Adam was supposed to come to school today so we could talk for prospective parents for open day, but he had to go to school (yes, it's Sunday). Then Lucy (the mom) took Jenna and me out for lunch and went with us to pick up our qi paos and shirts(Cantonese-cheongsam; high-collared, Chinese dresses), but they were all too big. I know that westerners are all fat, but dude, you took our measurements. They also made the pretty button on Jenna's gold shirt pink. She hates pink and had asked them to make it white, gold, brown, or black. People here have a tendency to do what you *should* like. Lucy helped us work things out and Jenna's shirts will be ready before she leaves on Wednesday. There was a man there who I think was a friend of the tailor, who spoke a little English, but he had some pronunciation problems. When the tailor was remeasuring the dress in the hips, the man was saying, "[something something] fat". Then he said "fat" again a little while later. Eventually we figured out he was trying to say "fit". Then I was saying that I have big shoulders (especially compared to Chinese women) and he said, "No, your shoulders aren't big... your hips are big." Me (to Jenna): "Do I say 'thank you' to that?" Then to him: "Right. That's impolite." But he didn't know what "impolite" meant, so Jenna translated and explained that we know westerners are bigger than Chinese people, but we can see our own hips and he doesn't need to point that out. He said that he meant that my hips were bigger than my shoulders. I let it go.
On Wednesday, Jenna and I will go down to Guiyang. She's leaving for Beijing on Thursday morning and she and Julian and I are going to celebrate our birthdays and Jenna's leaving. I got Julian the second season of South Park on DVD and I got a set of Zunyi Meeting Place stamps with a pin of the place. After Guiyang, I will head east to Kaili and the minority villages around it. I told Lucy this and she said she was worried about me. I told her not to worry. China's actually a really safe country and I think the rural folk could probably be held accountable if a foreigner died in their village, even if it wasn't their fault. After we came back to the school, she stayed in the front office and was talking with Amy, our new director in Zunyi. Then a while later, Amy came and asked me if it would be okay if her cousin came with me to Kaili. She's 18 years old and likes to backpack, though she only speaks a little English. I told her she was welcome to if she actually wants to. In eastern Guizhou, they don't even really speak Mandarin. They speak more like funny, backwoods, incomprehensible talk, so even my pitiful Mandarin wouldn't be understood, and I would have no idea what they were saying. And if this girl is up for visiting random little remote villages, so much the better. As you might remember, Jenna got to go to a Miao wedding when she was in the area, damn her.
There's a new guy coming to Guizhou. He's one of the posters on Thorn Tree, the Lonely Planet message board. Jenna invited him to meet us on Wednesday. Julian is opposed to meeting him, because he fears change. He's a young Irish guy and I'm happy for any foreigners who drop in. Hopefully he would fall somewhere between Julian and Angel on the Funmeter. Angel showed up for open day yesterday and said that he had been drinking all night and hadn't slept. congratulations? He's 30 or 35 years old.
My shirt today says:
OLD COLLEGE
ORIGINAL
ATH. DEPT
18-72
THESE GOODS WNICH HEPI BEING LOVEDEROM
THE OLD AGE BY THE PEOPLE
ANNOUNCE A NEW WORK FPOMTHIS AS WELL
Just looking up "Miao" (the minority people in E. Guizhou) on the internet and I found a woman in Georgia selling them. She has embroidered baby carriers for up to $950. That's ridiculous! And she has sleeve bands for up to $535 for a pair. This stuff is ridiculous. And lucrative. Can I interest anyone in Miao embroidery? The website is www.marlamallett.com. Feel free to check it out and let me know if you are interested in anything. I don't know if I will be able to find such elaborate things, but I will look. They have many wall hangings that are about 15"x15". Cell phone holders, purses, sleeve bands (that you can sew onto shirts or pants, though the dyes run), baby carriers, children's hats, etc. Let me know if you are interested and I will just buy stuff and get back to you.
The day before yesterday, one of Jenna's students came in with a Monkey King boxing puppet. The Monkey King is a character from "Journey to the West", a Chinese epic folktale. She asked the student where he had bought it -- turns out it was a toy given out with happy meals at the local fast food joint. So we went down there and ordered two happy meals on the condition that we could get the Monkey King dolls. They had other dolls: Scary Pig Man (from JttW), Osama bin Laden, Bush, and Saddam Hussein, but the Monkey King is just creepy. Like one of the evil monkeys from the Wizard of Oz. They looked everywhere, but they only had one Monkey King. We were really disappointed, so the girl asked me if we worked at Interlingua (we said yes) and gave me a Scary Pig Guy and told me that if she was able to find a Monkey King, she would bring it to school. Jenna and I sat there eating dinner, eyeing the children to see if any of them had a Monkey King. I saw one that did and suggested offering a trade. Jenna said that she still had dignity, and I imagined the kid would start crying. They always do.
The next morning at school, I was just about to teach my morning class when the woman from Dicos (fast food place) came in with a Monkey King! I thanked her profusely, fortunately, I stopped myself from hugging her. She might have thought that was a bit weird. I offered to give her back Scary Pig Man, but she said that I could keep it. Yay!
Then in class, my boys were playing with the Monkey King, so I threatened to kill them, as usual.
The boys are funny. They were talking in class the other day, while I was trying to listen to another student and so I "shh-ed" them. Then they started talking again, so I gave them an evil look and said, "If you keep talking I will kill you!" That shut them up for a little while, but they soon started talking again, so I turned to them again and said, "I will kill you!" Fine. So more students were reading what they had wrote and some girls in the back started talking, so I shh-ed them and the boys said, "She will kill you!"
Yesterday was Jenna's last day teaching, so we went out to the Korean restaurant for dinner. Then we were walking through town and stopped at a CD/DVD store. They had 20 James Bond DVD's for $1 each (after bargaining) of which I am now the proud owner. Jenna found a Journey to the West set.
Then we went home and watched an old Bollywood flick. Then I woke up this morning and called the school and asked them what time I needed to come in, specifically telling the woman to check the schedule (which was at school) and she said that I could come in now (10 a.m.), not bothering to clear up my should/could question. So I did and pointed to the schedule taped on the wall that said that I didn't need to be there until 11:30. Thanks so much.
We also talked about music and I was pleased to hear that some of the girls agree with me that F4 (a Chinese boy band) look like girls. Some even thought the Backstreet Boys are bad. Not most of the boys, though. The Backstreet Boys are their favorite. They won by a large margin. The two girls who go to the Foreign Languages School in Chengdu mentioned Def Leppard when I asked them to give me band names. They knew "Pour Some Sugar on Me." They are the ones with a 24 y.o. teacher from LA. I asked them where I could find good cd's in Zunyi, as I've had almost no luck so far, and some of them offered to take me shopping after class. So we took a bus out to the new part of town and first they took me to a small cd store, but that didn't have what we wanted, so we went to a really huge cd store. About the size of a small Tower Records. I was really impressed. They had cd's, dvd's, and vcd's. I even found the second season of South Park on DVD! Yay! And I got some other stuff. At another store, I found 50 Cent. It is a two disc set, which is odd as he has only put out one cd. The first song on the next cd is "Nellyville". Its other songs include "Oh, Nelly" and "Hot in Herre".
Tomorrow we go to the zoo. Should be lots of fun, in a depressing, heart breaking kind of way.
I just bought yogurt from a stand this evening. They don't have to refrigerate their yogurt or milk here and apparently it's shelf life is many weeks. Ahh, chemicals.
On Wednesday, we will go to the zoo. We get to learn even more Latin words!