Welcome to the Foreign Monkey Show!

We ex-pats working in China have a little phrase to describe our function in this society: "foreign monkeys."  Many times we are wanted not necessarily for our sweet skillz or our awesome personlitiez but just because we look foreign.

The work of a foreign monkey is not difficult.  It includes things like this:

• posing for photographs
• attending functions with important people
• allowing our names to be dropped
• attending English corners
• helping schools and businesses with PR (by appearing in their ads or making personal appearances)
• talking to reluctant little kids whose mothers push them forward to say hello
• dancing and singing on command

Now I'm in a place where (I think) no foreigners live and few foreigners visit.  They want to take full advantage of having us here, which means we were asked to come to two community English corners and also to spend an evening teaching a class at the high school. 

Here's my report.  Welcome to the foreign monkey show!

English Corner
English corners are everywhere in China.  They are supposed to be times for people to come practice English.  Our leaders organized an English corner on Wednesday in the town square and asked us to come.

Picture ten giant magnets walking into a crowd of iron filaments.  That about sums up our English corner experience.

Teammate Larry fielding questions

Teammate Cara bonding with middle school students

One of the girls in my class and her cute baby.  We were happy some of our own students came in addition to the crowds of locals.

At the High School
We were asked to each teach an hour-long class to high school seniors.  My teammate and I decided to introduce ourselves, teach a few songs ("Hokey Pokey" and "Row Row Row Your Boat"), and then have them try to write English songs.

I was astounded to see that there are 90 students in the class.

They are high school seniors, which means it's less than a year until they take the college entrance exam.  They will not learn any new material this year.  The whole year is devoted to reviewing what they've learned and taking practice tests.  You can see from the piles of books on their desks how much information they have to study.

The college entrance exam is also the reason these poor kids are going to school all summer long, day and night.  This is true throughout China.  Your whole first twelve years of education are devoted almost exclusively to preparing you for the two-day exam that determines your future.  If you don't do well, you have to wait another year to take it again.  This leads to a lot of super-seniors in high school.

Anyway, I had a great time teaching the students.  They haven't had foreign teachers before so they literally applauded everything I did.  They also caught onto the songs really quickly and even managed to sing a round.  Not bad!  Some students were videoing me on their cell phones for the entire hour.

Clapping to get their attention

Most of the 90 students

The rest of the students.  Couldn't get them all in one photo!

Free Time in Beijing

A true representation of how I'm spending this week would have lots of photos of training sessions in the RuYi hotel and twice-daily meals with my team.  But I haven't taken many such photos so instead I'm going to subject you to a few outings in one of the coolest cities in the world.

Olympic Village at Night
Never gets old.

Eleven of us went to the village and couldn't get a cab from the subway to our hotel so we negotiated a ride with the driver of this van.  It is the second most packed vehicle I've ever been in.

Church at Gangwashi
A couple teams went to the Gangwashi church on Sunday, which was a good experience.  The choir was singing beautiful, traditional music in harmony (which I've never heard in my limited Chinese church experiences) and the message was about spiritual sleepiness.
 

Houhai with Student Friends
Lisa and I were able to meet some of our former students in an area called Houhai, which has some small lakes, lots of touristy traditional alley architecture, and bars lining the streets. 

Chinese chess in various stages of dress

Drum tower

Rabbit eating tofu

Photos by the lake

Students and supper

Ridiculous purses for sale

We saw the tourists out in rented boats and decided to try it.  It was a fun memory with our students!

:)

Fake in China

Here's an interesting article about the evolving shanzhai (fake) culture of China.  It mentions fake name-brand items, fake universities, a fake bank, and fake careers.  One interesting quote:

Zinch China, the Chinese arm of U.S.-based educational networking site Zinch.com, estimates that 90 percent of recommendation letters to U.S. schools are fake, that 70 percent of the essays are written by someone else and that half the transcripts are fabricated. Zinch drew the numbers from interviews with Chinese students, parents and agents.

Based on what I've heard from students wanting to study abroad, this sounds about right.  One student said that most online forums and discussion groups for Chinese students applying to U.S. schools talk about almost nothing but how to cheat the system in order to get in.  The "agents" mentioned above are people or companies that guide students through the U.S. admissions process (for a price), often taking care of many of the fabrications themselves.

Things I Did That I Never Told You About: April

In this post, I will share a few fun activities from April that never made the blog:

• Shopping for a qipao (traditional Chinese dress)
• Visiting the Botanical Garden
• Making dumplings
• Getting a visit from my friend Jessie
• Picking strawberries

Let's hit it.

Shopping for a Qipao

I asked a student to help me find a red qipao as a souvenir of my time in China.  She recruited another friend and we went to a big shopping market called Sun City.  I eventually decided to have a lady make me one.  (Just about $30 -- not bad!)

Then the girls apparently had planned a seaside tour and photo shoot, which turned a simple shopping trip into a 5 or 6 hour multi-location extravaganza.  I had a fun time hanging out with them.

Gabriella, a freshman, drove us around in her dad's car.  Yikes!

I tried on a few (including this one) before deciding just to have one made.

Gabriella and Avril Lavigne pose with the shop owners

Then they took me to a park

Then they took me to the seaside.  Photo shoot!

Lots of hotels by the harbor

These fishermen were unloading their nets.  The girls saw them toss out a few starfish and asked for them.

Starfish inspection.  (Smelly.)

My city has done a great job of developing miles of the seaside into nice beaches and walkways.  This was one I hadn't visited before.

As if they hadn't done enough for me already, the girls insisted on buying me souvenirs at the end of the evening.

Dumpling Party and Jessie's Visit

One weekend I got a visit from a former student who lives a couple hours away.  It was so fun to see Jessie again and hear about her new life as a college graduate and elementary school English teacher.

Our activities included visiting my teacher friend upstairs for a dumpling party and biking to the beach (a must-see for visitors to Rizhao). 

My friend/colleague/neighbor Lynn preparing dumpling dough

Me and Jessie

Mountains of dumplings

My friend Melissa and Jessie kept trying jumping photos, but Melissa could never get off the ground.

Botanical Garden

Another great thing about my city is the new (free!) botanical garden.  This spring they had a tulip exhibition and I went with some friends to check it out.

A couple of the students we went with

There are always wedding parties taking pictures on nice days.  This couple was nice enough to wave to me.  And I've never seen bridesmaids in matching dresses in China!

Tulip+Photo Love

JoJo and a rainbow of tulips

Picking Strawberries

On one of our many three-day weekends this spring, a student friend invited me and Sara to go strawberry picking.  We took a couple buses for a total of 2 hours out of town, picked for about half an hour, and then went home.

I've heard a few other students talking about strawberry picking, so it may be catching on as a fun weekend activity for students.

It was in a typical Shandong-style greenhouse owned by a local family, and the rows of plants were pretty brown.  It didn't quite live up to my memories of picking strawberries in bright green fields under Iowa's hot July sun, but it was still pretty fun.

House (right) attached to greenhouse (left)

Pounds and pounds of strawberries

That's it!  If you made it this far into the post, you have my hearty congratulations.  Now I'm off to go find some lunch.