They couldn’t be stopped.
There was the patter of bare feet and some piercing screams, and before we knew it the alley was a war zone. The children swarmed from every direction and soon we were batting away spindly arms and grasping fingers that had been you-don’t-want-to-know where. Within two minutes the potato chips were gone. The obvious foreigner (Hi Mr. White) was the main target, since these boys and girls had never seen a waiguoren before. Actually it was pretty confusing… they inexplicably concluded that he was from Japan, which resulted in some pretty relentless slapping. I escaped relatively unscathed, although one little guy went after me with a sharpened tree branch and I had to draw on nonexistent mixed martial arts training (what can I say, SoS teaches us a lot about improvisation). Another girl ran after us with arms outstretched Dawn of the Dead style. Anyway, we made the kids’ day and they ran off with all of the food we had bought for our host, the wonderful and idiosyncratic Bingo. Thanks Bingo!
Homestay weekend? Pretty successful.
I was able to briefly revisit the village of Mayang and even more briefly reunite with a 2011 student, Veria, who had hosted my teaching trio last year. This summer she’s babysitting her nephew and biding her time before September, when she steps in front of a classroom (of >70 students?) to begin her career as a teacher at the local middle school.

It’s strange… after a few weeks in the classroom and sharing nearly every waking hour with the students, it’s easy to begin to think that you know them.
Then, somebody makes the jump and invites you to their home. They seem to offer everything. You meet their family (grandparents caring for devious children while the parents are off working in distant cities), you sleep in their beds (or on their bedroom floors, whatever), you sit at their table and accept the food they cook for you. You smile when you have no idea what’s going on.
(We saw Bingo’s school. We met her teachers. We met her students.)
But what you really learn is that you don’t know your students. You catch these glimpses, and then you realize that these are people who can’t be simplified by something you can find in a book or the news or on the web. They’ve opened up so much to us, and maybe we reciprocate, but in the end this is just a hint of the complexity and richness of each person’s life. Each of our students has already done and seen so much, and after this summer they will continue on their way (Affected by the experiences we’ve shared? Maybe. Hopefully.)
For me, that insight is enough to be very, very thankful for.

It feels like it wasn’t too long ago that students were meeting us at the Jishou train station and welcoming us to China, yet we’ll be going back to that train station in less than a week to start making our way home. As the students love to say: time flies when you’re having fun. This week has gone by so quickly, so I’m going to take this post to do a recap of the past couple days.

On Wednesday we had the PIJ 2012 Summer Olympics! Although I spent Monday and Tuesday running around like a crazy person trying to finalize everything for the games, everything worked out. Every level was full of spirit, and all of the students seemed to have a great time during all of the events, especially the relay. I wasn’t sure how well the Strong Man competition was going to be received, but Cameron and Nick did a phenomenal job running it, and I have to say, I have never seen a more intense game of limbo in my life than I did on Wednesday.
The final scores for the day were: Unicorns – 80 points, Dragons – 55 points, Lions – 50 points, Phoenixes – 25 points.

Thursday was our last day of precept, and that afternoon also marked our time for individuals session with the students. Alyssa, Alex, and I had more of an impromtu English corner with our Phoenixes. Britney had made us all bracelets with three really cool Chinese knots in the middle of them. One knot represented a teacher, another represented Britney, and the middle knot represented the Phoenixes. I was so excited when she gave them to us! It was so sweet of her. She also taught me how to make the bracelets – I can’t wait to try it out for myself later.

For dinner on Thursday I met up with Reuben, Nick, and several students for what the teachers thought was going to be a picnic. The three of us were under the impression that we were going to pick up some dinner to go, and then eat it on the field at the middle school. The students just laughed at us, and told us that a picnic is for eating snacks…after eating dinner. Eating with the students is one of my absolute favorite things to do, so I had no problems with sitting around chilling after dinner. The girls got us lotus root, tofu, and duck collarbone (? Nobody can seem to agree on what part of the duck it is…) to munch on after dinner and before English corner. Duck collarbone may sound strange, but my advice to you is to just go for it. It is absolutely delicious.

Today was effectively the last day of school! All of the students had their final exams today, and there is no more official learning to be done next week. Today was also the day of the speech contest! I had the pleasure of watching the Phoenixes and Unicorns compete in the morning, and judged the Dragons in the afternoon. Only two Phoenixes competed in the contest today. I can’t even begin to describe how proud I am of Ryan and Dada. The two of them have improved so much over the summer, and today really showcased that for me at the contest. Although neither Phoenix placed at the contest, they (and the rest of my Phoenixes) are still number one in my heart! (Is that enough Velveeta for you, home office?)

Anyway, after the awards ceremony for the contest, I went out with some teachers and students to celebrate Andy’s birthday! We ate at a delicious hot pot restaurant and then went to a bakery for some cake. Tomorrow I’m heading off to do a homestay, Monday is Halloween, Tuesday is the day of the Talent Show, and Wednesday is graduation.

Everything is going by so quickly and I’m not ready to leave yet…

…yoga session. Lecture. Week of class.

This has been a summer of firsts, but as the program comes to a close, I’m beginning to taste the bittersweet of “last.”

Tuesday lecture was one of the best I’ve had here; I got to talk about my home away from home, New York City. A grid of the city, complete with approximate avenues and streets, the words SoHo, NoLita, Broadway, Chinatown, Statue of Liberty, etc. littered the blackboard by the time I had finished. For the second part of lecture, Miryam and I combined classes – we somehow went from playing the classic “New York, New York” by Frank Sinatra (which only Miryam and I seemed to fully appreciate) to blaring “Starships,” “Glad You Came,” and “What Makes You Beautiful.” The students couldn’t get enough of the Jersey fist pump and other cheesy dance moves that we taught them; everything was caught on video, naturally.

Precept was also amazing; one of this week’s textbook lessons was on Flat Stanley. In class, each student made their own version of a Flat Stanley; some of my precept’s included Cuber (an alien robot), Spongebob and his trusty sidekick Patrick Star, Scarecrow from Kansas, a Chinese empress, and my very own Princeton Bob. We ended up taking our Flat _______ out for a Jishou adventure; the characters enjoyed a trip to a local bookstore, took photos on the bridge, and finished up with a visit to Drinking Express, my new favourite tea haunt (sorry, 7Cup). After class, I told the students that they could give me their Flat characters, and I would take photos of them in their new Princeton home. The students seemed overjoyed at the prospect of having their paper creations fly halfway across the world; as for me, I can’t wait to bring back such a personal piece of China to Old Nassau.

Wednesday, the Jishou Olympics were held. I don’t think I’ve ever yelled so much in my entire life. Miryam and I painted blue battle stripes across our students’ cheeks; we also wrote “Unicorns Unite” down their arms with black eyeliner. The goal was to elicit some Unicorn pride. I guess the plan worked, for our little Unicorns – drum roll, please – took home the Gold! Cheering on my students as they played ping pong, badminton, basketball, tug of war, and a host of other events against the other levels was something I will never forget. I felt like the proudest mother in the world as I yelled, “COME ON, UNICORNS! GO UNICORNS!” till I was hoarse, running back and forth like a hysterical Chihuahua. A completely different person seemed to take hold of me yesterday, and I joked with Eliot and Jessica that a crazy alter ego had been born.  

With only one week left of PiJ, things are heating up. Today’s speech contest was a great success – mad props to Cameron and Alyssa for leading Speech Club and for organizing this event. The talent show is coming up soon, too; with such a gifted bunch of students, I have no doubts that the performances will be stellar.

Unfortunately, the Unicorn teachers have already had to say a few goodbyes (to Yolanda and Tina). It’s hard to believe that I might never see any of my students again. The tears have not [fully] been shed yet, because I know that once the waterworks start, they will never stop.  For now, my goal is to savour every moment I have with my students; I have exactly one week left with them.

I plan to make it count.

Going into this year, I made a very important promise to myself: type up the literary magazine submissions early so that I wouldn’t have to pull a Princeton-style late-nighter and be exhausted the next day. That isn’t to say that I didn’t have fun when I did it last year (shout-out to Ms. Shifke, SoS ’11); its just that I appreciate having had a good night’s sleep when standing in front of a class and getting confronted with some rather particular grammar questions or inquiries about the phonetic alphabet (which still looks a little bit like alien gibberish to me).

To make a long story short, I did not keep my promise to myself.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that the magazine is awesome this year, and I can’t wait for the students to get to see it next week after it comes off the presses.

Here’s a sneak peek:

She Danced Like a Bird

By Cansy (Lions)

She danced like a bird.

What a pity! She is on the TV.

How can I dance with her?

Just wait!

She danced like an angel.

What a pity! She is in my dream.

How can I dance with her?

Still wait?

She danced like a fairy.

Wow, she is closing in on me, closer and closer.

Oh, my god..

She can fly, flying in the air, like a bird.

Darling, why don’t you go back?

Go back, stay with me.

Just planned the last Dragons lecture with Nick. We wanted to do something reflective. Here’s what we came up with:

We’ll start off with a dictation and then read through the text to correct pronunciation, as usual.

Next we’re going to listen to “You’ll Be In My Heart” from Tarzan. Don’t worry, we’re not that sappy and we didn’t quite think of this randomly. Actually we thought it would be fun to do mad libs with the students, and when we were browsing mad libs online, we came across a “You’ll Be In My Heart” mad lib and realized it would be a nice song to introduce to the students. I hadn’t listened to it in a while, but I was quickly reminded that it is a fantastic song. Here are my favorite lines:

I know we’re different but,
deep inside us
we’re not that different at all

The Chinese textbooks at Princeton tend to focus on the differences between the US and China. Last summer at Princeton in Beijing, one of the first sentences we learned was “Chinese people like to shower at night; Americans like to shower in the morning”. Back at Princeton in 3rd year Chinese, our discussions continued to contrast China and the US. We covered differences in spending habits, attitudes towards dating, sex and marriage, attitudes towards education, child-rearing and how to care for parents in old age.

Having been thinking in dichotomies for such a long time, I came to China this summer and saw differences everywhere. And let’s not kid ourselves; they are everywhere. But over the last few weeks in Jishou, I’ve become aware that there are so many similarities between Chinese and American students. We’re sarcastic. We like to make fun of each other. We like to eat. We like to sing. We have dreams and insecurities. We like to talk about relationships (this is perhaps the students’ favorite topic). I’ve seen the dynamics of their friend groups, and I could totally fit in as a student here.

Back to tomorrow’s lesson. We’ll continue with a mad lib version of the song (the students will replace words in the song with words of their own choosing, not knowing where they’ll go). Should be fun.

Last, we’ve planned a 30 minute reflective free-write. The writing will address address expectations coming into PiJ, how the experience compared to expectations, and thoughts about the future. I plan to write along with the students. Then we’ll spend the first hour of precept discussing what we wrote, and the second hour playing King’s Cup (one of the student’s favorite games). Can’t wait to hear what the students have to say and to tell them some of the things I’ve been thinking about.

6 weeks in China. 2 more to go. It’s amazing how fast things change and how rapidly we adapt to them. I remember the first week in Jishou when we went to KTV being surprised and even laughing at “Big world” playing and Eliot, Cameron and Tony singing it. It was such a simple, plain song. “I’m a big, big girl, in a big, big world, it’s not a big, big thing if you leave me.” The words- hysterical. Three young men singing it- even funnier. I remember thinking “I’m never singing that- ever.”

Last week, we had lunch with June and Cameron for their birthdays, which fall on the same day. We went to a Miao style restaurant where we had lunch- after the speeches that we all gave in honor of June and Cameron. This is a very nice tradition, where you say something to the birthday boy or girl, congratulating them and thanking them for their friendship. I thanked June for being genuine and true to herself and Cameron for not being serious with me (He has a reputation amongst the students of being serious since they claim he rarely smiles. That is not the case).

After lunch, customary of Chinese birthdays, we went to KTV at 2:30 in the afternoon. After a rendition of Lucky, We R Who We R, Tonghua, came Big World. Having requested this song, I proceeded to sing along at the top of my lungs. Surprise, surprise. The “I will never sing this song- ever” turned into “I’ll yell this song until everyone else is singing along.”

I guess China is getting to me, I am becoming more Chinese. I omit “yes” sometimes and grunt in approval instead. I like to drink hot water. If the food isn’t spicy, it’s weak. The fan I used at the beginning, gone. I take afternoon naps. I like KTV. And Miao clothes. And taking photos. Basically, I love China.

Last week, in a Chinese town you’ve probably never heard of, we introduced the concept of hipsters to our students. I guess it was kind of cool. If you’ve ever tried to explain this recent phenomenon to someone unfamiliar with it, you may know that it can be difficult to explain, and even harder to undertand. We tried our best to make it comprehensible, even if the students didn’t know the definition of the word ironic.

First thing on the agenda: dress like hipsters. The night before class Arianna, Reuben, and I planned out carefully what we were going to wear. Arianna went for the I’m-a-young-woman-wearing-vintage-clothes-and-grandma-glasses look. To top it all off she made sure to wear her Converse. Reuben went for the apple product indie hipster. With headphones draped around his teal v-neck he pulled off a convincing outfit. I donned thick-rimmed grandfather bifocals, a skin tight shirt, and rolled up skinny jeans. All that was missing was the handelbar mustache.

We came to class among mixed oohs and ahhs. “Ooh you look so cool!” screamed one student with what might have been sarcasm. “Why are you wearing those glasses? You look so old” said others. Clearly, this was not going to be any ordinary day.

Ten minutes later, my students were still struggling with the concept. I pretended that I didn’t care too much and wasn’t worried – getting stressed would have been way too mainstream. Instead, I tried a new tactic. “Ok. What would you guys think if I grew out a huge mustache and beard?” “What?” “Do you think it would make me really attractive?” “Nooooooo!” the girls in my class screamed in unison. “A hipster grows out his mustache because many people find it unattractive.” After a moment of silence, some students seemed to get it, smiling quietly and nodding their heads ever so slightly.

Now I had to test their knowledge. I split the class into groups, outlining a skit for each of them to perform. Here are some of the highlights:

On trying to buy a pair of jeans: “No! You need to be yewnique, not normarl!”

One hipster explaining to another that the stickers on her clothes and face come from a store she has never heard of: “Ridiculers! Stupid! I know where that sticker store is!”

On clothing: “You look like a beggar!” “No! No one has the same shoes as me!”

On relationships: “I love you so much but I want to be the unique one. Let’s break up.”

Later, a hipster commenting on the tearful breakup: “Ugh, I can’t believe they’re quarreling. That’s so typical.”

Although many of their ideas seemed to hit the mark, with an absence of flannel and skinny jeans the Jishou students could only compensate with weird hairstyles and headbands. While they failed to talk fluently about obscure music (aside from Reuben’s jazz) and veganism, at least my students posed for the camera in a disinterested fashion. Moments like those made me unreasonably proud, erm, I mean, somewhat amused. Meh.

-Nick

I’ve had the joy of helping about a dozen students write speeches over the last four weeks.  It’s been an amazing experience. I think I’ve learned just as much from them as they have from me.

Cameron and I divided speech club into two levels: Dragons with Lions and Unicorns with Phoenixes. At first, I tried to replicate what was done in last year’s speech club based on the description and book I had received from Caroline. It took me about a week to realize that I was not here last summer and I did not know what had been done; we were putting on speech club for this summer’s students. 🙂

The first week I asked the students to find something that annoyed them or they thought could be improved upon. The point was to get them to take a stance on a subject or state their opinion. I tried to stay away from directly asking, “What problems exist in China?” but I still felt like I was asking them to be critical about their lives and their surroundings. Cameron made a great point and said something like, “So maybe they like to talk about the meaning of happiness or how to be content, but what’s so wrong with that. Maybe they’re on to something. Maybe we don’t talk about happiness enough in the USA.”

The following week, I took a new approach to speech club. I told them that they could write about whatever topic they wanted. The only rule was that it had to be something they were passionate about. I also incorporated fun games into speech club. I had them write and narrate a fairy tale to the their peers. I encouraged them to use hand gestures and a loud voice. Some students came up to me after class and said, “That was so cool. My first time performing in front of my class.” These changes made speech club more of a fun after school activity for the students.

But this week, it is no longer fun and games. It’s crunch time. Today, I held office hours to give students with questions a chance to ask me about their speeches. The speech contest is on Friday. I know each of these students’ speeches by heart now and although I continue to give them advice, I have to say, I’m very impressed by what they’ve come up with. They went from not being able to choose a topic to having complete speeches about a topic that really interests them! I can’t wait to hear them on Friday.

Shout out to Miryam and Eliot who have also been running the Unicorn/Phoenix part of Speech Club!

*Another shout out to Sofia, who has been giving great advice on performing speeches during her individual sessions. 🙂 Teamwork rules!

During our WildChina trip before arriving in Jishou, we spent multiple nights in Miao villages, watched countless Miao performances, and learned all about their culture. Some fun facts that I learned about the Miao people on WildChina include:

• They are found all over world, from California to Vietnam and Thailand.
• They can be divided by their clothing and hairstyles. Among these categorizations are mini skirt Miao, long skirt Miao, long-haired Miao, Japanese, and Miao Miao.
• Miao women love to get drunk off rice wine when they are happy. We witnessed this first-hand when we were greeted by a group of drunk women upon our arrival to Wugao.
• Miao houses have three stories: the bottom floor is for farming tools, the second floor is the kitchen and living room, and the third floor are the bedrooms.
• Miao women love to sing and teach you their songs, which include a lot of high-pitched yelling, whistling, and other vocal sounds we can’t quite achieve.  They also expect you to learn their songs after hearing it only once.

After living in Miao villages and experiencing their culture first-hand, “Make Me Miao 2012” became a running group joke. This would be a reality TV show that would take American women and put them in Miao villages. The winner of the TV show would be the girl who can master the different levels of Miao life. The levels would include things such as farming, learning how to do your hair like the Miao woman, serenading the Miao men by learning the Miao songs, cooking in a Miao village, using a Miao bathroom (not as easy as it sounds…), and Miao dancing. The final prize would be becoming a Miao princess.

I think that after WildChina we have all gotten past most of the levels. Given our Miao-style welcoming ceremony when Alex arrived three weeks ago, we are all expert Miao singers and dancers. This weekend in Fenghuang, Arianna and I were able to complete the final stage and become Miao princesses.

When walking through the crowded Fenghuang streets, one is attacked by vendors holding posters of tourists dressed in traditional Miao clothing. Arianna and I immediately gave in – there was no way we were missing the opportunity to dress up in Miao clothing and get a photo shoot in the middle of Fenghuang. So we followed two of the women and used our magnificent pointing skills to communicate with them and pick out our Miao outfits. Then we proceeded to our hour-long photo shoot in our Miao princess outfits, complete with tacky Miao poses we were commanded to do and complements on complements from our photographers. Not to mention all of the Chinese tourists amused by the Westerners dressed in Miao outfits. I knew Chinese women loved taking pictures of themselves and everything around them, but I did not think an hour of photos would be necessary. Apparently it is part of the process of becoming a Miao Princess.

And that is the story of how we became Miao princesses. Here is the proof.

Monday:

Where would you like to go in China? Why do you want to go there? What would you do or see there? What is the food like? What places are difficult to reach? What makes the trip so difficult? Do you think you’ll ever be able to go?

The premise of somebody who wants to travel but can’t definitely resonates with most of our class. Out of my nearly 40 students, maybe 4 have ever been on an airplane. Meanwhile we’re planning the Jishou 2012 Olympics (Wednesday) and casually discussing states and countries around the world… I have a girl whose entire life goal seems to be to visit Australia. Koalas wander into her writings and example sentences, she shows up to class wearing Australian flag earrings. She gave me a drawing that showed her smiling classmates meeting Miryam and me at the Sydney Opera House.

So we approach the Flat Stanley lesson gradually. Each student has a sheet of paper and they get to design their own Flat Reon, Flat Bom, Flat Yolanda… Then we introduce each other. Hometowns: Jishou, Huaihua, small Hunan farming villages. Where do they want to go in China? How about if they could go anywhere in the world? Laughter. Almost every girl in my class wants her paper doll to be sent to Paris, where they can go clothes shopping (maybe they can share an envelope?). Flat Annabelle hopes she can sit on the slopes of Mount Fuji and look at the cherry blossoms. I hear a few soft “America”s.

Tomorrow we take the paper cutouts out around Jishou.

A lantern at Sofia’s birthday celebration.