| Hellooo?? |
[Apr. 17th, 2008|07:56 pm] |
If anyone is still watching this...I've moved (cyber-wise, though soon physically, too).
Yeah, you probably figured that out.
(No, China's still blocking LJ with the Great Firewall, but I finally found a proxy server that will still let me log in!)
Anyway, if you are still interested in reading about my adventures in China, they are now located at http://blog.dimsummary.com , and my many lovely pictures can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/middlekmissie .
I hope you are still interested, and with this new website, you can also use RSS or email notifications to keep track of me.
--Missie Kay
(Lissa_Maylee, 何潇潇，柯梅莉，柯云潇, XiaoXiao or any other name you might have known me by.) |
|
|
| At Sally's House |
[Apr. 29th, 2007|04:31 pm] |
Whoa, another update from Missie? And so soon? Well, I'm feeling motivated lately, and I'm leaving tomorrow on spring break. I thought it'd be pretty pathetic if I couldn't get my winter break report finished before spring break!
After I left Happy's house, I went to another student's home; her English name is Sally. I was nervous before visiting Happy, because we hadn't been close before, I didn't feel that way about visiting Sally, as we were already good friends. (I did get much closer to Happy through the course of my visit with her.)
( Click for pretty pictures! )
Remember! You can click on any photo to see more at my Picasa Web Album. This trip, especially, had lots of beautiful pictures. |
|
|
| Staying at Happy's House |
[Apr. 24th, 2007|09:29 pm] |
Well, now that we're at midterms in the spring term, it's a great time to talk about some more of my in-between-terms vacation, right?
Right?
Okay, so it's been a long time. This term has flown by.
The rest of this vacation was spent at the homes of two different students. The first student lives in Fenggang (Dongguan), which is a suburb of a good-sized city near Guangzhou, and her name is Happy. In her home, there are: her father, her older brother, younger sister (April), and her little cousin (Jenny). Her mother came home for the New Year's holiday, too.
( Pictures and more behind cut! )
My final vacation post should be coming in the next few days. I say should, because I never seem to move as fast as I think I will on these things. I do want to get it done before I leave for the May (week-long) vacation, though.
P.S. I realized that I never mentioned: click on any of the pictures to go to my Picasa web album, where there are more photos. |
|
|
| Chengdu, Part 2 |
[Mar. 19th, 2007|01:06 am] |
Sorry for the long delay, but I was trying to figure out a good way to bypass the filter on the school's internet. Apparently, most blog sites are currently not allowed. Grrr... They did this before, but only for about a week, and this time it's at about 18 days.
Anyway, I obviously figured out a way around that, it's just annoying, because I can't stay signed in, and I can't access friends-only posts at all, even my own.
So, I left off with Chengdu. By the way, there was a little bit that was cut out of the last post because of bit of wrong code, so if you wondered why I was laughing about the green goat, you might want to go back and reread it. :-)
One of the other things I did in Sichuan was to visit a town near to Chengdu to see the tallest statue of Buddha in the world. I was sure that I had seen another statue billed as the "largest", but then I remembered that that one was laying on its side, so the one I saw probably is taller.
Anyway, it's located in a town called Leshan (Happy Mountain, which, you have to admit, is a great name for a town), and through a friend, we got a local guide (Alice), which is always a wonderful thing to have!
( cut for pictures )
Don't worry, there's still more to my vacation experiences that will be posted later! |
|
|
| Chengdu, part 1 |
[Feb. 13th, 2007|10:38 pm] |
Six lovely weeks of vacation! (I hear my friend Mirna groan)
Well, this update will be about the first part of my vacation, which was in Chengdu, Sichuan, China. Most of you have heard of Sichuan food (almost all Chinese restaurants in America claim Sichuan (Szechuan) style food). It's very delicious, but I warn the foreigner (even those who may think that their tongues are tough) to be wary of native Sichuanese claims that "it's not hot".
I stayed with some friends from home, who have some lovely children, both of whom love to feed fish.
( cut for pictures ) |
|
|
| New Year's, Macau, Finals |
[Jan. 22nd, 2007|10:59 pm] |
For New Year's Day, Karen, Yeeling, Angela, and I went to Macau for a short break. The most famous sight in Macau (which you may not have realized was in Macau) is St. Paul's.
( pictures )
When we got back to Guangzhou, it was time for finals. I ended up giving the reading final for all 5 of my reading classes at once, and if I ever do that again, I'm going to have about twenty more teachers watching, I can tell you that. These kids cheat like you wouldn't believe, and it's really hard to catch them. Many teachers just give up, but my principles won't let me do that (although I kind of wish they would). So, yeah...not fun.
Also not fun: when four girls waylay you after the test to beg you not to give them zeros, even though they cheated and you took away their papers. I finally agreed to give them scores of 50 each (60 is passing), so that if they did well on the midterm and attended class regularly, they can still pass the class. When I started grading the papers, the strange thing was that all of their papers were missing! I think that they took them while I was cleaning up the room, so that I had no proof that they were cheating. Unfortunately for them, I also have no proof that they took the test at all now, and they fail.
I finished the finals week vowing to be more organized next term, so that grade-entering won't be so arduous at finals. We'll see if I keep that resolution.
Tomorrow I leave on my vacation--the first part of the break will be spent with friends in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province and spicy food. Wish me luck! |
|
|
| Christmas |
[Jan. 7th, 2007|01:40 am] |
We've had some trouble with the internet lately...apparently the Taiwan earthquake messed up telecommunications from America to China, or at least that's the excuse they're using this week. Anyway, here's my Christmas post.
On Christmas Eve, I was able to be part of a special Christmas choir, which was lots of fun, and then that night, I attended a student party.
Then on Christmas Day, we had some American college students who came and visited some classes; after lunch, I talked to my family, which was wonderful. We opened presents from each other while talking on Skype. So here are some highlights of my haul. :-P
( presents )
That night, there was another party, this one much bigger, thrown by the English Association.
( Party )
On Boxing Day, we did have the day off. The contract officially says that we get Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off, but since Christmas Eve was a Sunday, we also got Boxing Day. In the morning, I talked to the extended family on Dad's side, and they sang for me. :-)
Then we decided to get off campus, since we had had to stick around most of the day for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We went to Yuexiu Park downtown, and it was beautiful.
( Yuexiu )
I was planning to add New Year's on here, but this is so picture-heavy already. Also, I'm having trouble with YouTube again, and there's a video I'd like to have on that post.
This was the first Christmas that I've ever spent away from home, and it was a little hard, but the parties and the park definitely helped. It also helped to think about the real meaning of
Christmas. |
|
|
| Midterms and Pets |
[Nov. 27th, 2006|10:06 pm] |
First, there were midterms. Let me say, I never thought about my poor teachers at midterms before. I mean, most of my professors probably had TAs to do the written-test grading at least, but...poor TAs, then!
Midterms are a lot of work. (Sorry, no fun pictures there.) Not only is the written-test grading hard work, but oral tests are very exhausting. The thing is, you have to constantly be evaluating for one and a half (or in my case two days that week, three) hours at a time, and so you have to concentrate, and since I'm really an introvert, anyway...it was tough.
But I survived! That Saturday Karen and I went to a nearby town to buy a cat. I suppose that now would be an appropriate time for a picture, right?
( Cat Pics )
Of course, poor Alfred, or 爱福, promptly got sick, and we had to take him to the vet. He seems okay now, although still pretty thin, and incredibly whiny. Oh, and he's deathly afraid of the outdoors, and really likes to chew on (but not, as far as I know, eat) plastic, and still has a few fleas, even though we bathed him in baijiu (alchohol).
Speaking of pets, we were also pet foreigners for a friend of a friend.
What are pet foreigners? They are foreigners who are at some company or social event simply to be foreigners, basically.
Witness: ( Pets )
In other news, Thanksgiving happened. Karen and I did a nice semi-traditional meal and invited our American friend Eddie as well as some Chinese and Japanese coworkers.
( Thanksgiving dinner )
So now that Thanksgiving's over, it's Christmastime, right? Too bad it's not very Christmasy weather (in my understanding of the term, that is). There is one Christmasy thing on campus, though.
( Christmasy? ) |
|
|
| Belated Birthday, Carpenter's Wood |
[Nov. 20th, 2006|01:39 am] |
I never did post birthday pics, did I? Well, ( here they are! )
Early November brought Carpenter's Wood to our campus. They're a singing group from a college in America, and our students were overjoyed to meet them, although it was definitely a whirlwind visit. We had fun talking to them, and they did a great job singing.
( Carpenter's Wood Singers )
Next update: midterms and on being pet foreigners. |
|
|
| National Holiday Vacation! |
[Oct. 25th, 2006|09:44 pm] |
When I last updated, Karen and I were standing at the side of the road with a bunch of Chinese people, waiting for the replacement bus after the first one broke down on the way to Fuzhou.
Of course, the replacement finally did come, even though it was just short of the time that our fellow-travelers had told me they were considering the company's deadline. If they had taken any longer, we were going to call the police to bring us home, because we were literally in the middle of nowhere.
So, we got to our friends' house, and we spent a lovely, relaxing week with them. We saw some sights, but didn't stress ourselves out with trying to see everything.
( Pictures )
Also, another short video clip: They have these great Firework Lights all over in China, and I've never seen them at home. This is at the town square, Fuzhou.
P.S. I now hate Photobucket, and am currently enjoying Picasa. I kind of wish it wouldn't shrink the photos so much when I post them here, but I guess it's easier for readers who don't have fast connections. |
|
|
| National Day Festivities |
[Oct. 16th, 2006|08:40 am] |
National Day here in China is October 1st. It's a lot like the 4th of July back home, because it's the big patriotic holiday, and most people get the day off work.
( Decorations )
The school had a big National Day variety show, and I was pleasantly surprised by how good most of the acts were. I was asked to be an emcee.
( Show )
Of course, on the actual National Day, I was riding a bus, then waiting by a broken down bus...( broken-down bus )
...for 7.5 hours. Yeah, that was...interesting. It wasn't so bad, actually. The fellow passengers were pretty friendly (especially after they had a few beers), and although I was certainly skeptical that someone might be acting friendly in order to pick our pockets, that turned out to not be the case.
Also, there was a young girl and young guy that appeared to have formed a love connection during the wait, which amuses me and Karen no end.
YouTube finally cooperated with me! So I have several links for you.
Students Drilling (Matthias, I think you and your friends should really enjoy this.)
Soldiers Drilling Kung Fu Postions
Soldiers Mock(?) Fighting
Break Dancers at the National Day Concert |
|
|
| Teaching and Random Guangzhou Stuff |
[Sep. 27th, 2006|10:11 pm] |
Okay, it's been a while since I updated. You may remember that last time, I told you all about the trials of my first week teaching. Well, I have had two and a half more weeks of teaching since then, and I'm happy to tell you that things have improved quite a bit.
I've gotten a better idea of how much to prepare for each class, although the speaking classes still require lots of preparation...Although I can usually ad lib something if someone gives me a topic, I can't come up with speaking games and activities off the top of my head.
Speaking of classes, I believe I promised some photos of my classrooms.
( Classrooms )
The students have loosened up a bit--they're more willing to talk to me and answer questions in class--and some of them have started to invite me places outside of class and text message me. Text messaging is a very popular form of communication here--I mean, I know it is in America, too, but I never really did it. If I wanted to talk to someone, I just called them. But some people do it constantly here, and I certainly do a lot more. It does cost money off your plan, but much less than calling.
( Friends )
I was able to visit a local church on Shamian Island. It was a bilingual service. Here's a picture of the outside.
( Shamian Church )
Another day in Guangzhou, Karen, Jeffrey and I took a few minutes to appreciate the waterfall and park outside of the Citic Plaza.
( Scenery )
I saw my first student show--they are serious about the pop music here, as you may know. All the students love music, usually pop music of the more sentimental variety. This can be a bit painful for a rock'n'roll lovin' girl like me, but at least I have my computer and my own speakers. Anyway, they danced and sang away the night last week, and I got to be there for it.
( Show )
Another interesting experience was the freshman welcome ceremony. The freshmen start a little bit later than the upperclassmen, because they have military training for a few weeks. The training was started, I've been told, after Tiananmen Square. However, after witnessing a demonstration, I have to say that it's less military training and more discipline/obedience training. In other words, it's more like the foundation for a real military training.
( Student Troops )
There was also a pretty cool demonstration done by some of the actual soldiers that trained the students.
( Real Men Know Kung Fu )
Finally, a pic for my cousin Simon.
( Special Store ) |
|
|
| First Week of Classes! |
[Sep. 9th, 2006|09:45 pm] |
Well, I've completed my first week teaching at a Chinese college, and I guess you all want to hear about it. Or not, but you will anyway. :-P
Monday and Tuesday I had two (or in this school's language, four) classes each of 2nd-year English majors for an Extensive Reading course. I do want to supplement the readings with extras, because the readings in the book are all manufactured textbook stuff, but I didn't really know how things would go for this first week, so I stuck to the book.
Oh, yeah, the class system here: all classes go in pairs of 45-minute periods, making (to my way of thinking) 3 class periods throughout the day, each 90 minutes long. However, all the students and teachers refer to them as 6 classes, even though classes never change during the 10-minute breaks. Also, at least for the classes that they have us foreigners teach, each one only meets once a week.
On Wednesday, there was some awkwardness. In fact, pretty much the whole day was awkwardness. Before class, I had to run to the office to pick up my family & friend photos that I was showing to all the classes during the first week. One of the younger male English teachers was in there already, and he wanted to see the pictures, so I let him. I pointed out my sisters, and he said, "Very beautiful, just like you."
Wasn't sure how to take that, so I just said thanks and left. When I arrived at the Sound Lab (This is a Speaking/Listening/Watching course), I tried to figure out the equipment, but nothing seemed to be working. When the students got there, I gave my intro, and then I asked if any of them could help me out with the equipment, figuring that for sure, one of them would be able to help me out. None of them knew, either. Eventually, one of the other teachers figured it out after about 20 minutes. We did a little tape work, but none of the kids had the book that I had. So we couldn't do any of the written exercises.
I gave up on the tape and asked each of them to come forward and talk about themselves a bit, and that went pretty well, except that one girl absolutely refused to come up. I didn't want to make her cry, which it seemed like she might if I forced her, but...how can you major in English and be that scared to speak it in front of others? I'm shy about Chinese, but not that shy.
Anyway, that class was over, and one student says, "You know, we did this book last year."
Then all four guys in the class (yeah, all of my classes have many more girls than guys in them--I've heard that the Business English major is that way) came up to me and asked if I wanted them to show me around Guangzhou this weekend. Which struck me as a little inappropriate. I mean, if it had been girl students, or mixed, I would have immediately said yes, but...four guys and one foreign girl? Iffy.
(This decision was later validated by one of the Chinese male English teachers.)
The second class I had that day is my only class that is just Speaking. It's Hotel Management majors, and I think that they take learning English much less seriously. The first thing I heard when I walked into class was "Oh, so beautiful!" coming from the mouth of one of the male students. Loudly. Everyone giggled, and I blushed. I'm not really used to getting these kinds of compliments, and so often. I'm not exactly a fashion model. But the fact that this is coming from one of my students...that much more awkward.
Anyway, these students are rowdy, but otherwise there were no major problems after that.
I found out the deal with the book: half of the students have already done it, but the other half haven't. So I have to pick and choose and supplement a lot with this course.
I was told that I could show movies, but that seems like such a cop-out. I mean, I'm sure I'll do it sometimes, but I don't want to every week or anything. This will take some thinking.
On Thursday, I had one Speaking/Listening/Watching class, which ended up being a bit of a disaster, because I didn't have nearly enough material prepared. The students in that class were kind, though. :-) Then I had my last Reading class of the week, which went about as smoothly as any of the others. I enjoy the Reading classes, which is probably a surprise to exactly no one who knows me.
On Friday, I was taking my morning shower (distinct from my evening shower, because yes, I do need two a day here, especially when I teach in the hot classrooms), when the lights went out.
This has happened before, so when I was done, I went over to flip the breaker switch, only to realize that they didn't need flipping. From this, I guessed that it must be a campus-wide, or possibly village-wide outage. I guess that they were upgrading the power plant or something? Anyway, no electricity till that night. Great, only I was scheduled to teach more Speaking/Listening/Watching classes in the Sound Lab.
We ended up adjourning to the main classroom building and the lovely new material I'd prepared (music, with TV clips if necessary) was irrelevant. It turned out okay, because I had made a point of preparing more than I thought I would need on Thursday night. Turned out that without the music, it was just enough.
I apologize for the lack of photos of classrooms and classes, but I was too busy trying to figure out the system and all. I'll try to remedy that situation soon, but for now, I do have some other photos that are not teaching-related.
( Pics ) |
|
|
| This is pathetic: |
[Sep. 1st, 2006|10:43 pm] |
create your own China map
Also, riding up at 10:00 on the motorcycle taxi--I decided it's a very good thing that I didn't try to walk up. There are certain things on the way that might be fine to walk by, as a lone white woman, during the day, but not at night. |
|
|
| Campus |
[Aug. 30th, 2006|07:47 pm] |
Now that I'm all caught up and settled into my dorm here on campus, I think it's time to post about the school.
First of all, the campus is not "in" Guangzhou. The address still says Guangzhou City, but it's really in, or near, a village on the outskirts called Dayuan. It's a gorgeous area with some lovely big hills and lots of trees.
( Campus )
One of the buildings you can see the roof of in that picture is the foreign teachers' dorm, where I live.
( Foreign Teachers' Dorm )
This school is actually a 3-year technical college, and it is only 3 years old. We found out about our assigned classes yesterday. We each have 3 different classes to teach, in different combinations, but always adding up to a total of 20 teaching "hours" (50 min. periods). My classes are: 3rd Year English Major Speaking/Listening/Watching (Movies); 2nd Year English Major Extensive Reading; and 2nd Year Hotel Management Major Listening/Speaking.
I really like the feel of this campus and the village around. I definitely feel as though I'm in China now! Also, Guangzhou is among the more expensive cities in the country, but the village around here is not nearly so much. The same products and same types of restaurants are much cheaper here.
( Street Pictures! )
When Karen and I went down to the village, we got to ride motorcycle taxis back up the hill to the campus! It was great fun, but they don't have any helmets, so that was slightly nerve-wracking. It was mostly just fun, though.
( Random Other Pics ) |
|
|
| Guangzhou! |
[Aug. 25th, 2006|09:04 pm] |
So, now that I've been in Guangzhou for about a month, I'm finally there on my journal!
It's okay, though, because this month hasn't really been too busy for me, so I can catch you up pretty quickly.
Here are a few pictures of Guangzhou to give you a general idea:
( Guangzhou )
Because the teacher housing wasn't ready right away, I was staying in an empty apartment belonging to a friend of a friend of a friend, or something like that. It was in Clifford Estates, which is this really fancy place with like 5 swimming pools and a massage parlor and a little shopping center. Oh, and an internal bus system and then buses that took you to the city for a small fee--basically, much fancier than anywhere I've ever lived in America.
( Clifford Fanciness )
It's very nice, but I certainly wouldn't want to live there permanantly. I'd feel cut off from the city--from real Chinese life. I didn't feel like I was in China at all there. Maybe there's some kind of portal at the gate, and it was really...Singapore or something.
( Random Pics )
My friend from college, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) daidawei (Hi, Dawei!), had a friend here in Guangzhou, so he e-introduced us. I've done a couple fun things with her, and sometimes with her boyfriend--mostly just shopping, getting my computer fixed (it decided to spice up my month and have several things go wrong at once), and going out to eat, so not that exciting as far as pictures go. But here's something fun we did!
( Gotheborg! )
A replica of the Swedish ship Gotheborg, which is famous for all the trade it did in China back in the day, was on its world tour, so we went to see it. |
|
|
| Unimportant News! |
[Aug. 21st, 2006|01:45 am] |
For all my mom's claims that I have an adventurous palate, today I finally ate chicken feet for the first time. It was...interesting. |
|
|
| Kunming Pics |
[Aug. 15th, 2006|11:53 pm] |
I wanted to show a couple other pictures of Kunming, but didn’t fit under any of the other entries here. There may be some things that are new to Westerners that have never been to China, too.
( Read more... ) |
|
|
| Trip to Dali |
[Aug. 11th, 2006|09:45 pm] |
I completely forgot to mention in the last post—Tibetan yak butter tea. If you get a chance, try it. That is all.
Since we were done with the English camps, and had another week in Kunming, we decided to take a short trip to Dali. Dali is a town about four hours away (by bus), and is famous for three things. 1: Lots of Bai minority people; 2: Erhai Lake; and 3: lots and lots of Westerners.
The Bai (White) minority is so called because of their traditional decorating habits: they use lots of the white marble that is prevalent in the Dali area, and the walls of their houses are usually white, often with paintings.
( Bai Decor )
Bai houses are in the traditional “courtyard” style, and we were told that the second floor was usually used as the barn, which I found interesting. Their internal doors tend to be wonderfully ornate.
( Bai Houses )
As I’m sure you can tell, there’s a mix of photos here. Unlike a lot of Chinese cities, Dali has kept part of its city wall. Basically, inside the city wall is the tourist park, and outside is where “real” people live. We asked them if we could take pictures, of course!
I discovered when I visited Xi’an that I love city walls. I’m not exactly sure why, but I think it has to do with the feeling of history that lurks around them, a love of good scenery, and possibly some of those princess pretend-games I used to play.
We paid two kuai to go up on the wall, not realizing that the wall itself was free, and it was just a small (not very exciting) temple that you had to pay for. Ah, well. The view was worth more than that (about 25 cents US).
( City Wall )
However, since we paid, we could go past the temple, where people actually live on top of the wall. Theses people didn’t want us to come in, but I did get a picture.
( Houses on the Wall )
Another place we went was the former governor’s mansion, where I learned a lot of this stuff about Bai people, and we also got to sample the traditional Bai three-course tea. There’s a presentation for all the tourists, and interspersed between each course were little cultural dances, etc.
The first tea was quite bitter, and a little hard to choke down, but I figured—when else am I going to try it, right? So I did.
The second tea was very sweet, with little nut shavings in it—almond or walnut, I’m not sure which.
The third tea was also very sweet, and it was a wedding tea, I believe (at least, the wedding dance was what accompanied it).
( Dances )
Of course, we had to try several of the local foods, too.
( Food )
( Tourist Shot )
Because we took a bus, we had a lot of opportunities to watch scenery out the windows on the way there. Because there was a landslide (due to heavy rain) while we were there, we had many more opportunities for watching on the way back. We took a nice long detour through twisty mountain roads, which also meant there were some times when we didn’t want to look out the windows.
So here are my best scenery pics, especially including some fields for my dad.
( Scenery )
Finally, quite possibly the last thing I was expecting to see on a tourist trip in China: ( marijuana! )
Note: some of these pictures were taken by my friends Grace and April. |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| |
|
|
calm
guilty that it's taken so long
determined
tired
drained
annoyed with YouTube
indescribable
awake
complacent