here, there, everywhere

I don't have as many photos of the Great Wall as I would like, as I almost passed out - either from the heat or not having eaten or just being monstrously out of shape, whatever it is that makes your entire field of vision go blinding white for several minutes - the minute I got to the wall and decided against trying to hike ten more kilometers. So instead, I ingloriously hopped a cab to the end point to wait for Iain, and climbed a much more modest distance on the wall at Simatai to wait for him. I feel pretty stupid about wimping out on the hike, but seeing Iain collapse at my feet two hours later at least convinced me it had been a good idea. At any rate, it's been a long time since I've had to take in any massive tourist sight all on my own, but it was something I loved about the time I spent backpacking through the UK and Spain, and it was actually really nice, just sitting on the steps, taking my time and watching everyone go by.

Inside the Forbidden City; apparently all of China had the same idea as us yesterday, so it was massively, overwhelmingly crowded and we didn't have the energy to see all of it, though what we did manage to see was pretty amazing.

After crawling from our train to our hotel laden with way too much luggage and not enough sleep, we didn't really manage to see much of the city when we first arrived, so the massive entrance to the Forbidden City yesterday was one of my first impressions of Beijing.

Yesterday I got to suggest English names for my new class of 10 year olds. Although Iain wins by managing to get not only a John, Paul, George & Ringo but ALSO a Han, Luke and Leia, I still managed to squeeze in a Rick, Wendy, Maggie, Joey and a Jack (and a Kate, a Sally and a Laura-for-Lauren-because-they-can't-do-final-sounds). Sorry to the rest of you guys - your names had too many syllables or else there weren't enough kids after I stopped naming them after Princess Leia and Tina Fey. I'd feel guilty about this gross abuse of power, except Jackie - who was my wonderful T.A. at the last school and seems to have been promoted to work with all the teachers now - told me that students change their names regularly, and that she's also been a Susie and a Helen. Good news for the girls with names like Belody and Ben, and the little boy who insisted on calling himself Robery.

Today was our one full day off from in between summer camp programs, and our boss/handler/complaint fielder/drinking buddy Mr. Leon arranged a tour of the nearby "ancient town" of Wu Zhen . As tired as we both are - Iain's attempts to renew his visa are causing massive drama - it turned out to be a really nice trip. The town itself is a long line of old-fashioned houses along a thin canal slung with stone bridges; it's predictably filled with tourists, but beautiful nonetheless, all crooked old houses, weeping willows and cobblestone roads. And if any of these photos look familiar, it's because it served as the backdrop for some movie, possibly one with Tom Cruise, although it was hard to tell:

Mr. Leon: (rapidfire Mandarin) Tom Cruise (more rapidfire Mandarin)
Girl who gets stuck translating everything: He says Tom Cruise made a movie there.
Iain: The Last Samuri?
Mr. Leon (via translator): Yes!
Another Teacher: Was it Mission Impossible? (hums theme)
Mr. Leon: Yes! Yes! James Bond!






Anyway, that's here. Iain is in Shanghai for the night getting his visa sorted out, and I am lonely and bored in our messy hotel room, but today at least was really nice. Tomorrow we are apparently moving to a new hotel, where hopefully there will be internet access, but, as ever, it's hard to know what's happening. More photos of Wu Zhen to follow, hopefully!

9:36 A.M.


I didn't find out until yesterday about the longest solar eclipse of the 21st century, but, as it happens, Hai Ning is right in it's path! (In retrospect, this does explain why all my campers had been running around in silver paper sunglasses all week and forcing me to put them on and stare directly at the sun. I thought it was a strange choice of toy for them all to randomly have.) At any rate, I didn't manage to get my hands on a pair of those glasses - or a welding mask - but I still got to see Hai Ning plunge into darkness at 9:34 this morning, which was extremely cool. It was rainy and misty, which made it hard to take photos, but it was just cool to be standing outside, watching with everyone else on the street and seeing all the people crowd around the windows of their office buildings and shops.

A few photos from our camp's "Disco Night" last week; much like the Opening Ceremonies, we were forced to sit in front of everyone (hence the vantage point). Only, then, we were - without warning - forced to dance in front of everyone by the nearest person I think we have to a boss, whose four word English repetoire unfortunately extends to "GO GO GO." So that was fun.*




Y-M-C-A

For me (if not the more exhibitionist teachers), Disco Night meant reliving an actual nightmare I once had about improvised, unplanned public dancing. For the kids, it meant following a couple of perky dance instructors while remaining carefully in gridlike formation.




This KFC chicken was more popular than a line of awkwardly dancing teachers, curiously enough.


At any rate: One more day of teaching at this particular camp and then we are being ferried to another one, this time in smaller groups. This is good, because while some of my kids continue to be the cutest and sweetest kids in the world, the rest of them are definitely suffering from Too Much Summer Camp and have become horrifically, exhaustingly bratty - fighting and crying all the time, refusing to do any work, driving all of their teachers insane; probably what's to be expected after two straight weeks of near constant stimulation (fireworks! fireworks again! water games day! lots of candy ALL THE TIME!) intermixed with a regular school schedule. So here's to sending them all home and moving on so we can start the whole thing over again at another elementary school.

* Except it wasn't.

Photos of my ridiculously cute students to come, but for now, a few of Hangzhou on our single day off during these two weeks at the first camp; we didn't get to see much of Hangzhou, but I loved the parts we did see, so hopefully we'll go back before the summer is over...

Things from the last 72 hours:

1. 24 hours before we were all set to leave for our summer camp job, we got an e-mail from our recruiter saying that, due to a newly imposed restriction, recent arrivals to China are *not* allowed near schools due to the swine flu risk, so, no job for us. The harried recruiters then graciously spent the next 24 hours trying to find us alternatives - including one city 16 hours away by train and another in what only seemed to be described as "one of the three hottest cities in China in the summer," and we started seriously considering fleeing back to Vietnam to look elsewhere. Finally, after advising us to buy tickets to said hottest city, they realized we'd in fact been in China long enough, and - several hours after our original train left - told us to jump on the next train and take our original jobs.

2. So, against a number of odds, we figured out the glitzy Shanghai train station and arrived in town yesterday afternoon, where we were picked up by two incredibly friendly teaching assistants who'll be working at the camp with us, and were whisked to an abandoned middle school campus which is flanked by about a million tiny world flags fluttering around a "HAPPY INTEGRITY PROGRESS" and lots of rainbows. There are a number of other teachers, some of whom, fortunately, speak fluent Mandarin, otherwise none of us would have any clue what was going on, but for the next two weeks I'll be up to my ears in very small children who speak an indeterminate amount of English, and we have absolutely nothing in the way of materials, aside from a xeroxed sheet of possible 'conversation topics' - including how to fill out a job application, and the differences between learning British and American English - burning issues for the average eight year old. So it's a bit odd, but nothing I don't think I can handle, and certainly not nearly as overwhelming as...

3. The camps "Opening Ceremony" tonight: after being told only to show up by 7 pm, we were then lined up and marched out of the school to realize we were standing underneath the HAPPY INTEGRITY PROGRESS banner in front of the entire camp (500 kids? 600?), who, in their neat lines with their neat (and fitted) uniforms, looked a fair bit more presentable than the teachers in their too-large shirts (the camp had only ordered XXXL and XXL) and who had no idea they were going to be on display. After some welcoming speeches by various camp directors, with the kids clapping and shouting "WELCOME!" at appropriate intervals, and also including an incredibly cute speech by a little girl who looked to be about eleven and who had amazing English, and an improvised speech from one of the teachers (so I guess some of us knew what was going to happen), they then set off about some massive, earsplittingly loud fireworks on either side of the school. For the next four or five minutes, the incredibly cute kids in the audience covered their ears and stood there looking back and forth and back and forth as the fireworks exploded to the left and to the right, and then, finally, we got the signal to move offstage.

4. Only, as I started to follow Iain, one of the camp directors flagged me down and asked if I didn't mind being interviewed for the news (!!), so for then next few minutes, I awkwardly smiled and tried to figure out who I was supposed to look at (the guy with the camera? the woman translating? the guy asking the questions?) and babbled about where I was from, how I'd never been to China but how I had taught in Vietnam before, how I was really excited to learn all about China from my students and tell them all about San Francisco and how I would really focus on teaching my kids how to communicate (I didn't mention the filling out job applications part.) So I might be in the news! Somewhere. Maybe.

5. So: we are here, with jobs, and - for the next two weeks, at least - internet access in our lovely hotel room! The other teachers seem nice, the town seems chilled and not unpleasantly hot, and I have no idea what to expect tomorrow, but that's all that's going on for now.

6. Except for one last thing: China has seen fit to block Facebook in addition to Blogspot lately, which has been surprisingly depressing - I miss at least knowing what people are doing while I'm so far away, and there's a lot of people I can't get in touch with otherwise! So I'm incredibly sorry in advance if I'm more out the loop than usual, but at least Gmail still works for now if you need me.

We are in Shanghai, where we haven't done much more than get ourselves to our hostel (no easy feat with four massive bags) and make a brief excursion out to the Bund, though before we were even allowed to get off the plane, we had our temperatures taken by a solemn, white-hazmatted health inspector in the plane, who took *every* single person's temperature with a strange forehead laser pointer before giving us clearance to step into China. This morning was muggy, though not as humid as Hanoi, and the tops of the Pudong skyscrapers were shrouded in mist. (I am not evolved or classy enough, by the way, to not snicker at the name "Pudong.") We haven't had the chance to explore much, but despite being massively exhausted, I'm so excited to be here; Shanghai definitely a world away from Hanoi and we have a whole week before summer camp starts, so more to follow I hope. (A side note - China blocks blogspot, the website I usually post through, so any blogs while I'm here are either posted via flickr or e-mail, so I'm sorry in advance if they look a bit funky).