School Begins

Well the moment I had been waiting for for months has finally come, school has started. I am now an English teacher at Guilin Yangguang Elementary school. Yangguang roughly translates into English as "Sunny" but I'm going to keep calling it Yangguang because calling it the Guilin Sunny School makes it sound like I work at a daycare center (oh shit maybe that is what I'm doing). But in all seriousness I was surprised and very impressed by the campus. I had heard going into it that Yangguang had a reputation as being the nicest elementary school in Guilin but I wasn't exactly sure what that meant. The campus is completely gated with three buildings (two of which are four stories and one that is three) surrounding a large courtyard with basketball courts and a large building off to the side for "international students" (99.9% of which are Chinese). I had originally thought that I would be only teaching the second grade but on my first day I was informed that, in addition to teaching second grade, I would be teaching grades ranging from preschool (WTF!) to 6th grade. I have found all of the grades to be manageable but dealing with preschoolers has reaffirmed my feeling that I am nowhere close to a point in my life where I would be ready for a child of my own. One of the things that I have really noticed about these kids is that they have a desire to learn greater than most kids I have seen at their age. I still can't decide if it's genuine or if they have parents who have really hammered home the fact that they are paying a lot of money for them to go to school there, nevertheless it makes my job a bit easier. My two other coworkers and I combine to form the entire population of westerners in the school, so our presence has been met with great interest and curiosity. Walking in between classes is always an adventure for me. I've had kids spying on me through windows, try to touch my face and hair, and one time I had a group of about ten 2nd graders surround me and each try to hug me. Every time a student sees me in the hallways they always waive and say "Hello teacher!" Most of the kids seem very eager to practice their English with me, and with the school's accelerated English curriculum many of them are quite good. I almost wish that this was the kind of school I went to when I was younger in Taiwan. It also makes me realize that the U.S. really needs to step up their foreign language education in elementary schools.

A typical day at Yangguang starts at around 7 A.M. where students arrive and eat breakfast before the first class at 8. Before classes begin, all students sit in their classrooms and recite some type of creed or motto (my Chinese isn't good enough yet to understand fully what they're saying) followed by what I think is the national anthem. Things go along normally until 9:30 AM when, if it isn't raining, all of the students go out to the courtyard and line up by grade do their morning exercises. These exercises take the form of a choreographed dance that follows a 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 cadence demonstrated by a faculty member on a stage in front of everybody. After the exercises comes the daily English sentence...that's where I come in. The three foreign teachers are supposed to split days to do it but since I'm new I've gotten stuck with the duty more often than not. A person then hands me a microphone and I get on stage and recite a prepared sentence several times, which the

Student beds

student body then repeats back to me. After the assembly, classes resume until around noon when the students break for lunch and a nap (every single student in the school has their own bed). This break lasts for over two hours and classes resume at 2:20 PM. During this time one of my coworkers and I will usually go back to his apartment and watch a movie. Classes continue until 5:45 PM and then the day is over. All of the classes are forty minutes long with breaks in between where some activity or exercise is planned. Everything seems very regimented from the exercises to the mandatory apple eating immediately following the nap (seriously, that's real). They must have figured out some formula to help students retain the maximum amount of information in a given day. Don't worry America I'll keep investigating and taking secret notes. As I alluded to earlier everything my job requires seems very manageable to me and even fun at times, but talk to me in two weeks and see how I feel then.

"Going Native" Experience of the Week

Coming face-to-face with one of these bad boys during what I'll call a "moment of crisis":

Not Cool

I know that China isn't the only country to use these squatters as toilets, but the whole approach to toilets and bathrooms here is mind boggling to me. This is what the bathroom looks like next to my office at school:

Aside from the obvious lack of doors on the stalls and the trench that would absolutely ruin your day should you accidentally slip into it, notice how short the sides of the stalls are. I'm a short person and those things barely reach my waist. What's the point? Something to hold on to for extra stability maybe?  They certainly aren't there for privacy. Also, there is no toilet paper to be found anywhere in this and many other bathrooms. Living here you need to get in the habit of always carrying around a packet of multipurpose tissues in case of an emergency. Failure to do so can result in some pretty shitty (HA!) consequences. So that's another item that I need to carry with me at all times in addition to my local phone, iphone (for pictures), keys, and wallet. It's a lot to carry everywhere I go especially when I'm wearing a pair of khakis. Maybe I should get some cargo pants or a man purse...haha just kidding, never. Now, if I lived in a poor area that didn't have an adequate drainage system I wouldn't be drawing attention to their bathrooms like I am, but I don't. The school I teach at is a private school with a reputation for being the nicest in the entire city. The school has enough money to purchase beds for all of its students, provide everybody with three meals a day, own local real estate so its employees can live for free, and have nice glass backboards on its basketball hoops in the playground. But stall doors and toilet paper are nowhere to be found. Oh and I'm pretty sure the bathroom in that picture is unisex.


Mandarin Improvement Sign

One of the positive aspects of teaching young kids for me is that their English is not very good which forces me to try to explain lessons and activities in Chinese. I have gotten a lot of laughs from the students when I try to speak because I'm sure that I'm butchering a lot of the pronunciation; but, if I am able to get my message across and they do what I want them to do it gives me a feeling of satisfaction.

Funny Sign of the Week

Posted throughout the school are a series of motivational and instructional signs. Most of them make sense but I thought this would be a good section to share them, many of you are probably reading this as you're procrastinating at work so maybe it'll help motivate:

Of course they have a quote from Marx. Also, "numinous" is not a word

Reason Why I Like This Place
Spontaneously placed elliptical machines! What a good way to promote public health. Now they just need to conquer the rampant tobacco addiction here.

Random Tangent

I actually had a pretty lengthy, musically-themed installment here but it's late, I'm tired and I have a 13.5 hour train ride to Hong Kong tomorrow which I'm sure will provide me with some good material for my next post so it'll have to wait for another time. Instead I'll leave you with a clip of one of my favorite movie scenes of all time from one of my favorite movies of all time Pulp Fiction.

Hope everyone home is staying safe from the polar vortex, whatever that is.

**I had some good pictures and videos from my school but they're on my ipad which is currently having difficulty syncing with my computer, I'll have them next time.

Calm Before the Storm

My god it's cold here. I thought I was through with Blacksburg winters. While the actual temperature hasn't been exceedingly low (mid thirties to low forties) there's more humidity than I'm accustomed to. It's the kind of cold that penetrates any area that isn't being blasted by a heater and makes you dread getting out of the shower; once you throw wind into the mix, it can be pretty brutal. Besides showering, the only other time that I feel somewhat warm is when I'm out running. I haven't had much to do while I wait for school to begin so running has become my attempt at creating a routine for myself. I've been able to carve out a route which, due to living in an urban area, hasn't been the easiest task. My route takes me behind my building and down a path that goes around one of the mini karst mountains (these erupt sporadically throughout the city), past a Buddhist temple, through a small street market, up a gravel path that becomes a sort of construction zone, and loops back to the main road which takes me back to CLI. The distance is about two miles and the amount of loops I do depends on how I'm feeling that day. Running here doesn't seem to be as popular a form of exercise as it is in the U.S. The exercises I see people doing range from simple stretching to Tai Chi to chinese yo yo-ing to the man I saw last summer who decided to exercise his vocal cords by standing in the middle of a soccer field, spreading his arms and yelling at the top of his lungs at 8 AM. Craziness. The market is always the most interesting stretch on my route. I get the

part of my route

sense that A) they don't get many runners coming through and B) they haven't seen many people who look like me. My legs don't get very cold when I'm running so usually I'm wearing shorts when I come barreling through which, combined with my whiteness, creates quite a spectacle for these people. I see a lot of them nudging their friends and pointing at me as if to say "What the hell is that strange looking person doing?" While others look as though they can't comprehend what they're seeing.

Spring Festival is more or less over so more stores and restaurants are now open as the city seems to be getting back into the normal swing of things. I'm wrapping up my second week here and I've started to compile a list of go to food establishments. These places range from sit-down restaurants to street vendors. The process of finding these places has been largely trial and error, and there have certainly been some errors. The health codes here are not as strict as in the U.S. so I've found that it's best not to think about what health violations are occuring in the kitchen where my food is being made. The other day I found a small restaurant near my building that I enjoyed, however, upon leaving I noticed a sign with a large letter C on the wall and realized that that was the health rating. I would've been grossed out but that restaurant wasn't even close to the dirtiest place I've eaten. Many places don't even have health ratings. Good thing I packed a lot of Tums. Running isn't the only time where I get a lot of stares. Seeing a waiguoren (foreigner) eating at a local Guilin spot also seems to be pretty amusing to the people around here. I normally go to lunch alone so I've had people come sit at my table and try to speak to me in English, to which I'll do my best to respond in Chinese. I've had others simply stare at me and smile without making any attempt at subtlety. The other day I had an old man and woman stand next to where I was sitting and watch me eat, while conversing with each other in the local Guilin dialect and laughing with each successful bite I took. All of the attention I've been getting is mostly borne out of curiosity and is always non-threatening, so I don't mind it and I do my best to smile and acknowledge them. It's also been a good way to practice Chinese.

The restaurant health rating. I love the emoticon.

I'm starting to become more and more convinced that chopsticks are just one big practical joke that Asians play on outsiders. It's not as though these people have never heard of a fork before (at least spoons are used here). I just think the sight of a foreigner struggling to eat food that is placed right in front of them is a joke that never gets old. I've spent a decent amount of time in this part of the world throughout my life so I've more or less gotten it down, but it hasn't been easy (try eating rice with chopsticks) and I still struggle every now and then (always to the amusement of whoever is eating with me or nearby). When I first taught myself how to use chopsticks I always held them with my thumb, ring, and middle finger, until one day I was informed that that was not the proper way to hold them. Furthermore, I learned that if your index finger wasn't holding the chopsticks and was pointing at someone who you are eating with, that it is a sign of disrespect to some people. I then had to teach myself all over again how to hold them. I personally think that they just saw a foreigner who was getting too comfortable and decided to ruffle my feathers a bit. I must say though, I do respect their dedication to the chopstick as a utensil, not because I think it's some cool cultural norm that has endured through the years, but rather that it is a subtle, yet effective, way to prevent too many westerners from infiltrating their country, especially Americans. If you're looking to protect a native population from American influence there's no need to waste time making immigration harder, simply make eating harder. Americans will be more distressed than Tobias Funke taking a shower.

The 3rd and 4th characters are gou and rou which mean dog meat.
I haven't eaten here...yet

Aside from my food and exercise adventures there hasn't been much to report. I've gotten pretty bored at times but something tells me in a few weeks I will be looking back on this time with nostalgia. On Monday I will enter a room with about 30 second grade students and attempt to teach them English. Something I anticipate will require more patience than I've ever needed before.

Oh yea and I saw a guy riding down the road today on a scooter with a crate of roasted dog carcasses attached to the back...so there's that.



"Going Native" Experience of the Week
I realize that the concept of an arcade is not a distinctly Asian creation, however, going to an arcade in China is. Due to my prior experiences in Guilin and Taiwan, I was already aware that the video gaming scene in Asia was on a different level than back home. Still, despite being armed with this knowledge, something definitely gets lost in translation when you actually experience it firsthand. It was the weekend and some friends and I were looking for a way to kill a few hours before heading out to the bars. One of the girls in the group suggested that going to an arcade would be a good way to accomplish that, we all agreed. The entrance to the place was a nondescript, descending staircase; however, as we walked further down, there was a blue glow that continued to get brighter and music that continued to get louder. When we reached the bottom I couldn't tell if I was at a rave or an arcade. Blue lights were flashing all around me and the combination of the music and sound effects from the games was loud enough to where you had to shout at the person next to you. As far as games go they had everything: driving games, shooting games, basketball games, fighting games, rock band, trivia, item grabs, some type of rhythmic gong-hitting game, and some game in the back that combines virtual fishing, gambling, and repeatedly pushing some green button. That final game looked pretty stressful and all of the tables were under a large cloud of smoke that came from the participants sucking down cigarettes at a pace that can only be described as lethal. We all bought tokens and off we went. I didn't win anything and I left with the group an hour and a half later with fried retinas and ringing ears, it was pretty fun though.


Mandarin Improvement Sign
Playing Chinese drinking games. It's amazing how much your confidence level increases after a few drinks. I should knock a few back before school (kidding mom).

Funny Sign of the Week
Again from the archives:

Fancy way of saying overpriced airport retail store

Reason Why I Like This Place
The eggplant here is the best I've ever had. It makes me actually want to eat vegetables because I enjoy them, rather than feeling obligated to put something green next to a 16 oz steak. Living here is definitely going to improve my spicy food game as well.



Random Tangent

^Bum

The Indiana Pacers have been my favorite NBA team since I was in kindergarten. It's the only professional American sports team that I did not inherit from my dad; coincidentally, it's the only professional American sports team I root for that is actually good (what else did you dupe me into Dad?). Since the Washington Redskins, Seattle Mariners, Washington Capitals, Virginia Tech Football/Basketball, and even Manchester United this year are more or less crap, it has been very exciting to watch this current NBA season, and witness the team I root for become arguably the best in the league. With the emergence of Paul George combined with a revitalized bench, one of the best defenses in recent history, and an especially weak eastern conference, it's been pretty smooth sailing for the Pacers heading into the All-Star break. I am concerned, however, with their recent signing of Andrew Bynum. Even back when he was on the Lakers he was one of my least favorite players in the league. He's an entitled, locker room cancer who has left a trail of dysfunction in his wake (more here). He clearly doesn't care enough about basketball any more  to improve and is simply hanging on to collect a few more paychecks. Although far be it from me to question the methods of GM Larry Bird. He's the only person to ever be the MVP as a player and go on to become coach and GM of the year. He's basically made the sport of basketball his bitch. That being said, a trend that I've noticed with people who have experienced that kind of success, is that they begin to get too cute and outsmart themselves because they think they can succeed with players that "lesser" people have failed with (Patriots/Tim Tebow and Albert Haynesworth, Lakers/Kwame Brown, any team who has ever signed Mario Balotelli or Milton Bradley). This signing by the Pacers seems to be following in those footsteps. I get that it's a minimum contract and that he'll be spending the majority of the time on the bench but the guy is, by all accounts, a shithead. While things have been pretty easy so far for the Pacers there will come a point this season where they are faced with adversity and when that happens, Bynum is not somebody you want in your locker room. I'm sure that I'm probably overanalyzing all of this but as a big sports fan who has witnessed so little success in my life from any of my teams, I feel like I have a lot riding on this NBA season. Therefore, if the Pacers have their season torpedoed by some guy riddled with red flags who they willingly signed I swear I'm going to...well...I'll do something.

Leave any questions/comments/concerns below or email me. Hope everyone back home is staying safe and enjoying the snow.

The Eagle Has Landed

Well I made it, although it would seem that my body still thinks that I'm on the east coast of the United States. Due to the fact that Guilin is thirteen hours ahead of Richmond, I anticipate that it will take at least a week for me to get used to this time zone. My erratic sleeping patterns have so far supported this theory. Despite a first day flight cancellation, which led to me having an overnight layover in Detroit, the trip went relatively smoothly, relatively being the operative word. I made a critical long flight blunder in that I did not download enough reading material on my kindle. After finishing reading what little I had on there, I was forced to choose from the movie selection provided for me on my personal TV, a devastating first world problem. During the 12.5 hour flight which took me over Canada, the North Pole, Russia, and Mongolia before finally landing in Beijing, I managed to watch Forest Gump (great movie I had never seen before), Goodfellas (ditto), The Purge (made me want to purge whoever directed that pile of crap), Rush (better than I thought it would be) and The End of Watch (not a fan of the home video style of filming). I arrived in Beijing at 3:30 PM and had a six hour layover before my final three hour flight to Guilin. By the time I boarded the plane, I had been awake for over 24 hours and was planning on trying to catch some rest so that I wouldn't be a zombie when I arrived at my final destination. After takeoff I began to settle in but just as I was about to fall asleep, a teenage Chinese girl (or maybe she was in her mid to late twenties, who knows, Asian girls seem to age much slower) sitting next to me pulls out her phone and starts playing What Does the Fox Say at full volume without bothering to put her headphones in. Are you kidding me? The only thing I could do at that point was laugh. I guess that song is making an attempt to fill the void left by the immortal Gangnam Style. Somebody needs to explain to me how the fox song became so popular. Gangnam Style was a bit silly also, but at least it's a song you can bob your head to while drunk at a party. Attempting to sing along with the fox song could lead to some people mistaking you for having a seizure. Anyways, about 20 minutes after the song was over, the plane ran into a particularly violent patch of turbulence. The intercom came on and, since this was a domestic China flight, told everyone in Mandarin what I assumed to be along the lines of "we 're experiencing turbulence please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts." A couple seconds later the intercom comes back on and, in English, says "Everybody please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts the plane...has been destabilized...." WAIT WHAT?! The announcement sent a jolt of panic through my body that immediately pulled me out of my half awake half asleep state. Frantically I began looking around and noticed that nobody else seemed to be worried. I realized then that it must've been an imperfect translation. I was one of maybe three white people on that plane so I doubt the flight attendants even realized the scare they gave me. Falling asleep after that was out of the question, but at least the rest of the flight went without incident. I arrived in Guilin at midnight and was taken to the Chinese Language Institute (hereafter CLI) where I immediately collapsed into a much-needed sleep.

Quick tangent: On the first two legs of my trip I flew on Delta airlines, an American company, while on the last leg I flew on China Southern, a domestic Chinese company who is a partner of Delta. After experiencing those two flights I came to notice the enormous gulf of difference between the service of American vs Chinese airlines. The flight attendants on American airlines seem to all have the looks and demeanor of an angry, beaten down elementary school bus driver. They make you feel like they're doing you a favor by simply doing their job. On the other hand, China Southern (annoying passengers and translation problems aside) had young, attractive attendants who always had a smile on their face and were constantly checking on people to see if their needs were met. Now, I do realize that Chinese airlines have a more extensive history of plane crashes than American airlines, but I take solace in knowing that all of my needs will be met right up until the point that I become vaporized in a fiery explosion. Come on America, get your shit together.

So now I find myself staying in a temporary room at CLI as my apartment isn't ready for me to move into

Local street art

quite yet. The atmosphere in Guilin is quite different than what it was when I left last summer. Right now it's the Spring Festival in China, which is a two week celebration that coincides with Chinese New Year. This is a family-oriented holiday where schools and many businesses go on vacation. CLI is pretty much empty and many of the restaurants that I would normally go to are closed, making getting food a bit of a chore. Despite these obstacles, there is a certain independence that I feel when I'm alone that I really enjoy. While I do love travelling with friends, sometimes I feel that it can cause you to descend into groupthink, which can stagnate and dumb down the experience a bit. While it's always good to share an experience with someone else, I believe it is equally important to make an effort to form your own opinion of your situation and surroundings; something that can only come through self-discovery. I'm sure in a week I will be bored out of my mind and ready to start making some more friends but right now I'm pretty content.

Aftermath of the firecrackers

I've been spending a lot of the daytime walking around the city taking in the many different sites, sounds, and smells. One custom of this holiday that is taking time for me to get used to is the practice of people lighting off firecrackers at random times throughout the day. It catches me by surprise every time. There is never any warning and it occurs seemingly everywhere, on people's doorsteps, on the sidewalks, people throwing them out of moving cars, etc. It begins around 8 AM and goes late into the night. The streets are littered with red paper that had previously been wrapped around these firecrackers. The city seems to be in a constant mode of celebration, which I find to be pretty cool. I'm thinking I'll go buy some of these firecrackers and start throwing them out of my third story window just to show people that I'm down with the spring festival too. I don't see any way that could end badly.


"Going Native" Experience of the Week
Getting woken up at 7 AM by some guy standing outside my building playing the flute, then deciding to go on a run and getting chased by a flock of chickens.

Mandarin Improvement Sign
Explaining to the lady checking me out at the supermarket that she had charged me for two cans of shaving cream when in fact I had only bought one. Baby steps people.

Funny Sign of the Week
I didn't see much in the way of funny signage this week so again I'm going to use one that I saw the last time I was here. Finding a new sign each week may be harder than I thought. Here it is:

I saw this sign while I was touring a famous cave system in Yangshuo, about an hour outside of Guilin. I'm not sure if they're trying to say don't touch the cave walls or don't beat other people around you. I showed tremendous self-control and refrained from both just to be safe.

Reason Why I Like This Place
Buying lunch, dinner, and other miscellaneous items for the past six days has cost me a grand total of $50 US.

Random Tangent
With all the celebrities that are out there nowadays sometimes it's hard to keep track of who's alive and who isn't. It seems every month some famous person is committing suicide or overdosing on drugs or getting in a fatal car accident. It happens so often that these instances become just another headline and we, as consumers, have become somewhat numb to it. It is because of this trend that I felt surprised at how sad I was this week to learn of Philip Seymour Hoffman's death. If you asked me a week ago to name who I thought were the best actors in the industry today his is a name that I think I would have forgotten to say, and I'm not exactly sure why. He is on a short list of actors who, for me, can make a movie better just by his mere presence (other people on that list would include Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Christian Bale and a few others). Due to the age we live in, artistic license in movie directing often takes a backseat to making a quick buck. That's why there's about 573 vampire movies because I guess that's cool now and everything that becomes a box office hit then gets turned into a sequel or trilogy. Because of this laziness the onus often falls on the actors to make or break a movie. Hoffman's acting prowess allowed him to play characters that ranged from Scotty J. in Boogie Nights to the embattled Father Brendan Flynn in Doubt to arguably his best role as Truman Capote in Capote. I encourage whoever is reading this to check out his IMDb page here and read this obituary written about him on Grantland. Oftentimes when somebody dies before their time the people who remain behind search for a meaning or a lesson behind it. As far as lessons go I can think of two: first being that the rich and famous are not without their own problems. Secondly, heroin is bad news bears and you shouldn't ever do it. Deep stuff I know. Rest easy PSH.

On a lighter note here is a video of Seattle Seahawks fans celebrating their Superbowl win but still refusing to jaywalk. I love how they go nuts when the walking sign is illuminated.  Good for them, hard to believe they live on the same coast as Raiders fans.