Quick Update from the "Net Bar"

Not nearly as much time as I would like (but hey, for an incredibly long winded person, what else is new?), but I'll post some quick updates.

1) Matan sent me a wonderful article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7373235.stm . I saw both of those objects at the Yin Ruins yesterday when we went with Sam and Mike. The Yin Ruins were completely stunning and fabulous. I've read a decent bit about them, so seeing them was really exciting. I would love to be more long winded with this one, but you're going to be spared. The article actually sums up why Anyang is famous really well. It is incredible to think that such an ancient culture was producing such detailed things.

2) Having Sam and Mike here was great. They met us in the park (we were there with the students) and the school took a bazillion pictures. False advertising, I think: they had 4 westerners, not 2, so it looks like more of us were at their school... There were many, many, many posed pictures that are clearly going to go up in some office or on some banner or something.

3) Yesterday Kitty, one of the "English" teachers, gave me a lift home on her electric bicycle. I'm a klutz normally, as you know. Her bike is made for a little Chinese woman. I am big and tall and have a massive boot on my right foot. So, as you can imagine, balancing on the back of her bike was not a walk in the park. I was also wearing a skirt. Hopefully I didn't flash all of Anyang. I thought I was going to die repeatedly, but it was really fun. The way we rode in the middle of traffic was flirting with danger like it would never be allowed in the US.

4) Today was the last day of class. It was hard to see the students go. Harder than last time, I think, because they're older and I bonded with them more. My idea of what it would be like to teach kids here was not completely correct. It's hard to explain why, but the bottom line is that kids are kids, wherever you go. Yes, these kids had never seen a westerner, and yes, the facilities are poor, and yes, they don't have much opportunity, but if you put them in a room with a bunch of Americans, they would get over their differences pretty quickly and just go out and play. I think I pictured the kids being in awe forever and always being really well behaved because they'd want to please me. To an extent that is true, especially at the beginning, but really: kids will be kids. And it sounds so simple and logical to say, but for some reason I expected something slightly different.

Ha, and this is me trying to not be long-winded.

5) I have almost slipped up about four times and called Anyang "home." It feels like home whenever we return from a weekend trip.

6) I took many more photos of the school (the toilet trench pictures are coming soon) today and it made me really uncomfortable. Taking pictures of what has been a part of our daily routine for the past month somehow distanced me from my surroundings. It made me a tourist in a place where I don't see myself as a tourist at all. I'm a part of the school, and taking pictures of the rooms and facilities made me feel like I was gawking at them. I often openly gawk when I go places for a weekend, sure, but taking pictures around my school meant gawking at the people I have befriended and the place I have come to love (well... like a lot, anyway).

7) My English skills have dramatically decreased. I teach English, but I can't speak to normal English speakers now. All my English is oversimplified for Chinese learners. If I try to speak at a normal pace, I say things that make pretty much no sense. Fantastic.

8) Today I gave the kids some parting gifts and things... mostly I compiled the work they had done these past two weeks and made it into a pretty book (kind of), but I also gave them each a CD with all the songs we stretched to each morning. They were thrilled. When I think about where they'll be in 5, 10, 15 years, I also think about where the things that I give them will be. Maybe 20 years from now, one of them will still have that CD and play it for their grandkids. Maybe it will be that person's prized possession. How many villagers will listen to my music in the next month? Year? How many CDs will end up on the street as trash? How many will end up in other peoples' hands? I sound like the cultures in Papua New Guinea that see gifts as an extension of themselves. But to an extent, that is how I feel. It's like trying to think about how much my 8 days teaching these 27 kids will influence their world, their friends, their friends' friends', etc. How much influence do I have here, really? I'll never know.

9) We leave Anyang on Friday for Zhengzhou, where we take the overnight train to Shanghai and arrive there early on Saturday morning. We have Satuday and Sunday to roam around Shanghai, then we leave for home on Monday.

10) There are plans in the works for me to hang out with Tasha, one of Angie's (my roommate at Cornell) best friends from Colorado. She's interning in Shanghai for the summer. It should be really fun!

11) I fantasize about going up to the headmaster right before we leave at Zhengzhou (he is driving us back, requirements of Orbis), punching his guts out, screaming swear words at him, beating him to the ground (again), then spitting on him. Repeatedly. Rob and I could hoc some excellent lugies.

12) I thought I was ready to leave Anyang, but ending is really sad. Helen and I are going to spend the day together tomorrow... I'll miss her a lot. I'll also miss the teachers, the school, and my kids (of course). Rob and I invited all the teachers to lunch tomorrow. They have been so, so friendly, even though with almost all of them there is a massive language barrier.

13) It's hilarious that I consider this a "quick post." I think it's because there are no pictures involved (those will come when I'm back in the States. They're always more fun than just text)...

14) My dad sent me another interesting article. Check it out: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/sports/sports-olympics-media.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Now that my computer is broken, I will almost definitely not have the internet again until I'm home. I may have to wipe my computer and reinstall Windows... cross your fingers.

Until next week!
Zai Jian!
(Goodbye!)

This program has been interrupted due to technical difficulties....

Emma's dad here. (Yes, I can hear you all groaning already.)

Emma asked me to announce that her computer has died, so she won't be able to post anything more till next week. At least as of now.

She's doing great.

Luoyang Pictures and Torch Update

Before I begin on the enormous amount of pictures I just uploaded, I have some more updates.

Last night the train got back to Anyang a good two hours late. We arrived at 1:30am. We sat at one of the stops along the way for a long time. Apparently our engine had been given to another train, and we were waiting for a new one. Um, what? So we were chilling in the station with no engine for awhile. The train was turned off and it was stifling inside. But enough complaining. The really interesting part of the train ride was the people on it. The train was packed with the merchants who follow the torch from place to place selling t-shirts, flags, etc. There was very little room because they each had all of the stuff that they sold packed into big traveling bags, which were stuffed everywhere. It was really interesting to be traveling with that crowd. Our entire car was packed with people wearing various Beijing 2008 Olympic shirts, stickers, and pins. We were following the torch from Luoyang to Anyang along with them.

For the past few days I have been really irritated with the torch. Maybe that's a bit strong, but I'm not as excited as everyone else is. I thought it was annoying, because it made all of our travel plans complicated this weekend with streets that were closed off. On the train ride back from Luoyang, there was a period of about 2 hours where we thought we had nowhere to stay in Anyang, because the landlady was kicking us out out for the night (the cops were checking the hotels every 4 hours because of the torch). Everything ended up being fine, but in my mind it just seemed like a lot of inconvenience for a little bit of fire.

Pessimism, anyone?

But then this morning when I got to the school at 8:30am to teach, my translator Kitty brought me to a room on the first floor of the dormitories (I think it was an office) where all the kids were gathered around the TV, watching the torch pass through their city, completely mesmerized. We sat and watched the entire 2 hours of torch passing through Anyang (I was exhausted and very happy to watch the boob tube rather than teach about groceries in the supermarket). Seeing their facial expressions change between awe and smiles and they watched the TV completely changed my perspective on the torch. Nothing like the infamous Olympic torch ever comes to Anyang. This was incredibly, incredibly exciting for them and watching the TV with them this morning really made me realize that. I knew it before, but this morning it just clicked.

(After the torch, they were murder to teach. They complained and didn't want to do anything. It was actually kind of funny.)

On to pictures! I tried to make them as chronological as possible. I have many, many more (obviously) and it was hard to pick the best ones. Hopefully they aren't too repetitive. They start from last Thursday...

From my walk around the Old City of Anyang last Thursday. This is coming out of the heart of the Old City. The buildings are old and there is a pretty, old bridge, but just past these houses is the main shopping drag with loads of modern things. The juxtaposition is really something.

Also in Anyang's Old City. I'm a sucker for the bike-against-wall shot. Lame? Perhaps.

Again, Anyang's Old City. I. Love. These. Rob and I have agreed that they're great fun (well, no, he said "great craic," but I don't want to write that in here and get laughed at) so we now take them almost always instead of traditional taxis. They are so dangerous and so against any and all street codes in the west, so we have to use them here as much as we can. Helen calls them open taxis, the Luoyang group called them rickshaws. Take your pick.

The main street of Anyang's Old City.

This is an older photo, but it's still of Anyang's Old City. Remember when I was talking about the random temple and compound that was chilling in the Old City and the 26th great-grandson of this famous dude had the key and let us in and showed us around? Yeah, this is that. On my left is Helen's best friend, on my right is Helen's best friend's cousin (I'm really bad at remembering Chinese names).

The snack street that we went to late on Thursday night (I wrote about it before) in Anyang. This is just one of the stands, but you can get the idea of the variety and uniqueness of the food. This stand had pretty much everything you could think of on a stick. You pick which ones you want, then they fry the suckers up and put some sauce on them. Yum.

Ok, now we're on to the trip to Luoyang. This is the front building of their school. The campus is huge--it feels like college and it takes about 5 minutes to walk back to their teacher dormitories. And do you see that globe on the top of the building? Yeah, that's an observatory.

The Longmen Grottoes. There were carvings all over the mountains. Some were bigger than others. We powered through this site for sure... there wasn't much time, but we still managed to see everything. There were stairs all over the place to climb up and down and around to get the best views. I'm surprised that I'm still alive. It got really difficult in some places with my boot.

Me and Helen.

I like this shot because of the light.

No explanation necessary, I think. I didn't get bored of taking photos...

This is in the main, incredibly famous cave (or carving in the mountain... not entirely a cave). It used to be a temple. The size of the carvings are just incredible.

After Helen took this photo of me, some random Chinese men came over to me and asked to take their picture with me. At first I thought they wanted me to take their picture, but nope, they just wanted to get one in with the tall westerner. Good times.

A view up the mountain while walking on the ground. There were so many nooks and crannies... I wish we had more time to look.

This is at the main entrance to the walk to get to the Shaolin Temple. These were all the Orbis kids that I traveled around with that day. From left to right we have Kate, Joey, Antione (is that the right spelling?), me, Danielle, and Emer. Emer is the only Irish one (just in case her name didn't give that away).

I know I'm not in this picture, but I love it. Danielle, Kate, Joey, and Antione. Still at the main entrance at Shaolin.

One of the many shots I took in the actual Shaolin Temple. It was very touristy and I didn't take many photos with people, but there were tons of buildings within the temple grounds. It was really beautiful.

Helen and her brother outside of the main entrance of the Shaolin Temple. They were both really, really excited to be there and see the Kung Fu demo (which was AWESOME).

I forget what this place was called, which is lame. It was a little walk past the Shaolin Temple. The Pagoda Forest? Something like that. These are all gravestones erected back in the day (Tang dynasty, I think?).

The mountains were really beautiful. Driving up into the mountains from the Grottoes, the pollution was incredible. We couldn't see any of the mountains, even the ones closest to us. But once we got to these pagodas, it *almost* cleared up for a little while! There were a few patches of blue sky and we could actually sort of see the mountains!

On the walk out of the Shaolin Temple area (it's really spread out inside), we saw these kids (all ages) practicing Kung Fu. It was really impressive. (We also saw a professional Kung Fu show, which was totally unbelievable. I flinched a lot of the time.) Helen said that these kids in the picture go to a special Kung Fu school. Their red uniforms against the green mountains was beautiful.

The next day, Sunday, in Luoyang's Old City. Helen and I went into this shop. It was owned by a family and we made friends with them quickly. The son was 21, and he and his parents were all very, very nice. This is what the father made for me, and that's the mother and son holding it out to dry. I know there's horrible back lighting in this picture, but I like it anyway.

Walking along the main road in Luoyang's Old City.

And, last but not least, Sunday lunch! We ate in a little hole-in-the-wall place in the Old City. That's baozi (yum, yum, yum!) on the left and right. In the middle is a soupy thing that is unique to Luoyang. Helen had never had it before, so it was fun to try... and hey, adding fried things to a dish never hurt!

Just a few more things:
1) Mike and Sam, two of the teachers in Zhengzhou, are coming to Anyang today(!!!) with their RC, Sophie (one of Helen's friends) and leaving tomorrow night. It will be really nice to have them here. I was surprised how excited I got at the prospect of being able to show them around our school, the city, etc.
2) Hank, one of the Orbis directors, just sent us this article about the torch in Henan province. It's interesting, so I'm sharing: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/jul/28/olympicgames2008.china
3) Orbis gave the school English books that are too hard for nearly everyone. Today I pulled them out and arranged to meet with the 4 older ones in the class who have good English. We're going to talk about some of the stories in the book so that they can practice their speaking. It should be good.

That's all, folks!

And You Thought the Xi'an Entry Was Long...

I'm at an internet cafe in Luoyang near the train station. Helen and I were extreme, hardcore tourists this weekend. We ended a few hours early (the train for Anyang leaves in a few hours), so we had some time to kill and we wanted something that involved chairs and air conditioning. At first we aimed for bubble tea, but ended up here.

So the good news is I have some extended time for updates (and boy, do I have updates). The bad news is that I don't have any pictures or anything to share, as I left the hook-up for my camera in Anyang (I almost wrote "at home"... yikes). So this entry will be all text and in the coming days I'll just add an entry with photos.

There is one random thing I have been meaning to write about and keep forgetting to include. Last week, I taught the words for family (mother, father, aunt, uncle, etc). As a fun break from drilling vocabulary and writing sentences, I made a powerpoint with photos I had of my own family members. Because there is no multimedia in the classroom, I have to bring my computer around to each person, so it takes awhile, but the kids loved seeing them. Anyway, I had a picture of my mom with her two sisters (for "aunt") on the beach outside my Nana's condo in Florida. Mom: almost every single person in the class told me that you looked "young" and "very beautiful." Even the English teacher thought you looked more like my sister than my mother. So that's either really good for you or really, really bad for me. But I thought you'd like that. They thought you were 40. Ha, how's this for a public shoutout?

Ok, on to the daily updates. I'll start with last Thursday, which at this point seems like a lifetime ago. After class on Thursday, I ventured around the Old City by myself. It was the first time I had spent an extended period of time by myself, and it felt completely liberating. I walked around for hours with no particular destinations, just following the winding, narrow streets of the Old City. I didn't talk to anyone. I put on my sunglasses (they are so obnoxious... from the early 1990s and florescent green). In America, everyone would stare at me for wearing them (oh, wait, everyone does), but here they made me fit in. No one could see my big western eyes, and no one stared at me. It was fantastic. I felt like I was undercover. Some people stared at my boot, but I consider that a separate issue. So I got to roam around the Old City blending in more than I ever had before.

On Thursday night, we had to leave our hotel. The police are conducting searches of all the hotels every couple of days as the Olympics draw nearer (and because the torch will be in Anyang tomorrow). Our hotel is not insured to have foriegners, so we leave whenever a check is planned. We went to kind of a late night snack stand, which turned out to be little carts lined up under a big, open area with a roof (like the Ann Arbor or Ithaca Farmer's Markets) with all sorts of traditional Chinese foods and snacks. It was phenomenal. Several people came over to me and Helen, too. A little 8-year-old came over with her dad and sat with us for awhile. She didn't know English, but she chatted with Helen for awhile and then gave me a little Beijing Olympics 2008 flag. It's the stupid things like that that I will treasure when I go home. After the snack stand, we met Rob to get bubble tea just down the road. It was his first time having bubbles, and when he first tasted one he kind of flinched and jumped up and back out of his chair. It was hilarious (yeah... maybe I need to get out more).

Teaching on Friday was fairly uneventful. Maybe I haven't stressed this enough, but the kids this session are at a much higher level than the kids I had in the last session. I have been able to do the activities with them that I had originally wanted to do in China (like use maps of NYC, Ithaca, and Ann Arbor to teach directions, do complicated games with sentences, etc). I have really enjoyed that. There are also two very, very advanced girls in my class--Mary, who is 14, and Helen, who is 17. I write letters with them back and forth so that they can have some extra practice composing their thoughts in English. It isn't as good as spending more time with them conversing, but I think this way is good because it gives them time to think about what they are going to say. They often get nervous speaking with me even though they know a lot about English. Every so often I play a game called the "yes/no" game, where I split the class into teams (3 or 4 teams) and each team takes turns asking me a yes/no question. If I say "yes," then they get 3 points. If I say "no," then they get 1 point. I got the game off the internet. It may seem stupid, but it's great fun. The kids are curious about me and they can ask anything they want, plus they have to practice composing questions and speaking in English in the process. Some of them were funny... Nancy asked if I thought Anyang was beautiful and I said "no." People couldn't stop laughing.

After class on Friday, Rob, Helen, and I went to Helen's house for lunch. It was fantastic. Her family was so welcoming and wonderful and her mom made some of the best food I have had so far in my time here. Rob and I also met Helen's 19-year-old brother who we named Liam. His English is so-so, but he's a really friendly guy. He decided to come with us to Luoyang for the weekend! After we finished lunch, Helen and her brother showed us the books that they use to learn English. I was flipping through one, and found several pages of dialogue and excersizes that focused around the "Michigan Football Game." It was hilarious! The dialogue was like this:
"Betty: I really do hope that Michigan will win the football game!
Pauline: Yes, all they need is one more touchdown.
Joe: Yes, One more touchdown!
Dan: Do we have any apple pie?"
Those kind of cultural stereotypes were all over the book. It was really fun to look at.

Later in the day we left to take the train to Luoyang. We had standing tickets (which, unbelievably, are the same price as sitting tickets). Helen and her brother made friends with the police officials in charge of the station and they helped us out. We sat in their heavily air-conditioned office to wait for our train in cool privacy. When the train arrived, we were escorted out and they tried to find seats for us (we milked my boot for all it was worth). There weren't any seats left, but they gave us a tip of going and sitting in the dining car and ordering something little, which we did. (There was a man sitting across from me and Helen hocking continuous lugies on the ground. Welcome to China.) We got to sit for almost the entire four hour ride there until we were kicked out for the last 20 minutes. Still, it was a good idea, and we have seating tickets for the ride back later tonight so we don't have to worry.

We were welcomed by the Luoyang crew at the Luoyang train station (there was so much English there! Back to tourist land, I guess) and went back to their school,the Luoyang Number One Middle School. It was completely, totally, utterly unbelievable. Palatial, no question. Huge. More like a really nice, manicured University than anything. They even have an observatory on the top of one of the main buildings! Rob and I were astounded. All the dormitories, students and teachers alike, were insane. The facilities were just all around incredible. I'll include a picture of the main building later to show you what I mean.

But here's the thing: I am really, really glad I'm not in Luoyang. The kids are rich and therefore have opportunity. The school is about 15 minutes by taxi outside of the city (6 million) and is really isolated. The kids at Luoyang go everywhere in some kind of group. It's a really different experience from what I'm having. Being in Anyang has forced me out of my comfort zone into really authentic China in a way that I didn't think was possible for one month. I don't think I'd trade my time in Anyang for anything, even the excellent conditions in Luoyang.

So Friday night we hung out at the school. It was just me, Rob, and the four teachers from Nanyang who came on Friday, so we slept in the school. Then, on Saturday, a small group of us set out early to see both the Longmen Grottoes and the Shaolin Temple (which is actually in Dengfeng), which is the birthplace of Kung Fu. We took a taxi to the Grottoes and from there we took a direct bus (more like a large van) to the Shaolin Temple. The admission fees were ridiculous by China standards, but both sites are pretty famous, so it makes sense. The ride from the Grottoes to the Shaolin Temple was about 1.5 hours. Both sites were just incredible, and I think it's better to describe them in photos later than to add even more detail to this entry. It is worth mentioning, though, that we didn't eat any breakfast or lunch because there was no time. Like I said, hardcore.

We weren't sure how to leave the Shaolin Temple and get back to Luoyang. Helen talked to people and they said that there was a bus that would drive by on the way to Luoyang, and we should flag it down to get a ride back. We went out to the street and the bus came immediately! We hopped on and for 20Y were en route back to Louyang (about a 2 hour ride). The route we took was pretty sketchy... we drove through dirt roads in the middle of corn fields, small villages, and really narrow roads with huge drop offs. It was like dangerous off-roading with 50 other people in a tour bus. Fun stuff.

The Grottoes and the Temple occupied our time from 8:30am -- 7:45pm, to give you some idea of the amount to see and the amount of walking involved. When we got back to downtown Luoyang, Helen, her brother and I left the rest of our small group (the others had slept in and went to the Temple after us. Some other teachers from other areas in the province came in to Luoyang for the day, but we didn't get to see them because we were out at the sites) to get our train tickets back to Anyang. After that, even though we hadn't eaten anything all day but a few snacks, we got in a taxi to try to get to the Luoyang water show, which is the biggest water show in Asia. Everything would have been time, but the streets to get there were closed off because the torch was passing through Luoyang the next morning (on the way to Anyang, where it will be tomorrow--we're following the torch). We were bummed. We went and got food at a random place.

Because of the blocked off road, getting a taxi back to the Middle School was really difficult. We got in three different taxis who tried and failed before we got a taxi with a young, hilarious driver who promised that he knew a way to get us back to the school. And, after a very sketchy dirt road, and a long taxi ride, we arrived back at the school.

I was sitting and talking with Emer and Danielle, two friends who teach in Nanyang, and we agreed that we didn't really want to stay at the Middle School again for the night. We had all been looking forward to a nice hotel room as one of the main attractions of the weekend (for them more than me, as their living conditions are worse). Helen made a few calls, and around 11:30pm the four of us left to go stay in a hotel. Getting a taxi back to the city luckily wasn't hard because some of the other teachers were coming back in a taxi just as we neede to leave, so there was one sitting right outside the school.

We didn't get fully situated in our hotel until an hour and a half later, but it was glorious. Completely glorious. Three stars. Breakfast was included, and we all ate as much as we possibly could and then went back to sleep until we had to check out. It was Helen's first time in a hotel, and we took a bunch of fun pictures of her in the room.

After we left the hotel, the four of us went to a Teahouse. It was fun, but not what I was expecting. The private room had a dining room table, a couch, and a TV. The tea wasn't served in China, but in glass--even the cups were glass. The tea was quite good green tea. Helen said it wasn't very traditional, but it also gave me the feeling that a real, traditional Teahouse is hard to find and probably found more in the big, touristy cities farther east.

We said bye to Emer and Danielle (they had to leave for the bus back to Nanyang) and went to Luoyang's Old City. It was fantastic. We climbed the city wall and saw the temples up there. After, we walked all around the Old City. I made friends with a family who owned one of the stores that sold Chinese art (artistic words and pictures). The mother, father, and son were all insanely nice. I bought a personalized piece of art for myself. I'll show you in pictures later. In the Old City we also had baozi. Surprise, surprise. It was in a little hole-in-the-wall shop. It was a lot of fun.

Ok. I actually left out a good bit of detail, but you're probably thankful. I know I tend to be too long winded. I'll add pictures as soon as I get a chance, so that will help to illustrate what I have left out.

The Start of Session Two

A lot to say, but as usual there isn't much time and I'm sure I'll forget some things, too.

Session Two started on Monday. There are 26 kids (well, on the first day it started with about 19, but because we deal with the villages, kids slowly trickle in for the first several days), which Rob and I decided was not worth splitting into two classes. On the one hand, two classes of 13 is nice because each kid gets a lot of attention, but a lot of the games and things we like to play would be really difficult with 13. Also, it's unclear how we would split the kids. They are ages 10-17, but splitting them by age doesn't entirely make sense because they're almost all at the same level. There are a few outliers below and above the average, but the ones who struggle constantly get help from the older ones who know what they're doing, so it all works out.

So, because Rob and I decided to keep just the one class, we split the day. I teach the kids in the morning, which is 8:30am--11:30am, and Rob teaches the kids in the afternoon session, which is from 3-5pm. I chose the morning one because it forces me to get up, get a head start on the day, and leaves a bunch of time in the afternoon and evening to do whatever I want around Anyang. I also like teaching more than Rob does, so I didn't mind taking the 3 hour bulk instead of the 2 hour one. I know myself, and if I taught 3-5pm everyday, I would sleep more and do less. So, this way my day is structured really well and I have more time to go out and about. When I finish teaching, I eat lunch with the kids in the cafeteria (ah, I still need to take a picture of that room and the dishes to show you what it's like), go on the internet for a bit, and then walk home. Normally, Helen and I take a nap, and for the past few days we have gotten up around 3:15pm to go out and do something, before heading to the school at 6:15pm for dinner.

On Monday, Helen and I went off to the grocery store (Angie, I got that milk tea you had in our room last year... mmm delicious), did a little bit of shopping, and took an open-taxi (aka motorcycle with a little cart on the back that you sit in) to see Helen's old High School. I always think grocery shopping in foreign places is interesting, and we spent awhile perusing the different fruits and things. There was a lot of fruit that we definitely don't have in the US, so that was fun. Seeing Helen's high school also showed me how poor the conditions in the school where Rob and I are teaching are. Helen's school is the number 2 school in Anyang, whereas our school is private. Private schools here tend to be poorer with much worse facilities, which is flip flopped from the US, that's for sure.

Then, yesterday Helen and I met Helen's best friend and her best friend's cousin to walk around the old city. Her best friend's grandparents live in the old city, and her cousin lives just across the street from her grandparents. I. Love. The. Old. City. Most of the original buildings are still standing and were built in the Ming Dynasty. We walked all around and Helen's friends showed me their houses. There was a random temple about 800 years old just chilling in her best friend's backyard, and they ran all over the place to get the key so I could see. There was a small gathering of people--it was kind of like being in the village again. Then, a little ways down the road, there was a newly repainted ancient compound in incredible condition... Helen ran off to find out who had the key to get in, and she brought back an old, little man who claimed to be the 26th grandson of a very famous Anyang man who used to live there. The Chinese government is planning to make the area into a park/museum open to the public, but now it's still locked off and is in the process of reconstruction. The old man took us all around, showing us the houses and the temples, etc. There were several big stone carvings from the Song Dynasty. In the Old City, history really came alive for me. It was so neat to see these ancient buildings and carvings that are surrounded by new, metropolitan Anyang. I have pictures I'd like to show you of the Old City, but they're still on my camera, so later. I have no doubt I will go back repeatedly, so maybe I'll have one entry dedicated to just the Old City. Anyway, going with Helen and her friends was fantastic and it just piqued my interest even more. I like her friends, too, and I want to take them out to dinner somewhere in the Old City before I leave Anyang.

Class has been going well. The first day was painful because I tried to do stuff that was way, way, way too easy for them, but now things are looking up and I think I've gotten everyone to respect me, even the 15-year-old boys in the back ("messers," as Rob calls them). Yesterday we did family members (ha, my dear family, I'll have to show you the powerpoint of pictures I used to talk about my family...) and today we worked on neighborhood vocabulary (like "what's in your neighborhood?", etc). Tomorrow I want to do directions. It's nice teaching older ones because with every activity, I can tell them to write 6-8 sentences about whatever we're doing. They have more of a conceptual understanding of English, and that often makes things easier and more rewarding. Sometimes they also work in complete silence, which after teaching the younger ones is like experiencing a miracle.

Ok, I'm going to go walk back to the hotel/hostel/apartment and take a nap. Or "have a rest" as everyone says here.

But time for pictures!

I snapped some photos on the walk home from the school. I'm not completely satisfied with how they've turned out, but they're still worth showing, I think.

Again, on the walk home. Just a restaurant that we pass everyday. One of the "English" teachers, Kitty, saw this photo and told me her brother-in-law owns the place. The chances of that are funny, considering Anyang is 400,000 people.

In the grocery store, Dennis, with Helen. These are different kinds of honey... we didn't buy any, but the honey here is amazing.

Tea, tea everywhere! It actually isn't tea, but flowers and dried fruits and things that you put in hot water to add a little flavor. It was fun to smell the different bags. The colors were great, too.

For all you Pioneer peeps... this is the parking lot at Helen's high school. There are about 2,000 kids and every single one of them who "drives" to school drives a bicycle. Slightly different from our beast of a parking lot, no?

As always, more to come!

24 Hours of Travel for 24 Hours of Vacation

This is going to be the beast of all beastly entries. You have been warned.

7/21/08 7:54pm

After talking with various other Orbisters this weekend, this is the common consensus: we are fascinated by China and we are quite happy to be here teaching, but we don’t actually like China that much. The way of life is very different and really interesting to observe and partake in for this month, but I don’t have the same desire to immerse myself in it like I do with South American countries, European countries, etc.

Some friends this weekend gave me some Chinese proverbs that their Regional Coordinators (RC—ours is Helen) told them and they pinpoint what I don’t like about Chinese culture. The first proverb translates to “it is better to be crying from a BMW than smiling from a bicycle,” which I just cannot believe no matter how many times I hear it. The second proverb is “the tallest blade of grass gets cut first” (actually, there are many like this—for example, another one is “the bird who flies far from the flock gets shot first,” etc). I don’t think I need to elaborate much on what bothers me about these quotes. It’s fairly obvious… I don’t think they could clash with western thought any more.

Ok, on to details about this weekend. I’m actually going to start with the end of last Thursday, so this is bound to be quite a long post.

Anyway, I taught for two more hours on Thursday. For the last hour or so, the back of the classroom was flooded with parents. They had come in from the surrounding villages to pick up their children, but they got to the school early so they sat in the back and observed. We were discussing the Olympics and everyone had a really good time. The parents laughed along with us and it felt good—their laughter showed they approved of the style of my teaching and the dynamic of the class. We played a game for the last half hour, and when I finally dismissed the kids, they went screaming, laughing, and running out of the classroom. Only a few stopped to say goodbye. I was a little surprised… I was expecting tears (I know, way to toot my own horn), but I think they were all just really happy to see their parents and to go socialize. After I packed up my stuff I walked down to the second and first floors and saw everyone packing up their stuff, emptying their rooms, and heading out. (Packing up stuff means taking everything and shoving it into a really big plastic bag.) It was a lot harder and sadder for me than I thought it would be. Nothing incredibly intense, but it showed how much of a bond I felt with kids who I had only spent less than two weeks with. On my way out the front office, I high-fived every one of my students I saw and they were really enthusiastic about high-fiving back and gave me big smiles. It made me feel good. (As a side note, some of the kids actually left an hour early without saying goodbye. Their parents must have needed to get back sooner rather than later, so some of them just disappeared before the end without warning.)

The day before last we went on a little walk to a nearby park. Most of these girls were Rob's students.

At the end of the last day, I had all my kids go outside to line up for a class photo. That's Fanny, who was translating, on the right. She took one of me with the kids, too, but it didn't turn out as well. So yes, here's the whole gang.

Later that evening we went out for Helen’s birthday dinner. Rob and I beautified ourselves (I’ll take the liberty of saying that it was the first time we tried to look nice since being here) and took a taxi out to one of the nicest restaurants in Anyang. Helen’s boyfriend had rented out a private room, which was upstairs (the second floor was just a long hallway with private room after private room after private room). We had our own personal waitress who stood in our room in case we needed anything. It was me, Rob, Helen, Mark (Helen’s boyfriend), and four of her other friends. It was really nice. It was interesting to see what the etiquette is at a formal gathering like that and it was also nice to meet some of Helen’s other friends. The host is expected to pay for everyone (which Helen did, with the help of Mark—they kind of functioned as one unit), which rarely happens in the US with our age group. No one wants to take out all of their friends and pay for an incredibly expensive meal. Anyway, after the dinner (there was a ton, ton, ton of unbelievable food), we went to an arcade in the center of the city and played game after game after game. It was really fun. What was most interesting about the night was how different activities for kids in their early 20s are here versus in the west. We go to an arcade to play games in late middle school and high school, but don’t tend to go crazy there in college like we did in eighth grade. But here I think kids have less freedom, so they are doing the activities now that I did awhile ago. It was, like I said, really interesting to consider. At any rate, I had a nice time.

We came back and went to bed. I was so, so happy to have a morning to sleep in.

Ha. Sleep in? Helen and I were rudely awakened at 7:30am to the headmaster banging on our door. Helen had to jump out of bed, throw on clothes, and go out and talk to him. I stayed in the room, but I spent awhile imaging what it would be like to go hit the headmaster as hard as I possibly could. It was very satisfying. The headmaster had decided to pay us one of his obnoxious visits because he wanted us to leave the hotel. We were going to Xi’an for the weekend and he did not want to pay for days that we were not going to be here. He wanted us to get up, where he said we could rest at the school. Rob and I were both in sleep clothes, hadn’t showered, hadn’t packed, and were just generally pissed that his highness had the audacity to come bother us on the one morning we had to ourselves. Helen and the landlady argued against the headmaster (I love the landlady, more on that later), and he finally slammed money for the weekend down on the table and stormed off. See, technically he’s supposed to pay for Helen’s room and board, too, so he can’t just send her off when we’re not around. Also, there was no guarantee that there would be a room when we got back. He was trying to save money, but in reality had we left this popular hostel/hotel thingie, the headmaster would likely have spent more money finding fancier accommodations and having to feed us, etc, when we got back. He is easily one of the most inefficient, daft people I have met in my life. After he left, the landlady came in our room and gossiped with us (well, really with Helen) for awhile. She stressed that not all Chinese are as rude as the headmaster, and she told us she wanted us to have dinner with her sometime. She’s wonderful. She also offered to do our laundry and is always doing extra things here and there to look after us. She could not be nicer and, considering that all I can say to her is “hello,” “thank you,” and “goodbye,” I have grown surprisingly attached to her.

Later in the day, we went to the bus station and headed off on the 3.5 hour journey to Zhengzhou. I really liked it. It felt different, it felt new, and it felt like adventure. I looked out the window at the fields and villages the whole time. I noticed that the highways are always incredibly empty. The only vehicles on them are a few busses, a few trucks, and only a tiny smattering of cars here and there. Most people do not own cars, so they can’t travel between cities by themselves. And most people, even the ones who own cars, probably don’t travel much, anyway. So that leaves public transportation for the most part. It’s so different from the US, where the highways are packed with people going to work or going on vacation. But here in good old northern Henan province, people seem to stay in the same place and when they do rarely go somewhere else, they take public transportation. The highway is kind of like a railway track, almost—really only meant for buses.

We met everyone in Zhengzhou (in front of the KFC; Rob was thrilled) and headed off to the train station (it’s across from the bus station) to catch our night train to Xi’an. It was really good to see everyone, actually—even better than I thought it could be. I talked with a lot of different people who I hadn’t really gotten the chance to sit down and chat with before and I like pretty much everyone I talked to. Because we’re all teaching in different places (some more remote than others), we had tons of things to talk about and experiences to compare. Rob and I definitely have one of the most hardcore assignments. The other intense group are the ones in Nanyang (don’t be misled by the name… one letter difference from Anyang, but 8 hours between us), who are living in the school and use the school’s trench toilets as their own toilets. I was impressed with them.

Moving on. The night train was actually really nice. Some people stayed up to drink, but I decided to sleep (shocking, I know, Emma passing up the chance to drink to do what’s practical). The beds were stacked in threes; I was put on the bottom because of my ankle. Hank, on of the Orbis leaders, came around to tell us that we had better not miss the stop in Xi’an (7 hours away), because the next stop after that was Kazakhstan, which was another 8 hours. That freaked me out. My over-active imagination pictured me by myself, getting of the train in Kazakhstan, totally and utterly screwed.

After whispering with one of the Irish girls for awhile about our experiences (she was the one who told me the BMW/bicycle quotation), I went to sleep. A few hours later, I got woken up by a fairly intoxicated Rob (he was sleeping in the bed above me) who was babbling on about how drunk they had gotten Hank and how I needed to wake him (Rob) before Xi’an to make sure he didn’t wind up in Kazakhstan. After that, it was hard for me to sleep. I didn’t know when the train would get to Xi’an (I didn’t know exactly how long the ride was and I didn’t know exactly when we had left) and I wasn’t sure if a hammered Hank would remember to wake all of us up (we were scattered all over in different cars) to get off at Xi’an. But, luckily, Hank came staggering to all of our beds with about 10 minutes notice to get off the train. We all made it to Xi’an.

We got off the train at 7am (ish) and headed to the hotel, where we had breakfast and checked in. At 9am, we left for a day of tourism. It was really nice to have a break, be in a place with a decent amount of westerners, and just have the day to be tourists. I know we’re really tourists here anyway, but it was a day with no teaching, no real responsibility… just a day to hang out and have fun.

So. The terracotta warriors. Definitely worth seeing, definitely impressive, but not as impressive as I thought they would be. It makes me sound kind of stuck up to say that. I certainly wasn’t disappointed, I just wasn’t as in awe as I thought I would be. I imagined us walking through caves or being right down alongside the soldiers or something, but the museum is set up so that you can look down into the pits from above. Still cool, but yeah… for whatever reason, I wasn’t as wowed as I was expecting.

View down into the main pit.

In the first pit (it was easily the most impressive) with, from left to right, Danielle (American), Michelle (Irish), me, and Samantha (American).

Orbis treated us really well, though. We had a tour guide and a tour bus for the day. After the warriors, we went to the famous Pagoda in Xi’an, followed by the Muslim Market, which is a market in the older part of the city (within the old city walls) that sells the kind of touristy trinket stuff we had all been looking for (considering there are no tourists in Anyang, it’s kind of difficult to find that sort of thing). Both activities were fun and worthwhile, although I need some practice on my bargaining. I think I’m actually pretty good, but I always leave thinking I could have paid even less. It’s a moral battle, though… for example, I paid 100Y for two very beautiful bracelets. That’s about $15ish. After the fact, I decided I could have probably paid about 60Y and still have gotten away with it. But the thing is, that’s really not that much money for me, whereas for the vendor it makes a world of difference. So does it matter that much? I suppose it’s the principle of the matter—I don’t like getting ripped off—but part of me thinks I shouldn’t care because paying 40Y more is hardly getting ripped off… it’s a $5 difference. That’s $2.50 a bracelet. Ok, a few dollars.

Walking around the Pagoda with Mitch and Molly.

The kids who are in Luoyang are kind of in a bubble compared to everyone else. There are 10 of them there and they have been with Daniel, one of the Orbis leaders, who has helped them get around. They actually didn’t even have to take the bus to Zhengzhou—the train went through Luoyang on the way to and from Xi’an, so they just got on and off there. In many ways, their experience has been much cushier than anyone else’s. I would think it would make me jealous that they got the supposed good end of the deal, but in reality I’m quite happy that I got put in one of the more “remote” locations. I am experiencing China in an authentic, independent, real way. I don’t have a bubble of western comfort with me wherever I go and I live in a city with people who have never seen a foreigner before. The conditions are worse (ha, some of the other teachers have just been watching DVDs over their multimedia systems in the classroom), but being here is real and unsheltered in a way I have never experienced before (ok, still sheltered, we do have Helen handy whenever we need her, but it’s all relative). Rob’s different—he would rather be in the big group because evenings are a bit more fun that way (to say the least)—but there you have it. That’s my opinion.

We had some free time in the afternoon and evening to do what we wanted. Everyone else arranged to go out to a club together. I roomed with a new friend, Sam from Colorado, and we decided to spend the evening doing our own thing. She is also vegetarian and she also doesn’t really drink, so we were in the same boat. Our tour guide told us about a water show in front of the pagoda at night, so we decided to go there. We went out on the town, just the two of us, and I had a really excellent time. We got the tour guide to write down everything we would need for the cabs in Chinese, and we were off. We found a place to eat dinner by the pagoda, where we pointed to the items we wanted (the menu had pictures), but a girl sitting at another table came over to us and told us she was studying English in school and helped us decide what to eat. Picking out what to eat in these restaurants is always stressful because the waitresses hover over you until you have made a decision. They try to point out things to help, but it really only makes the situation more chaotic. We were under pressure to pick what we wanted, and the young girl who came over really helped. She clearly wanted a chance to practice her English. She was incredibly nice and kept looking over and smiling to us for the rest of the time she was there.

After, we headed over to the pagoda. The water show was incredible. It felt like the fireworks show in Disneyworld, except with water and lights and, um, an incredibly old building and not a fake castle (that’s fine American culture, for you). I could babble on like I’m babbling on about everything else, but I’ll just use the picture to illustrate instead.

It was really fantastic.

After the show, we walked around. There were some vendors selling things and we meandered around for awhile before heading back to the hotel. The hotel that Orbis booked us in was completely luxurious, so we checked in early for the night. Our entire evening out cost each of us 22Y. Yeah, that’s roughly $3… Anyway, we were both exhausted from the journey and were happy to be back at the hotel. When I turned on the faucet, the water reeked of rotten egg. Turns out the water is from a hot spring, which stunk up everything pretty quickly, but it’s probably much more sanitary than the toxic water that normally runs through the pipes. Also, the water pressure in the shower was completely blissful. I don’t think I have felt that clean since before I got my cast on. It was marvelous. And the sheets! They were so soft! These details probably bore you, but I cannot stress enough how wonderful the hotel felt after two weeks in our little room in Anyang. Not to say the accommodations here are bad… the standards are just really different. Like, at home that hotel would probably be just slightly above average. The bathroom looked a little bit like some of the bathrooms I’ve seen in Collegetown in Ithaca. But hey, it’s all relative. And to us, it was palatial.

The next morning we awoke at 6am to eat and make it to the train station to catch our train back to Zhengzhou. Lots of people weren’t up in time from a night out (my fellow Anyang-er included), so we waited in the tour bus for a long time. We were supposed to leave the hotel at 7am, but we didn’t leave until 7:40. It was stressful. They told us when we got to the station, we should be ready to run. I can’t run, not in this boot. And the train station is hell—stairs up, stairs down, narrow walkways, etc. Not handicap friendly, that’s for sure. I need help everywhere and I have no way of catching up to the group if I get behind. Luckily, my power walking skills were adequate and I was still faster than most, considering they were pretty hungover. Sam helped me up and down the stairs (I always need a hand) and we made it. It wasn’t like the train we took to Xi’an—we got down to the t racks and we had to race past 20 or 30 cars to get to the one we needed, which was a nightmare for me—instead, our car was the one right next to the stairs, which was a nice treat. So we took the train back to Zhengzhou, where I chatted away with a variety of people. Well, the ones who were awake. It was really enjoyable. And the bathrooms are just holes in the floor. You can see the tracks. It was fun.

Orla and Michelle, two of my new Irish friends. I spent awhile talking to both of them on the train. It was a good time.

Back in Zhengzhou, Hank took us to help us buy bus tickets. We were there around 3pm, but we all decided to get later bus tickets to give us time to go get a late lunch/early dinner together in Zhengzhou. We went to a noodle place and then Rob and I bid farewell to everyone, got in the taxi back to the bus station, and got on the bus headed to Anyang. We got the nicest buses—air conditioning, comfy seats, the whole shebang—and it was 66Y apiece. That’s $9.50 apiece for a 3.5 hour bus ride. Wouldn’t it be nice if going from Ithaca to NYC was the same way?

We got back safely and took a taxi back to our hotel, where Helen was waiting for us. I organized some lesson plans for the start of session two and then crashed pretty quickly.

And that was the weekend, in a nutshell. In a really long-winded nutshell. I have more to say about today and Session Two, but I think I’ll save that for another time.

End of Session One and a Little Vacation

Greetings.
Ok, I'm in a listing mood.

1) Apparently people on the street and various people who come to the school (parents, the newscasters, etc) have been asking Helen if my boot is some kind of fashion statement in America. As in, they eye me and eye my boot and then assume that my boot is something "cool" that us western youngins wear to be hip. So maybe by the time I leave Anyang, I'll see people here and there wearing an enormous black boot on their right foot, thinking they're being a cool American. Because I am oh so cool.

2) Teaching yesterday and today has gotten worse. Worse than I think I've let on in the blog, I think. I try to incorporate a lot of games and activities, but slowly the kids have abused the freedom that games provide and have gotten constantly hyperactive and a little out of control. Today I lost it, which is unfortunate because it is the last day of Session One (the school has arranged 2 8-day sessions, so we will start again on Monday from day one with a new group of kids) and I wanted to have a good last day with the kids. I made them recite and write lines for about two hours. I hate being a mean teacher--and it's hard to convey why I'm making them do what they're doing with the language barrier--but buckling down really did the trick. They obeyed in silence for about two hours and were on much better behavior. At the end of the three hour block as a reward I taught vocab words for the Olympics. The main problem with the class is that it's 2nd graders -- 8th graders who are each capable of very different levels of English. There is no lesson plan I can do that suits all. A big challenge. I don't think I've done badly, but I hold myself to a high standard and this is a difficult situation to be dropped in. Some days I leave exhausted and in a horrible mood; other days I leave satisfied and happy. That's how teaching goes, I would imagine.

3) I like teaching because the effect that I have on some of the students is tangible. I get the feeling that I've really inspired a few to learn English, and that makes me happy. Mandy, one of the nine-year-olds in the class, has become the translator. Really, she's better than the school's English teacher who works as the translator in my class. Whenever a student doesn't understand the directions and I'm trying to help, Mandy will march over and translate what I'm asking into Chinese and then translate it back into English. She's really impressive and I'm really proud of her.

4) This weekend is really exciting. Tonight, once we are done with the last classes in Session One, Helen is having her 21st birthday party with her friends. Her birthday is tomorrow, but she's celebrating it tonight. It should be really interesting to a) meet her friends and b) see what it's like to be at a social gathering with kids our age. Then tomorrow (after SLEEPING IN, hallelujah, first time since the end of June), Orbis is taking us to Xi'an to see the terracotta soldiers. I'm really excited. Rob and I will take the bus from Anyang to Zhengzhou in the afternoon. We'll meet the rest of the group in Zhengzhou at 10pm at the train station, where we'll take the overnight train over to Xi'an. It's going to be a short weekend trip (I think it's pretty far away), but worth it. Definitely.

5) So, no internet until early next week.

6) I've gotten a decent number of emails and stuff about the last post. Maybe what I wrote didn't come out as I wanted it to. I do think there's a definite difference between censored and I do think that people have certain rights. It's just hard to talk in absolutes. Ok, I need more time to explain than I have. I think I was just trying to point out that it is a complex issue and I didn't want to go into the argument thinking I had the "right" answer. But Alex, your comment was really good... we'll talk more about that. I'd really like to talk to you about this kind of thing, actually.

7) Two of the high school students just came in to talk to me for awhile. I exchanged letters with one of them and they gave me little presents and kept saying how excited they are to talk to me. It's really nice and I hope to keep in contact with them through letters, but it also makes me sad. They said their lives are very boring... but it doesn't seem like they have any control to change them.

8) The grammar mistakes I've made in here are driving me crazy; there's just no time to proofread and correct. ...Just so you know, I am aware there are mistakes and it does bother me. But better to have more writing with more mistakes than less writing with less mistakes, I think.

8) Ok, class time. Then party time. Then sleeping in. Then Xi'an. Should be good! I'll write more next week.

Communist China

Orbis gave us a list of topics that we were not supposed to talk about in China. Or a list of topics that we should at least be cautious with when discussing them in China. So far, Rob and I hadn't really mentioned any of them... but today, oh boy. That changed.

It started with Rob asking Helen if she had heard about the semi-recent riots in Tibet. Helen promptly told us that those were a lie, and that BBC and CNN were not showing the truth--that the videos they had were staged and that the officials in the pictures were not Chinese. That's what the Chinese news had told her. We all started arguing about censorship and how China is different from America, Ireland, and other western countries because it censors the news. Rob's and my western ideas were clashing all over the place with Helen and her Chinese upbringing. The topic of Tibet quickly led to the Dalai Lama. Helen told us he is a very bad man... Rob and I (mainly Rob, I mostly listened and commented here and there) explained why the west thinks the Dalai Lama is so great. Helen was surprised and a little upset that we thought so highly of him, and explained why we are wrong and why he is a bad man. Which, of course, once again led back to the topic of Tibet and how Helen thinks that the people there do not know what's best for them and have no right to be free. She talked a lot about how Chinese people think it's better for the government to decide things for them because too many people are not smart enough to make decisions for themselves. Rob was going nuts at this point. Our heated discussions about communism, freedom of speech, Tibet, the Dalai Lama, and a bit about Taiwan lasted through lunch ( we were the last ones who left), and Rob and Helen were still heatedly discussing things when they left to go home to have a rest (I stayed in the office to use the computer).

Rob was going crazy because to us, Helen's views are a direct result of everything that the west considers bad about China. In our minds, lies are told to her by the government as fact, and she believes them wholeheartedly. We think she trusts a corrupt system without understanding how corrupt it is. We think that people have the right to be free and to live how they want, but she thinks that people who want freedom just don't know what's best for them.

I felt really detached throughout the whole argument. Of course I disagree with her, but I recognize that I am a direct result of my upbringing, just as she is a direct result of her upbringing. My western way of thinking will always clash with the way China operates. Who am I to tell Helen that her government is operating the incorrect way? Yes, I think the western way is much better, but the only reason I think that is because that's where I come from and that's what I am brought up to believe.

The heart of the problem is that we're all brought up to think that our country and our way of doing things is the right way and everyone else is just wrong. To Rob and I, the fact that China censors the news and lies to it's people is awful. To us, we have the truth about situations that Helen doesn't know the half of. And yes, to us that's bad.

But is it actually? Do I actually have the right to argue with Helen and explain to her why my system is better than hers? It's all about perspective. There is no absolute right and no absolute wrong. Rob and Helen left arguing about censorship... to us it will always and forever be wrong. But does that mean it is?

Anyway, this afternoon was very eventful. I've only heard about how China shields its people from the truth (should I even use that word?); I've never experienced it firsthand. I still adore Helen... the arguing to me is very separate. And I think that three young people discussing politics, government, right, and wrong is never a bad thing.

On an unrelated note, I salivate whenever I picture a cold glass of skim milk.
Oh, milk. How I miss you.
~
And, as always, some pictures (better ones to upload soon):

My class, working hard (um, or hardly working).

Alex, a stellar drawer, showing off his picture of the four seasons (I taught weather awhile ago).

Rob and his girls. They swarm him. I mean that. Swarm. Sometimes they swarm me, but no, mostly just him.