This blog is a diary account of our life in China. We spent one year teaching English to chinese highschool/ middle school students. Hope you enjoy reading it. We are currently living in Minneapolis. For further questions contact us by email. mrsjoegro@yahoo.com

Two plane rides, plenty of nasty airline food, and over the international time zone line and we are back in America!!

Things we are expierencing/ wow you know youve been in china too long!:

1. as the plane came into the airport we were shocked to see suburban homes with drive ways
2. Keg beer is fabulous
3. Its weird to see people of other races, I was starring at the lady and she walked up to me and said hello. ooopppps
4. life is fast paced and highways are full of scary cars


as we left china both joe and I cried. We woke up at 5 am and got prepared to leave at 6. The students normally wake at 5:30 for morning exercises so they were all outside getting in lines as Joe and I are packing a van and balling our eyes out.
We hugged our neighbors and friends and waved goodbye to our students. It seemed like nobody understood that they might never see us again. Everyone continued to say dont worry we will see each other again.
We cried almost the whole way to the capital city.
We then got into Changsha and took a flight to Beijing. Thank God our luggage fit and was under weight!! almost impossible.
then we waited in the Beijing airport for 10 hours until our second flight to america. We made it through customs and finally we are home!!


things we cant wait to get back to

pizza
bath tubs
western toliets
good red wine
chocolate cake
people not spitting in the street or smoking everywhere you go



things we will miss

the best neighbors I have ever had
students always saying hello, even if its the only english word they know
the brightened faces when you walk into a classroom
our town
walking to the markets /our normal route
the orange lady
seeing the babies get bigger
watching my neighbor boys play rock paper scissors and dance outside the house
ultaman



these things and much more................

China wedding photos uploaded to flickr photo site, access them on the right! They are to die for, really you will die.
I had drag queen eye lashes and drawn in eye brows, not to mention my huge fushia dress that was clearly 5 sizes too small for me, but we just didnt zip the back.
In china instead of getting a photographer at your wedding ceremony you go to these glamour shots type stores and have them made like this. Then you get a book and large prints made, I havent been in a chinese home where there wasnt one of these monster size over the coach in the living room , and then again over the bed. They are everywhere!! Check them out. We also went with my YueYang friends. They call Joe and I mama and papa gro, so we say there our children. We had a few family portraits. In one we are having a family kung fu fight.

Primary school.

This past weekend Joe and I got the oppertunity to teach at a few primary schools around the county and city. Joe was bused all the way to a rural county school and I was at a city one. It was saturday and these kids were made to go to these extra classes kinda like summer camp. I think basically it gives them something to do. The school I went to was sort of a trade school. all the kids were learning there own little things. In one class they were learning regular dance, in another fan dance and then also music. You could hear the traditional chinese instruments playing in the back ground, too bad i would never know if they were any good or not. The insturments kinda all sound like cats at night. ha ha
Well teaching went well my first class was 9 year olds. They were easy enough to handle and still wanted to learn english enough that they were interested and didnt act up. Its always a good day when you dont have disipline problems. The next class was the same and went well. In each class I taught about the body. I had a huge picture of a man and they labeled him, then we sang head shoulders knees and toes and played simon says. Its crazy when I taught my juniors at my own school this same lesson, this lesson was the whole period. but when I taught it to these smaller kids it went so fast i had to improve new things and games.
My third class was little little kids, like 6 or 7. ( again I must emphasis that in china kids ages are different a 3 year old in america in a chinese 5 year old. small bodies) So the first thing I asked all the kids to do was stand up say there name , where they are from , and what is there favorite fruit. Really simple because these questions are pounded into them in regular school. ask any little chinese kid on the street there name they will tell you and then when you ask them how they are they have the programed answer "fine thanks and you" So these questions should have been easy. Well they were really confused and that when I knew i would have a problem. How could i teach them the body when they barelly can say there names. Before we went on this little adventure the lady that gave us the job said well i think they are in kindergarden. well my students ranged from kindergarden till middle school, my last class was 11-13 years olds. Oh well i made the best of it and with a chinese teachers help we got through all the games and song with no problem. In each class I taught about 15-20 kids, a nice small number since i normally teach 65 in one high school classroom. Its was really funny to see how the students acted. In the older kids class there were little clicks starting. You could tell all the boys were too scared to talk to the girls and the girls being only 1 year older were not interested in even looking at the boys. The girls were at least already 4 inches taller then any one boy in the class. It was kinda funny.
Joe said he mostly taught smaller kids, but in one class he said there was a boy that just ran up every 5 minutes and punched Joe square in the "you know where", He said it happened like 20 times that lesson and he couldnt figure out why this kid thought it was so funny. We have so many chinese teaching bloopers!!

Gao Kao: well our friend billy got his test results back from the entrance exam. He said he didnt do as well as he wanted. He then explained to us that the numbering system on the test figures out what your major will be in college. So if you do well in one area you can be a certain job. He said he didnt have the grades to go into journalism ( his dream was to work for discovery channel) So now he will do international trade. Which we said was defiently good for him, because this kid could talk your ear off.

Gao kao, wedding photos and more!

Well this past week was the college entrance exam for the students all over China. Its serious buisness here and our school was a host site for all the neighboring schools to come to. Joe and I went for a walk and were greeted by hundreds of buses all coming to our school even stopping at the near by hotel just packed with kids.This test is so important that many students will send other kids to take the test for them, or somehow cheat on the test. Thats why all over our school there were police and officials over seeing everything. This test is the only thing that gets you into college here. You work for senior 1 and 2 and then your last high school year senior 3 is a complete review of the last two years. Then the last semester of senior 3 you just take practice tests after practice test. Many students drop out because of the pressure and some even commit suicide. What happens when your parents , grandparents and all your other family members are counting on you to succeed? All these family members put there money together just to send you to school? With the one child policy the pressure is even worse for that one boy or girl that will be the future to the families well fair. There are some students that come from rich families and they say that there not nervous about the test at all because there Dad will just buy them a place in a university. Ahhh it makes me sick.
We had a friend Billy who taking the test, I never saw a boy more stressed out them him. He is the one that was able to travel to America and go to an american high school. Now he is finally taking the gao kao. After the test he ran over to our house and was just so excited he couldnt even speak. When Joe and I went to the grocery store the roads in front of our school had been closed, to save the students from the noise of the cars and big trucks. WHen we went to the back gate to leave right after the test was over there were thousands of parents waiting. We asked the guard if we could squeeze threw but there literally was no where to go. So we waited. The guard then opened the huge gate and in rushed all these parents!! It was just like at the train station well the chinese train station, when you rush to get on your car. It was crazy!!!! So for our school the Gao Kao was a success, even though they had to send most of the other boarding students home, and feed and put up barriers for all the out of town students to come and take the test. Next week we are holding the Jun Kao which is the high school entrance exam, we shall see how that goes.

Well Joe and I took wedding photos yesturday. Its really popular to have these huge wedding photos above your coach and bed and basically in every room of your house here in China. You go to these studios, which happen to be on every corner of every street ( big buisness) and you wear the gowns and change into many outfits for these photo. They have really funny poses like one where you both look into the sky or the man appears to be sniffing the girl. Really hilarious. In these books there are also funny english sentences about love, but they never make any sense, the english is always really bad. We will load some of the photos when we get them next week. You will die, the outfits are hilarious, the lady put fake eyelashes and fake hair on my head, I got to also wear a fushia dress. Joe all I can say looked like a figure skater all afternoon the Yueyang girls and I called him Brian Boitano. You will just die!

photos of the week

say hello to a student of mine that Joe has nicknamed " count dracula bangs" Look closely at her bangs and you'll understand why.

We saw this incredible sight at the arcade! Chinese women are soo girly, shes even wearing heels, ofcourse! i saw a chinese women wearing heels ,hiking up a mountain once, what we do to look pretty!

News story: good thing we're almost outta here, eh?? Hunan is our province!

Saturday May 19, 08:36 PM
China confirms bird flu outbreak
China has confirmed an outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu virus among poultry in the central province of Hunan.
The Xinhua news agency says there were no cases of human infection in the area hit.
The outbreak was in a village in Yiyang city in Hunan and it killed 11,172 birds, a Ministry of Agriculture spokesman told Xinhua.
Scientists had sourced the poultry deaths to H5N1, the strain of avian influenza that scientists fear could mutate into a form that jumps easily from human to human, threatening an epidemic.
China, with millions of backyard birds and a strained medical system, is seen as key in the fight against bird flu.
The country's last reported human death from bird flu was in March.
Hunan authorities have taken steps to contain the outbreak, culling close to 53,000 other birds, Xinhua reported.

V is for vacuum flask, o is for omni bus

On a recent scavenger hunt activity I did the teaching in a large multi level classroom un think able. I let my student go outdside!! dun dun duuuunnnn! Its true they might have run amuck, or just played basketball to their hearts content, but Its been nice, so I thought hey they don't wanna be inside as much as I don't , so we'll give it a shot. After about 10 minutes of threats dealing with You better come back or you'll never go outside again. I was ready to set them free.
The activity was write the A,B,C's and write 1 word for each letter. Its called what do I see outside. So if you see emily you can use emily for e, and tree for t. Simple enough right?? Well first these kids have never been allowed outside. (all my worrying was really for nothing) I mean I let the kids out and they just stand right at the door or right next to the classroom. They really had no idea that I was letting them go, go free!! I had to push them to even go down the hallway! Then when a teacher would walk by they would freak out and run back into the classroom. I finally got them to see that I was really letting them have a little fun and this is what I got back in return. Here's a list of the best ABC words. Do you think these kids aw these things?? Aren't dictionaries the greatest!

A: Agriculture ( a unit in their book), Alien,
B: Bacon
c: Clothes, Cow
e: earth, environment
g: good looking girl ( awesome)
i: ice cream
j: junk
l: insect ( does that start with l??)
m: monster, mother, hmmm
n: nostril ( i had a kid that did all the body parts), nothing ( can you see nothing?)
o: omnibus ( what is that?), Oprah Winfrey!
q: quilt, quad, quill
r: rocket
s: sleep, slim girl
t: tobacco,
u: undertaking, UFO
V: vegan, Vacuum flask
w: Witch
X: X-man, Xylograph, X-chromosome ( my fav)

Speeches:
I am half way threw listening to my speeches. The kids have been giving some really great ones and some really horrible ones. My favorites are the kids that don't think I'll notice when they give a real speech copied out of an english history book. Like the kid that gave 'I have a dream", or the kid who recited a famous song. They always say,... but i really did write it!!ha ha ha now i know what my teachers felt like and man do I respect them now.

best shirt ever!!! She has no idea what it means!!!

Jack Ass most hilarious china happening!

So I dont know if I wrote this yet, but we did a really awful americans go to china and show there culture type thing. Joe downloaded the movie "jackass" and one night when we were watching it as usual our neighbors Bear ( the phone guy) and the barber came up and we decided oh what the hell, lets see what they think. China is a pretty conservative place, they freak out when they see cheer leaders on tv, much less the Jackass movie where guys are doing horrible things to there bodies with electricity! So we let them watch and at first they are shocked, but then as it goes on the just start cracking up!!! Now for me to laugh at the jackass guys I have to have a few drinks, but these chinese guys were rolling off their chairs!! The barber seriously was hyperventaling he was laughing so hard after watching a part where a guy farts into a funnel and steve-o is wearing an astronaut helmet that is attached, which steve-o then throws up into. I was totally embarassed to being showing them this horrible american culture blooper real, but they just loved it!! I never laughed so hard watching someone else grip their stomach from laughter. The barber seriously couldnt stop laughing!!
Then just last night we were introducing them and their wives to gin and tonics and just sitting outside in the summer heat when Bear brings up this movie. They then start explaining in chinese to these two poor women the goings on. The barber then gets up and starts motioning a funnel and bear acts like hes wearing an astronaut helmet and start making farting noises!!! All in chinese!!! Maybe you just had to be there, but it was the only thing that could top watching the barber laugh that first time. The ladies gave us this look like what the hell?? I guess Jackass is something you just have to see, cause telling it in a story is just not as funny.... point taken.

Heng Shan.

Recently we traveled to a mountain in our province called Heng Shan. It is one of the 5 holy mountains of china. When you get there you stay in hotel rooms that are above restraunts. Kinda like a bed and breakfast. It was a little weird when we first arrived because the taxi driver dropped us off at his friends hotel place. We were like man, this always happens to us, but we were able to bargain the room down from 100 kuai a night to 70, so we thought oh well it can't be that bad.
We spent the first day exploring the town, The town is full of mainly insence shops and temples. When you walk down some of the roads near the temples you can also see carpenter shops that are full of wooden buddahs not yet painted. You can sit there forever it seems and just watch the men squatting usually ( a normal chinese stance, when you have no chair around. ) and they are just using there small tools to shape these huge tree trunks into massive buddahs. I wish we could have taken a picture, but theres always a respect issue that you must up hold when your in another culture. I have been told by one buddist that it is bad to take photos of buddahs in temples because its disrespectful. I thought about her words when I was watching the men and thought how horribly disrespectful it would be to take a photo before they even made it off the essembly line. I will just have that memory in my mind forever instead and have to remember the street forever. It was really interesting to also see the female monks or nuns, walking around with there interesting hats and long socks and black pointy shoes. This trip has made me want to know more about the religions in Asia. While we were in Tibet the people and monks looked really different from the monks here. Chinese buddism is alittle different from tibetan buddism and this trip has really sparked my interest to read up on those differences. While climbing the mountain we visited many temples and we wondered if they were daoist or a mixture of buddism and something else. Really interesting buddahs and like nothing I had seen before.
The next day we decided to scale the mountain. On the way up we walked through many beautiful scenes. There were little pagodas and waterfalls. It took us 5 hours to get to the top. Each few meters there would be a temple to see and pray at. They had huge insence burners and some people even threw firecrackers inside it.
When we finally reached the top I thought I was going to die. Hiking up huge marble stairs until I almost passed out. When we got to the top there was a huge temple on the very highest peak. People had started kowtowing up the walkway to it as far back as 400 meters. Really amazing to see even the oldest people getting down and doing this while chanting and singing. As we walked all the way to the temple doors, you could see the clouds rushing all around us. At first I thought it was the insence smoke, but no this air was really moist and you couldnt see more then 20 feet in front of you. We scaled down the mountain after having a banana and a snack. When we got down to the bottom I once again thought my legs wouldnt move, a feeling I had when hiking at another place last fall. When we got back down to the restraunt we told the owners that we made it to the top. They all had jaws dropped and eyes open wide and said to each other "Foreigners are strong and crazy! Chinese people dont even do that and its their mountain!!". So we had a good time there, We hope to maybe go back and see it when the weather is better. Maybe the clouds will clear and we can see more. It is said you can see Dong Ting Lake for the top peak on a clear day. However many thing are "said" in China.