Two to Tango: Funny things about China

As it turns out, China is pretty different than the US. I think I forgot just how much until I came back. There are the standard differences, like everyone is Chinese, they have squatters instead of toilets, and everything is written in Chinese. But there are also lots of differences that you just don't expect.

When I was super sick last Wednesday I spent a lot of time watching Chinese television. Although most of the programs are in Chinese, I found one channel with English documentaries. They don't believe in continuity or closure with their tv programs. I was watching one documentary about China that completely changed in the middle of the program. The first half followed this Australian guy who was trying different kinds of foods. The second half was narrated by some guy you never saw and it was about a Chinese businessman who built a Disney World-type theme park. Same program. Also, when things run short or long on the air, they just throw in random highlights from sporting events. I was watching one highlight on speed skating in the Olympics. I was getting super into it when they suddenly switched to their regularly scheduled program. Lame. Soren and I have also watched some Disney cartoons in Chinese. It's funny, but they always cut off the punch line. No closure.

They like to do things at very inconvenient times here. Like the other day, they decided to turn off all the water in our ILP building just before teaching. This meant the kids couldn't go to the bathroom or wash their hands. The water didn't come back on for the first hour and a half of class. There were some very unhappy kids. Eventually, we started letting the kids go even though they couldn't flush the squatters--sort of a "go now, flush later" mentality. I gave most of the teachers hand sanitizer since the kids couldn't wash their hands.

A couple days ago there was an International Festival held at the school that we all took a part of. It was a neat event, but no one knew what was going on: the participants, the students, or the teachers. We knew the time, the date, the tentative place, and that we'd have a poster. No one told us what to prepare for, so we came prepared for anything. A few of the ILP teachers (Me, Krista, and Soren) were at the United States booth. Maddie was in the Great Britain booth (even though she's never been there). Heather and Jenna were in the Canada and Zambia group (Heather went to Canada once, Jenna hadn't been either place). Morgan was supposed to be in the US group, but she was still super sick. I guess the school figured that if you're from one foreign country, you're from all foreign countries. Soren and I took the Ukelele and taught a group of students how to sing "Oh my Darling, Clementine." Most of the time we just talked with the students about random things. When it was over, we were told that it was a success. I thought, "Oh course it was a success. There were no expectations!" Pictures of the event are below.

It would seem the cafeteria food is prepared in a very strange manner. Like the way they cut meat. They seem to put it sideways through a bread slicer to maximize the amount of bone per piece of meat. Maybe here in China, getting lots of bones in your meat is good luck, but where we come from, boneless chicken wings are a delicacy.

To contrast, delicacies here in China consist of things like dried sea cucumber (going up to 5820 yuan). Yum.