exceedingly long
In a sort of interesting way, this week is going much better. There was a book Ohad read to me once, called Badulinah, which was basically about the phrase: if you smile at the world, it will smile back at you. So, I'm still not sold on Qingdao, but I guess I was frowning all last week. PMS is overused as an excuse to be bitchy, but, I always find that my period starts after the worst of weeks.
Tuesday was BJ's birthday and I folded dumplings with one of the Chinese teachers and two doorguards for his birthday get-together. It was really nice just sitting with them and chatting, even if I couldn't understand about 40% of it. At one point I asked the other teacher, "What does yibenyi mean?" and she laughed her ass off. I asked what was so funny, and she said I had mimicked the Qingdao accent perfectly, yibenyi means riben ren (Japanese people).
Wednesday, the class from hell was considerably cowed and nice, aside from the guess who game. Next week I'll teach them PC ways to describe people and try again. After reading through their little notes on why I should let them stay in my class, it was gratifying that some people wrote that they thought I was a really good teacher and could help them more than their Chinese teacher could (don't know about that) and that they were glad I was setting down rules.
Thursday, Lara (the teacher from England), Jeannette (the hiring person), and I went to the Police Station to settle my resident permit business. We sat and waited for about an hour and a half. Early on during this time, someone came up to Lara and started chatting with her. I wasn't paying attention, until I realized that she looked uncomfortable and wasn't replying to this guy, and I turned around and asked what was going on. It was this guy from Ghana who's a buyer for a company; apparently he was originally in Guangzhou (other side of the country) and had been scammed into coming up to Qingdao and losing a couple thousand dollars. He was now stuck here three days after his visa had expired, and he needed help getting an extension and didn't know where to go nor who to ask for help. I asked Jeannette if she had understood and she said yes, but she was very busy dealing with our work and couldn't go helping strangers too, so I asked how to say "visa" and "expired" and went around the PSB with him asking for help. I couldn't believe the level of laziness on the part of the police. They had English translators hanging around the hot water dispenser upstairs, but when we called them no one replied so the police officer said he couldn't help the guy, tough luck; I ended up arguing with the police officer to drag out of him what kind of paperwork the Ghana guy was supposed to get and which room he was supposed to go to. He went there on his own, with my phone number written on a piece of paper, and ended up needing to call me because the officers upstairs couldn't understand that a guy showing them an expired visa was probably looking for an extension to leave. I went up and explained the problem, then someone asked someone else, who's this new translator? for official work we need to see her ID, so they asked, "Pardon me, I've never seen you before. May I see your translator's ID?" I replied, I'm just Chinese-American, I was sitting downstairs when this guy asked for help because you guys wouldn't help him. Someone overheard and started yelling at other employees for making me walk around doing all this when there were several translators just hanging out on that floor. So, in the end, the Ghana guy got help; he called me from the train station to say he was back on his way to Guangzhou and was leaving from there for Ghana in a few days. Then, at some other point, he called again to ask me to tell a taxi driver where to go. It must suck so bad to be so helpless language-wise in a country of unhelpful people.
Thursday evening was the party with the Alliance Française. The mixer bingo game that I came up with was the best game of the night. Hooray for playing American bingo at a French cultural party. I had to explain the game in French, then my partner explained it in Chinese, then, out of nowhere, the director asked me to explain it in English. I said, "WELL, you should be able to speak French to participate in this game, but! blah blah blah". The director then got back on the mic and said, yes guys, she's AMERICAINE, but she speaks French perfectly. AMERICAINE. She's from California!" I think she said I was American at least five times. All the same, afterwards while playing the game Chinese students were like, "Wow, why is your French accent so good, are you from France?" "You look so French." etc. etc. I can't imagine anyone who looks less French than my slobby self, but all the same it was gratifying to see what a hit bingo was. I ran into one of the French girls from this party at a club last night, and she said, "Sonya, right?" I was blown away that she remembered me, because all I could vaguely remember was her face. She looks a lot like Jen from West Virginia. I was piss drunk because my cousin from Shenzhen is in town.
Yesterday, after what seemed like an endless day of teaching, I missed the first bus home and another English teacher and I had to take the later bus. The bus driver on this bus was just super-fucking cool, really chill, and he fostered this community feeling on his bus. He was chatting with us and he knew a few lines of English, and we both know some Chinese, so we were having a pretty interesting conversation. The moment I got on the bus and asked if this goes to the old campus, he asked, "Yes, it does -- which country are you from?" I replied America, and asked where he thought I was from, and he said, your accent is just so different, I thought you were maybe Korean or Yibenyi. I had to laugh, and, skillfully avoiding the which country part, replied my mom is from Taipei and I have her accent. Anyway, this bus was super cool, and everyone was really nice and said hello to us and were chatting with us about America and about Chinese Americans and about how we like Qingdao. Then they started chatting super fast in their dialect and we couldn't understand anymore. We saw little things dangling from the back of cars dragging on the ground and we all speculated on what it meant. None of us really know, but the bus driver speculated that it's to catch your good luck in case it falls out the car. I fell asleep against the window, and, apparently, they all started telling my friend to wake me up, I can get a brain cold from doing that.
Right after we got off I realized it was five and I had agreed to meet a friend at a landmark a little distance away at this time, but he was also supposed to be playing a concert right next to where the bus dropped us off -- I tried texting back that I got the message about the concert, but the guy's cell phone was dead. We went to the concert and saw perhaps all the white people in Qingdao walking towards it, and I asked one of them if he knew this guy, and he was like, "Yeah I do, we're supposed to be doing a sound check right now but he had to run off to meet someone -- I guess, you?" So we ran off to the landmark to meet him and saw him leaving when we got there. I yelled across the busy street and my voice was like a bull horn, startling even myself, and we got to the concert. It was cool, but I was so fucking tired and not in the mood to be very sociable with new people. The other teacher and I, plus a girl from the AF, hung around until the band after my friend's, then we took off, myself to sleep. But, I was totally a hero, I don't know if anyone even realized it. There was free beer until 6, and there was a group of people standing around the kegs looking sad and lost. The keg was empty and no one was replacing it, so my drummer friend moved the kegs, but he didn't know how to do the spigot thing, so I bust out with my keg skills and changed the spigot, at which point this white guy working at the concert came up to me and said, "Look, sorry, it's free beer only till 6. We have a vendor here --" then he saw I was Chinese and switched to Chinese. I replied in Chinese but he didn't understand, so I said in English, "We just got here and we didn't get any beer yet, and look at all these people waiting -- could you please just let them have a last drink?" he argued a bit and I kept looking very sad, and finally he was like, "Okay guys, last call!"
I find, in China, all you need is to be a bit stubborn and not take no for an answer in order to get what you want.
While leaving the concert, I saw the ticket table had a couple posters. For all I didn't want to see the rest of the show, I wanted a poster, and asked the guys if I could have one. They said no, sorry, there are only two for the show and they need it for the concert tomorrow, why didn't I just get a magazine from upstairs? And I replied in my sweetest Taipei girl voice that I didn't get a magazine but that I really wanted a poster, could I please have one? I came to see my friend play and I really want a poster from his show. I didn't remember the word for poster in Chinese so I said it in English, and the guys were like, "Well.... OKAY, I guess, but we can't give posters to everyone!" and wrapped up a poster for me and were super nice, and I was like, damn, dropping words in English gives me amazing power.
So I went home, then my cousin, old enough to be my uncle, called to say he's here. My dad said I might be unhappy in Qingdao and sent him here to check up on me. Apparently my cousin is living the life of a fabulously rich man down in Shenzhen with his Taiwan airforce retirement money. We went to the club I was at last week, and my friend saw the asshole old guy who told me to stop right there; he was looking ridiculous dancing with a (prettier and sluttier-looking than me) young Chinese girl. How revolting. I seriously feel like half the white people in Qingdao are just people who couldn't function back home and came here to feel important. To balance that though, the other half are pretty cool. While at the bathroom I saw this Chinese guy speaking English, and I was like, "ARE YOU CHINESE-AMERICAN TOO?" He replied, "Actually, Taiwanese-American." And I was like, "omg! Me too! Where are you from?" and he was from the same part of LA as me. To be sure I asked him if he spoke guoyu, which is the word for Chinese in Taiwan, and he replied with a heavy American but none-the-less Taiwanese accent. His friends were laughing when they heard me say "like," and were like, wtf, you both sound like you're from the movie Clueless. I met all his friends and at some point he was behind the bar and passing me free shots of vodka. My cousin bought me a bottle of whiskey that you can keep on hold at the bar, but I think I forgot the little card for it... so someone will be enjoying a free bottle of whiskey... but before that happened the four of us (a friend of mine had come out with us, my cousin and his friend) had already drunk half that bottle and another one and I don't know how many liters of Qingdao. I was so drunk and tired, but I guess when I'm drunk I'm smiling a lot, because yesterday was a really good day.
Tuesday was BJ's birthday and I folded dumplings with one of the Chinese teachers and two doorguards for his birthday get-together. It was really nice just sitting with them and chatting, even if I couldn't understand about 40% of it. At one point I asked the other teacher, "What does yibenyi mean?" and she laughed her ass off. I asked what was so funny, and she said I had mimicked the Qingdao accent perfectly, yibenyi means riben ren (Japanese people).
Wednesday, the class from hell was considerably cowed and nice, aside from the guess who game. Next week I'll teach them PC ways to describe people and try again. After reading through their little notes on why I should let them stay in my class, it was gratifying that some people wrote that they thought I was a really good teacher and could help them more than their Chinese teacher could (don't know about that) and that they were glad I was setting down rules.
Thursday, Lara (the teacher from England), Jeannette (the hiring person), and I went to the Police Station to settle my resident permit business. We sat and waited for about an hour and a half. Early on during this time, someone came up to Lara and started chatting with her. I wasn't paying attention, until I realized that she looked uncomfortable and wasn't replying to this guy, and I turned around and asked what was going on. It was this guy from Ghana who's a buyer for a company; apparently he was originally in Guangzhou (other side of the country) and had been scammed into coming up to Qingdao and losing a couple thousand dollars. He was now stuck here three days after his visa had expired, and he needed help getting an extension and didn't know where to go nor who to ask for help. I asked Jeannette if she had understood and she said yes, but she was very busy dealing with our work and couldn't go helping strangers too, so I asked how to say "visa" and "expired" and went around the PSB with him asking for help. I couldn't believe the level of laziness on the part of the police. They had English translators hanging around the hot water dispenser upstairs, but when we called them no one replied so the police officer said he couldn't help the guy, tough luck; I ended up arguing with the police officer to drag out of him what kind of paperwork the Ghana guy was supposed to get and which room he was supposed to go to. He went there on his own, with my phone number written on a piece of paper, and ended up needing to call me because the officers upstairs couldn't understand that a guy showing them an expired visa was probably looking for an extension to leave. I went up and explained the problem, then someone asked someone else, who's this new translator? for official work we need to see her ID, so they asked, "Pardon me, I've never seen you before. May I see your translator's ID?" I replied, I'm just Chinese-American, I was sitting downstairs when this guy asked for help because you guys wouldn't help him. Someone overheard and started yelling at other employees for making me walk around doing all this when there were several translators just hanging out on that floor. So, in the end, the Ghana guy got help; he called me from the train station to say he was back on his way to Guangzhou and was leaving from there for Ghana in a few days. Then, at some other point, he called again to ask me to tell a taxi driver where to go. It must suck so bad to be so helpless language-wise in a country of unhelpful people.
Thursday evening was the party with the Alliance Française. The mixer bingo game that I came up with was the best game of the night. Hooray for playing American bingo at a French cultural party. I had to explain the game in French, then my partner explained it in Chinese, then, out of nowhere, the director asked me to explain it in English. I said, "WELL, you should be able to speak French to participate in this game, but! blah blah blah". The director then got back on the mic and said, yes guys, she's AMERICAINE, but she speaks French perfectly. AMERICAINE. She's from California!" I think she said I was American at least five times. All the same, afterwards while playing the game Chinese students were like, "Wow, why is your French accent so good, are you from France?" "You look so French." etc. etc. I can't imagine anyone who looks less French than my slobby self, but all the same it was gratifying to see what a hit bingo was. I ran into one of the French girls from this party at a club last night, and she said, "Sonya, right?" I was blown away that she remembered me, because all I could vaguely remember was her face. She looks a lot like Jen from West Virginia. I was piss drunk because my cousin from Shenzhen is in town.
Yesterday, after what seemed like an endless day of teaching, I missed the first bus home and another English teacher and I had to take the later bus. The bus driver on this bus was just super-fucking cool, really chill, and he fostered this community feeling on his bus. He was chatting with us and he knew a few lines of English, and we both know some Chinese, so we were having a pretty interesting conversation. The moment I got on the bus and asked if this goes to the old campus, he asked, "Yes, it does -- which country are you from?" I replied America, and asked where he thought I was from, and he said, your accent is just so different, I thought you were maybe Korean or Yibenyi. I had to laugh, and, skillfully avoiding the which country part, replied my mom is from Taipei and I have her accent. Anyway, this bus was super cool, and everyone was really nice and said hello to us and were chatting with us about America and about Chinese Americans and about how we like Qingdao. Then they started chatting super fast in their dialect and we couldn't understand anymore. We saw little things dangling from the back of cars dragging on the ground and we all speculated on what it meant. None of us really know, but the bus driver speculated that it's to catch your good luck in case it falls out the car. I fell asleep against the window, and, apparently, they all started telling my friend to wake me up, I can get a brain cold from doing that.
Right after we got off I realized it was five and I had agreed to meet a friend at a landmark a little distance away at this time, but he was also supposed to be playing a concert right next to where the bus dropped us off -- I tried texting back that I got the message about the concert, but the guy's cell phone was dead. We went to the concert and saw perhaps all the white people in Qingdao walking towards it, and I asked one of them if he knew this guy, and he was like, "Yeah I do, we're supposed to be doing a sound check right now but he had to run off to meet someone -- I guess, you?" So we ran off to the landmark to meet him and saw him leaving when we got there. I yelled across the busy street and my voice was like a bull horn, startling even myself, and we got to the concert. It was cool, but I was so fucking tired and not in the mood to be very sociable with new people. The other teacher and I, plus a girl from the AF, hung around until the band after my friend's, then we took off, myself to sleep. But, I was totally a hero, I don't know if anyone even realized it. There was free beer until 6, and there was a group of people standing around the kegs looking sad and lost. The keg was empty and no one was replacing it, so my drummer friend moved the kegs, but he didn't know how to do the spigot thing, so I bust out with my keg skills and changed the spigot, at which point this white guy working at the concert came up to me and said, "Look, sorry, it's free beer only till 6. We have a vendor here --" then he saw I was Chinese and switched to Chinese. I replied in Chinese but he didn't understand, so I said in English, "We just got here and we didn't get any beer yet, and look at all these people waiting -- could you please just let them have a last drink?" he argued a bit and I kept looking very sad, and finally he was like, "Okay guys, last call!"
I find, in China, all you need is to be a bit stubborn and not take no for an answer in order to get what you want.
While leaving the concert, I saw the ticket table had a couple posters. For all I didn't want to see the rest of the show, I wanted a poster, and asked the guys if I could have one. They said no, sorry, there are only two for the show and they need it for the concert tomorrow, why didn't I just get a magazine from upstairs? And I replied in my sweetest Taipei girl voice that I didn't get a magazine but that I really wanted a poster, could I please have one? I came to see my friend play and I really want a poster from his show. I didn't remember the word for poster in Chinese so I said it in English, and the guys were like, "Well.... OKAY, I guess, but we can't give posters to everyone!" and wrapped up a poster for me and were super nice, and I was like, damn, dropping words in English gives me amazing power.
So I went home, then my cousin, old enough to be my uncle, called to say he's here. My dad said I might be unhappy in Qingdao and sent him here to check up on me. Apparently my cousin is living the life of a fabulously rich man down in Shenzhen with his Taiwan airforce retirement money. We went to the club I was at last week, and my friend saw the asshole old guy who told me to stop right there; he was looking ridiculous dancing with a (prettier and sluttier-looking than me) young Chinese girl. How revolting. I seriously feel like half the white people in Qingdao are just people who couldn't function back home and came here to feel important. To balance that though, the other half are pretty cool. While at the bathroom I saw this Chinese guy speaking English, and I was like, "ARE YOU CHINESE-AMERICAN TOO?" He replied, "Actually, Taiwanese-American." And I was like, "omg! Me too! Where are you from?" and he was from the same part of LA as me. To be sure I asked him if he spoke guoyu, which is the word for Chinese in Taiwan, and he replied with a heavy American but none-the-less Taiwanese accent. His friends were laughing when they heard me say "like," and were like, wtf, you both sound like you're from the movie Clueless. I met all his friends and at some point he was behind the bar and passing me free shots of vodka. My cousin bought me a bottle of whiskey that you can keep on hold at the bar, but I think I forgot the little card for it... so someone will be enjoying a free bottle of whiskey... but before that happened the four of us (a friend of mine had come out with us, my cousin and his friend) had already drunk half that bottle and another one and I don't know how many liters of Qingdao. I was so drunk and tired, but I guess when I'm drunk I'm smiling a lot, because yesterday was a really good day.