I heart laowai food

My last week in China and my local grocery store decides to finally start stocking butter. How did they know?

the little things

Today one of my students made me kneel down so she could whisper "Jill, I love you". It does make the hideously frustrating moments of being a kindergarten teacher seem a little more worthwhile.

Also, for all its sometimes less-than-appealing aspects China does have its pretty moments:

I took this on a recent excursion to a city just outside of Shanghai called Suzhou.

Christmas

Hello all!

Well it seems that I've managed to drag my butt into the new year. I went through a pretty major spat of homesickness over the holidays but after a little (very serious) consideration I've decided that I'm going to continue on in China this year and hopefully make it til June. I have to admit, as I told my best friend Lisa, a part of my decision to stay is to do with the fact that I found a GYM. With showers (my showering/bathing situation has been less than ideal for some time now).It also has yoga...I can't tell you how warm and fuzzy it makes me feel just thinking about this actually.

                            at a church Christmas party and wearing my new qipao! ("chee-pow" = Chinese dress)

One very nice thing that happened over the holidays was Christmas day itself. I had a party for some of the people I've met through church here (most of whom are Africans) and they made some awesome African food. It was really lovely actually, some people came over in the morning and cooked up a storm in my teeny kitchen and just generally made the apartment feel warm and Christmassy.

                                               eating a Christmas chapati

By the way, in case you are wondering my Chinese singing debut went off in an acceptable kind of way. To be honest, my main stategy involved trying not to sing too loud.

                                         my kids doing their thing at the school Christmas concert

I'm back!

Ok, so I skipped the whole month of November in terms of making blog posts. That's ok I think because November hasn't really been such a noteworthy month (December is going to be much better) with the except of a couple of important events. My high school friend Giulia came to visit me last week in the midst of her travels around China. It was lovely to see her...definitely helped perk my spirits up. Also, with her help I managed to buy my first ever pair of sized LARGE tracksuit pants. They are actually still a little bit too small for me too...Giulia was running to get things for me when I was in the change room and said she absolutely refused to get me an extra-large. In China, I am booty-licious.

                                                            with miss Giulia at the Bund

I also made a little trip the the wax museum with my friends Sandy and Sally where I was very happy to meet my future husband (nevermind the fact that he is now engaged to another woman). I'm still practicing my Chinese with Sandy but am feeling increasingly like an idiot. Its way harder than I originally let myself believe and I don't really feel like I'm progressing much. Which brings me to my next important update...

                                                  doing my best awkward youth group hug here

The school (Xiwai) has decided to hold a Christmas pageant-type thing for the kindergarten on the 23rd of December. They have chosen "Ode to Joy" (always, ALWAYS spelt "Odd to Joy" by my supervisor). Bit weird, not exactly a Christmas song but you know, whatever (a lot of Christmas songs are too religious, I guess everyone figured it would be better just to steer clear altogether). We are singing it in Chinese. Fine. Good. The only thing is that of course because we are singing it in Chinese it would be a really GREAT idea to have the only three people in the whoooooooole   kindergarten who are NOT native Chinese speakers sing a solo. Well yes, that would be a great idea. So there you have it. On the 23rd of December this year I will be in the auditorium at Xiwai most likely utterly humiliating myself by slaughtering a Chinese song (in more ways than one for those of you that know my singing) in front of a large group of native Chinese speakers. Personally I suspect that this is what they are somehow expecting and have organized things this way as a form of special amusement. Sigh. Well, so be it I guess. It probably won't be the first or last time I embarrass myself in front of a large group of strangers. 

                                                                 with the future hubby

Sigh...

Well its been a tricky couple of days. I'm really missing home. Or well, maybe not so much home itself as things like close friendships, family, Western food (also - having my mum cook for me), easy access to English books and being able to communicate and connect easily with the people around me.

I've realized that part of what has been making me feel depressed is just the amount of pressure that I'm putting on myself. I just keep thinking that I have to be the best ever kindergarten teacher, perfect the Chinese language and you know...save the world - all in the next year. I was thinking about it today and I realized...in the past two months I've moved to China, learned to read, write and speak a very basic amount of Chinese and started my first ever "big girl" job...which I'm am mostly teaching myself how to do on the fly. Its not so terrible I guess that I'm still a long way off from having all the friends/skills that I would like to have. I'm not sure why I feel like I have to be such a superhero!

But anyway, all of this to say- please call me/ write to me! I miss you all and I'd love to hear your voice/see your pretty faces on skype/ read email news.

EDIT: I also miss hot showers. And water pressure.

怎么样 - A little Chinese lesson...

I have a new favourite Chinese word! The word zěnmeyàng ( 怎么样) can be roughly translated as "how" in English according to my Chinese textbook. VERY roughly if you ask me. The way Chinese people use it can be quite different from the way we would use the word how. For instance "wǒ zhōumò qù zěnmeyàng?" (which is a sentence from my textbook) means "how about this weekend?". If you translated it word for word it would come out sounding something like...I weekend go how...yeah. So it tends to mean something a bit more than just "how". Chinese people like to use it as a greeting over nǐ hǎo...or so I'm told. Saying "nǐ zěnmeyàng?" is like saying "what's up?". Or you can just say "zěnmeyàng".

I love it. I love the way it sounds and I feel super Chinese when I say it. I can't wait to try it out on more people!

The other thing I really love about this language at the moment is the Chinese way of asking questions. Chinese is not a language that lends itself very well to straightforward yes or no questions from what I can tell. For instance, if you wanted to ask "is it ok?" you would have to say "hǎo bù hǎo?". This literally means "good not good," as if you were saying "circle one of the above"! I think its super cute. You don't need to say "yes" or "no" to this type of question. You just answer "good" (hǎo) or "not good" (bù hǎo). I'm sure I'll probably get over this since its actually a kind of longwinded way of asking something in a lot of other contexts and Sandy tells me that its a bit of a childish way of phrasing things. For now I'm happy to go around asking people if they are something bù something though.

Lately...

Well its been a weird couple of weeks for me...and it isn't quite over yet. Two important Chinese holidays have just passed (mid-Autumn festival and the Chinese national day) and they have thrown my whole schedule into a bit of a funk. I've had some time off work but the catch is that I have to make up quite a bit of it by working weekends. This isn't just for me or my school either...the whole country is going off to work on Saturday and Sunday. I've been trying to imagine what Canadians would say if the government decided one day to try to send everyone off to work on the weekend. I think "no WAY!" would be a resonable approximation of the response most people would give. Anyways, today was day one of my first seven day long work week. Sigh.

The week long holiday I've just had for the national day has given me the chance to do some more in depth exploration of Shanghai. Plus I finally made it to the Expo yesterday (pictures of this will have to wait unfortunately, until I can get them off my roommate). I had kind of hoped to do some travelling outside of Shanghai but unfortunately I was sans passport (need it for checking into hotels...is this true everywhere or just China??) and a little light on cash (surprise! I had to pay three months rent this month). As it was I contented myself with doing some touristy stuff; going to the aquarium and checking out the popular Yuyan Garden. I also had a lovely teppanyanki dinner with some of my fellow foreign teachers from Xiwai. I ate more meat there than I have in a while...I'm going a bit vego since I've been here.

The roomie and I at teppanyanki.                                     



                                                                                                            The lovely Yuyuan Garden.