Extra Virgin, a new-ish, "hip" spot in the Crossroads. We pulled up to see the radio station's van parked out front. Megan hopped out to investigate.

M enters Extra Virgin, looks around.
Radio Station people sitting near the entrance: HI!
M: hiii..
Hostess: HI!
M: hi. Do you..have an event going on here tonight?
Hostess, thinking, isn't that why you're here?: ..Yeah..
M: Uhm..
Hostess: Iiiit's... the Lady Gaga pre-party?

Megan came back to the car and we quickly concocted a Plan B. (R Bar anyone?) But yes, Lady Gagme herself descended on downtown KC Tuesday night. Of course the appropriate response to such an event is, "OHMYLADYGAGA!" -- the popular phrase amongst Chinese youngsters as a variant of OHMYGOD. "Because...," one of my students explained, "Lady Gaga is so famous. Like God."

impressions of the US

Cleaning out my teacher drawer and came upon some students' impressions of the US that I had them write at the beginning of last semester...

• The United States is a democratic country. The American advocate freedom. In my impression, the American like to eat fast food and they are very white. The United States is a developed country.
• I like to see American moive, in particular the moive made in Hollywood. They're very perfect and cool.
• It's a young country, for China. It's democratic country. Most of Americans thinking are open. Many Chinese people want to American. Because they thought many chance in American.
  
• rich
• The United States is located in the middle of North America. Canada is in the north of America it's capital is Washington. There are about 30,000 people in America in 2006. American people are friendly, humble, romantic, general and easy-going. Compared with Chinese people, American people are independent especially pursue equality
• America has 50 continents
• I haven't been to America, but I think they are rich and friendly. One day if I have chance, I will go and have a look at it. That would be a nice thing.

"sports meeting"

Yesterday we had no class because of the "sports meeting," an event you may know as a track meet. We missed the "most wonderful part!" which was the opening ceremony, including a parade, dancing and singing, because it occurred at 7am. But we rode our bikes out to school a couple hours later in the first warmth and sunshine we've had here in months and spent the day reliving our youth as tracksters.
It was so typical that there was a teachers' race we weren't let in on (they knew we would win I guess), but we had a chuckle at the men's and women's 50 meter dash.

Above, Elvis (one of my fav freshmen) jumped so far and so fast that my camera totally missed him. But here he is after, with fellow fans and classmates, Rocket and Will.

resuscitation

finals, visitors, travels, visitor, start of semester, excuses, excuses.

We're already a quarter of the way into second semester. My freshman class has shaken the dust off their atrophied English skills since vacation and my 9 sophomores have solidified their hatred of the language. I have one writing class with them, which I really enjoy thanks to the writing textbook Jeff & Claire left behind for me to use, and my other five classes are all Listening & Speaking, four times per week with the freshmen and once with the sophs. (I should have two writing classes with the sophomores but they hate it, and usually me, and I don't love them, so I dropped one and am waiting to see how long it'll be until someone "important" confronts my liberties with the schedule.)

Everyone came back to school with new shoes, new coats and freshly sculpted anime hair: curled, swooped, frizzed, straightened, black, purple, or "blonde," which, properly translated, is "orange." The magic of having a foreign teacher has worn off for most of the students, except the ones who aren't actually in my classes, and only see me in the dingy hallway of the writing class building, grabbing their friends' attention to stare and giggle or call out, "Hallooo! Nice-tew-mete-yooh!"

Spring is at winter's back door with fickle temperatures and mostly gray skies sagging with showers, but Megan was lucky to get 68 degrees on her birthday a couple weeks ago. Simon and I came to her class to play shark pit and "the circle game" (that's what I'm calling it anyway) outside, which was a lot more fun than when we repeated the event the following week with my class, who, true to form, cheated. The freshmen boys are bedazzled by my new and awesome iPod; Jack pointed and said, "How much," and Martin held out his hand and demanded, "Give to me." Jack had the same question-as-statement last semester of my running shoes that I brought in for show and tell (hard to believe, but I do teach college and not kindergarten) which was followed by Martin's charming show of his pack of cigarettes, and tell, "I like smoking. That's all." Boys.

Hopefully we'll have some committed spring temperatures by next weekend for Easter/Qingming Festival aka Tomb Sweeping Day (interesting coincidence) when we get Monday off (and don't have to make it up!). Some of us are thinking of getting a bus down to Hangzhou, the lovely city near Shanghai where Megan and I started our winter vacation travels. Loreta's stipulation is a church and Tim's is beer, and thanks to Google (.com.hk, mind you) we know Hangzhou has both. All I need to do is figure out exactly how much I overspent by on our travels -oops- and see if I have the funds to go.

party in the usa

Since I have my freshmen class four times a week, I regularly play them English-language songs on Mondays, which I have cleverly dubbed "Music Monday". I play the song while they look at the lyrics, some of which I have blanked out so they have to listen for what the words are. Just this week I realized I could greatly enhance Music Monday by showing them music videos downloaded with some unnamed downloading client (because as of now, we shadily are not allowed internet access in the classrooms...). iTunes' top downloads list tells me that some song called "Party in the USA" is quite the hit back home, so I searched for it and downloaded a live performance.

And that's how I learned about this pole incident which looks to have been a real flurry in the media that I thankfully missed before we left.

Here I thought Miley Cyrus would be a nice window to American culture as a solid representation of current American pop music. What a tragedy that she really is a current icon of American pop! She is not such a nice window to American culture for these Chinese students. There's no way I could show this to my class of 20 year-olds: Megan and I drew out the lyrics for "The 12 Days of Christmas" and the boys couldn't even be mature about her stick figure drawing of 9 ladies dancing. Plus, I don't want to show it to them, which is really the sad thing, that what's "popular" in my country would embarrass me as a cultural ambassador to my students.

At least they now know who U2 is. Can you believe Bono was unknown in a corner of the world?

the Eight-Day Holiday

Before the break I told my freshmen their homework was to write me a postcard about their holiday. Well, Megan and I now know that postcards don't seem to exist in China, so I got a smattering of "Happy Birthday" cards, notebook paper, and construction paper.

Most of the girls did the assignment but only one out of the 10 boys did. His humble notebook paper was the loveliest writing I've seen from any of my students in any of my classes:

This holiday I thought I would go to some beautiful places to tour. Such as Beijing, Hangzhou or Yangzhou. But to my surprise, my parents told me that I couldn't go to any place just the hometown. And I must go with them to see my grandma. This year, my grandma is 93 years old. My grandma said she missed me everyday. She want me to see her. So in Three October, this day is very special in China. This day is the Midautumn Festival. Every people out of home all want to come back to see their spouses.

On the bus, I was not happy, because I want to tour. I looked out from the windshield. Leaf and grass turn yellow. I want to cry. I understand that my grandma is too old and she want to see her son, daughter and everyone in this family. Every old people want to have a happy time at the last time in their lives.

Ten minutes late, we get down from the bus. There is nothing in the field. It's bleak and desolate. Then I saw my grandma was sitting under the tree. She saw us and stand up. She smiled very happy just like a child. She is older than I thought. I thought I haven't seen her in two years. Because I was busy with my study in the past. Now I have time to see her. But I want to tour instead of seeing her. I feeled ashamed now. I want to say "Grandma, I love you."