Airplanes only have 3 wheels... so I can do it, too

Ok, so this blog will be dedicated to nearly a dozen really funny stories that have happened in the past few days. In no particular order,

1 - Today a group of parents came to our school who are thinking about enrolling their kids. As part of their tour of the school, they swing by our ILP building and could poke their heads in our classrooms. Halfway through my last rotation, Drew (a kid in my class) pulled Amy off of the Chinese-Chair (used to punish them when they speak Chinese), and she fell on her stomach. Amy then ran to the open center of my classroom, curled up into a ball, and started crying. I ran over to console her and help her up, but she refused to move. The three kids at the table opened up a Chinese story book and began reading it out loud to each other. Just then, our English supervisor teacher poked her head in and said that the parents were coming. My classroom was a girl crying in the middle, with other kids yelling in Chinese. The parents ended up not coming to my room, luckily.

2 - At the same time as my first story, Katie was in her room teaching her kids to play the game "twister" (Right foot, red... left hand, green... remember?). She was reviewing the vocabulary for body parts, and had put her foot up on the table. All of the kids put their feet up on the table with her. While talking about feet, Katie leaned forward to "smell" her feet. This kept the kids' attention, and would give them something to talk about in English. Right as Katie is nudging her face up against her foot, her classroom door opens. It is the head English supervisor. Taken out of context, it looked really weird for all the kids to be stretching one foot up to the table, and Katie's face in the middle of it. =)

3 - Yesterday I read a book to my kids about swimming underwater. I asked the kids if you could breathe underwater, and they said no. So we had a hold-your-breath contest. Everyone cheated by breathing through their noses, so we laughed and moved on. Today they remembered and wanted to try it again. I consented, so we all plugged our noses and pinched our mouths for about 15 seconds. Then we all laughed, and I went on with my lesson. After a while, I looked over to my left and saw little Zooie still pinching her nose, and her face was bright red. She was still holding her breathe long after the contest was over! I panicked, and got her to start breathing again. Oh, man. Some Chinese kids take school too seriously, even at 6 years old.

4 - Today we were shopping at the local street night market (window-shopping, really), and Katie found a shirt/dress that she really liked, for about $3. So to try it on, the lady at the stand held up a bed sheet to cover Katie while she changed. I felt like it was a little sketchy, but when Katie was done the shirt fit great... and about a dozen old guys from the street had gathered around to see how it fit, too... Pretty awkward... We bought it.

5 - This past Tuesday, I was going over a map with my kids, on the difference between the USA and China. I pointed to the USA and asked, "What is that?" One of my girls answered, "Amer-ica." Good, I said. Then I pointed to China and asked, "What is that?" The same girl answered excitedly, "China-ica."

6 - Our head-teacher's husband, Sam, has been joking for a while about cutting his hair to look like a Chinese man. He said he would buzz his whole head really short, except leave really long bangs in the front. That's actually what a lot of Chinese kids do... Yesterday I got a knock on my apartment door, and it was Sam. He had cut his hair just like we had joked about. It looked ridiculous. He then recruited me to help buzz off the bangs and make his head look normal again. Also, his did all this without consulting his wife. When she got back from teaching, she was pretty blown away...

7 - I want to write this before I forget it. You already know about the squatter toilets they have here. It's like a glorified porcelain hole in the ground. It's traditional. Also traditional is to have NO toilet paper available, ever. Sometimes my kids ask to go to the bathroom, and when they come back, they smell like poop. A week or two ago, I was playing with my kids by picking them upside-down by surprise. After three kids I got a "bad egg." Being upside-down put their bum pretty close to my face, and I could tell this kid had NOT WIPED. Sometimes at the public school when I lean over the kids to get scissors back from them for the lesson, I can smell poop. Just sometimes.

8 - This past Monday Katie and I went out with a couple of the other teachers to look at the famous statues along the ocean coast of Weihai. About four statues along, we found an absolutely ridiculous one. It is a statue of a teddy bear wearing pants, and they are the "traditional hole-in-the crotch" Chinese kids pants. Someone carved a square hole into the back of the pants, exposing two round butt cheeks. When we got around to the front of the teddy bear statue, well, let's just say we were 100% sure it was a BOY teddy bear. Katie took pictures. I want to meet the Chinese man who carved that statue, and take him out to lunch. This is ridiculous.

9 - Today we accompanied Kelly, our Chinese foreign affairs helper, to her drivers ed class. It was so funny. It was held at an abandoned gas station. They had weird cones they had to drive around and practice backing up into spaces. She said that if they messed up, they had to pay the instructor more money. The previous lesson, Kelly said she had lost $400 rmb to the instructor. It was so sketchy.

10 - To get back to our apartments after the driving lesson, we took a bun-bun (a taxi with only 3 wheels, and 2 gears). We asked the driver if his car had ever tipped over, since it only has 3 wheels. He replied, "Airplanes only have three wheels, so I can do it, too."

11 - For dinner today, Katie and I each got our favorite Chinese burritos. For about 35 cents, they roll out a fresh ball of dough and throw it on a skillet with oil. As the bread bubbles up, they pop one of the holes and pour in a scrambled egg and salt, into the middle of the tortilla! That's the coolest part. After flipping it a few times and cooking it, they spread a brown pasty soy sauce over it with a paint brush (NOT like soy sauce in the USA; more like peanut sauce, or sesame sauce...) Then they wrap it around lettuce and crushed pepper, and your choice of either a hot dog (Chinese hot dogs are disgusting), tofu noodles (Bruce likes them), or shredded potato hash browns (also very delicious). The whole thing is so filling, and delicious, and the sauce is soo good. We have to make Chinese burritos when we get home!