1) so a tuesday or so ago i woke up at my usual 2 pm to get ready for my 3:30 class. i dilly dallied about for a bit, and then decided it was time to take a shower. now, it's fucking freezing in this apartment, esp in my bathroom as the windows won't close all the way. my shower, if you recall, has a handheld shower head and only a handheld shower head (aka, there is no where to put it so it sprays on your like a normal shower, you have to hold it). at this point i've pretty much mastered the art of balancing the shower head between pipes on the water heater so that water doesn't spray everywhere and i can wash my hair without turning of the water. on this particularly cold tuesday, i decided that i would leave the hot water running like that after i was done showering so i could comb my hair without catching hypothermia. around this time the hot water started to diminish, so i pumped up the heat and the pressure. bad move. the water instantly cut off and next thing i know i'm being blasted in the shins by ice cold water. after my initial shock, i locate the knob to turn off the water....on the ground. i decide to try to screw it back on, only to find it's broken with no way of reattaching it. at this point i'm running around the apartment looking for my cellphone in my birthday suit. i finally locate it and call my contact teacher who isn't back at school from lunch yet and tells me to wait. i try to calmly (ha) explain that there is water going EVERYWHERE, and she says she'll make some calls. a few minutes later she says the maintenance guys are on they way. about 15 minutes after that they actually show up at my apartment after mistakenly going over to the other foreigners' apartment. yes, that means water has been spraying in my bathroom non-stop for about twenty minutes. anyways, they got everything all fixed up for me, but not until after gathering around my fridge to point and laugh at the sign which reads 'da fei ji' in both characters and english (jack off).
2) i was part of a chinese propaganda film. my teacher had told me that on monday our school would be filmed by a local television station to try to make it famous, but said nothing to be about being in it. sometime monday morning i get a call from her informing me that i am to be featured, my class will be an hour earlier than normal, it will be filmed, and the students should be active. if you've ever taught chinese junior high students english you know that "active" is not really a word often used to describe them in class, unless you're talking about a behavior issue. so i spend the afternoon trying to think of some way to get them talking in class. i decide to talk about christmas because they all seem to know a lot of random vocab words, and then play a game that i'd heard is really good at getting juniors to talk. once at school, i'm informed that only about 5 minutes of my class will be filmed, and it will be towards the end. i think "great, they'll be in the middle of the game." wrong. about 5 minutes into the class the dean of teachers comes in and has the students rearrange their desks into a U shape, and informs me that i will be standing in the middle of this U, far away from the board. this makes my job much harder, as my students don't really understand anything i don't write on the board. on top of this, right as the camera crew arrives, we reach the point where i'm explaining things about christmas that they're unclear on. this means talking has completely ceased and they're all just staring at me angelically and enthusiastically nodding their heads (which at least is better than doing homework for other classes?). at this point, the filmmakers (as i've now been informed this is a documentary) decided that i should go out into the courtyard with 8 students and have a "natural" conversation. first off, i didn't know this courtyard existed. second, my contact teacher told me to speak super basic english with them so they can answer confidently since the people making the film don't know what we're saying anyways. she then said, and i quote, "can you say propaganda?" third, they had me sitting on a bench with the students behind me. natural, eh? after that, i was asked to walk down a path a few times having another "natural" conversation. yeah, i'm pretty sure i stole the show. i just hope whoever sees this doesn't speak english, cause the conversations i had are about the most awkward things on the planet and i look like a jackass. ah well. i have a feeling i'll never see it anyways.
3) last weekend we went back to d-club for 15 kuai tequila shots. they worked. somehow i ended up there without anyone from my side of town (the complete opposite side of town). evan can't stay at his place (very close to where we are) because they lock the students in with a chain after like 11 pm(that's china for you), so we decide to make the journey together. when we're about to find a cab, we meet up with two girls from the program who live right by the bar and they offer to let us come back to their place. so i go into one room, and evan goes in the other. i've got a nice little pallet on the floor, and i'm about to fall asleep when evan calls informing me we must leave. i ask no questions (which will be the last time for that) and just leave with him. as soon as we get outside and i ask why we left evan has no clue and there's not a car or taxi in sight. for some reason we decide to go to stephen's place instead of mine, so we call and he says to come over. it's around 5 am at this point. two hours, a random non-taxi car ride from a stranger, a two block taxi ride, countless requests from evan to "just sit down and die" because of the freezing cold, numerous wrong turns, and about 20 phone calls asking for directions, we arrive at stephen's. then i passed on out a leather couch without a blanket in the freezing apartment, only to wake up a few hours later cause i was shaking. i couldn't believe my luck that the first time two guys decide to share a bed it's when it's 40 degrees outside in an apartment without heat. finally it's just too cold, even in my jacket, so i decide they can just scooch over. i walk in the room to find evan alone, on top of the covers. they each had their own bed, and i was on the couch. lucky for evan, i woke him up and made him realize there were covers on the bed.
4) this past weekend we went to an art show at a bar with free drinks. tons of the people from the program showed up and it was really fun. the bar is a really cool space and they could have some killer parties there if more people showed up. afterwards we went to this place called demon bar where we were told there was an ice room, like in an ice bar. while we're waiting for the guys to show, some random chinese people came and sat with us. one of them has been living in london so her english was fantastic, but that sort of just made things more awkward because the fact that we had nothing to talk about couldn't be blamed on the language barrier. anyways, the guys show up and we venture to the 'ice room'. wrong. it's a walk in freezer, like in a restaurant. basically, we paid to go stand in a freezer, in the winter, and take vodka shots, which i hate. it was pretty funny though because they had this cheesy blue forest wallpaper up and it was so china it made up for the lame factor. something happened after that that resulted in a busted lip, a scraped forehead, and a bruised cheek. one person says i ran into a pole, but i can't figure out how that would make these marks. no one else remembers this. one person says i trying to get in a cab after the door was closed. again, doesn't explain the marks. no one else remembers this either. i think i got elbowed in the mouth getting in the cab because i remember feeling my lip swell and yelling "who just punched me??" but no one else remembers that happening either. basically, i'm looking tres sexy.
this weekend is our christmas party, so hopefully i'll get some good stories from that and actually remember to write about them.
ONE MONTH TIL TEXASSSSS!!!
3 comments:
you should have asked them about their opinions about the tiananmen square incident whilst on film.
Or you should have been showing them how to use a gun.
Either of those would have been awesome to put on the chinese media
December 20, 2008
China Blocks Access to The Times’s Web Site
By KEITH BRADSHER
HONG KONG — Chinese authorities have begun blocking access from mainland China to the Web site of The New York Times even while lifting some of the restrictions they had recently imposed on the Web sites of other media outlets.
When computer users in cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou tried to connect on Friday morning to nytimes.com, they received a message that the site was not available; some users were cut off on Thursday as early as 8 p.m. The blocking was still in effect on Saturday morning.
But the Chinese-language Web sites of BBC, Voice of America and Asiaweek, all of which had been blocked earlier this week, were accessible by Friday. The Web site of Ming Pao, a Hong Kong newspaper, was blocked earlier this week and still restricted on Friday.
Chinese officials had few explanations for the restriction on The Times’s site. “Concerning your particular question, we’re not really familiar with the details,” said a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, who declined to give his name. “Web site maintenance is not within the job purview of the Foreign Ministry.”
Tang Rui, an official with the government’s International Press Center in Beijing, said he also had no specific information. “It might be a technical problem,” he said, declining to elaborate.
Access to the Web site was not restricted on Friday in Hong Kong, which Britain returned to Chinese rule in 1997 but which still allows freedom of speech, including on the Internet. Internet users in Japan and the United States were also not experiencing difficulties on Friday in viewing the site.
A spokeswoman for The Times, Catherine J. Mathis, said there did not appear to be a technical issue.
Rebecca MacKinnon, a researcher at Hong Kong University who specializes in China’s Internet controls, said the reasons for the restrictions were mysterious. “All anybody can offer is speculation,” she said.
In the months leading up to the Olympics in Beijing, during the Games and immediately after, the Chinese government temporarily unblocked access to some Web sites and eased curbs on the ability of foreign correspondents to travel within China. It has not tightened the travel restrictions since then.
when are you coming home? i might have to hold you hostage so you can't go back. i miss you too much!
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