Nutrition is No. 1 in rural China!

I just ate a huge bowl of Jell-O Instant Chocolate Fudge pudding and a can of tonic water for dinner. Am I a hobo?

It was so delicious!!!! My teeth feel like they may fall out of my mouth from over sugar stimulation. I am very afraid of the sugar crash that is coming soon.

Days alone in Shaojie: 3. AHHHH YUMMY.

When Tom grows a mustache...

and puts on aviator sunglasses and it's the middle of the night and we have nothing better to do - it's awesome!

Dear Mosquitoes

I hate you and I hate you for having more discretion in the places you bite. Face should be off limits. C'mon!

CHEATERS

Today, out of 51 kids, 29 of my 7th graders admitted to me with raised hands that they cheated on the morning's quiz. Let's do the math, shall we? 29/51 = 56.8% of my students cheated this morning and the ones that didn't, mostly scores 0/10. I much prefer a 0 than a C in my grade book, but I think the problem with my students is that they've told me that they much prefer seeing 10 falsely earned checks on their papers than a 0 that they earned. I don't think you understand, in China, students don't have grades - they only have midterm and final scores - so the grades that I give on a daily basis mean NOTHING.

I've told them time and time again that their quiz grades only matter to me. It's a measure of my performance as a teacher and that I've promised that I wouldn't get mad if I saw that they were earning zeros. It just meant that we would need to cover the material over again. I'm glad that my students feel like they can admit openly that they cheated and I promised that I wouldn't tell the principal. I'm still trying to figure out a way to teach them that cheating is meaningless and harms them more than it disappoints me without losing their trust. 

I didn't grade their quizzes and I put HK sad faces on them. I see them in 3 hours and what I've figured I'm going to do is reward those that didn't cheat and have the rest of them write an apology and explanation letter to me. Talk about a day deflator. 

Uno mas from Monihei

I love us!

FEATURING JOHN KUO'S BLOG on the Water Festival

For future reference, John Kuo's blog, A Little Trouble in Big China, can be found here. I had on my to blog list a blog on Poshuijie, the water festival by the local Dai people, but as it turns out, John Kuo's blog on the Waterfest was perfect.

Here's his take on the water fest: this is his post, but I'm copying and pasting the post that I like here: - THANKS John!

Water Festival

By John Kuo on April 19, 2011 8:56 AM| No Comments

I was standing outside my hotel in Xingfu when I saw a car speeding down the main road. Pete, a Fellow at Xingfu Elementary School, stuck his body out the window, holding onto the white van with one hand and onto a bucket with the other. "Get in the car! Get in the car!" he yelled.

This past weekend was the Water Festival, a Dai ethnic minority festival where people splash water on each other to celebrate the New Year. Everyone gets into the festival and no one is safe. At first I thought I was going to miss the holiday because, for some odd reason, our bosses scheduled a conference at the same time. Luckily, there was Dai village right behind Xingfu Middle School.

Pete's yelling and the van's sudden appearance incapacitated me for a minute, but down the street I saw Laura and Christine being chased by water-flinging little girls, so I hurriedly jumped in the van. Once the others had escaped the water, we made our way towards the village and Pete pointed to a smiley man in the front passenger seat. "Yo, say hello to my friend Baozi," he said.

Along the way, children harmlessly splashed water against the car doors and we saw water gun armed gangs creeping out from alleys. As we passed a woman washing her clothes, Christine screeched, "Splash her, Pete! Splash her! I'm gonna get that bitch later." Earlier, the same woman had pretended to wash her clothes as we walked down the road, but in a moment of sneakiness, dumped her entire washbasin over Christine's head.

The road towards the village narrowed, and motorcycles carrying water bucket-toting children passed us, inches away from our windows. The village's main square slowly came into view and dozens of villagers eyed us hungrily. When we came to a halt, the Water Festival seemed to as well. Children surrounded our van, holding with buckets over their heads and water guns aimed at our faces. "We probably should have come with buckets," Christine lamented.

Christine was right. Within moments of exiting the van, we were all soaked. Since I didn't have a bucket, I just resorted to grabbing kids' filled buckets out of their hands and dumping water on their heads. Others just stole buckets from helpless children. Pete, who already had a bucket, would just catch water flung at him in his bucket and then fling it back, while repeatedly yelling (in English, of course), "You don't get it. I played lacrosse."

Pete, on the phone, and splashing kids

By the end, we smelled of river water and once we tired of being attacked by children, we joined Dai women wearing traditional dresses dancing in the village center. On the side, men beat drums. One Xingfu woman I talked to said that we should have gone elsewhere because Xingfu was too small. I disagreed, though, saying that Xingfu was just right; it was a genuine celebration.  

The Secret Garden

Play hard. Work harder. Oh, what am I doing in rural China? Lest you forget, I’m a teacher and as a teacher I have certain responsibilities that mostly involve teaching my roomful of seventh graders engaged in learning English. How do I do that?

Well… I decided that I was tired of looking at the ugly remnants of the back of my room, which I had been doing so FOR LONG.

 

WHAT is that you ask? Remnants of sticky bits from years passed – every morning I awaken to looking at that in the back of my classroom – well, I couldn’t handle it anymore. I made it my project starting at the beginning of the semester. I’ve been back since March and I’ve been plotting to cover the back with something for so long. At first, it was ducks, perhaps cars? I also teach my 7th graders art, so I decided to make it OUR art project.

But what to do with such finicky students? Their capricious attitudes frustrated me time and time again until I came upon the perfect idea. It would take a lot of work, but it was something that I was definitely willing to do.

This project benefited me in a variety of ways. I needed to get to know my students better. I wanted to know their motivations – and what makes them tick.

They needed an art project.

The art project needs to be in English.

I want the back wall of my classroom to be covered.

SO – my plan of action involved having each student prepare 10 secrets that they wanted to divulge to me. Ha! You laugh. What makes you think that my students would tell me their secrets? Because no one else asks that’s why. I got some really amazing ones.

When you’re in class from dawn until past dusk and you only see your parents on the weekends – having someone else to talk to… priceless.

When I presented the idea to them, I told them ten secrets and all of them freaked out. They didn’t have ten secrets they told me – I told them, fine. 10 things you want me to know – secrets, hopes, dreams, wishes…. and then I scheduled 5 min meetings with all 51 of my kids.

I started a notebook and started translating. The first part of my project was in place. They prepare the secrets, I write them down but in English so that no one else can read it .

Then, I take those secrets, and copy them down on colored paper which I teach them how to fold into origami flowers, which we would then post on the back wall.

But that wall is huge! So was this endeavor.

Here they are – folding their secrets that I copied unto paper. 10 secrets/kid = 500 secrets!

They began to pile up and pile and pile! I put them in folders and stuck them under my mattress to flatten them until the next week!

Simple, pastel and pretty, I soon had over 500 flowers but I knew it wasn’t enough. The following week, I went into town, bought more paper and on the day that I planned on sticking my flowers up – my flowers filled with secrets, I was taking suggestions from my students on how they wanted to put them up but ultimately, I run this town.

We started with the land and the sky. Clouds and grounds. I split my kids into teams, the paper folding teams, the sorting teams, the taping teams and my pioneers- the desk standing stick teams.

My students at work!

Our secret garden was beginning to form. At the end of 2 hours…

Things were forming into a beautiful mural made of folded origami flowers! At the end, I gathered all my kids in the back of the room and let them pose however they wanted. I loved this one. I’m so proud of them.

… and after they left, I took another photo.

Please! Click to enlarge.

Other Monihei picture favorites

Here are some other pictures that I really enjoy that I didn’t incorporate in any other posts:

Sunburned boys.

Poolside girl love.

BULLFIGHT

In front of this majestic Banyan tree

Post mud-fight

Meta picture taking

The most awkward/AWESOME photo ever to prove how hilarious life can be. Lucas and I were playing slaps after dinner when a man with NO hands and forearms came upon us. We froze, then took video of him talking to us. This is the face that I like to make when I’m HORRIFIED and laughing. I just couldn’t believe that this was seriously happening. What is the word to describe this situation?

Hei hei: MONIHEI!

On the bus ride back, I decided to cover my camera with sandwich bags. I was determined to bring my camera into the high mud zone. Little did I know that the second the mud fighting would start that there would be NO OPPORTUNITIES FOR PHOTOS.

We waited outside at 2:30 for the gates to open. At 2:45 a huge herd of people rushed unto a field. We waited for an opening dancing ceremony to happen while a lot of us just hovered over huge planter pots full of doctored mud.

Here are some pre-fight shots, which I think are pretty awesome.

Sure they’re blurry but… the Chinese people just couldn’t keep their hands off the opportunity to be the first ones to schmear mud all over the white people (thankfully not me, yet).

(obvi click to enlarge!)

A performance went on before all the people got bored, mid way through someone flung open a tub and the techno music went on. I have discovered that techno music does tend to make exciting things a lot more exciting – in this case, two songs on repeat allowed a field full of people to schmear mud in places that I can’t even speak of. At one point, I looked to my right to see Lucas and John picking up a nearly empty planter to dump its contents on my head. Axel was slip and sliding in the muddy ground. Laura and Sean were interviewed by CCTV. Lucas and Sean posed in front of a stage full of people while John and I smacked handfuls of mud on Chinese popo.

These are what we looked like after:

The mud that we were slathered in was supposed to be easy to wash off and had a light scent of cacao. I suppose it was like what it would be to smear melted cocoa butter on stranger by the tub full. In the end, we were all hunting for people that had skin exposed. It was a mud fight to remember – ridiculous and utterly worth it.  In case you were wondering from left to right, Laura, Lucas, Axel, me, and Sean. The second photo was the same except with a new Chinese friend that wanted to be in our pic. WORTH IT.

Hei Day: Part II: Wa Village

We bullied our driver to taking us to the closest village – Wengding.An hour away, this village is a touristy village that lives 500, introducing the traditional living styles of the Wa people to all other people. The entrance was exorbitant in the sense that it existed at all but after we went inside… it was pretty interesting.

Upon entering, the welcoming Wa people of the village schmeared a mud spot on our foreheads to protect us from evil spirits and had us sip rice wine.

Look how happy about it we are:

Here, we also shot crossbows for 1kuai each and sat around eating from banana leaves.  The Wa people were originally head hunters – and were later convinced by the Han people to kill only cows. Apparently, as told to me from my driver, originally the Han people used to sacrifice Wa people every year for a hearty harvest – which when a united Wa people found out – decided that they would take up headhunting. Pretty cool, like this cow skull.

Now, cute Wa kids sell tea while speaking in unison. What’s cuter than one kid? SEVERAL, all saying the SAME thing. Tricky but effective!

We beat drums, drank tea with elderly village people, and posed in front of this Totoro totum pole.

The village itself was truly spectacular.

I’ll let you see for yourself.

Noon came around! The mudfight was at 2:30, we all jumped back into the minibus and headed back into town.

The Hei Day: Part I: Bull Slaughter

We woke up. It was the day of the Monihei Mudfest, but what did we want to see first?

A bull get slaughtered. Then we planned on going to a Wa village before finally getting mud slathered all over our bodies in the most impolite way.

Number one on the docket… turned out to be old Wa people dancing in a circle.

7 am wake up bust. Not that ethnic dancing doesn’t look cool. All those ethnic minority outfits. The dancing. The rhythms. Ooo.

But the freshness was not lost on this man, one of the leaders of the dance who left in the middle to pick up a phone call.

“Oh hey dude, what’s up? Not too much here.”

“Yeah, it’s noisy outside where I am but I can talk…”

FYI, there’s no inappropriate time to answer your phone in China. The silent button may as well not exist.

As you might be able to see, Sean, Lucas and I are super impressed with the dancing. at 7 am. My bathing suit is also put on inside out.

Village exploration

Upon our arrival into Cangyuan, we found to our dismay that the mudfest wouldn’t be until Monday afternoon – AND we had no hotel to sleep in.

Our intrepid group found hotel lodgings the first night and for the second night, we got more creative. All the hotels were expensive and we’re simple school teachers.

Massage parlor sleeping it was. I don’t need to go into more details but it is exactly that. A few of us got massages during the day and we asked them later if we could sleep on the massage beds – five comfortable mats to sleep ten people. Why not?

Look how comfy John is.

Cangyuan Menagerie!

Cangyuan, in its carnival type atmosphere was filled with random animals.

Here are some that I saw:

A lot of turtles! Small ones! Big ones! Medium – all cute!

Camel.

Peacocks that Laura thinks will peck out her eyes

A yak?

There’s something I need to get off my chest: we brought our own monkey because we feared that this carnival wouldn’t have enough animals… and

I hate dead scary things (scorpions, snakes, tarantulas)

But what about the Monihei Mudfest you ask? It’s coming!!