Adventures in Guangzhou!

For instance, most got the following riddles in less than a minute:
-Where can you find a road without cars, a forest without trees, and a city without people?
-What demands an answer but does not ask a question?
-Mountains will crumble and temples will fall with it, and no man can survive its endless call. What is it?
I have actually had some extra time at the end of class where I have had to request they write their own riddles because they solved all sixteen. Needless to say, I have been quite impressed. If anyone has any good riddles out there that aren't ridiculously hard, feel free to email me (ari.wolfe@gmail.com) and I will use them for my remaining lessons.

On an additional teaching note, I got a belated "Happy Teacher's Day" poster/card from Class #9 that has since gone up on the fridge. It was really sweet of the kids and it definitely made me smile, for what will soon become obvious. The following are some of the comments I got on the card, all anonymous:
"Your attractive smile, energetic words, and body language have deeply impressed us. Yeah!"
"I just want to say one thing- 'whatever happen, I will always back you up.'"
"I'm waiting for playing sports with you Ari"
"Fancy meeting you in our class!"
"It's always cheerful to know that foreign friends share such a crush in domestic culture. We like American culture as much as you guys enjoy Chinese one. It seems we are meant to be friends. Hope you guys have fun and achieved what you wanna persued here in China!"
And last but not least, "I don't know whether America has a teacher's Day such as ours. Anyway, Happy Teacher's Day! I hope we can be good friends!! I'm a girl!"

On a non-teaching note, I got my first haircut yesterday since coming here. I generally do not stress about haircuts at all but I found myself getting a bit nervous as I walked over, knowing I would not be able to communicate with the barber at all. I had visions of walking out with a mohawk. Or maybe a mullet. Or maybe a combination of both? Anyway, one of the teachers gave us a tip that South China Normal U., located right next to the school, has a cheap barbershop so that was the destination. When he said cheap I figured I'd pay a couple of dollars for a haircut. That would be a good deal, right? Well, it turns out I paid all of about 60 cents. But I digress.

I walked into the place and before I could even mime "I'd like a haircut," some guy beckoned me over to his chair. He sat me down, put the cape on, and there was no looking back! Steven had given me the word for "short" so I said it to the man with as much confidence as I could muster. He grinned even more and went to work. And, well, I've definitely had worse! The guy worked quickly and efficiently, taking care not to cut my ears off so that was a plus. I could tell that the other barbers in the place were definitely giving him a hard time too because they kept looking over and laughing after someone gestured in our direction. I'm guessing it was something along the lines of either "Hey don't screw up the foreigner's hair," or "My god, have you ever seen a Jewish afro like that?" Regardless, it was painless and I will definitely be heading back there for the rest of the year. It was funny that, similar to American barbershops, there seemed to be a whole bunch of people hanging out in the place that were neither giving nor receiving haircuts. I guess it's a fun place to hang out...

On a completely separate subject, Steven and I finally acquired a couple of spoons yesterday. Why is this significant, you ask? Well it turns out that in the school "canteen" where we eat lunch every day, no one uses chopsticks. I venture to say that we have even looked foolish eating with chopsticks everyday until now because literally everyone else had a spoon. We looked in our kitchen but there was not a spoon to be had. I finally cracked under the pressure and bought a pair so we could fit in a little better. It's only been three weeks without western silverware, but I have to admit, it felt both strange and as if I were cheating today when I was able to shovel my food down with a spoon. It just seems odd that everywhere else I have been so far has used chopsticks exclusively. Is the teacher's lunchroom some strange vortex within the Guangdong Province? Only time will tell.