we got a puppy yesterday...not sure exactly what she is, but she has a bit of wolf in her, she's 2 months old. we decided to call her jiujiu, cause 9 represents longevity in the chinese culture, and also it sounds like jojo for josephine. so now jo, you have to name your first kid after me. anyways, jiujiu is super friendly, she's always going up to strangers and sniffing. she's pretty smart too, after we yelled at her for pooping and peeing in the house yesterday, she's waited till we go outside today to do her business, and she comes when you call her name. pictures to follow.
today was the first day of classes at the primary school too, i had two classes of fifth graders today. i didn't manage to convince the headmaster to give me fewer classes multiple times a week, so i have 13 different classes a week for a total of 700 kids. i'm gonna spend the week giving everybody names and practicing them, soon we'll have 13 different rasheeds, tupacs, and arwens running around china. the kids are great and most of the teachers are pretty cool, though i did get thrown into another basketball game tonite almost on the spur of the moment. this one was important, since the primary school teachers were playing the best club in town; apparently the primary school teachers have the best teachers' team in town and they split the last two games with that other club so there's a nice rivalry brewing. i was feeling a bit sick so i only played a quarter and a half and we managed to hang on to win 73-72, pretty exciting. being in china has definitely gotten me into much better shape.
i really like this country, more and more as i see and learn more about it.
Tuesday, September 02, 2003
Monday, September 01, 2003
a lot of people here have asked if i'm korean or philippino, maybe it's the dark skin (my sandal tan is worse than ever, my feet look like optical illusions). when i tell people i'm american they don't believe me, since i look asian. apparently if you're born in america you come out of the womb a full-on white person, even if your parents are from taiwan.
one nite when we were in xi'an i got really annoyed at karen because i was talking with this guy, will (the son of one of the jishou college officials), about america and different attitudes and stereotypes that americans have towards chinese people, and karen cut in from behind and said 'pete's forgotten his roots and that he's not really american, he's chinese.' it wasn't the first time she's made a comment like that but for some reason i went off on her that nite and started rambling about the melting pot of america and how there're no 'real' americans anyways and such...to her credit, karen's always quick to admit a mistake and she apologized.
it's definitely been interesting being the only chinese-american in the middle of hundreds of thousands of chinese and a handful of white americans (plus diane, the black lady, but her perspective is a whole other story). in case you're curious, i am definitely not going through any sort of racial identity crisis. boo to those. for me, at least. i'm really glad for my background and i think there's several obvious advantages that come with it. for example, talking with people. by the way, mom, when i first got here and tried speaking chinese to people they'd start trying to speak english back to me, but now random people that i talk to think that i'm a local till i tell them i grew up in america. also, a huge part of the culture is already familiar to me since i grew up with it, even if i neglected a lot of it, heh. the advantages go both ways, being familar with both american and chinese culture and mindsets allows me to explain certain things to both the americans and the chinese, and the chinese can understand me without a translator (most of the time). it may seem like only a formality, but it really makes a big difference, even with something as simple as being able to stop and have a short conversation with a friend on the street.
the moral is that more chinese americans need to come here and keep me company, so we can talk about buying mcdonald's hamburgers for 29 cents and smelling like mothballs and that stuff.
i start teaching on tuesday. i'm gonna be the only foreign teacher at the primary school across town; the situation so far is that i'll have 13 different classes of 50 students a week (not including the chorus). that's 650 kids, unless my pleadings to the school officials have changed their minds.
the high school starts tomorrow so all the other foreign teachers (except nicole, who's at the other primary school in town) start tomorrow. i'm thinking of pretending to be a student to sit in one on of kevin's classes and standing up halfway through the lesson and screaming ' this is bulls---! comunism sucks! taiwan forever!'. since my chinese is just that good. (it's not, really)
650
ug
one nite when we were in xi'an i got really annoyed at karen because i was talking with this guy, will (the son of one of the jishou college officials), about america and different attitudes and stereotypes that americans have towards chinese people, and karen cut in from behind and said 'pete's forgotten his roots and that he's not really american, he's chinese.' it wasn't the first time she's made a comment like that but for some reason i went off on her that nite and started rambling about the melting pot of america and how there're no 'real' americans anyways and such...to her credit, karen's always quick to admit a mistake and she apologized.
it's definitely been interesting being the only chinese-american in the middle of hundreds of thousands of chinese and a handful of white americans (plus diane, the black lady, but her perspective is a whole other story). in case you're curious, i am definitely not going through any sort of racial identity crisis. boo to those. for me, at least. i'm really glad for my background and i think there's several obvious advantages that come with it. for example, talking with people. by the way, mom, when i first got here and tried speaking chinese to people they'd start trying to speak english back to me, but now random people that i talk to think that i'm a local till i tell them i grew up in america. also, a huge part of the culture is already familiar to me since i grew up with it, even if i neglected a lot of it, heh. the advantages go both ways, being familar with both american and chinese culture and mindsets allows me to explain certain things to both the americans and the chinese, and the chinese can understand me without a translator (most of the time). it may seem like only a formality, but it really makes a big difference, even with something as simple as being able to stop and have a short conversation with a friend on the street.
the moral is that more chinese americans need to come here and keep me company, so we can talk about buying mcdonald's hamburgers for 29 cents and smelling like mothballs and that stuff.
i start teaching on tuesday. i'm gonna be the only foreign teacher at the primary school across town; the situation so far is that i'll have 13 different classes of 50 students a week (not including the chorus). that's 650 kids, unless my pleadings to the school officials have changed their minds.
the high school starts tomorrow so all the other foreign teachers (except nicole, who's at the other primary school in town) start tomorrow. i'm thinking of pretending to be a student to sit in one on of kevin's classes and standing up halfway through the lesson and screaming ' this is bulls---! comunism sucks! taiwan forever!'. since my chinese is just that good. (it's not, really)
650
ug
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