Intensive classes start tomorrow. Violin, my best student, just stopped by to drop off a batik. She's going to Sichuan for a ski holiday, so she will miss me later on. The batik is some woman carrying some huge thing on her back and some man smoking opium or something. Not quite sure. Typical.
I think I am going to make a countdown calendar to put on my wall. At this point, being here is... something very not good. I want to be in Laos. I want to chill! I want to do nothing!
Some annoying person is playing the piano on the other side of this wall. My use of the word "playing" is not meant to imply any actual logical ordering of notes. Makes writing difficult.
Julian and I tried to go to the Korean restaurant in town, but it had been turned into a massage parlor. Or perhaps a "massage parlor". So we went instead, to the Champs-Elysees, the pseudo-western restaurant/tea house in town. They have, like, five western things on the menu. Julian got spaghetti, which had too much black pepper for him. I got the beef curry, which tasted suspiciously like Chinese food. Then we played Canasta and he absolutely trounced me, but he kept getting all the wild cards and red threes. Ridiculous. When my luck finally changed, I did well, but alas, it was too late. And the smoke was unbearable. I have yet to quiz the staff re. the pronunciation of the name of the place.
Bad news: my ski jacket has gone away. Fortunately, it was rather old, and I had been thinking that I needed a new one anyway. Also good is that I bought my stylish, though not-at-all flattering Tibetan coat in Xiahe. On New Year's, I was wearing my fleece and coat and my coat was on the bottom of the pile of coats at the club and my fleece was on the top and Julian and I left before some of the others and I put on my fleece, but forgot my coat. He and I realized this on our way home and went back, but the club people said that Angel had taken it. That would have been good if he hadn't lost it on his way home. So, yes, unfortunate. Fortunately, I don't think I had anything of value in it.
Off to home to do something pseudo-productive.
Basically done with teaching. I still have to finish watching Raiders of the Lost Ark with my teens tonight and I told DD I would take him to a tea house tomorrow night, but in terms of actual work, I'm finished.
My 1B class asked me if I would be their teacher next semester. I told them that I was going home to America and they asked when I was coming back, b/c they want me to teach them. Last weekend my 2A class asked the same thing. When I said that I wasn't coming back, they asked, "But what if our next teacher isn't beautiful?" as though this were a real concern. I told them I just didn't know. Their compliments usually go something like, "Jenny, you're so beautiful. We love you Jenny. Let's go to the park! Please!"
New Year's. I taught DD that night and Angel called school and asked if Julian and I would be interested in meeting up with him and some progressive Chinese friends. We agreed and met him and a parent and a student (JLK- Alice, 3A), gathering more people as we walked to a tea house. Very Pied Piper, minus the mass murder. We went to the tea house that Julian and I had gone to on Christmas and more people came. They ordered beer and Oolong tea, which being the nice kind, comes with a serving chick. I asked if they ever have guys doing the serving and we had a short discussion gender roles and tea serving. Doesn't really lend itself to a long one, but it was nice to be around people who get the point the question was making. Not a particularly profound point, but it's nice to talk to people who think a bit more independently.
Happy New Year everyone! My plans for the evening include tutoring DD, seeing if my DVD store has the new Lord of the Rings yet, and eating cookies from Eric, who contniues to make my "favorite people" list. The Shortbread Elves get an honorable mention for confectionary contributions.
Only one more weekend this semester. Then 10 days of intensives and then it's down to Laos! I will be meeting Graham in Luang Prabang. He's the British teacher who was working in Zunyi for the Volunteer Services Overseas. He left last month or so, but has decided to move to Bangkok and is taking some time to travel. He's very laid back and hopefully easy to intimidate. The question is, how many camping backpacks can he carry at once? He claims not to traffic in drugs or human cargo, and seems to have acquiesced to be the one thrown to bandits, should our bus be hijacked (or maybe he thought that part of the e-mail was a joke). All in all, a pretty useful guy.
Gloria and Wendy probably arrrived in Dalian today. Now I can write all sorts of scandalous things about them, since Geocities is blocked in China.
Kiss someone for me!
Today is testing. No real teaching to do. My first class was, of course, stupid. The others were wonderful, though. HM supervised my first class for me. I think she got a taste of how bad it can be.
Then Julian gave me a batik with a naked chick. It was a gift to him from two of his adult, female students. They are all young and are trying to get him to go out for drinks. As batiks with naked chicks aren't his thing, I volunteered to take it off his hands. Julian has no comment... oh wait, "The chick was hot, but we weren't meant to be together." Such is life.
What is everyone doing for New Year's Eve? Fun parties? My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail.
Is it wrong of me to want to do my coworker harm if he makes loud sucking sounds every time he takes a drink from his bottle of tea? It's the only sound in the room.
Anyway, I couldn't write the rest of the Kitchen Gnome story yesterday, b/c the program went stupid and now I forget what I was going to write.
I hope everyone had a merry Christmas and sang lots of carols and had fun parties and Christmas cookies and made s'mores. I explained s'mores to DD last night, but he didn't know what marshmallows were. I did a better job explaining why China doesn't allow its currency to float and why China's goods for export are better quality than those for domestic consumption.
Merry Christmas all. If my hands weren't so cold, I would take this opportunity to tell you all about last night and the now seriously Psycho Kitchen Gnome. Oh, forget my hands. It's a pretty entertaining story.
So, last night we had dinner and I came back to the office. Julian and I were going to walk around town and see how things looked, since Christmas Eve is the night when everyone walks around. We wanted to play canasta later on and Julian had a couple of things to drop off at his apartment, so we agreed that I would check e-mail and he would drop his stuff off and come back. Just after Julian left, the Kitchen Gnome came into the office and pointed at my desk drawer and said something about her eating. She can't really speak proper Chinese, but between gestures, my knowledge of recent events, and some words here and there, I could figure out what she meant. But I didn't really feel like dealing with her alone, esp. as I can only get general meanings and she never understands what I say, so I said/gestured that I was going to go out to the front office and get someone to help, at which point she said there was no one there. [slightly foreboding music] I went up front anyway and Julian was in the process of unlocking the gate, so I asked him if he would come back. He did and asked the Kitchen Gnome what the problem was. She said that I had told HM that she had eaten my granola bars, when she hadn't. Fine, fair enough. But then she spent the next ten minutes practically yelling at me and hitting my desk to punctuate what she was saying and basically being confrontational and aggressive.
Julian was quite brilliant and helpful. I hid behind him most of the time. The Kitchen Gnome said that I had accused her of stealing my food and Julian said that we had just told HM that some food was missing, but we didn't know who did it. I later congratulated him on his quick thinking, commenting that I probably would have told the truth (which is that I told HM that the KG most likely stole my food). He said that this was China, silly girl, no one tells the truth. How right he is.
Eventually, I him to ask her what she wanted us to do. She said that she wanted us to tell HM that she didn't take the granola bars. Julian said that since we didn't have any proof either way, we couldn't say that for sure, but we would talk to HM. You can bet your bottom dollar on that one. Then the phone rang and she went to answer it. We took that opportunity to lock the office and work on leaving. Angel was on the phone to see if we wanted to hang out, since it was Christmas eve, so we agreed and left school.
The freakiest part of the whole thing is that she purposefully waited until everyone was gone to confront me. She could have easily had anyone translate if she had just wanted to tell me how she felt and say that she hadn't done it, but she didn't. Now, while I can't prove that she was going to take a poker from one of the coal stoves and try to beat me over the head, I have my suspicions. But really, I can't understand her, she can't understand me, what was her plan? To yell at me and point to the drawer? What would that accomplish? Hence my suspicions about the poker. And while I would perhaps be more likely to believe her, since she seemed so adamant about having not done it, I now think she's psycho. More than before.
I should add that at dinner, HM told me that the Kitchen Gnome had apparently been making long distance phone calls costing hundreds of RMB, which she then denied. It's funny, b/c Julian and I had seen her on the phone once when we were leaving late at night and had joked that she didn't know how to use it (she is illiterate) and was calling random countries. The phone bills had been going up recently and HM asked the office girls if they had been making phone calls. They said yes, but when HM asked the Kitchen Gnome, she said no. Unfortunately, the phone company keeps records of these things (surprise?) and many of the calls were made during times when the Kitchen Gnome was the only one here.