Once you stretch a rubber band, it can never go back all the way.

I know we've stopped blogging.  I've thought about adding another post a hundred times, but I can never bring myself to do it.  Today, I think I have to, though.  The truth is, we haven't stopped blogging because  we've been to busy or something like that; things have gotten so bad here that we didn't want to depress anyone.  I was worried that if I tried to be witty or quippy I would end up sounding sardonic and cynical.  I figure by now no one is reading this anyway so I can speak freely.

Throughout my life I've been accused of being a smart ass (guilty as charged).  I would form opinions without the life experience to back them up but then share them with people as if I did.  I'm still young and without much life experience, I guess, but now I've seen some things, things that make reality a heck of a lot more complicated than they've ever been before.

When Ben and I go into a classroom, we can never predict what questions might pop up.  We always get the usual "Do you like China" and such.  Of course we can never tell the truth so we find some way to answer satisfactorily.  Somehow, though, the question of God has arisen lately.  I can't even choose the words to explain this; I have so many emotions rolling through me that are blocking verbalization.  Anyone who has ever called me naive, frankly, can shove it, because you have never seen naivete like this place can offer.  When these students look at me, their faces are tabula rasa.  I honestly to smack them and shout at them, "Wake up!  You have a brain!  Use it!"  They don't ask questions; they are told the "correct" answers and memorize them for a test then forget them immediately.  Oh, but they all remember that God does not exist.  How do you know God does not exist, I ask.  Because when we were in primary school, our teacher told us God does not exist.  That's what they say to me every single time.  I'm so angry the only reason I'm not throwing curse words around is in case some actually does read this.  I have so much rage inside me toward this place.  It's not that they all believe there is no God.  I have friends who don't believe in God, friends I respect a great deal.  But these students don't even give it a thought.  One of the biggest questions in human history and they don't even blink an eye at it.  In fact, they laugh.  Every time someone says "God" in a classroom, someone laughs.  Without fail.  They tell me that my God is not their god, that China has not had a god in many years.  They don't believe in God, but sometimes when they feel sad, they will pray to God for comfort.  What the hell kind of logic is that?????  No, really, that's the crap they are taught to believe.  And they accept it.  They can't see how illogical that is.  They are completely okay with praying to something that does not exist unless they need it to exist in their minds so that they might feel comfort.  Karl Marx:  "Religion is the opiate of the people."  That's it.  Okay, so I ask, "What about the soul?"  Is there such a thing as a human soul.  They tell me, our soul is in our mind.  So what happens when we die?  We die.  Then what is our purpose in life?  Why do we, humans, exist?  No answer.

And these kids are under unbelievable amounts of pressure to succeed, from their parents and from the government.  But for what?  Sure, maybe they can kick our butts in math, but they couldn't begin to tell you why 2 + 2 does not equal 5.  2 plus 2 is four and there is no need to ask why.  It's not really their fault, though.  This is what the government has done to its people, and it's convinced them all that it's good.  A student asked me what I thought of Chairman Mao.  I told her I did not like him.  She and her classmates said, "It's a pity."  These students aren't expanding their minds or learning how to be an adult.  They are learning how to be parrots.  They literally mimic everything I do.  They repeat what I say.  They mimic my hand motions.  And they stare.  Oh how they stare.

I have never doubted my own soul, nor have I doubted that humans do have a purpose on earth even if I don't know exactly what it is.  But when I'm here, so much of what I have come to understand is "human" goes away.  All the thought, the spirit, the emotion... I don't see it anywhere.

I do believe that Ben and I have done some good by being here, though.  I can see small progress with some of my nursing students.  Still, every day is a battle against an ideology and a mindset of chalkboards.  My mom always told me that I would argue with a brick wall.  Well, Mom, that's exactly what I feel like I'm doing here.  I'm not trying to convert these kids; that's not my job.  But I truly hope God is doing some good here, even if I can't see it.  I never truly believed that I could be His instrument, but if I am, I feel like a spoon against a boulder.

Yeah, that last post... I lied.

So, I thought I was getting used to living in China, eating with chopsticks, and not knowing whether the poop on the sidewalks was canine or human, but I might have been wrong.  Last Friday I had to use my first trough.  Barb Jones had warned me about them, but I had not encountered one until recently.  In the ladies' restroom there was literally a trough separated by "stalls" that had no doors.  I have seen more than my fair share of babies butts, but I did not expect to see grown women butts.  I honestly walked in, went bug-eyed, and walked out.  Unfortunately nature was calling so insistently that I could not afford to be horrified for more than a few seconds.  I waited until a few people had walked out, smiled at the white chick, and then hurried to the "stall" furthest from the door, where I thought my shiny white hiney would be least likely seen by anyone.  You don't wanna know what I saw in the trash can next to me.

The night before, Ben and I had gone on our first date in China, to celebrate our two-month anniversary.  We ate dumplings filled with soup and gong bao ji ding (kung pao chicken) then strolled through downtown Kaifeng.  It was quite nice, feeling slightly more normal (that is, until we saw two kids sitting next to a FIRE they had built on the friggin' sidewalk--apparently sidewalks are not for walking in China).

A group of Australians recently joined us here, and Ben and I have made a few new friends.  I mentioned Tim and Margeaux in my last post.  Now there is also Toby, the German teacher.  We all went out to dinner on Friday then retired to mine and Ben's place to watch the most horrible movie ever ever made and laugh and gag while doing so.  So now Ben and I have friends on four of the six habitable continents.  Yay!

Got to run.  As my lovely sister Madeline so wonderfully said, I gotta go teach them commies to speak English good.

PS See our picture of Longting Park on Facebook!

Acclimating

Hey y'all.  Let's see... What's new?

Honestly, I think we are starting to get used to living here.  It's taken me longer than Ben to accept the fact that we really are living in China for a year and, no, there's no way to jump ship and head home tomorrow or the next day.  So that's probably why we haven't posted lately.  We're getting used to kids pooping in the streets and not knowing exactly what is in our mouths at any given moment.  I'm even almost used to all the incessant honking.  The only thing I think I will never get used to is how the students answer your questions like trained monkeys.  Seriously, I have asked hundreds of students where they would like to travel, and anytime someone answers that they would like to see France they say this to me:  "I would like to go France...I think it is, um, romantic."  No variation ever.  And, honest to Spandex, I'm not sure they even know about the Eiffel Tower.  Okay, they probably do, but I wouldn't be shocked.

Some more Aussies have shown up, and with them they have brought along a mother and daughter from the States, named Sybil and Margeaux.  They are as interesting as their names.  Sybil lived in Istanbul and majored in Modern Dance.  Margeaux has been all over the continental U.S. as well as spending a year in Gap before the age 28.  It's been a huge relief to me to have her here.  We have a lot in common, I think.  She studied English and has her Master's in Rhetoric and Composition.  Last night, Ben and I went to dinner with some of her organization, who are all middle-aged women except for her and a 24-year-old guy named Tim.  After, Tim and Margeaux came back to our place for a couple of hours, and we all had fun talking and sharing music and such.  We also butchered a wine cork trying to get it out of the bottle.  I swear, nothing here works the way it should.  So, that's a little of what's new.

Oh, did we tell you that our flatscreen has a USB port?  Yeah, we may not have a DVD player, but we can load movies and TV episodes onto my flash drive and watch it on the TV.  That's cool.  I'll take it.  Because you really never know what's going to be on the English movie channel.  (Tangent:  I'm pretty sure they have 1 Italian, 1 French, and 1 Russian movie also that they mix in with the English ones.  And they call everything from Mulan to Ocean's 11 a "Classic Blockbuster."  Sheesh.)


So a tally:  Yay for China, USB ports on the TV.  Yay for the US, pretty much everything else.  :)

Pizza in China!

Hey y'all.  I'm sick (Mal).  Well, now that I've said that, I can talk about making pizzas last night!  A few weeks ago, Ben and I went to Zhengzhou with Adam and the other Ben to get ingredients to make pizzas, and last night we finally made them.  We took McCormick's pizza sauce and mozzarella cheese and put them on top of these delicious pieces of bread called "xia bing" and baked them in a little oven.  They were absolutely delicious!  I don't really know what else to say about that...  It felt so nice to have something familiar, though.  The food here is delicious, but I really miss the food back home.  Making the pizzas made that seem no so far away. 

That's another reason why it's been so nice to have good internet here.  We were fighting with a dying computer and ridiculously slow internet, so we often felt isolated.  Granted, we are on the other side of the world from everything we've known and loved.  Now, we can get Facebook without any trouble, and we can access our favorite TV shows and movies too!  Don't ask how.  Ha... Ben is now sitting beside me eating oatmeal and drinking coffee.  Why can't I have my cereal?  :( 

Oh, and being sick makes me homesick, apparently.  If you can't already tell.  Short post.  Hopefully something really interesting will happen and we can put up something longer soon.  I guess I'll get back to playing Angry Birds (I'm getting really good at it) and reading all the free books we got for the Kindles (don't ask about that either...)

Love to the US!

Thoughts on Being a Miniature Celebrity

Howdy folks, Ben speaking. For those of you who don't know, Mallory and I have had a few computer troubles over the past few weeks. As in, the computer went six feet under and our internet connection was moving slower than a geriatric turtle. But thanks to some great friends, some ingenious Chinese students, and a few thousand kuai, we're back online faster than ever!

A few things to catch you up on. First, people tend to stare around here. By that I mean, everyone stares and everything I do. And I partially understand. For many people in Kaifeng, I am the first non-Chinese person they've seen in their entire lives. They've heard about America every day, and then America just walks by. Most of the time, I don't mind the attention. But on days like today, it's about all I can manage not to smack someone. You see, I teach almost every morning. I teach two classes in two hour blocks, and I do the same lecture in both classes because I go around to different classes every day. So, I have different people every day and need to consistently deliver my lecture so they can practice their listening skills. [Remember: never seen a foreigner. So many students studying English have never heard a native speaker in person either.] Now, imagine talking at about one eighth of the speed you normally talk for four hours every morning. Pretty tiring...

This morning, one guy came up after class and asked if he could take a picture with me. "Sure," I said. What could be the harm? I'm sure this would make the guy's day. After the first picture, someone else comes up and asks for the same thing. Ten seconds later, I'm surrounded by people pushing and pulling each other [and pushing and pulling me] to get a picture. It wasn't like being an animal in a zoo. It was like being an animal on the chopping block. Eventually, I shook them off, gave them a few firm English phrases, put on my 'Don't bother me' face, and everything was good. For those few seconds though, I was livid.

Enough negative though. Things are just swell around here. The National Day holiday starts in a few days. For some reason National Day [the day the PRC started] lasts for an entire week. So that means a full week and a half of no classes for us. We're preparing for some serious rest, a bit of nesting, and a lot of TV shows in bed.

Now I'll leave you with a few pictures we've taken over the last month that we haven't been able to share. Enjoy! More to come!

 

 

Noodles and beer. What a mix!

A shot of the street outside of the second floor of a Chinese pizza place. Yep, Chinese pizza...

The Iron Pagoda, the campus attraction.

A full bus is a happy bus.

Never a day without something interesting...

Let's see... How to begin this post? First, I can say to you that not a single day passes here without some crazy surprise, whether revolting, hysterical, or just plain funky. Here are a few from our past week.

Nearly every day, Ben and I eat lunch together at a little fan-guar, or meal-place, outside the south gate of the university. The other day, we went with Adam and Eaaf (yes, Eaaf) to a place we had been to several times before. Well, I can say with confidence that I will never go there again. Right about the time everyone had finished eating, Eaaf put down her chopsticks and said, "That's it. I'm done." First, I thought she was just announcing to the table that she had had her fill, but no. In the midst of her white rice...was a worm. A worm. If we had been in the States, um, lawsuit! It was absolutely disgusting. I know I shouldn't have been as grossed out as I was (I am in B. F. China after all), but I wanted to go yell at someone about health code violations. Oh, wait, there are none.

Next story. Yesterday, the International Affairs Office took all of us wai-go-ren (white folk) to Zhengzhou to visit the Yellow River Park and the Henan Museum. At the park we climbed a mountain, took some pictures, yadda yadda (actually it was pretty cool but I'll just share pictures later). Then, we went down to the river and had lunch in a boat, where I experienced my first quad-language meal. At our table, we had four Americans, one Russian, and to Japanese people. The other two Americans communicated with the Japanese couple in Japanese and with the Russian in Chinese and with us in English. I learned how to say hello, or was it thank you?..., in Russian. It sounds like ztrasvoychen. And Tatyana learned to say "I like drink tea" and "I eat fish" in English. Success. Meanwhile, there was some eating going on. The first course (dun dun dunnnnn) was a plate of tiny little fried WHOLE fish! Funky. I ate a couple. They weren't as bad as I thought, but I still couldn't bring myself to eat the head. I miss salmon filets; no bones, no eyes, no funk.

Anecdote numero tres. This one is short. Today, I had lunch with three of my students. They are incredibly sweet girls, each of whom brought me a present. When we arrived at the restaurant, one of them asked me, "Do you like eat packets?" I'm thinking... "Not usually..." We had these yummy soup-filled baozi (which are a variation of dumplings. They translated the name to "Irrigation soup packets." Ha!!!!! Doesn't that sound delicious? Well it was. Got to go. Kisses from Mal!

"In Christ alone my hope is found; He is my rock, my strength, my song."

Sorry we have been absent for so long. We have had serious computer problems and could not get a blog post up for several days. This is Mallory speaking. :)

Classes have been going well, for the most part. My nursing students really seem to love me, which still shocks me. Mom was joking a couple of weeks ago, when I told her about the ladies who clean our rooms and take out our trash, and how we eat out for every meal; she said, "You won't be fit for shit when you get back." Sorry to the grandmothers reading this, but the rhyme is too good to re-word. Not to mention the fact that every day I have someone telling me that I am beautiful. When I enter a room, students glow with delight to see me. Some of them even jump up and down when they see me coming. We've had people paying for our meals and our taxis, even though we make a lot more money than they do. In a strange way, it is like we are celebrities here.

I can see how Mom or anyone else might think all this special attention would make me useless. But the truth is, it hurts. A lot.

When I come back from a class or meeting with my students, I feel heavy inside. Rather than giving me a big head, my position is proving to be the biggest burden I have ever carried. All I can think is, Who am I? Who am I that you should adore me so? I am not special; I'm not even really a teacher. I'm only two years older than my students. This is truly the most humbling experience of my life.

I'm doing my best here. Every time I leave a classroom, I'm exhausted because I've given everything I have to these students. But it doesn't seem like enough. Not nearly. The way they look at me, they deserve so much more than me. But I'm the one who is here. I just hope that I will not fail them.

Location:Kaifeng, China