Another Semester Nears the End

Yesterday was my last day of classes for the semester - unbelievable! The semester went so fast. Overall, this semester of teaching went WAY better than last year...I was more comfortable, confident and didn't have to create lesson plans out of thin air each week! Teaching 3 oral English classes also made it better - and although some days my freshmen students acted like the paparazzi (I was the first foreign teacher for most of them and turned around one day to see 18 cell phone cameras pointed at me...literally...) they were a good group and I'll miss teaching them. The last day was hard on my freshmen because they were unaware that I would not be teaching them again next semester - there are so few foreign teachers that we just can't have the same students more than once. When I told them, they were heartbroken and some started crying!

One difference I really noticed between my freshmen and junior classes was their motivation...their drive to improve. My freshmen tried SO hard and were so eager to learn, which of course made them fun to teach. One girl, Dolly (she's sitting third from the right in the picture below, yellow jacket) came up to me the first day of class frantically telling me in Chinese that her English was not good. I told her that her only choice was to work hard this semester and from that day on she was always front row center in class. Throughout the semester I became increasingly proud of her as she went from the girl who had no confidence in her English to the girl who would not give up. The improvement that those students made, especially Dolly, in their oral English over the semester was truly amazing! Below is one of my freshmen classes...


After finals next week, I've got 5 weeks of vacation, one of which will be spent in Hong Kong. But the other 4 weeks...hmmm...besides upping my Chinese study...I have very few plans. Any suggestions?!?!

Christmas Festivities

Christmas here in China came and went so quickly! While there were many "signs" of Christmas in the blue and purple Christmas trees around the city, a lot of things were quite different from last year and definitely different from being back home. Thankfully, I am surrounded by friends from all over the world who I can celebrate with! I think that between Christmas Eve and day I received over 50 text messages from students wishing me a Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve:
On the morning of Christmas Eve, I gathered up 3 former students and we went off to Cindy's house for a morning of baking and tasting. :) We made Christmas cookies and brownies. I was so delighted to watch the excitement in my students' eyes as they made their first batch of frosted Christmas cookies.


That evening I went to the Three-Self Church in Tianjin, one of two churches in my area (the other is a beautiful Catholic church in downtown Tianjin.) I went with 3 Chinese friends and they warned me ahead of time that it would be packed so we should go early. Well, they weren't joking as 2 of them went at 4:30 in the afternoon - the service started at 7:00!!! They said they would try to save seats for the 2 of us going later. At 5:00 I got a message saying that it was already full but amazingly they were able to save the seats until we finally arrived after 6:00. The service lasted for 2.5 hours and it was announced during the sermon that there were over 2,000 people there - in a church with 1,500 seats. Obviously, not everyone had a seat and so people were sitting on the floor, on the stairs, standing...standing for 2.5 hours. Wow. The service was really beautiful and I am so glad we went - there was a huge choir that sang a lot and the pastor spoke for nearly an hour but don't ask me what it was about because the whole service was in Chinese! :) Heading back to campus, we couldn't find a taxi or a bus so we walked and cut through a major shopping area on the way. I was speechless as I saw the amount of people out shopping - most of them wearing bunny ears or devil horns on their heads in order to "celebrate the holiday." Apparently, they are unaware of the true meaning... It was disappointing to see the scene and I wanted to get away from it as quickly as possible - I felt like it was a mockery of the holiday.

My Christmas Eve ended by talking to my mom, sisters and my Chinese "sister" on Skype. Hooray Skype!

Christmas Day:
On Christmas day I was up at 6:30 a.m. to get ready for class - yep, I taught two classes on Christmas day. :( It ended up being okay because my students were in the spirit of the holiday and they bought me gifts and sang Christmas songs to me. I also brought snacks for them and we spent the class talking about Christmas and having fun together.

After class, I went back to Cindy's house for a relaxing afternoon and evening of games and a nice dinner with a small group of people. It was a very pleasant way to spend the day!

Since Christmas snuck up on me so quickly, I didn't even get any cards sent out! So, now I will just say that I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas. I hope you were able to experience blessings and maybe even a miracle on this special day. May you be blessed abundantly in the year to come! All my love...Shannon :)

Merry Christmas from a Chinese snowman - a mound of snow with a head stuck on top! They are amazed when I tell them about Western snowmen and they wonder how it all stays together! :)

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Despite another Christmas party being completely re-planned the day before it was held due to Tianjin's questionable tightening up, it IS beginning to feel and look like Christmas around here. Especially now with the SNOW and freezing temperatures...it feels like Iowa!

Last night around 10:30 I started hearing screeching, screaming and yelling outside my apartment so I took a look and saw the snow coming down. Living on a college campus, the students began to emerge and were extremely excited. They started running around playing and throwing snowballs at each other. The commotion went on until well after midnight. I am guessing that many of the students have never seen snow, especially since last year we only had a light dusting the whole winter.

Taken from my back balcony at midnight.

This morning I decided that since it was the Sunday before Christmas, I just couldn't miss church so I braved the wind and snow (not on my bike!) and luckily found a taxi right away. On the way back I was not so fortunate and had to thaw my toes out on the radiator before I could walk properly again.

Taken on my campus this morning - students were up early playing. :)

On my way to church I observed very few snow plows, instead there were men out with their shovels, clearing the roads. This next picture was taken out of my taxi (sorry, it's not that good) but you can get an idea - there were groups of people every block or so loading the snow into wheelbarrows.

When I finally arrived back home I saw all of the waitresses and chefs from the restaurant across from my apartment outside shoveling the snow...must be in the "fine print" of their restaurant contracts... Imagine having this many people clear your driveway! I do sympathize with the girl using the broom... (Taken from my front balcony.)


As it's looking like Christmas outside, it is also looking that way inside. I got my little Christmas tree set-up and decorated several weeks ago and now it is complete with presents underneath!! (Thanks family!!)


As much as I'm happy to see the snow, I'm going to relish in the memory of my big snow adventure this morning and stay inside the rest of the day! Oh, I should mention...when it's cold in Tianjin, it seems even colder than it actually is because we are outside so much more - walking to a taxi, waiting for a bus, walking to a restaurant after church, biking - it's just not as convenient as having a car with the heat ready to blast when you jump in! Stay warm!

"The Perfect Gift" Part 2

As the fog of disappointment has begun to lift from last weekend, I have seen some good things come out of this unfortunate experience. I've had some really amazing conversations with my Chinese friends as we talked about the "how" and the "why" this happened. Even though my students were not able to perform in the program, we still got to witness the disabled children singing their hearts out after practicing for so long to achieve perfection. During the morning I got to decorate the theater with two of my students and listen to their excitement as they declared, "I've never decorated a Christmas tree before!" I also got to watch as 9 other students came to give of their time as they volunteered in various positions throughout the program. One girl came bouncing towards me after the program exclaiming that her job was so exciting! Her job, actually, was to direct people when they left the stage and say, "This way, this way." Haha...I'm glad she enjoyed it! :) Check out some pictures from the program...

After decorating the tree...and ourselves!

The BIG stars that we hung from the ceiling and the dreaded snowflakes that wouldn't stick on anything!

This is the Cerebral Palsy class singing, "Joy to the World."

"The Perfect Gift" Part 1

For the past 3 months, leading up to Christmas, Cindy and I have been planning a Christmas program for a project that is associated with our organization. The project, which is run by our organization, began several years ago and each year they have a Christmas program so that the kids can sing and perform. There are classes of kids who are autistic, those with cerebral palsy, mentally disabled adults, and the parents of children who are deaf. They prepare for this program for a long time and so do the organizers!

This year we wanted to do something special, along with the singing of the kids, so we found a Christmas program online, "The Perfect Gift," and got to work! First, we had some students at my university translate the entire program from English to Chinese, then I recruited 10 more students to do the acting for the play. We rehearsed for over a month, we had costumes sent from the U.S., found props, staged the entire play and even did a dress rehearsal with lights, music, microphones...the works. Nearly every detail was planned and prepared.

What happened next was utterly unanticipated...reality hit and I was painfully reminded of where I am living and the limitations that I have as I live here.

Friday afternoon (two days before the program) I got a phone call from Cindy saying that 7 representatives of "the powers that be" in China had shown up at our office and said that the program was canceled. There were some negotiations and finally the compromise was that the kids could still sing but the skit was out. I was crushed and proceeded to go through a range of emotions this weekend - disappointment rang most strongly, followed by regret, annoyance, anger, pity for the students who worked so hard, fear that I put the students in the line of scrutiny, sadness as I called each student and told them it was off, and the unavoidable feeling of injustice....to name a few. Of course, as I made the excruciating phone calls, they were curious as to why it was canceled. Please forgive my vagueness but I am sure you can figure out why a Christmas program in China would be highly monitored....

I really cannot see the good that came from canceling this part of the program, unless the goal of the "representatives" was to provoke irritation and paranoia into the foreigners that live here - maybe that was the goal. And maybe that goal was accomplished as I just went back through this post and deleted pictures that might be identifiable, names that might be recognizable, and specifics that might be questionable...

Merry Christmas?? Or more appropriately for this weekend...Bah Humbug!

AIDA

At the beginning of every month all the foreigners in Tianjin race for the latest issue of the "JIN Magazine" at their nearest ex-pat hot spot. Okay, not really, but every month it's available and most of us will pick one up. It is a free magazine for ex-pats living in Tianjin and it has an assortment of articles, reviews of restaurants, upcoming events, and whatever else ex-pats might want/need to know about Tianjin. I was flipping through the December issue and saw that AIDA, the musical, was going to be in town for a few days. I'd never heard of the musical but knowing my love of musicals and seeing that all the music was written by Elton John and Tim Rice, I figured it couldn't be all that bad and it was something different to do. So, I convinced a friend to go with me and off to the land of musical-bliss we went!


The story of AIDA is kind of like "Romeo and Juliet" - two families at war, set in Egypt. The music is all very African-themed and as in most musicals, the singing leaves goosebumps on your arms! I've seen a lot of musicals and out of all of them, it's surely not my favorite (how could it compare to "Wicked" !?!?) but it still provided a nice night out and the music, dance and sets turned out to be quite refreshing to me. On both sides of the stage were big screens that actually had Chinese subtitles for the entire play - impressive, although I was told after the show that the subtitles weren't all that accurate. The best part of the night was that our tickets ended up being free...it's good to know people in China! I'll be racing for the "JIN" again next time!

A Mixture of Pleasure and Pain

Have I ever written about Chinese massages? If not, shame on me! Chinese massages are on the list of Top 5 must-dos when people come to visit me in China and they have also become a must-have for me while living here! Last year I did not take advantage of them nearly enough! So, I've decided to change my ways and now I get a massage every 2-3 weeks.

I make the 5 minute trek to the massage place with a friend or two from my school and we enjoy being pampered for the next 2 hours! We always get the same thing - the foot massage that is actually an entire body massage...fully clothed. :) They bring in big buckets of hot water with tea bags floating in the water and we soak our feet for about 10 minutes before they come in to start the massage. At the place that we go, there are several different rooms and each room has 1, 2, 3 or even 4 beds so if we go with a group, we can all be in the same room. Then the masseuses come in and get to work! They do about a 30 minute foot massage first, hitting every single muscle possible and I would have to say, this part can be excruciating! The first time I went, I actually glanced down at my feet several times because I could have sworn they were using a spoon to dig out the arch of my foot...yow! I always bear the pain and remind myself that they will feel better when it's done than when I first arrived...and it's true. One time I went to the massage place with a Chinese person and they told me that the masseuses kept talking about how beautifully white my feet were. (Side note...China is the opposite of America in that white skin is considered to be BeAuTiFuL! No one wants to be dark, hence the carrying of umbrellas on sunny days. Crazy, huh? My fair skin is admired far and wide in this country!)

After the foot massage the masseuses leave for a few minutes and then come back for another hour+ to do a head, face, neck, shoulder, arm, leg, stomach, back, butt...yes, butt massage! The head, neck and arm is my favorite part!

Afterwards we always lay on the beds for a few minutes as if we've just made it safely through a war-zone. Amidst the pleasure of a massage is a lot of pain - these masseuses are well-trained and they are STRONG! They can find every sore or weak part in your body and then, no mercy! Sometimes I do wonder why I keep going back, but I always feel amazingly good the next week or so and that's reason enough for me!

It's fun to compare with each other afterwards about what new things they did compared to other times - we often have different masseuses and their styles are very unique. Sometimes I wonder, "where in the world did they learn THAT!?!?" I won't go into detail...

Oh, and did I mention that we get this treatment for 68 yuan (exactly $10 USD)?? Now, that's a deal!

Professional Basketball in China?

Yeah, I never knew either! But, I attended my first ever CBA (Chinese Basketball Association) game the other night and now I'm a believer! :) We saw Tianjin play against another team that I cannot remember and unfortunately, Tianjin did not come out on top.

One interesting thing to note about the CBA is that each team is allowed to have a maximum of 3 international basketball players. Although they have 3 international players on their team, only 2 of them can be on the court at a time. The international players on these two teams looked like they were probably all from the U.S. It's quite strange to see super super tall African American men rebounding balls without even having to jump! I'm not saying that the Chinese players are short, but in comparison to the Americans, there's a noticeable difference!! :)


Better luck next time, Tianjin!