Adventures in Guangzhou!

I was inspired after our Thanksgiving meal to seek out an oven, especially after Ms. Meggie Lu fed me a couple other amazing oven-cooked meals. I should preface this story by saying that ovens are rare in China. Most homes and apartments do not have them. Most hotels and restaurants don't have them. Only the few western-friendly establishments around have ovens so there's not exactly a big market for them. I asked my friends where they procured their ovens and they told me about some mystical far off warehouse area where hotels go to buy appliances. With only a bus number and crude directions in hand, I headed out in search of the promised land.

After traveling on two different buses and two different subway lines, I finally found it. I was told that it would be extremely difficult to find the exact store with electric ovens, but I scoffed at the warning. I figured that if I got to the general area, it would be no problem. Well, ummm, I can't say they were wrong. This place was GIGANTIC! There must have been hundreds of mini shops all in this one warehouse area. I started to wander around and did not see any ovens. Hmm. I must have wandered for about 20 minutes until I decided to just head back. Naturally, as I was walking out, the very last store I walked into had 4 ovens in different sizes. I asked for the biggest one (not very big at all) and got psyched up to bargain. I asked how much and he said 200--fully 200 less than what I expected to pay. I must have balked for a split second too long because when I said 175, he responded in English with, "So cheap already!" I forked over two crisp one hundred yuan bills and happily walked out. I haven't cooked with it yet, but I plan to christen it this week with some form of roast chicken. Yum!

Another perk of this position is the amazing people I come into contact with. As I've mentioned before, I tutor two Korean boys every Sunday. Last week the mother asked me if I would like to have dinner with them this week. Home-cooked Korean food? For free?? Wild horses couldn't keep me away! So after our lesson today, I walked out to a dining room filled with an entire table of different dishes. We had kimchi, bulgogi, some sort of potato-vegetable pancake, some shrimp creation, seaweed and mussel soup, and what they translated as jelly fish. It didn't sting me, and it sort of resembled jellyfish, but I'm pretty sure something was lost in translation there. Regardless, it was all incredible. I feasted like there was no tomorrow and they seemed all too happy to keep filling up my plate. Then, of course, we had great fresh fruit for dessert along with chocolate cake, ice cream, and ginger tea. Yum!

Yet another perk of this job is vacation time. In less than two weeks my family will be here and I get a 5 day weekend for Christmas. About two weeks after that I get about three and a half weeks for the Chinese Spring Festival (their New Year). Woe is me--I don't know where to go or what to do! I can't decide whether to go somewhere random in China (Qingdao? Harbin? Lhasa?) or make my first international venture abroad (Chiang Mai? Singapore? Hanoi?). Tough life, huh? I'm hoping that some PiA-ers will start take advantage of our offer of hospitality here because lord knows I will be imposing on a heckuva lot of people in the coming weeks. I'm comfortable on floors though--doesn't take too much to make me happy.

I'm not quite sure if it's a perk or not, but working at the high school does make you a minor celebrity. Everyone knows us (even they aren't our students) and says hello when they see us. It's friendly in that way, which is great. The downside is that we are expected to be at almost all school functions, regardless of timing or content. There was some celebration this weekend that Steven and I missed for various reasons and I'm hoping we don't get any flack for it. No worries though--I think we'll make up for it with our end-of-the-year performance. There is a big to-do at the end of the month and we were convinced to give a short musical performance. Ha! I'm not sure what we're going to do yet but I have a couple ideas brewing...

Being the big fish in the small pond, I got the opportunity this past week to guest host one of the student radio shows which was a blast. We took turns playing different English songs over the P.A. system at the school and chatted about music in between. I played Martin Sexton, Guster, Jeff Buckley, Glen Philips, and even a tune by my good friend Sam Bigelow. Ha! I haven't gotten any feedback on the show yet, but I know I had fun so whatever. I might even do it again...

On a separate note, one of my brightest students here just impressed the heck out of me by reading through the entire Allegory of the Cave (Plato) in her spare time... in English. We had a conversation about the Matrix and the Truman Show and I thought she would appreciate it so I gave her the information on it. Knowing how busy the students here can be, I did not expect her to look through it for some time. Silly me--she's already finished it and begun analyzing it. The students here never cease to amaze me.