Christmas Performance

Yet another performance where we embarrass ourselves onstage in front of thousands of students! This one comes complete with Christmas carols!

In the end, we had a lot of fun with this performance, but it was kind of a rocky road getting here. All our problems came from the administration, of course. If you've been reading my blog you know how much I LOVE the administration at this school, but this time was particularly frustrating. When starting this blog, I wanted to record the good and the bad of my experience here, so if you read further, be prepared for a heated rant:

About a month and a half ago, the school asked us to put together a skit/dance/song performance for Christmas Eve. Now, performing on a stage is not exactly on my list of fun activities for Christmas, but the students always love it, so we agreed. After a lot of stress over the last performance due to miscommunication, we asked a lot of questions about this one before creating our act. They told us they wanted it to be ten minute long, they wanted singing and dancing, they wanted it to be about Christmas, and they wanted us to lip sync. So we put together a performance that did all of these things. Brenna didn't want to sing, so she read from the poem and danced while the rest of us recorded ourselves beforehand (which was a very complicated process), and figured out dances to go with our songs. Some of us even spent a whole day in Chengdu finding costumes, such as the angel wings and the bow ties. Then we canceled a previously planned trip to Emei Mountain so that we could practice it this weekend and get it perfect before Christmas Eve. In the end, we had five songs, and a pretty good little show.

Then, at the dress rehearsal, we hit a few small snags. First of all, when we went up to rehearse (in front of all of the other acts, so we had a pretty large audience), the sound crew played our songs completely out of order, even though we had given them the impossibly clear names of Track 1, Track 2, Track 3, Track 4, and Track 4. So they cycled through all of our songs, making it embarrassingly clear that we were lip syncing, before figuring out the correct order. Finally, we got the sound all figured out and went through our routine. It went off without a hitch, and we left the stage feeling confident and satisfied with our performance...only to find out that suddenly the administration thought it was "too long". Even though they had specifically asked us for ten minutes, they now wanted it cut down to five.

We were beyond frustrated. We had spent a LOT of time getting these songs ready. We had canceled a planned trip to perfect them. And now, for no substantial reason they wanted us to completely scrap two of the songs. The best explanation we got was that they expected it to be more "active". I'm sorry, I thought I was hired to be a teacher, not a singer/dancer/performer.

Anyways, they told us all this the night before our actual performance, so we had to spend the next day figuring out what song to cut, how to change our entrances and exits, and revising choreography so that it could all tie together without the two other songs. But we did succeed, as you can see, and the students thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact, the only complaint I heard from one student was that it was too short! Hah!

Merry Christmas from Pengshan!

While I wasn't at home with my family for Christmas, it still ended up being a fabulous holiday. The festivities kicked off Christmas Eve at the Christmas performance. Our part consisted of reading "Twas the Night Before Christmas" interspersed with Christmas carols (a video of this will come shortly). The rest of the acts didn't really have anything to do with Christmas at all. Some of the other parts included a routine by cheerleaders dressed in camouflage, a beat boxer, some traditional Chinese dances, and then there were also a couple dances to some Christmas songs. It was fun, and it was also our last performance of the year, so that made it all the more enjoyable.

After the show, we all trouped back to my apartment to listen to Christmas carols, drink mulled wine and hot buttered rum, and exchange Secret Santa gifts. It was a really great evening, and finally felt like Christmas.

On Christmas itself, I skyped with a lot of different family members, opened presents from my students and friends, and ate a huge Christmas brunch with the other American teachers. The presents were pretty hilarious. I got a scarf and a snowglobe (pretty standard Christmas presents), but then I also got a nightlight in the shape of s clump of mushrooms, a pillow in the shape of an enormous teddy bear head, and a  rhinestone encrusted picture frame. 

Being far away from home at Christmas time is tough, but it helps to have a lot of good friends to spend it with.

Happy holidays everyone!

More pictures from last weekend that my students sent me:

Channeling the Spirit of Martin Luther King Jr.

There's generally a wide range of English levels among my students. Some can hold deep philosophical conversations, others prefer to keep their answers short and sweet. Their essays tend to reflect this variety. But every once in a while, there comes an essay that is simply too good not to share.

This past week, I assigned my News English classes to write a short essay detailing their opinions on the Death Penalty (we were learning about the justice system in class). One of my students wrote that he supports the Death Penalty, and I would like to pluck out my favorite quote:

"(The Death Penalty) holds people responsible for the horrible content of their character. This fulfills what MLKJ always wanted: judge not by the color of your skin, but by the content of your character. The character of these criminals warrants death."

I laughed for 3 minutes straight. I'm sure it's exactly what MLK always wanted.

Thanksgiving, Floating Lanterns, and the Countryside!

It's been a pretty full week here in Pengshan China. Even though we are not living in America, Thanksgiving surprisingly still ended up being a fun and busy holiday for us foreign teachers. I say "surprisingly", because we had actually just planned on having a small get together and maybe trying to make some American style dishes to eat...but it turned into so much more.

To start with, our "small get together" somehow kept adding people until we had a full house of about 15 people coming over to eat dinner at our combined apartments. Nonetheless, it was definitely doable. We went shopping the weekend before in Chengdu to acquire necessary ingredients, and some of our Chinese friends planned to do the brunt of the work by getting enough food to make jiaozi (dumplings) for all of the people coming. We were all very excited about our little Thanksgiving party.

And then, on Thursday afternoon, about three hours before our dinner was scheduled to start, the school decided to inform us that they were throwing us a Thanksgiving dinner. They had apparently gone through a lot of trouble to get a hold of a turkey and other traditional foods, and the president of the university wanted to eat with us. Which would have been lovely, if we hadn't already been planning our own Thanksgiving party for a few weeks. Once again, the Chinese administration was a little lacking in foresight. Big surprise.

After a little last minute scrambling, we managed to reschedule our own part for the next night, and we all at turkey (which tasted amazing) and a variety of other "American" dishes. Some of the highlights of these dishes was a fruit salad (apples, bananas, and cherry tomatoes in a honey-mustard dressing), chow mein, pasty mashed potatoes, and stir fried green beans. As I was eating, I couldn't help but wonder if this was what Chinese people felt like when they went to "Chinese" restaurants in the United States. So many of the dishes looked similar to their authentic counterpart, yet really tasted nothing alike. Ah well, they had done their best to supply us with American food, and we certainly appreciated the sentiment (and the turkey!).

The next night proved to be a great success, and it ended up being a great idea to have it on the Friday night instead of on Thursday. For one, I had a makeup class Thursday evening which means I would have missed most of the festivities. Secondly, it ended up being on the same day as a Chinese festival, so after our Thanksgiving dinner we had a night's worth of entertainment.

Dinner itself was spectacular. Making jiaozi has been one of my favorite experiences since coming to China, and this time did not disappoint. We spent a few hours together just talking, drinking wine, listening to music, and making jiaozi.

In addition to the jiaozi, some of the other foreign teachers brought/made some food. Devin and Jono brought the wine, James grabbed some green beans from a nearby store, and Brenna made a delicious apple crisp in her rice cooker somehow. I also made a big batch of mashed potatoes!

After dinner, we happened to look out the window and spotted some strange lights in the sky:

 Upon further investigation, we discovered that they were hundreds of floating lanterns being lit out on one of the university's quads, for a festival in honor of one of the Chinese minorities. Despite being stuffed full of Thanksgiving dinner, we managed to set off in the direction of the floating lanterns. What we found when we arrived was a festival, indeed. In addition to the floating lanterns lighting the scene, there was also a band playing on a stage, as well as three bonfires in the middle of the quad. It ended up being quite the night!

It was a wonderful night, spent with good friends. However, my favorite part of the weekend ended up being on Sunday, when some students invited me to go out to lunch with them. I was surprised when we didn't go out to a restaurant or to the river for a barbecue. Instead, I found myself being led on a trek away from the school, and out to the Chinese countryside. We passed out of the commercial area surrounding the school and were soon among small farms and quiet, if a little grimy, side streets. The house we went to was the home of one of the students, and it was a very small brick farm house tucked away behind a little bamboo grove. Altogether there were about 20 students and their teacher, and they were all so welcoming and sweet. Their English was fairly basic, but we communicated well with a mix of Chinese and English.

Together, we harvested some vegetables from the farm fields, and then went back to the house and cooked an AMAZING lunch together. We used a traditional Chinese stove, which consists of a humongous wok built into a counter top. It's heated by a wood fire that burns underneath, which we had to keep feeding while we cooked.

It was a really amazing experience, and I feel very lucky to have gotten away from the university bubble and seen a different side of China. The food itself was, of course, spectacular, and they even let me help with some of the dishes!

It was a fabulous day. I made a lot of new friends, ate a lot of good food, and have already made plans to go strawberry picking together this weekend! 

What a day. What a life!