Also, re. the water cooler. I asked yesterday at school about the unnecessary number and my TA said that you just call, give the neighborhood name, and say that the foreigners want water.
Moving on.
I saw Undercover Brother the other night. Fabulous movie. The '70s camera work was great, as was Neal Patrick Harris. Chris Kattan could have died much, much earlier.
The Headmistress came up to Zunyi yesterday. Her son is preparing for tests and she manages the school. Jenna and I had asked for money for Children's Day (this Saturday), so we could work on art projects that would also be for the end of the year performances. Apparently there was some misunderstanding and she thought we wanted a lot more money than we actually did. She explained the finance situation of the school: last month they borrowed 20,000 RMB for this school to put the kindergarten (her brother's pet project) together. Who knows if anything will ever come of the kindergarten. She said that the Guizhou gov't had asked for money, something, something... not clear... but she would be asking for it back. It sounded suspiciosly like the gov't asked for bribes to give the approval for foreigners to work for the school, b/c she said that it was *her* money. Fishy. We have been assured that salaries will not be a problem.
Zunyi Temple. There's a temple in Zunyi where Jenna studies. It's really nice and old, on the top of a hill in the middle of town. During the Cultural Revolution many of these were destroyed, but this one, which really should have been, given the location and importance of the town to the Long March and all, hadn't been. Jenna asked her temple "mother" about this, and she said that before the Communists came through, the townspeople planted trees and plants, and threw debris into and around the temple. When they were asked about the temple they feigned ignorance, and only in the 1980s did they uncover it and restore it to working order.
Jenna found four roaches in her bedroom last night. She slept in the living room. We think (hope) they came in through the open window. That room is usually close, but she had opened the window and her curtains were blowing out. We found two of the roaches on the curtains and the two others very near. We are disgusted. Today is re-fumigate day. I fear this may become a roach-update website. I really hope not. I did mention that they don't have exterminators in China, right?
Later that day...
So, apartment is fuming. I am going to recommend staying away from this hemisphere, at least for a few hours.
In the May 2003 Vogue that Mom sent me, there was an article written by a journalist about raising her kids around the world; the balance between having broad horizons and a sense of being an American. She wrote about studying in China when she was young and while it was more than 20 years ago, it struck me as relevant in regards to how some of us view(ed) China. Of course, China has been steadily moving towards Capitalism for quite some time. With that, the quality of life has improved, so the picture that the author paints is somewhat outdated. Anyway, here's an excerpt:
"I first fell in love with China as an act of rebellion, and I found the propaganda coming out of Communist China seductive... So, as a junior [at Harvard], I grudgingly went to Taiwan, only because mainland China-the cool Communist China-wasn't yet open to Americans. I viewed my elegant, matronly Chinese teachers, who had escaped during the war, with disdain, and considered their anti-Communist jargon a bunch of Fascist propaganda.
"That was, until I first visited the mainland, in 1979, where I found a country of grim-faced blue-and-gray suited bicyclists. The hotel floor attendants watched us all the time. The markets had next to nothing for sale. And through my only real personal contact with a family-a secret visit one of my teachers had arranged-I found nothing but fear and suffering. By the time I returned the next day to take pictures of my new friends, the 'neighborhood residents' committee' had already interrogated them about my visit. The experience scared me profoundly and challenged everything I had believed: What I had viewed as Western propaganda turned out to be completely true. Slowly, after I got over my shock and embarrassment, my political ideas about the world became more nuanced and informed: I didn't stop loving China, but its government no longer fooled me; I didn't stop hating certain things about the United States, but I no longer fooled myself that it wasn't truly the land of the free."
Right, so ideas about being "fun" being accepted. You guys think I'm fun, right? If only the kids had the same background (it's hard to get The Simpsons growing up in small town China). I suppose I could give them a list of books/movies that I will be referencing throughout the semester, but they are pretty bad at studying at home.
Haha. I just asked Orlando and he said that my class was fun. But not being one to rest on my laurels, I'm going to make a big effort to be mindless. Yeah, that will take a really big effort.
See? Funny!
They took my temperature on the way down and on the way back. It's standard procedure on buses now. That brings the number of times I have had my temperature taken to 7. Total number of times reported to the government: 27. Of course, about 19 of those were fudged. We had to report our temperatures to the school for 10 days after getting back from Xinjiang. I didn't remember most days, so I just kind of made something up based on a faint line that was on the thermometer when they gave it to me. We had to report in Celcius. I knew body temperature was about 37 degrees, but wasn't exactly sure, and the line on the thing looked like it was at about 36.8, so I usually said that. I had brought a fahrenheit thermometer from America, but it didn't have Celcius conversion, and the thermometer they gave me here didn't have fahrenheit. And I had always just brushed my teeth or something when it occurred to me to check. Anyway, turns out the school was supposed to report my temperature *twice* a day and it was supposed to be checked by a doctor. So the school just faked the second temperature and found a doctor willing to sign off on it without seeing us.
Jenna moved into my place yesterday. She was supposed to move into another apartment kind of far away from school, but as she regularly e-mails into the wee hours, and buses stop running at about midnight, she asked if she could stay with me. The school didn't understand why she didn't want her own place, but then they also didn't let us see it, after asking multiple times (and their agreeing to show us, but never following through). Hopefully things will work out well. We each have our bathroom. I will have to move the TV out into the living room, so no Magnetic Fields as I brush my teeth in the morning. I might just go out and pick up a cheap set of speakers. Jenna actually has food. It's weird. I mean, I bought strawberries the other day -- have I given my official "the fruit here is better" speech? no? i will -- and I still have two Nature Valley oats and honey granola bars, and now chocolates from mom- some tea, too, but that's about it.
Right the fruit. It's all about distribution area. Most of the fruit here is locally grown. It's not necessarily as pretty, nor does it all have a really long shelf-life, but it can be so good. Their strawberries, especially the little ones are just perfect. They are all perfume-y (word?) and wonderful. France has the same thing, plus they do mayonnaise and bread products amazingly well. I digress. They have several fruits here that I've never seen before. There is a little berry, a bit darker than a raspberry, with a pit like a cherry, but the fruit doesn't separate from it as easily- more like it clings to a plum, and the flesh is kind of fibrous. I'm not such a huge fan. Then they have small red plums- they look like big red grapes. Their peaches are more oblong than ours and seem to generally have red flesh. Mine rotted before they got ripe. Or maybe they did get ripe. I wasn't really paying attention. There's another fruit that's kind of like an apricot, but more oblong, and instead of a pit it has four dark brown, garlic clove-shaped things in the middle. It's a bit bland, but good. They have regular-sized mangoes, and little ones; oblong eggplants, and round ones; red and yellow carrots. It's all very interesting. They sell tofu, meat, innards, vegetables, and chicken's claws on sticks.
Off to plan lessons. Send Vogue.