Thanksgiving…

It’s been a while since I updated. Since the bakery craziness a lot has happened. But not much of it has been anything outside the ordinary flow of life.  While the holiday season is one of the saddest times to be in China, away from family and friends I am so used to spending these months with, it is by far one of my favorite times to be in China. Thanksgiving day was full of fun and tons of great food. At Shi Yi we have a Thanksgiving themed English Club and we all make traditional Thanksgiving food for the kids. Minus the turkey as the cost is about $90, we substitute with some yummy rotisserie chicken. We teach kids about the first Thanksgiving and then use the holiday as an excuse to watch a movie in class. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is after all very educational! I enjoyed telling my kids that a tradition at Thanksgiving is that people will eat, and eat, and eat until they are soooo full they can’t eat anymore and THEN they eat dessert.

On Thanksgiving day ERAP did just that. We all gathered up at one of the other schools (Fu) and everyone brought a dish to share. There was soooo much good food. It was awesome.

This is my awesome team.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JUNIOR 1!!

Liz and I teach the advanced Junior 1 kids (7^th grade) we are teaching out of a new curriculum that no one has ever used before, so we have been creating the lessons from scratch. This past week the lesson was on Celebrations, specifically birthday celebrations. So naturally Liz and I came up with the brilliant idea of throwing all 240 of our students a birthday party- including cake – and we never turned back. Next thing we knew we were elbows deep in an extreme cake making process. Now baking in China isn’t quite what it is in America. For one, we can’t just run down to the closest Aldi and pick up a dozen cake mixes and cans of frosting. We have to make everything from scratch. And we don’t have powdered sugar readily available. (Making it is generally an option, but to make 1 cup of powdered sugar in the blender takes a good 5 minutes and when you need 45 cups… not gonna happen) Also we don’t have normal sized ovens. We have glorified toaster ovens, that fit 8×8 or 9×9 pans and they don’t have the best track record for baking prettily. Often times the top and edges are blackened when the middle is still jiggling. But nevertheless we didn’t even think twice before we started baking. Luckily the school has given us money on our ID cards to use in the cafeteria and a small convenience/snack store that we call the ‘free store’ and Liz and I were able to get most of our ingredients from there so there was very little out of pocket cost for this endeavor. Just in case you are curious as to the recipe to make cake for 240 people here it is:

Vanilla Cake

16 Cups of White Sugar

8 cups of Butter

32 Eggs

24 Cups of Flour

9 1/3 Tablespoons baking powder

8 Cups of Milk

Frosting

5 cups of butter

45 Cups of Sugar (supposed to be powdered, but like I said, that’s not gonna happen)

9 Tablespoons vanilla

3 cups of milk

This recipe will make you 6 8×8 pans and 12 9×9 pans. Which is enough to feed 240 7^th graders.  You can find the real recipe here I made it with a few students today (yes after baking all that cake I made another with students today) I put the vanilla in this time and also added an instant vanilla pudding packet and a little extra milk.

We are starting our own bakery.

 

The transfering of the cakes to the box was a delicate process.

 

Not all of the cakes looked this bad. Most of them looked relatively good, however the last big cake we made stuck to the bottom of the pan so we had to use one big one and a small one for this cake...

We did stations for class, one station played this 'game' where they unscrambled letters. Other stations made birthday cards, wrote 3 wishes, reviewed their homework, and of course ate cake. I think we fooled them into thinking learning is FUN!

Coocan and Mercury came over to make lunch today. They wanted to know how to make a cake from scratch. This time I did it right. That is real powdered sugar frosting! When I pulled out my box of 15 different color food dyes their eyes got HUGE. They quickly selected the color blue for the cake. It was quite delicious. However, I will not be eating or making cake for a looooong time.

ShanHaiGuan

Thursday night I went to bed at 2:45am. Friday morning I woke up at 5:10am. I find that this sleep pattern usually only occures when I am about to take a trip, especially a trip to the ocean. And that indeed was what I did this weekend. I went with Chris and Macy, the two girls who live across the hall from me. We took a fast train (average speed 204 km/h) to a city called BeiDaiHe, then from there we hired a taxi to take us to a city called ShanHaiGuan . This city is famous for being the location the Laolongtou (Old Dragon’s Head) part of the Great Wall. It is where the Great Wall of China meets the Ocean.

This is where the Great Wall of China runs into the ocean.

The day was simply beautiful. Blue skies and warm temperatures, but not hot. It was a perfect day.

Through the window of a tower on the Great Wall.

All the Chinese People were lining up to take pictures with this statue. It had Chinese characters on it. I couldn't read them, but the kids were cute!

The water was a little chilly at first, but I quickly got used to it. The sand and water felt so good.

The beach was beautiful, the sand was nice and the water great. There was a perfect slope. We went swimming for quite a while. I just can't express how much I love the ocean.

Chris loved finding shells, rocks, and seaglass in the sand.

To Change out of our swimsuits our options were the bathroom or this room. The bathrooms were disgusting so we opted for this little ramshackle shelter. The doors were barely attached and the back was wide open to a thankfully abandoned field. We thought surely we were the first people to have used it in years, until two older women came to change in it after we had finished.

Be Thankful this is the outside of the toilet.

Below are the details of our crazy train ride home.

We got back to the train station around 4 to catch our train that was scheduled to leave at 4:31. We hadn’t been able to get tickets back to Beijing on the same fast train we came in on so we had bought tickets on a slower train. We had been told the ride would last around 5 hours,  we were anticipating being able to sleep most of the trip. When we got there there was  a long line of people waiting to get through the gate that led to the platform. We got in line and started examining our tickets for further information. This was when Chris noticed two charachters. “I think these mean ‘No Seats’ she said. I asked her what she meant by that and she said, I hope it just means we can sit in any seat, that there aren’t any numbers. Surely we would have a seat. When the line started moving in typical Chinese fashion the crowd started pushing and shoving to get through the narrow 2 foot opening. I am pretty sure that as I squeezed through the passage getting my ticket punched at least two other people came through right beside me. We got through and began walking down to the platform. The train wasn’t there yet, so we showed the train worker our ticket and he motioned for us to wait further down the platform. We needed to get on traincar 15. We waited for a while before the train pulled into the station. When it did we saw that as car number 15 passed we weren’t going to be near where it stopped. Suddenly all the Chinese people around us began to sprint to the cars.  So we began to run as well. As I was running I noticed that the windows of the train were full of people already, people who were laughing at us for running. We got to car 15 and even though we were the first to the car it was already packed. We started squeezing through the people who were already occupying the standing room only in the train. We were moving through spaces that were not large enough to move through. When we finally got to the back of the car we gave up all hope of finding a seat. We were standing in the aisle ways of a train that had way more people on it than the designer originally intended. As the train started moving or maybe I should say creeping along we managed to wiggle down and sit on the floor. To which the crowd of Chinese people around us errupted in giggles and questions directed to us. I suppose they thought it was odd to sit on that nasty dirty floor. I figured I would choose having to wash my jeans in bleach before I stood for 5 hours. The people around us ended up talking to us (mostly Chris who can speak the best Chinese) for pretty much the entire trip. There was a 50 year old man, a 60 year  old lady, and a young girl our age who spoke some English. None of them had met before this train, but by the end of the ride we were all good friends. The man even made sure to get all of our photos on his smartphone.  At one point a lady who had been sitting on a folding stool got a seat and gave us the stool. Then one seat oppened up and I got to sit down on it. Then the man we had been talking to scooted over a bit and gave Chris a part of his seat. By the time we were two hours from Beijing all three of our friends had gotten off the train. For the last hour we slept. When we got back to Beijing and got off the train we followed the mass of people outside. When I say mass, I mean mass. I don’t have a clue where all those people were coming from, but there were hundreds of thousands of people pushing and running and walking and trudging toward the small exit doors. I have never seen quite so many people in one place before in my life. Then almost as soon as we got out the doors of the Beijing Railway station they completely dissapated. It was very surreal.

All in all it was a wonderful day. And although next time I may seek other means of transporation back to Beijing, other than the ghetto train, I can’t wait to go back someday soon.

Chicken Salad, Ticket to Ride, and Random Pictures

I promised to blog more often, but nothing really happens on a regular basis so here is what you get: Ramblings that include a Chicken Salad Recipe, a new game you HAVE to play, and random pictures.

Lately I have consumed a lot of Chicken Salad. This is not something I am complaining about, just a statement to a fact. I am actually quite excited about it. Being on the food committee means that I have been learning how to make food in large quantities. I have also learned that generally the more of something you have to make the more disgusted you are at the amounts of certain ingredients that go into them. For example meatball subs for 45 people means 200+ meatballs and more raw meat and eggs than I ever wanted to see let alone mix with bare hands. Chicken salad for 45 calls for 4 jars or Mayonaisse. GROSS!

I have made chicken salad for large groups twice now in the past month and about 5 or 6 times in the past year.  Most recently we made it for a team meal and then for English Club. However we made way too much for English Club, so we had an ‘empty the fridge’ potluck for our Shi Yi team meeting to finish it off.

Chicken Salad Recipe (for 45 people)

-40 Chicken Breasts

- 5 cups of halfved grapes

-2 Large Red Onions

- 2 cups of chopped celery

-12 Cups of Mayonaise (give or take)

Boil the Chicken till cooked thouroughly.  Shred the chicken. Cut grapes in half, finely chop celery and onions. Put it all in a LARGE bowl, add Mayonaise, if the chicken is extra dry you may need to add more. Mix with hands or if you don’t like having fun with a spoon. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve on a bun or with Ritz Crackers (preferably wheat… do they have those in America?)

  Moving on to my next topic. Ticket to Ride. This is a game that is sweeping through the ERAP team and has quickly become a favorite of mine. It’s an easy game to learn and is different every time you play it. The idea of the game is that you are trying to build a rail system across a map of the United States at the begining of each game you draw route cards that tell you the cities your train needs to touch. You get to lay down train cars on the board by collecting collored cards throughout the game and playing them on your turn. Here is the website if you want to learn more: http://www.daysofwonder.com/tickettoride/en/ It is seriously an awesome game. Since learning how to play 3 weeks ago I have played dozens of times, often into the early hours of the moring.

And here is what I’m sure most of you have been waiting for or what most of you just skipped to. The pictures. This makes me realize I need to take more pictures  in life.

Man sitting outside the market selling vegetables and enjoying the beautiful weather while he gives himself lung cancer.

This started out as a super cute hug, but before I could take a picture it turned into a tackle.

These are a couple of our ERAP kids. These lucky ones get to grow up with 40 Aunts and Uncles to play with. When we’re all together we all look after the kids. It’s quite humerous really, they can’t get away with anything.

This is Joel and Mary's new little baby JoAnna, we call her Annie.Selling apples at the market.

The Great Wall of China. We went as a team activity. I didn't actually climb it this time though, I played a game instead. 5 years ago I never thought I'd say 'been there done that' to climbing the Great Wall of China. But that time has come and passed my friends.

学生-Xuéshēng-Students

Life here in Beijing is going quite well. I’m coming up on the 1 month mark of being back in Beijing. My class schedule is pretty set by now except the probable addition of a drama elective for Senior 2 students (11 grade). I love my students, I really can’t say it enough. They are all such good kids. Office hours this year have been packed, last year I felt like it was pulling teeth to get kids in there at the begininng of the year, now we are busting at the seams almost everytime we are open. Which is great, because office hours is where we are able to have great one on one conversations with students, as well as play a million games of UNO. I am excited for the opportunity to meet so many more new students.

With my schedule this year I have a couple of days off, which I have been able to use to spend time with students. I ate lunch with one of my favorite girls the other day and it was great to catch up with her about her summer and listen as she told me some of the things that made her worried. And to hear her take on being in 8th grade and all the stress and emotions that go into being in Junior School. I love hearing about how students relate to others, who their friends are, who they don’t like, what is going on in the classrooms. I don’t get to see that when I am teaching, all I see then is the academic side of them.

My classes this year have seemed incredably sweet and more often than not I am surrounded by students after class asking me questions. They range from “Are you married?” to “Do you prefer your hair being short or long?” to discussions about Canadian vs. American Higher Education. I have recently stopped being surprised at the things that come out of kids mouths, although sometimes they are more funny than others. Here are some quotes from students recently:

“I am hilarious that you are my teacher.”                                     -7th grade student

“Physics teacher has upside down hair.”                                       -10th grade student (meaning he is bald with a beard)

Oh and this wasn’t a quote but a funny story. Earlier this week I was waiting for a student I had lunch plans with. Tons of students were streaming past me on their way to one of the cafeterias on campus. Walking up to me I saw one of my students from last year. Now this kid doesn’t know a lick of English. Even after all my efforts last year. By the end of the year I had a standing date with him on Tuesday nights to help him learn English, but he never showed. I even had a student write him a note in Chinese in an attempt to get him there so I could help him-to no avail. However this day when he saw me his face lit up. And he exclaimed “TEACHER!” and ran toward me. I was surprised as he threw his arms around me and gave me a big hug. I then said hello and asked him how he was doing. To which he looked confused and made a motion towards his mouth and said the word “EAT.”  So I wasn’t able to teach him any English, but I must have made some sort of impression on his life. Which is more than I could ask for really…

Back in Beijing

Here I am in Beijing. The flight over was uneventful. I am finally over jetlag. My apartment is all set up and I am unpacked. I have enjoyed having a few days to relax and sleep! All the new people are awesome. It has been fun showing them around the neighborhood.
I start teaching class tomorrow. I get to teach a class of International students this year. Most of them if not all are from South Korea. I am told their English level is pretty low so it may be a challenge. The class meets twice a week which I am really excited about. Other than that class I still only have a vauge idea of what I’ll be teaching, in a typical Chinese fashion we still haven’t been given the final schedule of classes they want us to teach. Hopefully we find out before we have to teach them! =)

I am Alive

Ni Hao Pengyoumen, (Hello Friends)

After a summer full of people telling me that they have been reading my blog I have begun to feel very guilty… If you notice below the last time I wrote was about October. A lot has happened since then. And you should know I am going back to China this year (the 20th of August) and so I have the opportunity to  be better at this this year, I hope. At least now I know that if I don’t a lot of people will be at least mildly disappointed.  They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so i figure if I put a ton of pictures from last year in here we’ll be even… so here goes.

this girl stole my heart.

And that’s all for now! Much Love!

-abby

October Holiday

I know it’s December but since I haven’t updated since October I figured I’d back up and tell you all about what happened back in October. So here goes… In October we had what we call October Holiday. Kinda like fall break but cooler because the whole nation of China is celebrating the People’s Republic’s Birthday. This year was the 60th anniversary. This holiday is called National Day and it is what our school is named after. We got a little over a week off of classes. It was super relaxing and the weather was gorgeous thanks to a little seeding of the clouds. The Thursday of break was National Day and that morning we all got together and made a big breakfast and watched the big parade on CCTV (the news station) I’m sure you saw stuff about it on the news in America, the government showed all of their military forces, it was super impressive. There were even airplanes that flew overhead and we were able to run outside and see them fly over our school. Then there were dozens of ‘float’ like things. There were different groups that walked down the street in front of Tiananmen Square each group had thousands of people in it dancing in fancy costumes. After watching the parade Jarrod and I went to take pictures. So what follows is lots of pictures from that. Enjoy!

This is one of the Cafeteria workers, they all wear these awesome hats. I loved that this guy was taking a break and texting

These roses were in bloom along our road for about 3 weeks. Simply gorgeous.

There is a sky bridge down the road from our school, most days it is too smoggy to see the skyline in the distance, but this day was absolutely beautiful and clear so I made sure to take this picture.

Staring into the sun… or something like that.

These mums were all along the road in the weeks leading up to National Day.

I like to take pictures of my feet in different places. I’m weird I know. Here I am on the bridge above Yong Ding Lu.

This is the road across from our school. I want you to note a couple things in this picture. First of all those laterns are not always there, they were special decorations for National Day. Second The lights across the street are always up but are only turned on during special events. I am looking for the switch that turns them on so I can flip in on Christmas. Thirdly, please notice that car is parked halfway on the sidewalk. This is normal.

This is my street Bei Tai Ping Lu, on a clear day you can see the mountains in the distance, this doesn’t happen often, and more times than not I forget completely that they are there. But they are very pretty when they show up!

Miss Wight! Miss Wight!

I have never really been called that before coming to China. I’ve been called Miss Abby many times by kids at Shiloh or by Kevin. However Miss Wight is something new. The few times I was called Miss Wight in the states I midly resented it. I am not old enough to be a Miss (does that make any sense?) But recently my whole perspective has changed. I love being called Miss Wight. Now that does not give you permission to call me Miss Wight so don’t go getting any ideas. The only people who can get away with calling me that are my students. I’ll be walking across the soccer field (or the playground as they often call it here) and students everywhere will be calling out “Hello Teacher!” “Hello Miss Wight!” I love it.
So it’s been forever since I apologize profusely. I got busy with classes then so much has happened that the idea of writing it all down seemed a little overwhelming. So what you’re gonna get here is a brief overview of two and a half months of craziness…
Teaching
Teaching. It’s what I came here to do. I was scared to death on my first day. Knowing I was going to be standing in front of 20 some students and that I was responsible for their Oral English education. But once I got into it I have found I absolutely love it. I teach over 400 students during the week. I teach Junior 1 students (the equivalent of 7th grade) and Senior 1 (10th) Oral English. Then I teach Senior 2 (11th) Drama. I also have a class of Chinese teachers who are learning English as well. (Although they haven’t actually showed up to class for the past month and a half…)
Junior 1 students provide the biggest challenge. They are full of energy and their English level is pretty low. If I got a kuai (Chinese dollar) for every time I told them to write something in their notes I could probably pay for you to come visit me here (maybe I should start collecting money from them…) My third or fourth class I ever taught here was probably the worst. They would not be quiet for anything. At the beginning of class each class get’s 3 check marks and if they talk I take away one. The idea is that at the end of the year if they have ‘enough’ checks they will get to watch a movie. And if in any given day I take away 3 checks I will go talk to their head teacher (a HUGE threat to these students.) So on this particular day Junior 1 Class 8 was being particularly talkative. I took away all three check marks by the middle of the lesson. And still they would not be quiet. Finally with five minutes left in class I got fed up. I told all the students to stand and to be quiet. I told them we would stand for five minutes in silence because they had talked all through class. I must have sounded mean because they all stood silently looking down at the ground. Except for the kid in the front row who dared to raise his hand after two minutes and argue that it had been five. The next week I talked to the kids teacher and the next class period they had been swiftly changed into a room of quiet attentive angels. Over the past few months I’ve honed my discipline techniques and this past week most of my classes have actually been behaving quite well.

Don’t get me wrong, Junior 1 students are the ones who give me the greatest joy too. There are a few kids to note that make me exceedingly happy. Basically any kid from class 4.6 one of my advanced, advanced classes, especially Nick who wrote about Einstein’s theory of relativity and time travel on his homework. Nick also expressed an extreme dislike for Rap and Hip-Hop music during my music lesson. When I asked the class if anyone liked it he loudly proclaimed ‘How could you like it? It’s not even music! It’s TERRIBLE!!’ after trying to collect myself and not laugh out loud in front of the class I asked the question again and as he put his head on his desk in disgust a few other students timidly rose their hands signaling that they enjoyed this ‘TERRIBLE’ music genre.
Here in China the kids all have their classroom and the different teachers travel class to class to teach. The kids basically live in that room for the year. This seems to encourage a variety of objects and things to collect in the room throughout the year. I notice this especially in my Senior 2 drama classes. The students seem to have everything out on their desks or on the floor around them. Books are stacked up high and papers are strewn around. They also seem to have more dishes setting out on their desks than I have in my kitchen sink (quite a feat I assure you) However it was in one of my Junior classes that a student had the weirdest thing I have yet to see. I was teaching when out of the corner of my eye I noticed that this quiet girl in the front row was holding up a water bottle and examining it. Nothing to weird I said to myself, but none the less I walked over toward her while teaching to see what was so enthralling that she wasn’t writing down everything I said about prepositions. That was when I noticed that this wasn’t simply a water bottle. In that bottle swimming around seemingly unaware that he was in a classroom learning the difference between under and above was a goldfish. She even had a small plant for him to enjoy. Of course a goldfish is nothing compared to another teacher’s story of her students keeping two chipmunks in the class room in their pencil cases over the course of several years…

I love the students and I am slowly learning their names. Of course there are some who made themselves very noticeable in the first few days and yet others who have such unique names it is nearly impossible to forget them. I have kids named Teddy Bear, Ice Frog, Potter, several girls named Cherry and a boy named Hope. Oh and there are too many Micheal’s and Jacksons to keep them all straight. One of my favorites and also one of my biggest trouble maker is a kid named Cory. Yes, I named him and I rightly choose the name Cory. He reminds me a lot of a certain Spain in my life when he was that age. He is always shouting out things that may or may not be the answer to the question I answer, but he apparently has no shame to be wrong. He is quite hilarious.
My drama elective has been a lot of fun to teach. I use the term ‘elective’ here loosely because the students I teach do not have a choice of what class to take nor do they have a choice on whether to attend or not. There are 7 different elective topics that the foreign teachers teach and we each randomly got assigned two classes to teach every other week. Fortunately it seems like most of my kids are on board with the drama idea, but it’s a little rough because I have nearly 40 kids in each class. This next week they are performing radio dramas. I’m excited to see what they do with it.
Well… I think that’s all for now. I’ll try and get the next update up before March… I’ll leave you with a few pictures…

This is James and Steven, one of the regular kids at the office. He is probably the funniest kid I have met here in China.

The kids love playing table tennis during breaks in the day. Even now when it is freezing cold outside.

Last week was Viki’s birthday to celebrate we went to Yu Yuan Tan which is a park not too far from our school. Jarrod and I made ‘fun-fetti’ cupcakes and we all got Chinese carryout for lunch. It was a hot and muggy commute there carrying the hot food and cupcakes through the subway, but once we got there and sat down by the lake there was a beautiful breeze. It was a great time to relax and enjoy nature and friends. We ate lunch and then most of us took a nap. The Chinese people got a kick out of us, at one point there were 5-6 people standing and staring at us unashamedly.

The Birthday Girl

Note the headphones

The whole Shi Yi family