Special Moments of the Day

Living in Beijing, often I have those moments where I just think, "Only in China would this happen."

This afternoon I was walking back from my classroom to my dorm room (walking literally to the building next door). As I'm crossing the little road, this burgundy car sees me trying to cross the road and literally accelerates toward me, with a look of disbelief (like, "How dare she cross the road in front of my car?!"). I had to run out of the way, because otherwise he would have hit me.

The traffic here is pretty horrendous. And the driving is even worse. The other night, during a ride home, the taxi driver was swerving so much, accelerating into red lights, and stopping so suddenly, I actually wondered if he was drunk.

Those moments sometimes make me aggravated that China isn't like home.

But while walking to the cafeteria for dinner tonight, I saw an older woman walking around in circles backward (!) around the tennis courts. It was the most bizarre, hilarious, awesome thing ever. And it reminded me why I love China.

Today in my writing class, a 10 minute writing warm-up exercise turned into a 40 minute writing exercise (and our class periods are only 50 minutes long!). One of my classes is known for its problem students because the students either don't show up, show up and act snotty, or just have no idea what is going on. (I'm glad I only have to deal with them twice a week.) So today, about a third of the class just didn't show up (the clique of snotty people all ditched).

So I was left with a group of 4 women that understood most of what I said, and a group of 3 men that have absolutely no idea what I'm saying about 95% of the time. Their level is so low that sometimes they don't understand what I'm saying when I'm asking them if they understand! It took so much personal attention just to get them to write 2 sentences. And then I wondered if it was a mistake for me to tell them that I understand Chinese, because then they just started speaking only in Chinese to me. Ahh teaching. Definitely a lesson in patience and time management.

Also today I learned that I had been misidentifying mapo tofu my entire life! So at home, my mom makes this dish that is diced soft tofu cubes cooked with bits of pork and salted soy bean. I love the stuff and served over rice, it's the ultimate comfort food. I had always thought that dish was called mapo tofu and so I wondered why whenever I ordered it in Beijing, the dish that came was a completely different flavor (one of the differences being that actual mapo tofu is ridiculously spicy). Today in the dining hall, since I made friends with the workers at one stall, I had her recommend me a tofu dish. She recommended liusi tofu, which is the dish that my mom cooks at home!! AND it came with some veggies. Mmm... yay for more comfort food here in China.

But I still crave pizza and french fries like every day.

We have the National Holiday off (the first week of October) and I was originally intending to go to XinJiang province with some other teachers, but the plane tickets are so expensive I can't afford to go anymore. So now I need to think of another place to visit. I also wanted to go visit Monica in Tokyo, but tickets there are even more out of my league. :-(

Also, one of the staff people, Joe, gave us a giant box of moon cakes for the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival! I love moon cakes! Now I need to go buy some tea to go with my moon cakes.

Look out for pictures soon!