Ten Things I Hate About You

 

1.     Pollution- I am trying to run a half marathon and in doing so I am probably contracting seven different kinds of cancer from the disgusting air pollution. I hack up a lung and get bloody noses from it.  A group of students in Northern China were asked what color the sky is and they all said gray.  They said its gray and every once in while it is blue. Here I thought Albany was bad.

 

2,     Weather- I am astounded that Shanghai is on the same latitude  parallel as Jacksonville, Florida.  It blows my mind.  Its the end of March and I still need to wear a coat inside my school.

 

 

3.    Pushing-  They even say allow passangers to alight before boarding the train but do people? FUCK NO. You may be the only other person waiting for an elevator and they will push you on so they can ride it one floor.

 

4.     Staring-  Yes I am white, yes both my nose and stomach are larger than a tiny Asian woman's features.  Get the fuck over it.  This is SHANGHAI--- population 23 MILLION, not bubblefuck land that was forcefully seized and made to join China with an expat population of zero. White people live here over 100,000 of them!

 

5.    Freedom of nothing.  I would like to go on Facebook, I would like a decent internet speed that isn't crippled by the Chinese government's Great Firewall.  Access to Google documents would improve my     teaching abilities tenfold. I would like to Google the word JASMINE.  I am not trying to overthrow the government, I would just like to read a legitimate news source.

 

6.    Scanners-  WTF. These things deserve the top spot on my list. The xray scanners make me angry EVERY SINGLE TIME.  Whenever I leave Shanghai I forget they exist and then BAM! I get the straight arm forcing my to put my bag on the scanner before going on the metro EVERY TIME. I legitimately lost a day of my life doing this.

 

7.   Public restrooms: I run a lot, I pee a lot.  These should require two things: western style toilets and TOILET PAPER!  This is not an option, this is necessity!

 

8.     Food:  I don't dislike Chinese food.  American Chinese food is actually quite good.  All the stuff you get at an American restaurant is Cantonese food or Sichuan (the two tastiest province.  These is a such thing as Shanghainese food and it will kill you. I gave up meat for three weeks because I thought it would prevent food posioning and gas.  It actually did but going to Hong Kong, a place with santiation and food code laws, made Ebenezers tikka chicken kabobs irresistable,  The Chinese love their oil.  So much that they recycle it and chances are you are consuming "sill oil" reused oil taken from pipes.

 

9) Poorly made in China: Thus far I have gone through five pairs of headphones, 3 pairs of slippers, a few purses, a wallet, and a pair of shoes.  The usage time of all of these items was extremely low.  Anything I wash falls apart.  This is just one reason why I can only shop at H&M and Zara.  The other reason is...

 

10) Fashion: My god woman you're sixty years old and wearing rhinestones.  And that man next to you, he has his pajamas on! I saw a woman wearing a full on orange catsuit to church. Also wearing shirts with poorly translatedenglish sayings is only cool when you know its wrong.

Note to self: never leave China until you are sure you are LEAVING China because if you ever come back, you will hate your life.  I am suffering from post-Hong Kong (free world) blues.  This list could be 1000 but after three days of a six day work week, I am too tired to continue.

An Asian love affair

"I compared Heung Shan with Hong Kong, and although they were only 50 miles apart, the difference impressed me so much that I began to wonder why it was that foreigners had done such marvellous things with this barren rock within 70 or 80 years while China with 4,000 years of civilisation had not even one place like Hong Kong…" -Sun Yatsen, the father of the Republic of China, AKA the China that could have been.

Writing to you from the air on a flight back to Shanghai after a wonderful 36 hours in Hong Kong.  People love to judge and they tell me “36 hours is too short, why bother?” Well Mr. nosey cat, flip open the New York Times travel section and read the 36 hours in ________ story.  Also I was actually there for 40 hours and 40 hours outside China is well worth any plane ticket.

My flight was delayed out of Shanghai and delayed in the air as we circled over Hong Kong for a while.  When I finally touched down two hours behind schedule I was so relieved.  Right off the gangway I had this feeling that I belonged there.  That’s the same feeling I get after crossing a bridge or tunnel into New York City.  Albany just feels like home- from the air it is gray and from the ground it is frozen and time as if no amount of time I spend away from there will change the grayness.  On the other hand Miami is beautiful from the air but on the crowd it feels like I’m vacationing in Cuba.  For a short time (four years)its amazing but I’m too restless to spend my whole life on the beach (although semiannual vacations are necessary).

I’ve always described Hong Kong as a perfect balance of New York, London, and China--- but only the good parts of China like its untapped potential. My travel companion Kirsti that it has a big of a Vegas Vegas feeling as well and I see that too.  Something are over the top, such as the super nice hotels going for $700 a night for a basic room this weekend.  HK is just a one hour ferry ride from Macao, home to the world’s largest casinos.  Also, as my friend Mary’s well established mother told me, forget Paris or New York, Vegas has the best shopping.  The expression for shopping in Chinese, mai dongxi, translates literally as “buy things”.  Other expats joke that whenever you tell a mainlander you are traveling to Hong Kong they respond “you go Shanghai buy things?”.  Needless to say, I did.  I can’t help if everything I like is located on one easy to walk island (actually some of the best shops are on Kowloon so one island and some other property the British borrowed).

So what was mine and Kirsti’s purpose in Hong Kong? Shop, eat, and party.   

All of our meals were planned beforehand.  It’s quite amazing how much we could eat in 36 hours. When I finally got to the hotel near 2am we ran off to get Ebenezers, the best kabobs EVER. MMMMM. The next day I took Kirsti to Chungking Mansions, a single building which should be called Little India based on demographics.  The building is VERY SKETCH. When I was studying abroad the boys would not let me go there without being accompanied by at least two of them.  The first floor is all black market currency exchanges, Indian groceries, and men harassing you to buy a suit, dinner, or stay at one of the many hostels located within this slum.  The hostels are by far the cheapest accomadations on this pricey island and would be hard to resist if you had no idea what a slum the building is.  But its Hong Kong, the building can’t be entirely bad and it is worth the trip for the delicious Indian food.

---Break that thought. The flight attendants are giving us midflight instructions on how to stretch!  They are counting and stretching and rubbing their temples for concentration.OH MY!--

The purpose of the trip was supposed to  be to attend the Rugby Sevens, an annual tournament in HK which many of my study abroad friends dubbed the best weekend of their lives.  Unfortunately, tickets sold out in 

minutes and we being scalped for hundreds of dollars.  So we decided to just party in the beer tents.  But with 36 hours in the best city east of New York, we nixed that plan and said we'll see all the hunky men out in LKF that night. And we did as it was a sea of WHITE. There was English- loud, fluent English.

Another amazing fact about Hong Kong is that it is impossible to get a hangover there so I spent the next day exploring the city on foot.  I shopped some more and revisited that Hong Kong Museum of History which has an exhibit celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Republic of China.  The quote at the beginning of this post was from the exhibt.  Needless to say, you will never see a display of this important piece of Chinese history on the mainland (crap land).

Now I am sad and depressed to go back to Shanghai.  I decided to dedicate myself to a Hong Kong job search.  The market is tough so if you or any of your friends have good guanxi pass it on!

See you on Monday, maybe?

I would add this to my "Kids Say the Darnest Things" list but I think this student but be onto something.

As I was leaving class, one of my 11th grade students said, "Bye miss Francesca, maybe I'll see you on Monday!"
And I of course asked "why maybe?"
The response- short, abrupt and passionate- "BECAUSE THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END! WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!".

My first thought was that this student is scared of earthquakes and other natural disasters. She's Chinese so she has far fewer reasons to be scared as do my Japanese students, several of whom have still not gotten in touch with their families.  I've been praying that they get in touch soon and I've been sincerely impressed by how much these students turn to schoolwork in a time of distress.

My second thought was did I miss the news?  Had the nuclear reactor in Japan actually have a meltdown? I considered the threat of nuclear radiation but I don't think my students are smart enough to register the danger.  They did inform me that I should consume massive amount of salt since iodine shield of SOME radiation. Thankfully, the prevailing winds will push the radiation over then ocean but still, it is 500 miles away.  Chernobyl caused birth defects in women as far off as 700 miles away.  The situation is not at the scale of Chernobyl and we can all pray that conditions stabilize soon.

Anyways, my students LOVE conspiracy theories so naturally their fear were removed from these recent real events.  My students fear that the moon  is too close to the earth.  A news article search told me that yesterday the moon was the closest its been to earth in the last 18 years (a relatively short period of time considering the moon's old age). NO notable news sources have related this event to the apocalypse.
I hope to fall asleep in the view of this giant moonlight sky then wake up and go to school tomorrow, just like any other Monday.

Regardless of what happens this is just fuel for all my students to make tangents about the movie 2012.  I say the movie since they probably can't relay the historical context of how the Mayans' calendar, the most accurate of all pre-modern calendars, ended in this year (I loathe misuse of the word ancient so despite my abundant use of hyperbole, I will not call any American colonies ancients).  It wasn't that they openly said the world would end then, they just stopped making a calendar. The entire school's obsession with this film (which was a terrible movie that I don't recommend anyone watch) explains why they don't open their textbooks, do homework or bring pens to class.

Kids say the darnest things

I first compiled this list of whacky things my students have said to me right before Chinese New Year Holiday.  It was saved on my school computer which, detrimental to my teaching skills, cannot access many great websites such as Blogger.com.  So here it is, my list of odd comments from students.  Expect frequent updates.



"Miss Francesca I cannot do homework! I am a housewife" -A married 12th grade student

Spoken to a Chinese teacher "you look nice today"
Chinese teacher "Yes.... I know"

Student: Teach-AAAAAH!
Me: student!
Student: TEACH-AAAAH!
Me: Stuuuuuuudent
(giggles)
  -I like to be called by my name

"Teacher do not go to Japan! If you go to Japan many men will rape you!" -a Japanese student to me

Student: Miss Francesca, come play soccer.
Me:  I don't know how to play soccer
Student: I don't know how to do math but I still try.

Me reading a fill in the blank question aloud: "A __________  enjoys the benefit accruing from a collective effort, but contributes little or nothing to the effort. " 
Student: North Korea!
 ^the question was the book's definition of a free-rider but I laughed so much at the student's prompt and adamant response.  This is particularly humorous coming from a student whose country props the North Korea government up so that it does not collapse.

"Tibetians are short, stupid and angry people. The Dali Lama gave them all roofies and that's why they are crazy" -student who has actually gone to Tibet speaking about his experience

"American girls are tall?  Johnny, now you definitely better return those condoms" -typical math class discussion where a student realizes he yet again has false hopes about going to college in America.

"Miss Francesca, you should fly to Canada and drive home.  People in American airports will see you naked and touch you" -Math class.. again

"Do you think I can graffiti the art room again?  I promise I will pay for all the supplies and paint over it".  -Student writing a letter of apology to the art teacher after spray painting his name on the wall

On two pages of a final exam: "Too lazy" or "lazy" written for every answer.

Economics Final exam question: What is economics?
Answer:  Principles in Action
       (the student's answer the the subtitle of the book textbook.)

Final exam extra credit: Write three things Miss Francesca should do if she visits your home country "eat, sleep, drink beer"
Actually 90% of the students advised me to drink, but most listed some other items distinct about their country too.  Of course some students left it blank.

Hilarrrrrrrrious video

Click here to view this video
I had to film this for an assignment for my Concordia class.  The original video was 25 minutes and due to my 54mbps internet speed, I had to trim it down.  Mainly I cut out the middle section which is students coming to board and doing problems like their homework.

Yes this video is hilarious.  I realized I am equally a cheerleader as I am math teacher ("This is beauuuuuutiful!").

Don't think my classroom is usually this awful.  In fact, one of my students told me after class we should have more classes like this and a supervisor went out of her way that evening to tell me that I am a great teacher! :)