Babies

In the last two days, I have received two, three-month-old kittens. One boy and one girl. They are siblings. It's now 3:30 a.m., and the only way to keep the little boy from crying is to sit up with him in the living room. There were some initial worries about a missing girl, but she was just well-hidden under the couch. Then there was the coaxing of the boy down from the ledge of my fifth floor balcony. There was also the constant crying of the boy when he arrived, and it seemed to stop once I got him in the same place as his sister, Fizz. This early morning, however, he doesn't seem so satisfied with sibling love. I'm guessing he misses his mommy. Strangely enough, no amount of petting or holding seems to help. NO. He simply wants me to be AWAKE and in the same room. Ugh...... The crying has finally stopped, and I imagine my neighbors are extremely happy about that. I'd really love to be asleep. Anyone who knows me knows I do NOT function very well on much less than seven hours of sleep. Alas, what we'll do for our babies.

I'm still working on a name for this boy. Both kittens are white. Fizz, the girl, has brown eyes, and the boy has blue eyes. They look a little bit like aliens with their pointy heads and huge triangle ears, but they're so cute.

Oh no, it looks like another round of crying might begin. Sigh....wonder how long this will last. I might have to find someone else's apartment to sleep in if this continues.

I'd Like to Buy a Homonym

By, not buy.

Aisles, not isles.

Language degeneration should be listed as an occupational hazard for EFL / ESL teachers!

Lately

As soon as I stepped off the plane and into the steamy heat that pervades Shantou summers, it felt like my summer of freedom had entirely evaporated - a memory that once was real, maybe. This really is a place where time stops and continues on its own agenda, carrying you with it, kicking and screaming, or not. It is a place of uncontrollably frizzy hair, sweat stains, mosquito bites, and noodles of longevity. I'm strangely surprised to find that it's also finally becoming a place I'm familiar with, at least the STU campus. I definitely have some hesitation about writing positive things so early in the year - I'm a bit superstitious about how things will turn out if I do so. However, this could be a really good year if the teaching goes better. I'm at least excited about the possibility of enjoying life here.

Thus far this semester, we've kept the STU-ELC traditions alive - enjoying the faculty meeting and seeing the new resident laowai for the first time, the classic ELC faculty and staff photo post bland ACC dinner meant not to offend anyone, apparently, nor impress anyone, apparently, and the painful experience of performing a song and dance - think "Hokey Pokey" -  on stage for a crowd of 1,000 + freshmen, although this year we were only live in front of a few hundred while all the others piled (due to fears of H1N1) into separate classrooms to watch the festivities via t.v. broadcast. We all highly enjoyed the comedy of upper-classmen performing for their freshmen peers - chief among the perfomers was a fantastic MJ tribute by one fancy dancer, though the most startling award may have to go to the English Corner coordinators who decided to take the evening from a PG rating to, well, at least PG-13. Following the freshmen orientation night came the comedy of errors that is the oral placement exam. There were some real jewels in the mix, as always. Before I write a couple, just let me say - I really respect the students here. They are brave and eager and always willing to jump into communication. They are not afraid of making mistakes. I realize that. So as I write, I do so simply out of enjoyment of the idiosyncratic ways this language of English can be put together. In fact, this is one of the highlights of language teaching for me - seeing the strange ways people put language to their use and thinking "Hey, why DON'T we do that?". Anyhow...just a few:  

[After about a minute of silence:] "When we do something, we need a plan because."

[explain the proverb "Honesty is the best policy."] "They think you are the political person, and you have the best policy."

"As we all know, the Chinese child live in China." 

Next up on the agenda is written placement test grading and the extra-curricular activities night. Have you ever wondered if you could actually suffocate due to lack of oxygen in a room? That's pretty much the feeling of the EAC night. There are hundreds of bodies pressing in on you, eager to ask their well-rehearsed questions, oblivious to the fact that you've already answered about a hundred times before that night, "Yes, I can eat with chopsticks." "I came to China because I like Chinese students." "Yes, I like white rice, sometimes." "Well, I haven't been to many places in China. No, I haven't been to _________(insert name of random students' hometowns here)." Ahhh...the fun! Maybe I'll be surprised this year with enlightening discussions on the political future of the country, the near neighbors and new ways of viewing them, or the rampant and deleterious (though seemingly benign) ethnocentricsm here and reasons of why it is so accepted.

More to come later, I'm hoping. This sight is officially blocked at the moment, so I'm scrambling to find ways around. There may come a day when it's not so easy to skirt the "harmonizing". But don't fear. If I drop off into a communication black hole, that's why.

The Curse

Year 1 – B-6, 402

Gas doesn’t work, doesn’t heat the water until after much tinkering, then mysteriously disappears faster than at other apartments despite more or less comparable use.

Strange occurrences with electrical outlets and malfunctioning television occur.

Remote control for t.v. will lower the volume, but not raise it.

DVD player is bought. Refuses to work. Then neighbour’s DVD player is borrowed. It will play a DVD, but the image shows up in static greys.

Toaster oven bought. Toaster oven plugged in and turned on. Toaster oven produces smoke and electrical burn smell. Toaster oven sent back to store via my lap on the bus full of people.

Clothes drying pulleys break. Maintenance repairs it.

Doors to balcony don’t lock. Door off kitchen found wide open when returning from month-long winter break.

Year 2 – new place, 1 bedroom, above network center

All furniture shoved into one room. No desk. No A/C. No curtains. No bug screens. No stove. No fridge. Hardly any storage space.

Night one – shower floods bathroom, then seeps through kitchen drain and into living room on floor where cardboard boxes with all decorations lie. Boxes piled up on the couch.

Night three – return from Eastgate dinner, door refuses to open. Called someone to call someone to come help me break in. Wait an hour or so. Repair man shows up, tries credit card trick, fails, thankfully. Shoulders his way into door, wish I could have kicked it in. Repair man goes home to get new door handle apparatus. Repair man returns and replaces door handle.

I stay in apartment at random times on almost every day to meet people to install things that should have been put in place during “renovation” over the summer. Wait a day, get fridge. Wait another day, get curtains. Wait another day, t.v. guys whom I didn’t request show up and do who knows what. Wait another sweaty day while AC guys play with wires and fix nothing.

It’s hot in Shantou. I’m not complaining. It’s just a fact. Bought my own fan, and now nights aren’t so terrible.

So ready for this curse to end!

Mirror, Mirror

Several months ago, I had the good fortune of being found by the person I like to, somewhat narcissistically, consider my namesake.  Here's the story.  Jennica's Aunt Brenda is a good friend of my mom.  Mrs. Brenda's oldest child is only a year younger than I am.  The Fincher kids and my sister and I grew up together, jumping hay bales and playing "capture the flag" in the woods.  As Jennica's mom was looking for a name for her daughter, she asked her sister (Mrs. Brenda).  Mrs. Brenda mentioned that she had a friend (my mom) who named her daughter (me) Jenica.  And so, Jennica got my name.  Lucky her.  As far as I can tell, if your name is Jennica, you're probably going to have a certain sense of adventure.  You'll definitely want to travel the world, yet you'll keep a few places as the countries you love the most.  You will be passionate about the things you value, look younger than your actual age, and teach English, at least for now.  From what I've surmised reading the blog, Jennica is waaay cooler than I am, but that just makes me even happier to share a name with her.  Read her blog. It's great.

Keep the Empirical

Nobody bothers you as you walk down the street.  No one shouts "hen piaoliang" as you pass by.  Some people wave or nod and say "heey" with that long-drawn out vowel that reminds you of where you are.  Grocery store aisles are wider, and streets are far more clean.  Most drivers follow the basic rules of the road such as driving with traffic and not into it.  You find clothes that fit your size and people who understand your normal pace of speech.  Air conditioners don't smell like mold, and the "firm" mattress feels like a pillow.

Yet something is missing.  There's an ongoing search, and no amount of comparison of here and there will really answer the questions.  Perhaps some of us were not meant to be part of a place.  Perhaps I am one of those.  

Travel Log - Hong Kong, the First

On the way back from New Year's travels, I stopped over in Hong Kong.  I had planned to spend at least two or three days there to experience the excitement of real city life.  I was definitely craving it after being in Shantou for so long.  I was looking forward to the promise of cereal, sauces, Mexican food, and shopping.  Sadly, choosing the cheapest available lodging possible backfired in so many ways.

As soon as I got off the city bus from the airport, several really pushy men approached me, each trying to sell a room at their hostels.  I had wisely booked beforehand, so I tried to ignore them, politely.  They wouldn't be ignored and insisted on knowing which lucky hostel I had already booked.  One attempted to show me around the massively confusing Mirador Mansions.  Or was it Chungking?  I can't remember now.  Either way, he ended up leading me around in a really obnoxious way - constantly attempting to tell me the place was no longer booked, and I wouldn't be able to find anywhere to stay except his hostel.  Eventually I tired of his "help" and, in no uncertain terms, told him to leave me alone, this time not so politely.  I somehow managed to find my way around the labyrinth to my perfectly cheap room.  It was after midnight, and I was far too tired to care about anything.  Had I not craved sleep so desperately, I could have spared myself the coming annoyances.  I met the hostel manager, saw the room quickly, and went back out into the world to withdraw some money to pay for this hostel.  Having almost zero sense of direction, I naturally spent far more time than necessary looking for a Bank of China ATM.  I finally found one, got the money, returned to Mirador (or Chungking), and made it back to my hostel through a connection of elevators and back-alley plank stairwells where the locals hung their laundry.  

As soon as I got inside the room, I realized the enormity of my economical mistake.  Before, when I was tired, I didn't really examine the room.  After spending more than two minutes in it, I saw what I had missed the first time.  The room was incredibly small, but that's to be expected in any budget lodging in HK.  What I missed the first time were all the black spots dotting the bed.  The other mattress in the room was turned on its side and covered in mold spots.  The room smelled terrible.  I couldn't figure out what the spots on my bed were at first, but then I noticed that they were flying out of the air conditioner, which had been turned on before I got there.  The black spots were large chunks of mold that would spew intermittently from the machine after blocking the air flow for a minutes.

I tried very hard to ignore the mold.  I thought I could just lay my towel over the bed, play some music, and eventually fall asleep from sheer exhaustion.  Not so.  Around three o'clock in the morning, I finally gave up.  I packed up, left the room, called the manager, and only got half my money back.  

So, out into the early morning I went.  I was fairly certain I could find a real hotel and just eat the expense of staying there for a night.  Again, not so.  The only hotels in the vicinity had the gates pulled down and locked tight.  So I trucked myself and my two small bags with a month's worth of laundry and gifts through the streets of HK, wondering what I would do all night.  I coughed up enough bravery to pass by the special crowds that populate the areas around Nathan Road at that time of night.  And then I saw it, every stranded-in-the-middle-of-the-night-in-HK-traveler's dream, the Golden Arches.  I have a strange affection for McD's now that I've never had before.  After spending so many hours there, watching the sun rise along with the other zombies and marathon runners, I truly appreciate the service provided by endless cups of *hot water* (one can only take so much coffee, after all) offered 24/7.

Because I was getting stir crazy, I headed to the area of China Travel Services to book a ticket home as soon as the metro started running again.  After buying my ticket, I still had several hours to wait.  I walked down streets, wishing I could waste my time smelling soaps in the Body Shop.  Then I discovered another place that caters to the night crowds - online gaming.  Where there is online gaming, there is internet connection, so, of course, I went in and caught up on emails.  I have never before been to an online gaming place, and I hope never to go again.  It's a strange, strange world and makes me worry about the amount of time I do spend staring at a computer, although I'm sure it's considerably less than the regulars.  There's something amiss in this world of alter-realities, but perhaps for another time.

I left the internet spot and returned to the land of daylight to begin my wait for the bus.  You can only truly appreciate waiting for a city-to-city bus if you've lived in a country where you speak almost none of the language, and the locals speak none of yours.  Once the bus finally arrived, later than scheduled, I could only assume that I'd make it home, or I wouldn't.  If I didn't, I decided I'd just have to figure it out later.  There was a strange drop-off in an unmarked parking lot of an indecipherable store, followed by pointless attempts at communicating, and finally, me hopping in a fifteen-passenger van.  But I eventually made it to the downtown Shantou area and got a bus back to campus.  Not the ending I had hoped for, but at least I made it home.