So I left off at my birthday…hmm A LOT has happened since then!

School: I taught Christmas, always fun, with words like stocking (aka Christmas Socks) reindeer, chimney, presents. Well they knew presents really well!! ;) then we wrote letters to santa, which I have to say were the damn cutest and most hysterical things EVER! I'm posting them as pictures on xanga and on yahoo, so be sure to look at the cuteness. The few days after Christmas, Heather and I took off to go on a trip to Hunan Province…which didn’t happen due to many circumstances, instead we just didn’t teach and hung out. It was a nice, much needed break!

Christmas was way fun and definitely the most unique Christmas…ever! The shenzhen Education Bureau paid for all of the foreign teachers to go back out to Silver Lake hotel and spend Christmas Eve night with dinner and singing and booze, all provided for Free! I love that word!! Soo off we went to the fancy dress party/chinese christmas dinner/crazy drunken fun! The people in our program are all wonderful, kind people. They just also enjoy drinking beer and wine in true chinese fashion. Especially when its provided! Soo, many people were quite intoxicated and attempting to sing xmas carrolls with no back up music (aka no music at all, just voices….music-less kereoke. It was…bad!) but very entertaining. It was really neat to be back at the hotel where we all started the year out but know we know our friends and know each other better so it was quite a treat! Plus it was my first christmas not surrounded by cousins and aunts and uncles. Instead it was crazy, intoxicated friends. Which ended up to be about the same amount of annoyance, love, and stress! :) I guess, once you’re an adult, Christmas really is the same, no matter who you're with or where you are!

Christmas Day, we came back to school to join our kids in their Christmas Celebration ridiculous-ness. It was like the School Birthday thing. Each class performed a song/dance/play number in English in front of family and teachers and the rest of the school. I will never really understand what goes on the in the Chinese mind. Some of the songs were great, Silent Night, Have a holly jolly Christmas. There was a xmas play that I wrote that was performed about an elf who couldn’t sing and went to find his family. The littlest elf being played by the most adorable 2nd grader named william who lived in Canada and speaks perfect english! And then there were the performances that had nothing to do with Anything! They were just in English. My favorite third grade did a rendition of The Three Little Pigs. It was so amazing! Theyre were children that were the houses (they had headbands made of paper with a stick, or a piece of hay taped to it and the brick house had it around their middles.) When the wolf huffed and puffed the kids who weren't major parts were standing on the risers (like a choir) and they all acted like they were blowing the house down with the wolf. Then the children who were the stick and straw houses fell to the ground acting as the house. It was really the most well thought out little play ever!! And of course unbelievably cute. Sometimes I wonder how I survive all the cuteness….after the performances, it was like Carnival day kind of. There were different games set up and the kids got to go around and play the games. If they one they got a stamp, then they could turn the stamp in for prizes! The most interesting thing was that the games were all english games! Make a sentence, fill in the blank, guess the riddle! It was really impressive, especially considering they didn’t get any help from Heather and I, it was all the Chinese English teachers. They did a good job and the kids had fun!

So on to New Years!! Oh the insanity! Sunday day, we headed over to Hong Kong!! whooHOO!! My first new years in a HUGE international city! Aaron, Martin ( a spanish teacher) and I ate dinner at an Argentinean restaurant! Yum! Steak and grilled chicken, the most delicious mashed potatoes! Argentine Wine! And great company. We had a really good time. Aaron and Martin got to talk to the manager in Spanish. Always exciting for him to meet someone else from Argentina and speak the native talk. I hardly understood a damn word…which just goes to show ya, French and Spanish…not the same!  Its like Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese (which they also speak here in the South of china as well as hong kong) The written language is almost the same but the way it sounds…TOTALLY different! 

After sufficiently stuffing ourselves and playing with fun new years toys on the table, we headed off to find the rest of the gang who were all eating and drinking and being merry in Lun Kai Fong. (yeah I have noo idea if that’s spelled correctly…whatever, just know that it’s the street with all the bars…kind of like the  French Quarter in New Orleans. Small streets, lots of bars, TONS of people, very crowded, very lively!) We spent the night partying at a bar called the Hong Kong Brew House, tons of beer and good times to be had! Any time after 10 oclock the street started getting seriously packed. And when I say packed I mean, no room to walk, shoving people out of the way just to move 2 feet! A few of us decided to wander away from the bar and check out other bars down the street. Now picture this, the street takes a sharp curve so you can't see around the side and then continues down a hill. We start walking, the closer we get to the curve, the less and less room to walk. We finally round the corner and its like wall to wall people EVERYWHERE!! No one can move, everyone is yelling, dancing, drinking, just being crazy with absolutely no room! We start to try and maneuver our way down the hill but the police are forcing everyone UP the hill, they are like a dam trying to push a river the opposite way! We got pushed back up the hill at least 2 times before we gave up and went back to the sanctity (if you can call it that) of the bar!! Midnight came, there was a loud countdown as a million drunk people tried to get the timing right. Somehow, everyone managed to get to 3, 2, 1 HAPPY NEW YEAR successfully! After midnight, the police pushed everyone who was in the street and not in the bar out of the area so we watched from the bar as the never ending river of people walked up the hill and out of Lun Kai Fong. Literally we watched people walking away for at least an hour and there were STILL people coming up the hill from around the corner. I have no idea where they came from. It was kind of like being on Bourbon during Mardi Gras. Everyone parties really hard till midnight and then they kick you out of the quarter because of Ash Wednesday.  Hong kong was pretty dang similar…except for random nudity, sexual displays and mardi gras beads!! I guess Hong Kong's a bit more conservative…must be the British side of them!

Aaron, Martin, Jeff, and I finally managed to leave around 2ish. Agnes, her brother Luke and Heather left at the same time. They were headed back to their hotel, and we were headed for the all night bus back to Shenzhen. So we start off going the same direction but then part ways at a corner. We go straight, they turn. So the cab to the bus depo was going to be insanely expensive so we decide to walk…it can't be that far right? Well, off we go and not 5 minutes later we run into Heather and Agnes again! Alright, well we say hello, goodnight, part ways Again! We end up walking around the port/ferry area, right along side the water. No people, a little bit dark and sketchy but im with 3 guys and its Hong Kong, pretty safe! So we wandering and Martin (who was quite the drunk Spaniard) would just kind of disappear. I would look behind me to see if he was there but then not a minute later, I'd turn around and he'd be gone gone gone! Like 50 yards away in the other direction gone! We lost him a few times and after that I kept a closer eye on him! 10 minutes of walking, around another bend in the road, who do we run into? Agnes and Heather AGAIN!  They didn’t catch a cab either. I still don’t know how we managed to keep running into each other in such a big freakin city but I suppose we were going the same general direction…still crazy! We finally find the bus like 30 minutes later and as soon as I am sitting and the bus starts going, I fell right to sleep and didn’t wake up until jeff whacked me at customs. Martin kept getting in the Hong Kong Residents line even after Jeff and I told him 3 times to get in our line….ah drunk people. We finally made it home at like 4 and fell asleep until 2 the next day! What a night!

After New years, we got a three day break from school, which rocked! So far I hadnt taught in like a week! Then I go to school on Friday and they're like, are you going to teach next week? The children have exams on the 15th and 16th and we will probably take your classes, is that ok? Is that ok with me, Hells yes! No teaching again! So I taught two days this week, next week is the exam for two days, then they grade it for two days and then we come back on Friday the 19th for the results and then WINTER BREAK FOR A MONTH! Hello, India, Malaysia, and Thailand! But the whole no teaching thing couldn’t have come at a better time cuz I've got a cold and I'm coughing etc etc. The two classes I did teach involved games. And one class, my head hurt so bad, I just said, "ok what do you want to do today? Read a book, do your homework? Draw a picture? Do whatever, just be quiet!" and they got it and were quiet. Of course the whole time they are asking me, "Teacher, teacher, are you sad? Are you sad?" No no, I'm sick. I don't feel good. I have a headache and a cold. Of course not many remembered that I taught them all those words like 3 months ago so they mime out my symptoms and then I just say yes. Good grief. "Teacher, don’t be sad!"  I even got a note under my door, " Dear Miss Meaghan: Are you sick? How are you to day? We are Class three Grade three. I'm a girl. Happy Nen Year! From Dolly." Adorable.

Baby, it's cold outside...

Ah December, can you believe its already here? I have lived in China for going on 5 months now! Crazy! I wish my Chinese was better. But I've gotten over nervousness of talking to people for fear of saying something wrong. Now, I just don't care and I talk to Everyone!! 

I've been teaching Music and Superheroes so far! The music lesson was great! I taught it during Li Yuan's Bday week so it went with the insanity of it all! I played different Genres and we talked about the differences. Now this is really basic of course! Ex - Pop Music is fast and for dancing! Country music and violin and guitar! Rock and Roll is loud, with guitar and drums! Overall it was a really fun lesson for the kids and for me! I played Twist and Shout by the Beatles and everyone dances! They love Nsync and Britney Spears of course. I played 'Doe a Deer' as my musical example and we all had sing a long time with the Sound of Music! It was really fun!

The Superhero lesson was just as good. First I introduced the idea of a hero (someone who gives to others, who helps others, who tries their best) I had some good photos of Yao Ming and Jet Li. Then I asked the kids who their real life hero was. I got such a range of answers from all my classes. 3rd graders were all about mother and father and teacher. The 4th graders, some got really into it! I got answers ranging from Jackie Chan, to the first Chinese man in space, to a scientist because they have a lot of knowledge. One kid even said Helen Keller because she 'overcomes problems' (a phrase I taught them) Gee whiz!! Then I showed picture of Superheroes which they loved! Superman, spiderman, harry potter, the incredibles! So fun, they freak out!!

So Saturday, Heather, myself, and two of our friends (mike owens and greg) decided to have a big birthday dinner at this mongolian restaurant near Heather and I's school. We had too many people to sit in a Yert so we sat outside the yerts. (yert being a big tent) The food was great; afterwards we discovered that there was a bar right across the street that none of us knew about! I was pumped- a bar within walking distance of my house! So we hopped on over to the bar, called Red Bar. It was pretty cool lookin on the inside but a lot of people decided they were too poor to buy drinks and they headed off to greg's apartment for fun times. But man, did they miss out!!!

    The bar started pickin up around 9ish. A sax player played me happy bday and that was the beginning of the randomness that was Red Bar. After the Sax player, there was ( I kid you not) a fashion show. The bartenders all dressed up in different outfits (girls and guys) and modeled on the raised dance floor/stage. It was soo random and Chinese. Then there were dancers, male and female (but the female ones got to dance on the poles. How come guys never pole dance?? That is a missed opportunity! ;) Oh and there was a clown. On stilts. At least 9 feet tall. In the bar, making balloon animals for people. Again, I kid you not!

    So after the fashion show and pole dancing ridiculousness, there was a contest and of course being that we were foreign, it was required that we participate! It was Me, brooke, ryan and jeff all on stage. So the first part of the contest, we had to pop balloons between each others chests like we were hugging! Ryans partner was a chinese woman. Now Ryan's really built so he was kinda pulling her pretty hard but they popped like 12 balloons!! I went with a chinese guy but we only popped 6 or so because I was wearing a dress and everytime they popped against my chest it stung like hell on my skin!! Jeff's Chinese partner tried to cheat and discreetly pop them with toothpicks so we boo-ed them offstage!

    Then there was the 2nd part of the contest. Please keep in mind that I had absolutely no idea what was going on. They played these noises on the speakers and there were 3 couples that had to imitate the noise. The first couple made some sort of whiny baby noise. The second couple howled. Now I was all up for howling but no, no. At this point I thought I could just make any sound. Wrong. I  had to make the only sound that was left. Which of course was a girl working up to and having...an orgasm. Of course I get stuck with having to make this sound!! In a bar, in front of 200 Chinese people. Fabulous. So I made some noise. But of course, that wasn’t good enough --- I had to make it longer!! I protested that the howling was short but of course no one understood me...so I had to do it AGAIN! Afterwards, the audience applauded for who they thought was best and not surprisingly I won. (its because I'm foreign not because of my noise making abilities I swear!!!)

    As a prize, I got a bottle of vodka and a HUGE teddy bear! Oh boy! Then my partner invited us to his VIP room where I think there were about 12 chinese - only men - and I think they all must have been on ecstasy. On guy was sitting on a couch, holding and pillow, and rocking back and forth. That’s it. Other guys were holding hands dancing to some techno pop crap music. We kinda hung out for about 15 minutes and then we were like 'ok this is strange, byeybeee!"

    As soon as we get back outside, all of the bar workers are going onstage with glowsticks which means of course a mad rush of Chinese people to the stage. Chinese people will do anything for glowsticks….wait we rushed up too. So I guess anyone will do anything for a glowstick! Then we had a glowstick konga line around the bar. After I jumped out of line, I lost everyone. I was lookin around and finding absolutely no foreigners! So I jump back in the konga line and look around the bar. Still, no white people. So, I am standing there with a 2 foot teddy bear, my jacket, my purse, a hello kitty doll, a balloon animal, and about 5 glowsticks and some Chinese guy starts petting the bear. That was my cue to leave!! Peace!! I went outside and found everyone waiting for me. Whoo. Crazy! We went to another bar and I got home at 2:30. Definitely one of the greatest and most random nights…EVER!!!

Remember Remember, all of november!

Li Yuan (my school) had it's 25th Anniversary. Which of course means HUGE celebration! The school put on a big production with the school dance team, choir, other dance team, and just random kids all performing!  In true Chinese fashion they prerecorded all of the songs and lip-synced on stage; loses something if you ask me, but this is the Chinese way. I guess it'd be kind of hard to do all the dance moves and sing well at the same time and these are all kids under the age of 12 so I guess it makes sense! Well Heather and I were involved as well! We were a part of a group of teachers in the opening song (happy bday - In Chinese!) and the closing finale which was our school song (also in Chinese) it was great fun but the practices all sucked. They lasted all afternoon 2 or 3 different days. And if the principal wasn’t pleased with the performance, everyone had to do it ALL over again. Sheesh. But the end result was great! Lots of important people came, like the Mayor of Shenzhen. For the actual production (there were two - one for the important people held in an auditorium and one for the kids and parents - held at south campus outside) so for the inside one, the introductions went on for at least 30 mins. Here's the thing with Chinese people. Introductions are really important. So each person has to talk and thank people and introduce things for like 10 minutes. And they always get like 5 people to do introductions..sheeesh! At the Guang Zhou tourist extravaganza the intro's went on for like an hour! But in the end the show was great fun! Heather and I got cool outfits, made some new friends with the other teachers, met some adorable children and got some awesome photos!

Heather (my roomie) and I visited a buddhist temple here in shenzhen. Quite an experience! I'm not really that educated about buddhism but there were some very devoted people there as well as some that didnt seem quite as religious. Many people who hiked up the mountain prayed the entire way up. Three steps, kneel. Palms up, palms down. Pray. Three more steps, repeat. it was very impressive considering its at least a 30 minute hike at a normal pace! then at the top i was watching some monks (monks always fascinate me) Two of them seemed deep in conversation but when one of them moved away, I saw that they were just looking at his cell phone!! Then he proceeded to make a few calls!! call me crazy, but im pretty sure true buddhism invovles a life a poverty which im also pretty sure includes cell phones!! but this is china, its a mix of what you expect of traditional chinese and the total modern opposite! I bought a wall hanging ornament at a 2 kuai store (so it cost like 20 cents) and its of course the obligatory picture of Mao Zedong on one side. And whats on the other side you ask? well, not a picture of the great wall or tiananmen square or anything remotely chinese or communist. Nope on the flip side of mao is a picture of....A BMW Z3. No lie. Mao and a beemer. Its so unbelievably chinese! Communism buuuut also commericalism and wealth! hooray for the class struggle!! ok im done poking fun at the Chinese Communist Party now!

My week was kinda uneventful. Most of my classes were good, we either played bingo or text twist. One class about a million kids ran up to the board without permission so I used a kids pencil case to get there attention which kind of made a small dent in it. Poor Jim, he was soo upset. He even produced a miniature hammer to try and bang the dents back down. Of course he has a tiny hammer, who doesn’t? So I apologized profusely in Chinese and English and promised him a present the next week. I also was sneaky and wrote down the bad kids name in the Friday class without telling them why. Then the chinese teacher, ms. Lisa, told them what the list was and whoo boy, their faces immediately changed into sheer horror with a collective gasp.. Heh heh…evil on my part but hey you gotta do what you gotta do!!

This is really long! but its all Month!

Lets see… its been an awful long time since I updated. Im a horrible person I know. Alright so, we got back from the Hainan trip and jumped right back into school! The first week back, I taught the kids about 4th of July traditions. I asked them what they think Americans eat on our National Holiday. Oh boy, talk about fun answers!! I got everything from beef curry, sushi, noodles, shark, rice, and of course Mcdonalds and KFC. They are obsessed with American fast food and of course they think that’s all we eat!! I informed that we usually have a BBQ. (Which they pronounced not bar-b-que but Bee Bee Q!!! It was pretty funny! Teacher Teacher, BBQ!) I also asked them where they think Americans go for our holiday. (They all travel during their national holiday so I wanted to see where they think we go!) I got quite a range on that one: Paris to see the Tower, Disney (they are also obsessed with Disneyworld in Hong Kong) Germany, China, the Great Wall, Shanghai, and the most ironic: England! It was a very enlightening lesson for all of us!!

Week two of October teaching, I covered personality opposites. Good/bad, nice/mean, generous/selfish, calm/quick-tempered, gentle/violent, neat/messy, shy/outgoing, and serious/silly. It was very interesting! I made a Harry Potter powerpoint and asked them what the personalities were of the different characters! They loved it!! Every time a different character came up the whole class made noises! With harry it was excitement, Ron everyone laughed. They absolutely love Hagrid and Dumbledore. But Dumbledore is pronounced - Dumb-ly-dore. Its really cute! "Teacher, teacher. Dumblydore is GOOD!!!!" yes yes, but what else is he? I kinda have to point them in the right direction. Is he calm or quicktempered? Teacher Teacher, he is calm! They love yelling "Teacher Teacher!"

Week three, I did some review and discovered the insane obsession with Hangman. I just decided on a whim to play because one of the classes was getting rowdy so play a game. "Teacher Teacher - this our favorite game!!!" Everyone was freaking out and so excited when I drew the hangman on the board. Man, if only I had known this like 2 months ago!! I think they love it so much because there is no way they could ever play with Chinese. It just wouldn’t work! So, first, I just put up words from the lesson which they got. Next a wrote a whole sentence. "MY GOD! Teacher! It is too much!! Too much!" I convinced them it was easy and they got most of the words! What an ingenious way to keep them entertained! Its so funny when they guess a wrong letter. The entire class will gasp and 'aaah' together. Imagine 50 kids gasping and 'ahh'-ing at the same time because now there's a head AND an arm on the hangman!! Hysterical!

This week I'm teaching Halloween! I made a kick-ass powerpoint with pictures and fun stuff. There's a Name the Halloween Monster game which gives two clues and then they try to guess what it is. Ex: "I am white. I say Boo. Who am I?" Teacher Teacher - a ghost!! Oh very good Roger! (Roger is the most precocious third grader on earth.) Apparently my picture of the ghost was funny because the next thing he says is, "Teacher, I think it is a snowman!!" now everyones laughing! They really like the skeleton and the mummy. The really funny thing is they don’t know words like cool or awesome, so when those two came up they all say, "Oh Teacher, its so beautiful!! Its beautiful!!!" I never thought anyone would describe a skeleton and a mummy as beautiful….guess its one of those Chinese things!! :) After the show, I made them draw what they wanted to be for halloween. "Teacher, Teacher! I want to be a pumpkin!!!" Lots of pumpkins, monsters, ghosts and princesses- words I told them during the lesson. The thing with Chinese students is they are never challenged to be creative. Its just not something that is taught to them; so its especially hard to try to get them to be creative in another language! But I did get some good pictures!!

Lets see, what else is going on in my life? Well last week was insane due to me switching to a different birth control with more estrogen in it. Wow, I turned into an insane, emotionally unstable, crazy person!! Multiple trips back to the pharmacy and much internet research later, I found a better brand for 'moodiness and irritability' (not something I have ever had a problem with before!!) Thank god that fiasco is over with!!! I've also been tutoring much more! I made about $100 bucks (yes american dollars!) this past weekend for about 4 hours of work (if you can really call it work! Three 5th grade girls for two hours, and Jerry - a business man moving to Europe. We talked about medicine, the doctor, I proof-read one of his speeches and we just talked for 2 hours! Easiest job ever!)

Last Friday, a few folks from my Chinese class and I were invited to goto dinner with a friend of my teachers. Turns out we were going to eat right by my house! That was pretty exciting, then we get there and Heather and I discover that there are go-carts not a 7 minute walk from our house!! Freakin go-carts! That haul ass too!! I felt like I was in the movie "What's New Pussycat" it was like being in fast-forward! Talk about awesome! Then we meet the guy and he turns out the be the MBA of the Country Club that’s right near us! Sweeeeet! We eat in this hotel/restaurant that is amazing!! The food was so so good! (we had our own chef in a little room next to our private room prepare some of the dishes!) and then we had the Chinese folk singers come in and sing us traditional folk songs!! So awesome!!

Sometimes its great being a foreigner in this country. People stare at you in wonderment, I stare back and wave, which always takes them by surprise and usually gets me a smile! Sometimes you get special attention because your not Chinese. In the train station there is a HUGE mall (5 stories, hundreds of shops) Man those people are insane. All the shops are owned by families and all the chinese are in Co-hoots. Co-hoots to make sure they sell stuff and we get ripped off! Great fun! So before you even get off the metro, there are people talking to you "You need help shopping?" but no one really says the "ing" correctly so everything turns into a 'Y'. "you like shoppy? You want buy-ee?" It never ends, "hello missy! You want baggy? Please, have lookey. Come, have lookey! You want DVD? Sexy DVD? MPsree? (mp3 - they cant really do the "TH" sound either, all sounds like "S") "What you want buyee? I find for you!" Ridiculous!! One woman followed me around for like three floors!! Luckily, I've been here for some time, I've been to the Great Wall and Shanghai. I know how to deal with the crazy people!! No eye-contact and no talking! But what really works is confusion!! I definitely said I didn’t speak english many many times. Meagan S, when asked if she want buyee a baggy, offered to sell they guy her back for 10 kuai! My friend Dan, in his limited Chinese, asked how much a Korean person would cost, to which the man responded (in chinese) Oh, no have Korean. Have Chinese people. Dan promptly asked, "Zhong-guo ren. Duo Shao Chian?" which translates to: Chinese person. How much money?? Freakin hysterical!! 

I finally go so sick of the Missy, lookey, baggy, that I started correcting people. "Its Miss. Not missy. Its look. Not lookey." Some people were appreciative; one girl was so excited! "oh your English is so good" she informs me. Hm, is it really? ;) Some people just kept right on trying to get me to buy something else! Crazy times. The tailors are the best. I discovered all you have to do is buy material (on the 5th floor there is a material/cloth store that probably never ends!) Once you have material, you take it to the tailor, show him a picture of what you want and the voila! 4 days later, you have the dress from the cover of Vogue! Amazing!!

The flip side of being a foreigner is being targeted by thieves who think we are here because we have lots of money. Aaron got his bag stolen as we ate outside near a park. We were at picnic tables, there were 5 of us all sitting there and yet no one noticed a thing. We finish eating and then Aaron says, "wheres my bag?" Gone gone gone. Probably already emptied and resold by the time we even noticed it was gone. It was a lesson in contrasts I think. This country can be great when you stand out. People notice you, special attention goes both ways though!! The Chinese way is so interesting. They are what we consider rude on the street. They push past you and don’t know anything about getting in lines! They make assumptions about you. They don’t really help each other out. If someone is getting pickpocketed on the bus, they don’t bother to help or do anything. But then you meet them and they are so excited to meet a foreigner and they are just genuinely nice and want to help you! They are really attentive and overly concerned for your well-being. Its such a contrast!

Vacation!