Daily Discovery

October 31: As many of you reading this in the US will know, today is Halloween! I was very interested to see that I had many students wish me a Happy Halloween, even though many of them don't really know what Halloween is beyond the Western holiday that showed up on their phone calendar and that they felt I must celebrate, so they wished me a Happy Halloween. This was awesome (and super sweet!) and we had a chance to talk about Halloween, and what it is and how it is celebrated in my family and community back home - from carving pumpkins to dressing up in costume to asking for lots and lots of candy. It was a great chance to get to know my students a little bit better and to share more of my own culture and experiences with them.

For lunch, my host mother happened to be on campus today because she had her once-every-four-months dormitory duty, being on call to answer the phone and take messages if necessary. Therefore, we had a chance to spend some time together and share lunch in the cafeteria. She decided she had to pay for it, and treat me, since it was 'my happy Halloween!' At lunch, I talked with her about my upcoming trip this weekend to Chengdu for VSV (Volunteers Supporting Volunteers) training, and mentioned how I have been extremely fortunate to have not one, but two, great host families.

She replies, "White, Crystal and I love to spend time with the Volunteers, because we like to be with all our family, Chinese family, foreigner family or any other family."

October 29: I have met so many students these last few weeks - and each time I meet a student it almost invariably ends up meaning that I have three new WeChat friends: one for the student I met, and two for friends/roommates that they share my information with so they can add me, too. I don't mind, for it gives me an opportunity to reach out and meet a lot of students, students who want to interact with their first foreigner, learn about the US culture, or share their Chinese culture with me.

Most conversations start out the same way, with a "Hi, teacher!" and a few more exchanges which always includes a "Have you eaten (insert most recent meal here)?" before I get the next question that always arises: "What do you think the difference is between China and the US?" Wow. Huge question for two minutes in to our relationship... or another variant, "Do you like China? What do you think of China?" Sometimes the conversations are conducted in English, where I know the student is using a translating app to input my message, then their response to find an English translation, which is then sent to me, and the process is repeated. Other times, I message in English, which I hope they try and read and gain some use from (since they all tell me they want to improve their English), and then they respond in Chinese directly. This carries on for some time, talking about my apartment, my life, their schedule, their major, and then they have class to attend or something else, so they apologize for having to end the conversation and then leave, usually with a "good night, good dream, teacher! talk later, bye."

I've include to the side and below a few examples of these exchanges with students, and hopefully you too will see how such a small act can be so meaningful.

October 27: Yesterday night, I received a message from the leader of the English club on campus: "Teacher! Tomorrow, we will have our speech contest, can you come be a judge?" Of course! So, today from 5-7 pm we had an English speech contest which ranged from very short speeches that were a few sentences of a joke, to a recitation of Walt Whitman's "O Captain, My Captain!", to a few speeches on why students love English. It was really interesting to listen to all of the students, many of whom were first years students, as they talked about why English was important to them, or used English to talk about their other dreams.

As the only foreigner in the city, and therefore the only native English-speaker judging this competition, there were other considerations added to my presence at the event. I was one of three judges, but the other two judges were students, so I was the one who best understand the speeches... the students were told the results of who would pass through to the next round would depend on all three scores, but in reality, they just used my scores. Also, for many of the first-year students who had never seen a foreigner before, their performance had an added level of stress: the foreigner sitting in the front row trying to be as encouraging as possible. There were many students who were literally shaking from nervousness and fear of messing up the English in front of me. I made sure to be as encouraging as possible, with many smiles and applause after each speech.

Afterwards, I was treated to dinner with some of the English club leaders! A lot of fun and food to end the Friday night.

October 25: Tomorrow is my students' midterm exam - my first exam as a teacher here in Wuwei, and I hope that it goes well. In case it doesn't, today I cleaned out the toaster oven in the previous Volunteer's apartment and put it to good use baking a few cookies for my students tomorrow, a sort of celebration if the exam goes well, and a back-up plan in case it doesn't. It was interesting to try and cook without a lot of things that one is used to having for baking the style of desserts I am used to - butter, vanilla, cocoa powder, powdered sugar, cinnamon... but it was a good challenge, and I ended up with some fairly decent tasting cookies.

I realized a few rounds in that this could easily transform into a somewhat misguided adventure, as the toaster oven cooks only some many cookies so fast, and with almost 200 students in the next 36 hours... Well, you can look at the pictures below, and I'll wait for the reviews tomorrow.

October 23: Today was a stressful day at the beginning, but a fun and rewarding in the end. Yesterday, my Peace Corps supervisors had arrived in Wuwei to visit me, check my apartment for safety concerns, and to watch my class and students (i.e. evaluate my teaching, or so it might feel from the front of the classroom). I needn't be too worried, though, for my students are great people, and kind and motivated to learn, and didn't let three strangers wandering around the room bother them too much and we continued to make good progress together.

Afterwards, I was very surprised to find out that my Foreign Affairs office at the school had organized a banquet lunch at a restaurant in town, which involved trying to eat too much really phenomenal food (tofu, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, a cauliflower dish, eggplant and beans, and lamb for the meat eaters among us), starting off by drinking a local tea, and finally drinking many glasses of 武酒 (local baijiu liquor) while receiving and giving many toasts. It was a really great time to hang out and enjoy food and friendship with my Peace Corps supervisors and supporters, and my local colleagues and supporters at site.

October 21: Today, after the consolidation practice and less than 24 hours after I arrived in Lanzhou, I took another train back home to Wuwei! I made it back to campus just in time to watch some of my students' dance performance that they had invited me to visit.

In my mind, I was expecting an indoor performance - instead, it was much better! A fun, minimalist outdoor show with a green mat to dance on and lights were supplied by viewers' phones' 'flashlight' functions. Afterwards, the students and I chatted for an hour and had a great time.

October 19: I had a very long, and tiring, day today. Tomorrow I am off to Lanzhou for a bit of training, and had to reschedule a class tomorrow morning for this evening from 7:30PM-9:30PM. It was exhausting, but a lot of fun, and rewarding as always - tonight I'll be able to sleep well.

The discovery for today was a truly ingenious cultural difference I spotted walking back to my apartment. Instead of above-ground dumpsters, here in Wuwei there are below-ground dumpsters that can be mechanically raised when the truck arrives to haul the garbage away. I was staring, looking at this, trying to figure out what the cage like device was, when a local man approached me and explained - "it's for the garbage, so it is easy to throw away and you don't hurt yourself." Brilliant.

October 17: I was eating lunch today (some delicious homestyle tofu), and heading to find a seat when a few students waved me over to sit and eat with them at their table. On the next seat, the two students had a huge bag filled with snacks that they must have purchased at the student convenience stores nearby. We chatted a bit in Chinese over lunch, and then they got up to head back to their dorm to nap. "Teacher, you must go back to your home and nap, too." I was sternly informed. Immediately afterwards, they untied the huge bag of snacks began the by-now-familiar task of finding a snack for me to enjoy, asking, "Teacher, do you eat these?" "I don't know what they are. What are they?" They pulled out a pack of these small white bottles with a green label. "It's Wahaha" which almost made me "hahaha" because I wasn't expecting that name. "It's very good, I like it. Try one!" "Is it milk?" "Try it! And sleep. Bye bye!" So, I tried it. It is actually surprisingly tasty - a sweetened yogurt type drink fortified with calcium, vitamins A and D that I'll probably be buying in the future.

October 15: Today, a more mundane discovery, perhaps in the conext of Chinese daily life, but a big milestone in my Chinese life: I bought my first tickets on my own. Public, and mass transportation, is a huge factor of life in China, and an incredibly convenient one. You can buy train tickets on your phone using the same app you use to text your friends, and then pick them up at the train station before you leave.

Being a foreigner, the process is a bit different. I can't buy them too easily on my phone (lacking the ability to full access online banking), but I had my host mom order the tickets for me, then I headed to the train station with the confirmation number to pick them up. Hand over the passport, give the confirmation number, and the whir of the printing machine takes over, producing two tickets for my trip to Lanzhou next week. The train is awesome: a smooth, easy 3 hour ride to Lanzhou, costing 46.5 RMB (a hair over $6), and no worries about parking, gas, or tolls. Plus, if you head to the station at the right time, not too many people are waiting in line at the ticket counter.

October 13: My second lesson for the week was on objects in a home, and I coupled that with grammar points relating relative positions of two objects (e.g. The computer is on the desk...). As my final activity of the class I made students draw a picture of their bedroom, adding in the objects we had studied, labelling them, and then discussing the room with a partner, asking about the location of certain objects in their room. The first of my two days on this lesson went smoothly with no surprises, but today when I was teaching, things suddenly changed.

In my classes today, as soon as I announced there would be drawing, I had so many students' faces transform with shock and horror - "I can't draw!" they announced in Chinese, and as I encouraged them to draw, they continued to make faces at me as if I were trying to force-feed them their least-favorite food from a spoon hovering inches from their mouth. This caused me (and then, them) to just continuously laugh during class (as I am now, writing this!) which as you could imagine makes it difficult to continuing teaching and practicing with the students. Nevertheless, another faction of students loved the activity and drew incredibly elaborate sketches of their bedrooms. Take a look at mine!

October 7: Today, my Chengdu host mother wanted to see the video that I had made from my trip to the desert (part of this story). After seeing it, I asked her what she thought about it (she makes phenomenal videos sometimes as part of her work). She told me: "It's pretty good . . . "

Naturally, I asked what the ' . . . ' signified, and she said, "It's pretty good, but maybe next time it could be better." Haha. True. But when I asked what to improve, then she claimed that it was all perfect, and nothing to change. But, the discovery for the day came after I asked again, and she told me to stop asking her to "look for a bone in an egg."

It turns out, 鸡(jī) 蛋(dàn) 里(li) 挑(tiāo) 骨(gǔ) 头(tou), or looking for a bone in an egg is a very famous Chinese saying for trying to find fault in something/someone that is flawless, or just being too picky in general as an egg, of course, doesn't have any bones. Or, does it?