Full Week, and the Huang He

The past few days have been the most action-filled thus far.

This was my first (almost) complete week of class. I had class Thursday morning for four hours, Friday for four, and Saturday morning for four. Thursday was nursing classes, so they got their second class from me. They'll consistently be my guinea pig classes for ideas and such since they'll be ahead a class the entire semester. That is, if I go the same speed for every class. Which I probably won't, since the sizes vary greatly. Friday classes are around 70-85 students. My biggest classes by far. The first class Saturday morning only has 13 by comparison. We'll definitely be going faster through lessons just because there are fewer of them. The second Saturday class is back up around 70.

My ratio of boys to girls is better in the non-nursing classes, since nursing isn't exactly a popular option for males. But the number of females still outweighs the males by far. The most I have is 30 in the 80+ class.

For my second lesson, I mostly stuck to the first unit activities, which included reading a passage out loud, answering questions in class, and some vocabulary checking. I made up a warm-up that turned out to be a smash. I found this Calvin & Hobbes comic, and made it empty. I asked the students to create a story or skit to the comic they could perform to the class. It gave me a few ideas for future warm-ups and activities, and I think every class really enjoyed it.

Here are the best pictures I could take with my tripod and self-timer of my teaching outfits. I forgot to take one of yesterday's, but there are glimpses of it in the following pictures, as you'll see.

One day I really was craving sweets, so this is a picture of an unopened and opened moon cake. Moon cakes are for the upcoming autumn festival (which we get three days off for), but the flavors can be a bit... hit or miss. I was able to find a strawberry one, and as you can see the inside was a strawberry-like paste. I liked it. Though I don't think I'll eat the egg yolk one.

Saturday, however, was the best day I've had so far. Ben was able to meet a fantastic man, Zhu Xue, a wood carver. Ben got in contact with him because he wants to learn English, and Zhu Xue invited all of us to his store and out to dinner yesterday. I was the only one of us genuinely excited to see the carvings, though I thought Zhe Xue was an old man from the business card Ben showed me. He is not. He's about 30 years old, and he's been carving for 12 years and incredibly successful. He's a native of Kaifeng, and he's carved the famous scroll, 清明上河图, or “Along the River on the During the Qingming Festival”. It took him five YEARS. (EDIT: Not two, FIVE! It took him two years to make the Olympic car featured on his website.)


Anyway, Zhu picked us up at 6pm in his shiny fancy car (with amazing sound system) and drove us to his store. Everything was incredible. After showing us the store, including a carved CAR he made for the olypmics (it costs about 3 million dollars to purchase) he asked us what our favorite Chinese characters were and proceeded to make calligraphy scrolls for each of us. Josh chose dragon: 龍, I chose phoenix: 鳳, Marlie chose duck: 鴨, Ben chose god: 神, and JM chose Tao: 道. The process itself was amazing to watch, using a rice-like substance to soak up the ink and create “feathering” of sorts inside the characters.

After the calligraphy we headed to dinner, to the fanciest place we've been to in Kaifeng. There was a woman paid to play the piano at the entrance! And the menu had English AND pictures, so we had a much easier finding food than usual. They had western food, so Marlie and I had spaghetti, and Josh had pizza. The pizza they make in China is slightly different (just like the Japanese idea of pizza) and it doesn't have tomato sauce on it. It's still very delicious, though. We all had Budweiser (the usual Qingdao is too sweet tasting for my tastes), since they offered us beer, and because there were six of us (or possible because of Zhu Xue) we got free extra dishes which included a plate of lettuce with dressing, roasted peanuts, and a delicious fruit platter that I ended up eating half of. (No one else seemed to be eating from it!)

After dinner, we realized we'd be getting back after ten o-clock so we had to call Lao Wang, the gatekeeper of our complex. He locks the gate at ten, and we need to let him know if we'll be back later so he can stay awake/be aware that he'll have to open it for us. Ben called and we were about to head back, but Zhu Xue suggested KTV. Karaoke. I said YES since we were going to be late anyway, we should take advantage of going to our first KTV. We ended up going, and it was glorious.

He brought us to the BEST KTV in Kaifeng. It was like a castle. It was incredibly clean inside and the walls were full of neon designs. As you can see, we enjoyed it.

We got back just before midnight (before the main gates lock). Best Saturday ever.

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I've realized that Josh is my catalyst for really DOING things. This morning he convinced me to get up at 9, even though we'd gone to bed at 3 the night before so we could go to the Huang He/Yellow River. The river that I've named this blog after.

I got myself up and threw on clothes. It was raining. But we decided we would go anyway. We originally were going to take the tricycle/cart, and I would drive it on the way there while he ran, and then he would bike and I would ride on the way back. But I can't maneuver it at ALL and so we borrowed Ben's bike (really a bike we found in the apartments that we fixed up to working order).

By the time we'd swapped bikes, it had stopped raining, (9:30 approx) thankfully. I rode the bike with Marta's yellow backpack she left, stuffed with our water bottles, extra coats, and 10 kuai. I decided last minute to grab my ipod and portable speaker and threw it in the basket. A great idea, and we played some Americana folk music as we biked/ran to the Huang He.

It was pretty clear we were leaving the city life and approaching the country. We passed through a very small market, and a lot of corn and rice fields. And a duck. And lots and lots of dogs, chickens, and roosters crowing.

We only knew vaguely the direction. North, until you can't. It took about an hour, and it was completely worth it. We reached a dirt path, and a man with his sheep was to the right. We didn't want to scare the sheep or startle any rams, so we went on the other side. It was a very pretty park. The tiny village or market we came across was almost empty.

And then we reached the river. The ground wasn’t muddy per se, but more like clay. We took off our shoes and waded in the river for a while.

On the way back we saw some cows chained to trees.

Another day off to a great start!