My kids are so poor that...

Welcome to the first of many posts on how awesome my kids are, given their limited means.

My students are so poor that...

1. Instead of fresh toys, they play with freshly caught bees. At the end of my fifth grade class, one boy had a black ball pinned in his fingers and I asked him what he was playing with. He told me that it was a bee, as he stroked its furry body, he had his hands tightly pinching the bee's wings. He had been holding onto this bee the entire 40 mins of class! When I asked him how he got this bee, he told me - he picked it off a flower! Duh!

When I first saw these flowers, I thought that they looked like baby carrots. If my kids saw a bee on these honey suckles, they'd pick it off and stroke it for fun. 

2. They steal paper from me. I give them little white squares of paper to take quizzes on and everyday, there just never seems to be enough paper. It turns out that perfectly square paper can also be used to send notes and fold paper cranes. I would steal from me too.

3. They play ping-pong on their desk tables during the break. Our school only has two tile ping-pong tables, which teachers and older students can play on. My seventh graders are simply just too low on the ping-pong food chain to even get any play time, so they've created a harder game. Desk pong. The two center tables are connected, and all of my boys crowd in the back of the room as two boys face off on one another for about 8 mins that they have for break.

I lost my heart in San Francisco

Yeah... something like that. If you replace heart with camera, and San Francisco with Dali - I actually lost my camera in Dali, but I thought that the title should be more lyrical. Happy Thanksgiving ya'll! I know it's past and now Alli Gates and Kathryn Davis are married with husbands! in America! and I'm in China sans camera. In case you were worried, I spent spent Thanksgiving eating and feasting on NOMS NOMS NOMS with my loved ones.

We also watched Harry Potter 6.5, and I proceeded to spent 1/4 of my monthly paycheck on food at Wal-mart. HEEEY. Now, I finally have pasta for my pesto and will be fine for the next month before I come home. It's kind of hard to sound cheerful about a post about losing my camera, which, as a Chinese girl obsessed with taking pictures has a rather large impact on my life. New post? Yes. Coming right up!

Thanksgiving Cut Off!

BIG shout outs go out to my father, Nancy, Jennifer Conner and Audrey Butcher for sending me and having received packages and letters! Thanks for all the love and the pudding and the mac and cheese! Not to add pressure but.. I would love some Christmas cards? and... Thanksgiving is pretty much the cut off for sending things and having me receive them guaranteed before Christmas... just sayin!

I must return to teaching my kids about French fries being unhealthy... what I wish I could tell them is that they're DELICIOUS and SAVORY pieces of freedom.

If you're reading this and in America, please send me weekends that you are available to hang out in February as I will be on an food tour across America during the coldest time of the year!

Girl Talk Tuesday!

Best Tuesday evarrrr. Girl Talk’s new album, All Day is free for download at his website.  Here.
If that’s busy, which it was for me, here are some alternative sites that I found with a quick Google search.
I’m only on track 3, but it’s the best thing to happen to me this week.

Here's the wiki on the album. I'm a gushing school girl.

Bus Badventures

Recently, on the bus back to my town, a peasant farmer, who had never taken a bath, nor had she ever washed her clothes…. sat in my lap. I yelled out in disgust but was powerless to shove an old woman off of my lap.

The bus return to Shaojie is one that I can never ignore or take lightly. Phoebe and I always try to arrive early. There are certain seats on every bus that we always want to be sitting in. The first seat next to the driver. The first seats behind the driver. The single seats on the left side of the bus behind the door. The seats that have a window that opens from the front.  You get the point….We  always try to dodge the peasant farmers, the crying babies, the fetid smell of rotting dirty junk. Thanks in large to the the corrupt bus drivers, willing to take anyone and anything on the hour ride, the stank of the farmers without the facilities to shower, and the cigarettes that Chinese people insist on smoking on top of you… the bus ride to Shaojie is one that we always take with care.

This past weekend, on our way home, I witnessed this man texting outside my window. He is the epitome of Chinese fashion sense. Please notice his slippers that he wore as shoes. I’m sure they smell disgusting.

REGRESSION: STICKER MANIA

Since moving to China, I've changed. I would say that I've become more patient, sensible and tolerant of many things. My likes have also changed. But in the other direction. Did you see my last post? I just posted that I wanted a Hello Kitty version of monopoly! All day I write in my Muji planner that is plain and bland from the outside and inside, I stick with sick amounts of stickers. I suspect that each page has up to 5 stickers on it. When I go into the closest town, one of the places that I will always stop is .. somewhere, anywhere to buy stickers. I spend all my money in China on blanket, booze, food and now, stickers. Sometimes, I plot on how to acquire more cute stickers online.

For example..

THESE:

You may remember that I have one of these in real life. Sitting at home in Atlanta, I posted him on my blog here:

Rawr! Is it sad or amazing that my life can be thought of as either rawr! or cute!? Anyway, I don't dare show you how many small sheets of stickers I own.... but if you want to send me some in those care packages that you plan on posting before Thanksgiving, so that they will arrive here before Christmas.....

My address is:

Christine Yuan 袁恢琪 

中国云南省临沧市云县茂兰镇哨街村哨街学校 

(675806），P.R. China 

Christine Yuan 

Shaojie School, Shaojie Village, Maolan Town, 

Yunxian County, Lincang Prefecture, Yunnan Province, 

(675806) P.R

Feel free. Quick recap. I love stickers. I love you.

Gimme this.

Surprise surprise. It's post-Halloween and other than the turkey and other delicious foods, Thanksgiving just isn't a commercial enough holiday. Let's start celebrating THE holiday, Christmas season. No, I didn't misspeak. Christmas season. As some of you may know, I'm not really a practicing Christian, but I do practice celebrating Christmas during the Christmas season and everything it entails. Because I'm currently lounging on a mountain in China, I can only online shop, and mostly just dream online shop. No more 1 am mistakes, of hitting checkout and having things charged then delivered to my door without my realizing it. When shipping doesn't exist, or... is about... $100 for $30 worth of things, I don't make those mistakes anymore.

Now, instead of buying it, I just screenshot it and post it on this blog! Frugality - WIN.

Midnight Cravings

H&M for Lanvin is coming out soon in the States. When exactly? I can't say because I haven't bothered to look because i'm not there :( But look at this beautiful dress that I'm in love with that's only $199, almost an entire month of salary! 

Rawr. Beautiful scoop neck one shoulder ruffles in a bright yellow that's good for spring, summer and fall? Can you tell I'm missing on some pretty things?

If only I were in America

Because I would definitely buy these. Yes. These are real. Thank you Target for making this real. 

Romantic China

Drinking a bottle of red wine on a Saturday afternoon, riverside. Romantic. Normal, even, if you're in France.

Drinking a bottle of red wine imported from France on a Saturday afternoon, riverside, in America... at my age, hipster/awesome.

Drinking a bottle of red wine imported from France on a Saturday afternoon, riverside, under a bridge. Things are getting interesting.

Drinking a bottle of red wine imported from France on a Saturday afternoon, riverside, under a bridge, in rural China. Nice. "'Hood rat," in the words of Laura Z.

the view.

Drinking a second bottle of red wine that has "French characteristics", with France on the label after drinking a real bottle of red wine imported from France on a Saturday afternoon, riverside, under a bridge, in rural China. MISTAKE.

Urlai your blog!

If you have a blog, go to Urlai.com to have your blog analyzed by a computer to see the computer's correctness. Testing computers is a favorite activity of mine to do...

Here's my blog under the Urlai formula.

It looks like I'm 75% female, mostly 18-25, with a large hint of 36-50, mostly happy, and this blog, is with only a tiny shred of doubt, personal. Good job, Urlai!

It's peanut butter jelly time!

Ohhh it's the perfect storm. Apply the apple jam, smooth on the Skippy crunchy peanut butter and slap together that white bread. Yessir, we're talking PB&Js!

I like apple more than grape, which explains the lack of the traditional PBeej... Regardless, today was a good day mostly because of this and the Raisin Bread Rule. I ate two of them throughout the day and they've really... just made things 100% better. Tomorrow, perhaps a Nutella sandwich. Nom! Yes, I'm 6 again.

Reese's Pieces or Meat Pieces?

Hello friends! While ordinarily, this wouldn't seem like a game... but as an American in China, it is! So.. Reese's Pieces or Meat Pieces? Guess, then click and find out after the jump!

The Raisin Bread Rule

Two weeks ago, I discovered that the closest city within an hour, Yunxian, sells bread. Not real french bread or rye, but white toast like bread. It was never convenient to buy it. My mountain makes all things mold and mildew, so I wanted to be able to eat my bread within a week's time. Since this week is midterms, I'm obligated to stay in on Friday, which means, another opportunity to eat this bread. Wednesday, on the day that I bought Vogue, I also remembered to buy a loaf of bread. Usually, it's white. This time, somehow, it had raisins. 

I grumbled to Phoebe about how I hate grapes and grape bread before she stopped me. "Christine, do you mean raisins?" I didn't stop. Obvs she knew what I meant. I'm losing my mind! Anyway... so now I have raisin bread! ...and with new things, come new rules.

This morning, Phoebe asked me if she could have a slice, and that's when the Raisin Bread Rule was enacted. I hate raisins. Phoebe wants to eat my raisin bread. For every piece of bread eaten by Phoebe, Phoebe must eat the raisins off of three additional slices of bread. Why 1:3? 

Phoebe good at following rules!

Well, first of all, there are a lot of raisins. If Phoebe eats just two pieces, I have six pieces of raisin free bread to make three sandwiches. It doesn't really make sense. Rules often don't. 

P.S. I'm not torturing Phoebe. Raisins are sweet and so is Phoebe. Phoebe likes eating sweet things. Today she ate a lot less candy because she ate all the raisins from my loaf of bread. Sugar, but natural sugar!

No power, no problem!

Even though we have internet now, sometimes, we as a village in rural China lose power. As in, once a week. Yesterday, we lost power from about 7am to 11:30 pm, where, me in my fun panic power time decided to take a jaunt to the closest city, an hour bus ride away and buy a Vogue magazine that I can't read. Did you know Chinese Vogue has no perfume tear-aways that once were the bane of my existence but now I crave?

Looking at pictures for the low low price of about $2.97 for Vogue, and two additional minibooks is pretty affordable. Lord knows, that Vogue isn't a measly three bux back in the States!

The costume double standard

In China, your costume choices need to be extremely creative given limited exposure to resources. With careful thought and consideration, I finally settled upon being a Christmas tree after finding Christmas lights, tinsel and realizing that I LOVE CHRISTMAS.

I considered being blackmail (dressing in all black.. and sticking mail all over my body) and also tried on a variety of hats the night before...

Both, while extremely funny... was nothing as cheerful as Christmas. On the eve of our Halloween party, I had to get dressed early and run around town on a few errands to set up for the party. While running around, I had a giant yellow bow and a ton of blush on. People were looking at me like I had grown a third head. Two women who I have talked to on a occasion stopped me on the street to tell me how pretty I looked. The sad thing is in China, I can't say if they were mean-girl-ing me or if they were serious....Although one woman did ask me if I was in a performance of some sort...

Meanwhile, one of the other American fellows, Rachel was dressed as an 80s star, walking around her town, getting on an hour bus ride, walking through town and sitting down to a bowl of noodles, all.... to absolutely. no. scrutiny. [I'd like to think Rachel kind of looks like Robin Sparkles here (shout out to my HIMYM fans!).]

Yo China, stop with the double standard. I even had a cloak on, hiding the bulk of my tinsel and lights... but no, I look like a freak and not the girl in bright blue eye shadow? Oh man... I guess this is China. Blue shadow is okay here?

November November!

It's Monday before the Midterm! Yay! Now that I finally have internet, I find myself unable to express anything witty, quippy or terribly interesting. I've been mainly reading, GoogleVoicing people and sleeping under my four comforters. Halloween was this past weekend and I was a Christmas tree. Specifically, a hipster cute Christmas tree.

Hi!

Today, I've been grading my students' personal pronouns quizzes and giving out more quizzes. These queeezes have forced me to come to terms with the fact that I have some creative kids that don't understand many of the questions that I ask them. Thursday is the midterm. I should really be off the internet and finish grading my 100+ booklets of scrawl that I have sitting on my bed... but instead, I wanted to show you this:

9. This isn't my pe..........Sean?

Oh, the things that children do when they don't know... to make things more ridiculous... the next day, Sean told me that he forgot how to write his name. Happy Monday after Halloween. I hope your weekend was delightful and that your head is still pounding from the hangover that you still have. Mine does.