I must have sucker written all over me.

because on Saturday, someone tried to steal my shit.

This past Saturday, after skyping with my family, I took the bus to go see the Olympic Stadium construction site (ie. the Bird's Nest). I found a feature on Google China that lets you type in a starting point and destination, and it'll tell you which bus line to take. The only catch is that the entire website is in Chinese, so yeah. I didn't realize how much of a problem it would be till I actually got on the road.

So I took the 731 bus. I didn't know exactly how to pronounce the bus stop I should get off at (to transfer to the second bus); I just knew the stop had the word west in it. So stupid me, I heard a stop with the word west in it and jumped off the bus. Wrong stop. In fact I was 6 stops too early. And let me just tell you I chose the worst day to go see the stadium because it was soo foggy and cold. So I had to stand in the cold waiting for the next bus.

The next one came, and it was super crowded. But this time around, I overshot and missed my stop. So I had to get off again and take the bus in the opposite direction (again super crowded). This time around, I swallowed my pride and asked someone to tell me when the stop came so I could get off (sometimes when it comes to navigation, I get kinda stubborn). But I didn't realize that I would have to walk several blocks to get to the transfer bus. I didn't feel like walking (most likely getting lost) in the cold so I just took a taxi to the Stadium.

Even though the construction of the stadium looks pretty much finished, it is still essentially a construction site, so we couldn't go in at all. The best we could do was climb on a giant dirt rock, to peak over the construction fencing. Again, it was super foggy, so my pictures aren't that great. I met some old women from Hong Kong, and it felt good to practice my Cantonese again. Also, I found a TGI Friday's next to the stadium. I spent the next hour or so, following random people around. I saw that some people were able to walk into the construction site, and I wanted to find out how, so I decided to follow people around and try to sneak in after them. After a few duds, I finally followed the right family. I was able to go past the guards, and go into the living area where the construction workers live. And I was able to walk even closer to the area surrounding the stadium. I couldn't enter the inner construction zone, since there were more guards (and by then I had departed from my "family") who had clipboards to check people in with hard hats, so I decided to wander out with my crappy ass foggy pictures.

After that, I took the subway to WangFuJing. There I walked around this giant shopping mall (which has super upscale stores like Louis Vuitton and Coach, the real stuff). They even have a Beard Papa's. It's kinda crazy, the feeling of wealth in that place. The stuff they sell there is expensive even on American standards, so I'm just like, "Who the hell can actually afford all this stuff? And why the hell are we wasting so much damn space and resources on this shit for the small percentage of rich Chinese people and rich expats, when there are thousands of hungry poor people in this country?" It made me feel disgusting.

And hypocrite Wendy, an hour later, I went to the official Olympics store and bought way overpriced souvenirs for my family. And I went to the Metersbonwe store (if someone can give me a non-idiot way to pronounce this word, I'd greatly appreciate it) and bought myself a knee length fluffy black down jacket, because it is freaking cold now. After lots of ups-and-downs with the ATM machine, I finally got all the crap I needed and popped into a McDonald's to sit down and organize my crap (I feel more comfortable loitering in American places).

I set my purse on the table and notice that there's a cut on the side. Silly stupid me, I think to myself, "Huh, did I put a sharp pencil in my bag?" Upon further inspection, I find that someone had made 3 short razor cuts in my bag. Someone had cut my bag to try to steal my stuff!!! Lucky me, nothing was missing. Even though there were 3 razor cuts, only 1 of the cuts made it through the inner liner, and earlier that day I had bought 2 pashminas and stuffed them into my bag. So lucky lucky lucky me, I escaped potential disaster. The thing that makes me feel so stupid though is that I have no idea when it happened and I didn't even notice it, ALL DAY! Thinking back now, it probably happened on the bus, when everyone was shoved so close together. And one thing I wonder is, if someone saw this happening, if someone saw that a person was cutting into my bag to steal my stuff, would anyone speak up and do anything? (Flashback to the cafeteria fight scene). Hmm, I wonder.

Wow, this was wayy too long to tell an anti-climactic story.

Later I'll post pictures of the Olympic stadium and my fun time at the LaoShe teahouse watching Peking Opera and other Chinese performances.

Some food for thought, ever wondered why old things in China are referred to as "ancient" whereas old things in Europe are referred to as "historical?" Here are some vocabulary things I hate, but can't seem to find a practical solution to while living here in China, using "modern" to describe very specific processes and "Western" and "the West" to describe things not Chinese.

Feeling a lot better.

I am trying to take a very proactive approach to life right now. I am not just going to lay in bed and whine and feel sorry for myself (even though I really really want to do this).

So Monday was the day when I felt like I wanted to cry in class. And I was really dreading Wednesday, because that's when I would see my CSP Qinghua class again, and that's the class I have a really hard time with. But I decided that if I am going to dread it that much, then I better be trying my damned hardest to make it as pleasant as possible. So I decided to design a class period that was completely activity based with as little of me talking as possible. AND it worked beautifully. They were energetic, and I was able to direct all that lovely energy towards the activity. So I felt a lot better with myself. It'll take a lot more effort thinking of activities for the students, but I think the students appreciate it. And it will make me feel a lot more effective. So yes Wendy, in order to be a good teacher, you must work hard at it. Oh, I knew this all along.

And last night after work, I walked from the Qinghua campus to Silk Street market. I love cities. And I love walking in cities. And I love walking in cities at night when there are so many pretty lights. And it reminded me of all the things I love about Beijing. I think it was good for me to take myself out of my room for a night, and just explore the city.

So things aren't perfect, but things can be better as long as I make an effort to try. So that will be my plan. Upswing. upswing. upswing.

And my ish with people? It comes and goes. There are those moments I want to slap someone, but I just need to remember to breathe and breathe.

Whew. Patience, Wendy, patience. I hope I come back from China a better, more mature person.

It's been awhile...

and there is A LOT to update on (because, as my cheesy blog title suggests, every day in China really is an adventure).

I am feeling too lazy to update with pictures (because it takes me a surprisingly long time to upload pictures onto blogger). First I have to choose which pictures to upload, since I take so many stupid pictures. Then i need to wait for them to load onto photobucket first. Afterwards, I need to copy and paste the html link onto blogger and wait for those to load. Then I need to arrange them, and give each of them captions, and blah blah blah. So yeah, no photos tonight. Maybe later this week, when I want to procrastinate even further with grading.

Let's see what I've been up to lately.

I went to the summer palace last weekend (on Oct. 20). It was absolutely gorgeous. It was my third time at the summer palace and I have to say, this was probably the best time. It was so relaxing, to sit at the edge of Kunming Lake and just watch the late afternoon sun glistening on the surface of the water. Sitting in the sun, on rocks, under trees. I miss that so much. I wish I could go to the summer palace every weekend to sit in the sun.

Also, before I went on my trip to Inner Mongolia, I got free tickets to go to a Chinese folk music concert at the Forbidden City concert hall. The performance was a special national holiday performance for foreigners working in Beijing. It was really great. All the performers were youth studying in a local music school. There were singers, er'hu players, and other cool musical instruments that I don't know the names of. There's this one instrument that is plucked, that I guess kinda sounds like birds chirping; but the first time I heard it, I swear I thought it was the choir clicking their tongues. And there were these other instruments that I've seen in old school Chinese paintings. And this is going to sound really ignorant of me, but whenever I saw this instrument in the old paintings, I kinda just always assumed it was some imaginary musical instrument, since I had never actually seen one in real life. Durh eurocentric American Wendy.

So freaky bizarre story of the day. Earlier tonight, another teacher and I were having dinner in one of the dining halls on campus. We both had the wonton soup noodles (I swear we have these delicious wonton soup noodles at least once a week, if not more). Anyhow, it started off like any other uneventful meal. But at one point, we see this one guy running down the aisle of the cafeteria tables, right past us, and towards the exit. Two other guys dressed all in black were chasing after him. And I mean sprinting after the guy.

About 5 feet before the original guy (the guy being chased) gets to the exit, the other two guys catch up to him, and start beating the crap out of him. I mean really really kicking the crap out of him. One guy is holding him, while the other guy is punching him in the face, and kneeing him in the chest. And I mean over and over and over. Not letting up at all.

Meanwhile, everyone else in the cafeteria is sitting silently staring at the fight. No one did anything. No one was screaming for it to stop. No one approached the men to try to break it up. No one got out their cell phones to call security. Literally, everyone was captivated, deer in headlights, staring at the fight.

I was really scared because I didn't know when it was going to end, since no one was interfering. I mean, in the States, someone would have interfered by now to pull the people away from each other. But not here. It got to a point where I was even considering jumping in the middle of it, to freak them out and get them to stop hitting the guy. Obviously that was a ridiculously stupid idea, so I didn't actually do it.

And by then, the two guys had pinned the other guy on the floor on his back. They continued to pound and pound on him, one guy struggling to wrestle something from original man's grip. He finally snatches it away and holds up the bag and screams into the cafeteria, "Whose bag is this?!?! Whose bag is this?!!?" Absolute. dead. silence. No one said a word. He keeps shouting, "Whose bag is this?! Whose bag is this?!?!" Again, no one responded.

I was really freaked out at this point since I was scared that maybe they had made a huge mistake by beating up a completely innocent random guy, that it might actually be the beaten up guy's own bag, and not a stolen bag. But then the beater-upper-guy, with the bag in his hand, pulls out a walkie talkie from his jacket and starts talking into it. Then literally, no joke, everyone in the cafeteria breaks into applause.

Meanwhile, the "bag snatcher" is still getting beaten up and pounded on by walkie-talkie man's sidekick. A moment later, a woman walks up and claims the bag. Then a giant giant crowd forms near the entrance around the bag snatcher, who is literally pinned to the ground. And I swear it looks like the two guys (who I guess are security guards?) are trying to break his arm off or dislocate his shoulder. I couldn't really see what happened next, since the giant crowd was blocking my view. But they took the guy away somewhere.

But seriously, even if those guys were school security guards, they were being wayy wayy too violent. It was bizarre and scary, and a little traumatizing. Probably the scariest part was that absolutely no one did anything to intervene. I mean, one of the guys could've taken out a knife and stabbed and killed someone in front of everyone in the cafeteria, and no one would've done a damned thing. Granted, that's a bit extreme, but I'm pretty sure people would've still just sat and stared. It's times like this when I really feel the culture difference.

You know, I had never thought of the whole collectivist/individualist difference in this way before, until I heard a speaker in Shanghai. I mean, we learn about collectivism and individualism in introductory psychology. I always hated talking about it, because I felt like when we learned about it, it was implied that individualism was not just different from collectivism, but better (Hello, we're Americans. We're taught to be individuals from elementary school). And for the longest time I refused to believe there was actually a difference. And before coming to China this time around, I envisioned collectivists as people who were inclusive of everyone in their entire country/culture. That collectivists didn't just think of themselves and their own needs (like selfish Americans do), but that they were considerate of everyone else and put their own needs last. So I thought collectivist people would act overly nice, generous, selfless, polite, and pushovers to everyone they met; basically, all the stereotypes of Asians in the U.S.

So when I came to China, I was honestly a little put off by how "rude" people were (rude according to U.S. etiquette). I mean, people shove into you to get onto a subway train, people will steal the seat from you on a bus, people will literally grab you by the shoulders to move you to the side so that they can get past you, people will cut right in front of you in line, people will bump you while walking on the road and not apologize. And granted, it's not everyone but it's happened enough for me to notice and complain about it. And I dunno about you, but all that sounds pretty individualist to me. "Hey you, get out of my way, I want a seat on the train, so I am going to push right past you and make sure I get that seat no matter what!"

And it didn't make any sense at all to me until this speaker explained the inner circle outer circle aspect of collectivism to me. Yes, collectivist people are caring, considerate, selfless, but only to people within their inner circle (ie. family, friends, co-workers), but they don't give a crap about anyone else, cuz hey, you're not in my inner circle. That explains all the seemingly "rude" and contradictory actions I get from strangers. I am not in their inner circle, so they don't need to treat me like a friend. Collectivism is about keeping your friends close, and not really giving a damn about anyone else. In fact, everyone else can go to hell, cuz they ain't in my inner circle, so I don't care if I bump into them, shove them, cut in front of them in line. They don't mean anything to me. And that is also why people don't get involved when they see a man get absolutely beat up in public. And that is why they just stand by and stare, no questions asked. Not because they're emasculated silent cowards. But because they don't know those people, so they have no reason to know or care about what happens to those strangers. So collectivism ain't so simple after all. And individualists? For being selfish assholes, we're pretty darn polite and considerate.

This post has got its issues. It's still written in an us-them way. I don't identify as being collectivist (and to be perfectly honest, I find myself putting more value in individualist qualities than in collectivist qualities) but I'm definitely not purely individualist either. I'm definitely a little of both, which I feel justifies me in being able to generalize about both sides, when obviously I can't. But this is my blog, so I get to write whatever I want, and if you don't like it, then DEAL! (hahaha, gosh, I love using that excuse.)

Anyhow, remind me later to talk about that other traumatizing thing I witnessed last week, involving a man getting hit/almost getting hit/pretending to get hit by a taxi, that I was sitting in! Ugh, too much drama in one post.

Onto happier subjects.

This past Friday (on Oct. 26), our school had a Halloween dance for the students. We cleared out one of the classrooms, decorated it with black and orange paper pumpkins and vampires and real pumpkin jack-o-lanterns. We turned out the lights, blasted my very own music mix of jock jams meets the Middle School Music Party Series Soundtrack of every party I ever had in college, and had a full blown dance party.

And by full blown dance party, think awkward junior high dance. I knew it would happen. A giant circle formed, with absolutely no one in the center, then one by one, or two by two, people were shoved into the center. Every single person resisted of course. And then there were the boys who sat along the sides of the room most of the time, only getting up once to attempt to break dance, and failing miserably. There were the women who stayed in their clique by the snack table, swaying ever so slightly, wanting so badly to dance, but feeling just a little too self-conscious to actually do it. And then there were us, the obnoxious American teachers, who just got a little too excited when 'Everybody Dance Now' and 'Tubthumping' got played. We were such a spectacle, students were actually taking pictures of us dancing. Jeez, I didn't think I was that much of a novelty.

A lot of the students actually dressed up, which was really great. There was only one man who decided it would be funny to crossdress, who wasn't even a student at our school, but a crasher, who just ruined the mood by being way too over the top, acting like he was high on something, and flailing a fake pistol in the air (which by the way was actually a piece of metal piping). I was actually frightened. But I think he got kicked out.

I dressed up as a grape, not creative. I tied balloons all over myself, and wore a sash that said California on it (Napa Valley? California grapes? California raisins?). All the other teachers decided to be beauty pageant contestants from their own state, so they each had sashes. I had one, but you know how I am, I had to be over the top ridiculous and silly. Few of the Chinese students actually knew what I was. They just thought I tied a bunch of balloons to myself. About 20 minutes into the party, one student (the one who is in love with Arnold Schwarzenegger and who is kinda creepy and in his 20s) decided to pop one of my balloons. Then he got the other boys in his clique to start popping my balloons too. It got to a point where the boys were following me, trying to pop my balloons. It was extremely uncomfortable, since I felt like they were flirting with me and picking on me at the same time. Extremely uncomfortable.

I think that's all I want to update on now. This has turned out to be a ridiculously long post. I promise, more pictures next time!

Most everything in China is disorganized.

Seriously.

Talk about cultural differences. First of all, you can rarely get a straight answer out of anyone, for anything. I attribute this to the major differences in communication style.

I like to know everything. I like to have everything in order, and I like to communicate what I know so that everyone else will know what's going on too. And it's not that people in China don't have everything in order, it's just that they don't communicate it in a way I can understand. In China, a lot of things are assumed, so things aren't necessarily said outloud. But that's not helpful for me. And it's very frustrating, because it just means that I have no idea what's going on most of the time.

Sometimes I don't even know when I need to do something until just a few hours before I need to do it, and sometimes even only a few minutes before. I know it's not because the staff at my school want to sabotage me, it's just the way things are done. But it doesn't make things any easier for me. I've just become the obnoxious American who asks the same question over and over again (mainly because I can never figure out what the real answer is).

I have so much sympathy for the office staff at my school. The office staff is nearly all women, and most of the time they have absolutely no clue what is going on. The president of my school is such a deceitful asshole liar. He's a misogynist, and he has no respect for anyone but himself and the other men at the school. I don't think he ever does any work, and whenever we ask him anything, he just lies and gives us the run-around, telling us to ask the office staff. But when we ask the office staff, they never know what's going on either since no one tells them anything. And they do everything in English! It's crazy. I certainly wouldn't be able to run an office using only Chinese.

So today I showed up 10 minutes late to my writing class. It was soo embarrassing. I got sick last night, and so I didn't correct any student homework, I drugged myself with NyQuil and went to bed early. I woke up this morning, taught for an hour, ate lunch, and went back to sleep. After lunch, I passed out again, until about 3:15pm, then I woke up, corrected student homework and ran to the classroom. I showed up to my Section 2 writing class. The students in the classroom said, "Teacher, we don't have class today. You teach us tomorrow." They showed me their schedules, and they were absolutely right. I must be out of my mind (Sadly, this wasn't the first time this week that I got the sections mixed up). So I ran to the office to check my schedule, and Mandy, one of the office staff, says, "Wendy, your students are looking for you. You're teaching section 1 writing today." So I go to the classroom (it's 3:38pm, and class starts at 3:40pm so I'm thinking, "Whew.. I'm just in time."), and the students are going crazy. When I walk in the classroom they say, "Wendy's late! Wendy's late! You have to sing a song! Sing a song!" Obviously I'm not going to sing. So I ask the class, "What time does class start?" I look at their schedules, and all of them say 3:30pm. But MY schedule says 3:40pm. What the heck!? See! Serious disorganization if the teacher doesn't even know what's going on. I take full responsibility for showing up to the wrong section, but for typing the wrong start time for classes on my schedule? Not cool.

But yeah, this level of disorganization, I don't think it's only my school. I think it's China. It's just major cultural differences in how things are run (and it's not even an issue of a language barrier. I'm pretty sure that even if I were completely fluent in Chinese, I'd still be confused all the time, just cuz I'm not used to the process of how things are done around here). And honestly, I don't think I'll ever get used to it. So for anyone who is considering working in China, prepare yourself for major confusion, like all the time.