haircuts

I've always been a little weary of getting haircuts in China. Maybe it's the whole non-Chinese hair thing I have going. I somehow doubt many barbers in this country have much experience with curly-haired foreigners. Although, somehow I have gotten lucky in the last two years.

Well, until last night that is. Everything went well for the first while. The girl shampooing my hair and massaging my head and shoulders was doing a great job--it felt more relaxing than usual. I was feeling great up until she whipped out the Q-tips and began removing some of the cotton from the ends. She was doing some exploratory work in my ear that was just not comfortable. Soon enough, there was a bit of pain and my hearing got a little fuzzy. I told her to get away. Fortunately, she didn't do any severe damage, just a little too much pressure on the old ear drum. It gave me the same feeling I get when I'm congested with a terrible cold. This morning it's feeling significantly better.

Then on to the actual haircut. I'll leave it at: it's much shorter than I wanted it. That barber had no idea what he was doing and gave me the worst haircut since I've arrived in China. I can't wait to move to a more foreign-friendly area that possibly knows how to cut hair.

A few things

First the news: I signed my new contract for the fall. I will officially be professor of academic writing for graduate students (MSc and PhD). I'm quite happy with the teaching hours, contract, and the fact that the Chinese staff in the office speak great English. They also have a school bus that stops right outside my new apartment so I don't have to spend an hour every morning getting to work on the public bus.

The government is being a bit of a pain in the ass about marriage. Jia isn't from Shenzhen, which makes things a little more complicated. Apparently, my marriagability affidavit from the U.S. Consulate isn't enough for the Chinese government. They need this pointless piece of paper notarized--which should cost about 500 yuan. Of course, the notary is being a lazy (censored by multiple governments). I need to provide a whole load of proof that I live in Shenzhen and that I will continue to live in Shenzhen. How does this make him an "international" notary? What about business people who need documents but aren't residents?

Then there's that lovely (note sarcasm) school that Jia is leaving. They are now telling her that she can't quit until July 8 or she has to forfeit THREE months salary. Unfortunately, they never gave her a copy of the contract for her to keep. That means that the contract means nothing and will not hold up in court. Nice to see that they do things legally around here. She'll try to be polite about the situation and explain her intentions to the headmaster. I'm not optimistic on this one. I'm ready to call a lawyer because I know they are wrong.

And there is no photo for this week because I don't feel like searching through the thousands of files to pick a nice one. Don't cry, it'll be ok.

Last night I asked a class, "At what age is a person mature enough to begin dating?" I figured my students were intelligent and would come up with some fairly easy answers. Most answers went along with the official government view of "No dating until you're 18." I was really expecting someone to say, "It depends on the person." Instead I was greeted with the following answer: "I think older than 25." I was shocked. I had no idea how to respond except to laugh.

As a side note: the woman who gave the answer is older than I am and married.

rolling along

Jia and I are all ready for our new apartment when we return from our little summer trip. Nice quiet neighborhood with plenty to do nearby. I even found out the other day that my Aussie friend (another castaway/escapee of Tsinghua Experimental School) just got an apartment nearby--great coincidence. That means I have a foreigner I can associate with in my extra free time (which I might have even more of starting in the fall).

I also got to check on the progress of my tuxedo at the tailor shop. The shirt is looking quite good and everything should be set by the end of the month (just in time for me to meet my parents in Beijing). If this thing comes out alright, I may just have to get a few suits made.

Only downside lately is that the air conditioners keep failing at work. I don't work well when it's too freaking hot in a room. And I'm sure it's not a great first impression for prospective students to sit in a classroom for an hour with the temperature settling around 30C.

Du Fu on Friday

Things are still going well. It looks like the sun is peeking through the clouds and pollution (just wait, it'll still rain later today). The excessively loud construction noises have stopped and I can actually sleep in every now and then. I also got some great news yesterday (more to come on that next week).

Anyway, lately I've been searching the Internet for some Chinese poetry with decent English translations. I've found some that seems ok. I mentioned it to one of my students last night and he said he'd find some for me and even write the Pinyin down so I can read it. I still have my goal to improve my Chinese so that I can translate some writing. But that's still a long way off.
This photo was taken at Du Fu's Thatched Cottage in Chengdu. I think it's a sign of true civility.

Productive

Yesterday was busy. Work screwed up my schedule this week, but sort of fixed it. I'm supposed to have the day off so I can tutor my private student before he makes his trip to the US next month. So, instead, they gave me four hours of classes and then I had to rush home to teach for two more. I was exhausted, but ok (I think it helped me sleep a bit).

It was the first time I got to teach the class of Bao'an police officers. I was warned that they weren't responsive in class--well, I got a response. I found that many of them have fairly decent English skills, but they lack an environment to practice. They are disinterested in the material they are supposed to learn. I pretty much threw out the text as it was filled with poor conversations and phrases that no one would ever utter (such as, "He's such a rascal!"). I changed a lot of dialogues around and joked around with them a bit. They all tried to keep me after class to talk some more, but I had to rush out to my next class.

I sloshed through the downpour to teach my private student after I got home and my umbrella did little to keep me dry. I have found that I am making progress with him. Unfortunately, I know he doesn't study much, which is hampering his abilities. However, I have changed a lot in him. When I first taught him, he always used his useless translator for everything and couldn't form a complete sentence. Now, he only uses the translator for single words that he doesn't know how to say or explain and he can speak in complete sentences (although with quite a few errors). It's amazing what I can do with a student whose Chinese English teacher barely speaks English (and yes, I have met his teacher before when I worked at that school). Since I have been teaching him, his test scores at school have doubled--from a 40 to 80. And that's only since April.

Stop this!

Some people on a message board I frequent directed my attention to this Web site: http://www.arcog.com/. This site is disgusting. They are basically stealing writers' work. They advertise that it's easy to take someone else's work from another site and rework it as "original content." They have a search feature that shows content without any byline or copyright information. This company is apparently based in the US, even though the English quality all over the site is worse than any students I've ever taught.

Feel free to flood their e-mail with harrassing letters and threats of copyright infringement lawsuits. This needs to be shut down.

wildlife in the city

The other night I was walking to Jia's for a late dinner after work. I caught a glimpse of a rock out of the corner of my eye... but it wasn't a rock, it was a really big snail in a shell. The snail was wandering about the tile steps with nowhere to go. I figured it probably escaped from someone's dinner.
On the way home, I saw it again--this time Jia was with me. She ran home to get her camera. This thing was huge We fed it a few plant leaves and later moved it to the grass in the hopes that no one would kill it for fun.

Tailor-made

I certainly have to thank Winnipeg. He saved me a trip to Luohu yesterday to potentially find a tuxedo for my wedding. I really hate walking around the Luohu shopping centers--the store clerks are excessively annoying and there are too many people in the area. Fortunately, my friend let me borrow his tuxedo to take to the local tailor. Apparently, they have never seen one and needed to examine it in order to make one. They checked out the shirt, jacket, and pants and concluded that they probably could make it for me. I just had to pick out some fabric for the jacket and pants. I was quite impressed with the price too. 850 kuai for a shirt, jacket, pants, and vest (exchange rate: 7.70 RMB = $1). If this comes out alright, I may go back and have another suit made.

Predicting the firewall

Yup, blogspot is blocked again by the government. This means I cannot read any blogs hosted here without the use of a proxy server, which runs rather slowly on these old Internet lines (guess I really am impatient).

So, in honor of our overlords who cannot seem to decide whether to block the blog or not each week, I present to you my favorite sign from my neighborhood in Shenzhen. I hope you enjoy "Truth in advertising."

I was on my way home tonight and I decided to check out the local sidewalk seller for DVDs. I flipped through, hoping to find some good TV shows (I found the X-Files a couple weeks ago). I was about to give up when something caught my attention: Creepshow III. Wow, cheesy horror, I thought. I checked the back to look at the credits (like that actually does any good in China, where most pirated DVDs have the wrong credits listed). I realized quickly that this was the real listing--my uncles' names and my grandfather's were right there in the credits. I'm sure they'll be real happy that I spent a whole 75 cents on their movie.

I'll watch it this weekend and let you know just how cheesy it is.

Lessons learned

Things have been going quite well since getting pushed out of the dancing monkey factory in January. When I arrived here more than a year an a half ago, I intended to actually teach English as a foreign language. I really didn't enjoy the idea of standing in front of a class as entertainment.

Last night I had a review lesson with one student for an hour. She breezed through the material and proved that she could handle it--although she does need to practice her pronunciation at times. With about ten minutes remaining in the class, we talked about methods of learning. She mentioned that other teachers let her and other students slide with their mistakes of forgetting to include articles and small prepositions. She thought I made class difficult when I'd simply ask students to say their sentences again without informing them of what their mistake was. She noted that it was helping her to notice her own mistakes and forcing her to take more time to think about what she should say.

Later in the day, I had the entire class. I prepared a rather large grammar exercise for the entire class. After the first half of class, the students began correcting each other when mistakes were made--without any prompts from me to do so. I found great pride in knowing that my students can pick up on their errors and help others with their errors as well (and this class is the lowest level I teach).

A moment of sunshine

Yesterday and today there is a halt to the rain in Shenzhen. It'll start up again tomorrow though. I should just buy a canoe and paddle my way to work for the summer. Or better yet, I could take Homer's idea and ride a walrus to work.

Anyway, here's this week's photo. A bit of light peaking into the doors at the Taoist temple at Tianchi in Xinjiang province (August 2006). The park is beautiful with a clean glacial lake surrounded by lush mountains. It's an amazing trip for a day outside Urumqi.

And as I was posting this photo, it began to rain once again.

So what did you do Wednesday night?
Well, we tried to save a kitten that was stuck in the rafters at the restaurant.

It's amazing what two guys drinking Tsingtao will do. We were sitting around, constantly hearing the kitten's meow and wondering where it was. Finally we discovered it to be walking along the thin rafters above. We were up on the chairs and tables trying to coax it down, but the cat wouldn't budge... even when it was only a short jump down. Needless to say, we gave up after about 30 minutes.

Somehow one of the cooks got the kitten. We're still unsure of how he got where he was, but it was quite amazing to see a large man on a very thin ledge along the wall. And he just grabbed the kitten by the neck and pulled the claws off the rafters.

Now we can shorten our story to: We tried to get some pussy and came quite close, but the cook got it instead.

On time

Hey, photo Friday is on time this week. I must be feeling sick or something.

This one is from my short trip to Zhaoqing, Guangdong, during the national holiday in October last year. The main park across from our hotel had these wonderful things. I really thought I wouldn't see PBR again once I left the U.S. My stomach always turned when my friends visited Colorado and brought along a case of it for our prolonged games of caps in the kitchen. Those were some fun times--getting drunk while playing such an unsanitary drinking game. I can still taste PBR... and that's not a good memory to have.

Last night was interesting at work. Classes were fairly smooth all day. I even had one class cancelled to extend my dinner break.

I had what was probably the largest demo class the school could host--they had to bring in an extra chair for a late-comer. Fortunately, there were about five potential students who were more than willing to participate and talk at length when given the slightest opportunity. That really made the demo time fly by. It also gave me a chance to actually teach something that some of them could actually use. My boss looked a little impressed when she saw the size of the class I had to handle.

I almost got in trouble with the students of my intermediate level. I gave them an article about coffee's growing popularity in China. I read through it before class to find the new vocabulary for class, but came across a line that made me a little uneasy. It had a reference to Taiwan, "a country with a similar cultural history to China." I decided to give it a try in class and to skip the last three paragraphs of the two-page article. Everything went well, until about the end when one student read further along and found the line. I had to explain that many Western governments and news agencies think this way, but that doesn't mean it's right. At least I escaped that one.

After Monday's problem at work--I actually forgot to eat dinner as I was talking with students and planning classes--I decided I better forage for food during my long dinner break on Tuesday. I passed by the foul-smelling river toward the shopping center that I figured would provide me with some sort of edible substance. I discovered that the bread shop and the noodle shop were now closed--there went my hopes of a super-cheap meal that would taste pretty good. I looked up and saw the sign of hope--Kung-fu. Yes, after more than a year and a half in Shenzhen, I made the journey to the fast food joint that bears the image of Bruce Lee. In a hurry, I purchased some chicken and noodle soup (not like mom used to make). It was a decent meal for 6 kuai.

On the way out, down the escalator, I found a rather amusing sign. "Please watch you head," read the sign protruding from the wall. I looked about. There was nothing except for the sign that I could possible hit my head on. The ceiling was at least 20 feet above my head. What was I supposed watch my head for? Was it going to pop off unexpectedly?

European Vacation? Wish I Could Go

This post is sponsored by EasyToBook.com

Planning a vacation to Europe this summer? I know I wish I could. Well, if you're not in my situation of staying in China, you can use Easytobook.com to make your hotel reservations in some major tourist destinations (yeah, I know, it rhymes).

The site is very easy to navigate--there really is very little showy HTML involved there. It's probably why they claim to have such low prices on hotels (and they have a large listing). However, their choice of cities is limited to Barcelona, Rome, Amsterdam, Paris, London, Prague, Dublin, and New York City. So, they have one place for you American domestic travelers too. I'd recommend some places to stay, but I've never had to get a hotel in NYC and all the places I stayed in Europe were pretty cheap.

Easytobook.com offers some insight into its destinations as well. Check out their description of the Red Light District in Amsterdam (does anyone really go there for the history?). They also have some travel articles written by staff to help you plan your vacation--they even allow users to add their own articles for inclusion. Their terms and conditions and policies seem fairly standard for hotel reservations. So, you can check them out and compare prices before you book your next trip.

A mixture of things

I have various things to blog about today.
As some of you may have noticed, I do have some paid posts on here (ok, two really). Today I received two more assignments to write, but one of them was a repeat of the same site I already wrote about but for more money. I guess I can't do that one since it'd be dishonest. And the other one just does interest me and would probably be of little interst to my readers.

In other news, work is going fairly well. Although my schedule of full-time teaching and tutoring is becoming a bit much. Plus I've been approached a few times with offers of more tutoring--I just don't have enough time and energy to do it. I don't particularly enjoy creating schedules that work around other schedules. I really like spending my free time at home writing and reading (and attempting to learn more Chinese, which hasn't been going well).

I've been a bit busy planning my summer vacation--the family is visiting in July and we need to find where to go. But some of the travel has to be cut short to accomodate my brother's short vacation schedule (there's that word again). We're looking at either stopping for a few days in Kunming or Shanghai at this point.

And what a coincidence, after I got off work last night and went out to recharge my phone credit. I was surprised to see P., a fellow Tsinghua Experimental School in Shenzhen firee (read: happy), wandering about the neighborhood with some of his visiting friends. He traveled out dirty Bao'an to get super-cheap dumplings on their way out to the clubs. I'm sure it would've cost as much buying more expensive dumplings near his apartment and saving money on the cab fare.

Photo Friday on Mother's Day

Well, I was busy working and completely forgot that I promised to update the photos every Friday. Fortunately, I have no paying subscribers so no one can sue me for false advertising.
Anyway, here's this week's photo:

In August 2006, I visited Xi'an for the first time with my parents. This is one of the Buddha statues viewed through an incense burner at the Wild Goose Pagoda. We took a group tour and combined it with a trip to the Terracotta Warriors. Needless to say, we spent too much time with the warriors and not enough time at the pagoda (but that's another story).