Cab drivers who ignore my carefully pronounced “I don't speak Chinese” used to annoy me – the ones who continue as if my declaration doesn't render all subsequent conversation meaningless. There are only so many variations of shrugging or shaking my head or laughing that I use to convey my own disappointment at my inability. I had two such cab drivers in one day, but I found their determination somehow endearing.

Recently I had asked Zack to draft some sort of script I could use for small talk with cab drivers, but he said their colloquial way of speech makes it difficult to predict the exact questions. Instead of a general “Where are you from?” they tend to appraise your nationality and form it into a question. “British?” they'll say. “Australian?” “French?” “Russian?” But this cab driver was more intuitive. He pointed to himself and said “China,” then pointed to me. “Ah!” I said. “Mei Guo,” I said, which is the Chinese word for America. He made a show of communicating to me that he liked America, his free hand locked in the thumbs-up position, overacting for my benefit. He then proceeded to ask me how much my coffee cost, by gesturing to it and then fanning out some bills for a visual cue. A good starting point to any conversation. 24 kuai, I told him, and he nodded as if I affirmed something important. He prompted me to say my age by saying, “Twenty......?” and allowing me to fill in the rest, raising his hand up and down, as if my height was directly related to my age. “Five,” I said, satisfied that I could at least comprehend something so basic. At a red light I ventured “It's hot today” from my phrase book, and he agreed, miming a parasol over his head and pointing to the female passersby, as if to ask why I didn't have a parasol, too. When we stopped, he shook my hand.

The homebound cab driver was like an extension of the first, equally determined and not at all put off by my sequence of shrugs and laughs. This time, he started off with “Ying Guo?” which I recognized as England, so I set him straight by pointing to myself and saying “Mei Guo.” He then made it clear that he wished to know what I did here in China, by pointing to himself and exaggerating his driving to say “I'm a cab driver. What do you do?” I understood perfectly well, but couldn't remember how to say “I teach English to children.” So I tried a piecemeal sentence. “Child, child, child, child,” I said, pointing in front of me to demonstrate a group of children. Then I mimed a teaching session in which I said “Hello!” and pretended to have the children repeat “Hello!” He wasn't getting it. I was lamenting the fact that the word “teacher” wasn't in my phrasebook when suddenly the chorus of my students' voices entered into my head: Lao shi! They address me by this word, meaning “teacher,” repeatedly, often combining it with some English, like “Kinzy Lao shi teacher!” He nodded, hardly understanding how excited I was to communicate this concept. At a red light he pointed to his name on his taxi driving license bolted to the dashboard. Three spidery looking characters that I repeated after him. At a second red light he taught me the words left and right, then pointed to the hair on my arms and rolled up his sleeve for me to see that he had no hair. “Yes,” I said, laughing. It was as clear as saying “You have arm hair! I don't.” Simply an observation of difference, nothing at all behind it that I could tell. My 4-year old students had noticed it, too, sidling up to me at break time and stroking my arm, looking up at me with questioning eyes.

 

We've moved across the city to a gated apartment building on a dead-end street. Numbered garage stalls line the way to our numbered entryway. We both remarked that it looked like residential Minneapolis; on one edge of the property you might mistake thick leafed bushes for the fence they have grown up around. The stairwell is cool, with no onions drying on the sills. At night, the lacquered wooden floor reflects the red streaks of track lighting, but our picture windows face other picture windows: big city pretenses in an undeniably suburban location. (Though the concept is so new that nobody calls it that; a translation for suburbia is not yet necessary. Language lags behind the need for it) From our old apartment, we watched lit Chinese characters melt from neon red to neon green to neon blue from an implacably plain white living room with holes in the walls (a cable-installation error, no doubt).  We've traded a convenient location for a shiny living space.

We have both acknowledged that it feels like we are cheating. The familiarity of living in a Minneapolis lookalike neighborhood is overridden by guilt – for what? Living on a wage above the neighbors we left behind? Is it not the “real” China?

The neighbors here pretend not to notice us, polite and unstaring. Nothing like the Heping ladies who used to gather on our small concrete stoop for hours on weekends, eying our takeout boxes as we returned from the Indian restaurant yet again. One of them had a child with Downs Syndrome who would never fail to laugh and say, “they don't understand; they're foreigners” or simply utter “foreigners,” a linguistic reflex, like identifying a squirrel on the path, even though everyone else also sees it. Zack could always make polite chat with them, but on the occasions I returned home alone I had to walk through their wake, setting my mouth in a line of good-humored naivety. All they knew of me was a shrug and a laugh, the nervous fiddling of a backpack strap, the fact that I took the trash out en masse and overflowed the tiny bins.

That was Heping. Now, in Huanggu, once you breach the gate with its flashlight-yielding employees, you're in China again – broken brick sidewalks, unaccompanied puppies curled calmly on shop steps, a magazine-plastered van that serves as the exterior kitchen to the restaurant it's parked in front of. About a block up the road, the fruit and vegetable vendors congregate on either side, all the way to the bridge. Underneath their Coca-Cola umbrellas they've arranged piles of orange-red cherries on tables, bananas they insist on cutting off for you (but they'll laugh and scold if you only purchase one), hard purplish mangosteens, small apricots, mangoes, pineapples peeled in a criss-cross pattern. Always walk in front of the carts and never behind, for they toss bruised or rotten fruit back there, where it continues to get smushed and flattened by traffic. Unidentifiable skins and pits are strewn along the path. I've dubbed it dead fruit alley.

Truck beds have watermelons piled waist-high, one of them always halved for appraisal, and pale lumpy tomatoes are spread out on the tailgates, tipped up at odd angles as if in mid-roll. Many of the vegetable vendors use the ground to display their produce, sometimes with a sheet or a towel between it and the sidewalk, sometimes not. A woman with an uncommonly sun-darkened face charged me three times the going rate for her carrots, which were covered in dirt, but I didn't argue – how could I?

If I were to guess what the staple of a Chinese kitchen is, I would not say rice. I would say the green onion. Big bunches of them ride home strapped to the backs of motorbikes. I see them splayed out like a stiff bouquet from the baskets of bikes. I see their tops, uncut and pointy, peeking out from tote bags, or wiggling from the passenger seat of a baby stroller, tucked in with the baby. The best part? I don't know what they use them for. And I'm so removed from the culture that their ubiquity strikes me as a trend, an accessory. People accessorize with green onions.

(Note the foreshadowing in the prior post about our train tickets)

We thought we had plenty of time. At 8:30 we convened outside the children's school with Adam and Erica to grab a cab to the North Train Station. Ahem. You see, we had purchased tickets from a booth representing the North Train Station. The cashier had presented us with a stack of tickets, return ones on top. But little did we know, the departure and return tickets were different.

We could probably blame our first cab driver from here on out. Zack, who sat shotgun, showed him our departure tickets (The ones with the other train station printed on them) and said something like, “Can you take us here?” This particular driver didn't understand Zack when he asked if he could open the trunk to stow our luggage, and even after the three of us struggled very vocally to arrange ourselves in the backseat, face to face with our own duffel bags and backpacks, he seemed unconcerned. This was the only annoyance we thought we had to deal with.

In a flurry of other opening doors and closing doors and rolling luggage, we exited the cab and walked in the general direction of the station. We followed the hordes through the different corrals: an outdoor staircase, a small bridge, and in-between some standalone dividers. I think we asked an idle-looking stranger or two where the departure gate for Dalian was. When we got to the gate that led to the tracks themselves, Zack waved the four tickets to the women standing there. Adam just walked right on through, assuming we'd be right behind him. But one of the women was looking at the tickets intently, waving her hands in a “no” signal and explaining something to Zack. We called Adam back. The women were now laughing, gesturing in a general way, like “Way over there!” So yes, if you've followed my clues by now, you'll have guessed we were at the wrong station.

We had very little time to discuss the mistake that had just occurred; I took off toward the street, instant coffee swinging from the wrist strap of the tea bottle I was using. We got into cab #2, urging Zack (needlessly) to tell him to hurry and that we were late for our train. It was now 9:00. We again shoved ourselves underneath the bulky pieces of luggage we had, panting and throwing each other worried looks. The cab driver, who was on his cell phone, cruised as if worried to hit bumps at too fast a speed. He also stayed in his lane and allowed other cab drivers to edge him out. For once, just once, we felt cheated out of a fast cab ride. Any other day of the week we would've felt blessed to be going such a casual pace. We would've praised him for his level-headedness. But now, we fretted and pointed at the other cabs, who were darting through gaps and accelerating on longer, emptier stretches. In the backseat, we were admittedly being a bit impolite. Groaning, sighing... the sort of wordless language whose tone I think is understood.

At least a half-mile from the station itself, the driver eased to the curb and told us he couldn't get any closer. “That's bullshit!” Adam said. “He just wants an easier exit. It's easier to pick up another customer here.” We also hadn't apparently gathered enough cash for the bill, so I tore through my bag to find the extra kuai we owed. Adam urged us to stiff him, as he hadn't taken us all the way. I left the extra note on the seat and practically toppled onto the curb.

It then became clear that we would have to run. I set the pace, weaving in and out of the apparently unrushed crowd and looking over my shoulder for the rest of them. Erica was keeping up with me, but we realized we'd have to wait for Zack and Adam if we wanted to stick together. I saw the two of them fighting upstream, one slung with a huge bag (totally my fault) and one with a frame backpack. Zack was holding my coffee upright with one hand – I had left it unwittingly on the sidewalk. I grabbed it from him and again bolted off. When we reached the station (its big clock tower reminded us we were late), taxis were wheeling around or creeping through hundreds of pairs of legs, going just slow enough not to injure anyone. We didn't know how to cross the street to the station – it was one of those divided by a metal fence at waist-height, impossible to jump in such heavy traffic. Eventually we found a gaping entrance to an underground area, which we could only assume led across the road.

It did. We ran through the tunnel and up a flight of stairs, where we showed our tickets to a pilot-hatted official, who waved us through and yelled at us to “Hurry! Hurry!” We climbed over masses of people gathered on a stairwell who were blocking the entrance to the departure gates. At each checkpoint we flashed our tickets and someone else told us to hurry some more. We ran through empty, cavernous tunnels and up and down flights of stairs, following the arrows. How many flights of stairs would it take to get to the tracks? At the top of one last flight of stairs, after an untied shoelace slowed me down twenty seconds, we saw the crowds of people and heard the steam whistles, so intense and movie-like.

Then we had to find the right car. It was now 9:30. There were tons, probably hundreds, of people trying to push and duck through the little cabin doors. We pushed into the pool of people waiting to board our car, and crowd mentality prevailed. There was nothing orderly about this. There was so much friction between people that I could've been dragged off by the backpack. I felt bad for the people lined up where the platform drops down to the tracks – right on the edge – the most dangerous place to be in this panicked funnel. I was first in our group of four, and I kept turning around to Erica and saying I couldn't do it. I wasn't aggressive enough to get on the train. We had heard earlier that the stations over-book the seats and that, if you don't get on, well – too bad. Someone else will get your seat. In the end I think Erica was the first to break through. By the time I crossed through that door, my panic had reached a hilt and there were suddenly, surprisingly, tears on my cheeks.

If not yet in our seats, we were on the train, at least. Erica and I stepped off the narrow hallway into a cubicle-like enclosure with four seats in it. We needed to catch our breath, and we needed to wait for Zack and Adam. Not ten seconds later, the actual holders of those seat tickets arrived and shooed us away.

Somehow, Zack and Adam had already found our seats and were calling to us. As soon as we sat down, I realized I didn't have my ticket. Usually they check two more times – when you're riding and when you get off the train, so I hurried back to the four-seated enclosure and barged in, very visibly looking for something. One of the passengers held up the ticket for me.

Yes, we were relieved. But we were also blinking back sweat and harboring anger and not yet ready to laugh at our eventual triumph. It didn't feel like triumph quite yet, even when the train began to sway beneath us seconds later.

A day of firsts. I picked up a package sent by my parents at the post office after a fellow teacher named Lyle rescued the pick-up slip from the office at school. He figured no one else was going to take care of it, so he went out of his way to find me and give it to me. (So thoughtful! And also exposes how unorganized the school can be). So we moseyed off to the post office where I presented my passport (why does the mere act of presenting one's passport make one nervous?) and walked off with a goodie-filled box that looked more battered than I had imagined. There was a form attached to it which detailed its contents, and I recognized my mom's handwriting: TOASTER, CANDY, DVD, NAIL POLISH. That last item had been crossed out and some Chinese characters were written next to it. Upon opening it at home, I found that they had in fact confiscated the nail polish, maybe because it was flammable... who really knows? The toaster and the pancake mix and syrup and jelly beans and chocolate Easter bunnies were cause for much rejoicing.  Thanks, Mom and Dad!

After dropping the package off at home, we met Erica outside one of the train ticket shops near the school for our quickly-decided-upon trip to Dalian for Labor Day weekend. This wasn't until we cracked the code that Jonathan had sent us via a laughably cryptic text: “You can buy tickets at the small shops nearby.” We assumed this meant near the school. But, hmm, small shops. So we asked our wise and helpful friend Eric and he gave us a little more direction and – at the very least - the fact that the sign to look for was blue. We purchased train tickets for Saturday morning at 9:30 and return tickets for 9:30 on Monday, taking special note of the time we were to be at the station: in both cases, 9:00. But the departure and arrival stations were for different stations (Insert ominous gong noise).

I then enlisted Erica to walk me to the salon where she had gotten her hair cut a few weeks back. (There's no shortage of salons here, and they're all relatively cheap, which makes it hard to decide who you want holding the scissors. But at least I could observe that they didn't do a hack job on her).

For my first Chinese haircut, I thought a picture would suffice. But in this case, it is actually unfortunate that a picture is worth a thousand words. They will assume you want to recreate the texture, the length, the layers, the bangs, the style... the color. So you need to pick and choose the elements you want to recreate. This is where a picture's ability fails and only language can pick up the slack. So Zack came along with me to explain that I wanted layers like the picture, but not the bangs or the coloring.

A lanky, disinterested young man in a faded black T-shirt was recruited for my hair's fate. Behind us, plastered onto the floor-length window was the translucent visage of a blonde Jessica Alba. The sun was beating through her and creating an uncomfortably warm glow as the hairdresser picked up my locks, lifting them and tousling them as he pointed to the picture with his other hand. I drilled Zack on the important things: no color, no bangs. The rest was pure trust. At least I knew I wouldn't be turning out like Lucy, a fellow teacher who had recently re-dyed her “mousy” blonde hair to a much lighter color. I saw her the following day with a kerchief bunched around her hairline. She told me her hair had been falling out from the harsh bleach they had used... Her intention to get highlights had resulted in more of a highlighter look. Needless to say, I wasn't going to go blonder in a country of over a billion dark-haired people.

The result was surprisingly pleasant. Though he was half-talking over his shoulder to a regular client of his, who was chewing gum impatiently while waiting to occupy my chair, his eyes were concentrating on lengths and symmetry. My hair fluttered down and got lodged in the space between the mirror and its gilded frame, joining the fringe of black hair already stuck there.


Hey everyone... rejoice! ... It's shirt season.






 

Sometimes I think the Chinese government will come swooping down on me just for teaching the content from these books. The most recent example of this is the first unit of Level 11 – world politics and expressing political opinions. Hmm, sounds "subversive" to me. Should I lead the discussion as one would in a high school in the States, defining all the different systems and debating their faults and strengths? Or should I create a whimsical debate worksheet centered around mayoral incumbent Spike Treebottom, whose policy of giving out ice cream cones to straight-A students was a big hit, and challenger Billy Pickle, whose campaign focuses on installing water fountains that dispense Coca-cola? Yep. That's what I did to skirt real issues. They were quiet when I introduced the new unit, but their English really opened up when they realized the debate was pure nonsense. I had to remind myself that my goal was to make them use language, not to force them to think about democracy or any other kind of “ocracy.”

After the lesson I walked all the way down to Tai Yuan Jie (the shopping street) just because I was a bit too timid for the self-paying subway system. (You know how everyone avoids those lines at ShopKo? Yeah.)

On the way back, I got stares that felt different in tone and target. They were staring at my legs. I was wearing a green skirt and no tights because it had been a warm and sunny afternoon, but I quickly noticed two things: that the shade was amazingly cold, and that no one else was showing any bit of leg-skin. Not one in the 5:00-commuting thousands. Was this a cultural faux-pas? But they looked amused. In the end I was simply cold and disappointed that I had managed to draw more attention to myself.

Zack had taken a borrowed bike across town with Danny that afternoon to check out Danny's tailor who specializes in suits/tuxedos. When we met back up around dinnertime, he told me he'd picked out a fabric (grey) and ordered one! For the wedding next year. I wish I could have seen it in person, but with another guy his age and an experienced tailor in his midst, could anything really have gone wrong? It'll be ready in two months. (Somewhat off subject, while we were walking home together, I explained my embarrassment about my bare legs to Zack and predicted that the ladies sitting on the stoop were going to make comments. Yes, they did. And Zack confirmed it was about my garb. Knowing it wasn't malicious, I was still miffed).

I've been reading some online forums about having a wedding dress made in China as well, and it's developing into more and more of a possibility. Apparently it's not uncommon for women to find tailors online, send them their measurements, and rip open some packaging tape a few months later to reveal the “designer” silhouette of their dreams. Being here, I think it will be less risky, because I can have more control over the process (hopefully pictures will smooth over most language problems). Marieke had actually been engaged in China about three years ago, and had had a dress made. She said it wasn't difficult, and that you can get exactly what you want for very little, or even combine elements of two dresses you've seen online, and they'll fuss over it until you're satisfied (at no extra charge). Still... it seems strange to have to pick out fabric for a wedding dress. Will I have an eye for quality fabric? Will I be able to recognize, say, chiffon, when I see it?

Zack gleans a lot of information on the ins and outs of Shenyang from his one-to-one students, and today we put their advice to use. Apparently you don't shop for sunglasses in the underground fashion street, or at Wu Ai, and certainly not at the glass-fronted stores on Tai Yuan Jie. You go to a special mall built for this purpose, of course.

So we walked down Tai Yuan Jie until we got to the foretold roundabout, then looked around a bit. The building with posters of sunglasses looked correct, and we walked in the ground floor level. It had the lighting and the feel of a Younkers, but each glass case held hundreds and hundreds of glasses frames and sunglasses. No wonder Zack G (a fellow teacher who unfortunately has Zack's same spelling and last initial) has about four different glasses frames that he rotates through, all bought in China. I know I keep championing how cheap everything is here, but I think glasses might illustrate the largest disparity between America and China. For frames and lenses and an exam, you might pay 150 yuan, or 200 if you want all those lense-additives. This amounts to $20-33... like picking up a cheap-ish pair of shoes. So tempting to stock up. That's the problem with shopping here. You can't help but calculate comparisons, and then all of a sudden you get greedy.

We walked through all four floors of this sunglasses/glasses mall, where after awhile the visual repetitiveness started to wear on me. There were so many glasses in some stores that they were stacked on top of one another rather than arranged in rows.  I had Zack help me write down some frame models that I liked and the number of the store so I could return and make the best possible choice. But this strategy soon seemed silly: if I came back another day, I'd find another pair I liked, because there were simply that many. You could find a hundred pairs you liked... each time you came... and each time from a different store. Zack ended up buying some glasses frames (he does wear glasses with a light prescription occasionally, for driving). But these were more of an accessory. They have real bamboo bows with faint, shallow carvings of bamboo plants on them, and the eye/nose part of them are shiny black. He also learned a good rule of thumb about bargaining: divide the listed (or told) price by three and add ten kuai – that's the price you should start with when bargaining. And sure enough, he got them to knock off quite a bit. He also got some sunglasses at a different shop, paying a total of $20.

As it was Marieke's last night in China, she invited some friends, maybe fifteen or so, out to one of the most iconic Chinese restaurants in our vicinity. Eric and Jake brought a cake along because her birthday was nearing and she wouldn't be in China to celebrate it with everyone like she had for the past four years. She was also given a golden paper crown (like BK) from the bakery that made the cake, and later a man walked by wearing a similar paper crown. Birthday king and queen! They had a picture taken together. We said our goodbyes in a circle outside the restaurant, and she gave a short speech about how this group had been her family for the past few years. Having only been there two months (six weeks of which she was away), we felt honored to be so pointedly included in that group.

Here's Erica (middle), Marieke (right), and I.



 

It's one thing to think you understand fair trade. It's another entirely to sit in front of a group of teen geniuses and answer their questions about it. Most of the students in my VIP Level 11 class are about 13 or 14 years old... the VIP denotes that they've already zipped through all the age-appropriate books; the “level” books they are using now were written for adults and therefore the topics can be much too dry. And then there's Alice, who just turned 11. She speaks English with no hesitation and almost no trace of accent, and apparently she was selected last year to represent China at an English spelling bee in the States. Peter (the teacher who I am subbing for) said when she first joined the class, the other students resented her. Similarly, I am intimidated by her – what if she were to ask a question I'm not fit to answer? Expose me as the unsure, inexperienced teacher I am? I guess a teacher has to learn how to say “I don't know” at some point.

On Sunday morning I took one of Irish Paul's classes, a Level 7. It was three hours long. So I started with a lengthy introduction about Wisconsin, and it didn't occur to me to teach the word “Cheesehead.” I thought it a useless endeavor – they wouldn't remember it, and they wouldn't use it. Instead I explained that one of the major industries in Wisconsin was dairy, and that we were known for our cheese. But one girl volunteered the word on her own. She said “Cheeseheads” under her breath, and I immediately made her repeat it. But it seems she didn't know what it meant. It had been buried deep in her brain and just bubbled up when she heard me talking about cheese and Wisconsin. (I also saw a man sitting in a van the other day sporting a big white “W” on a red baseball cap. There was no mistaking the font – it was a Badgers hat. I stopped walking and looked at the man through his window, willing him to understand what it meant to me. I think I just pointed at it, became instantly embarrassed, and walked on).

That Sunday was Marieke's second-to-last night in China (after a good four-year run), so we got a group together for “street beers,” really just code for this cheap chuar (barbeque) restaurant where sometimes in the summertime they set up tables out on the front sidewalk. The teachers have befriended the owner, whom they call “Granny” in English and probably the equivalent of Granny in Chinese. She's a really smiley white-haired woman who puts up with a lot of our antics. Case in point: Marieke and Jake presented Danny with his birthday present at the table: matching shorts and button down shirt, both with a horrendous, rainbow-bright flower/vegetable pattern on them. He tried them on. And then the kicker: a speedo plastered with a Cuban flag pattern. A bunch of Americans/Australians/Brits getting crazy over in the corner, and Granny just smiles. We also played Tourettes, a card-based drinking game that involves coming up with really obscure categories, and remembering everyone else's categories. If you and another player are dealt the same card (both fours, for instance), you must say something in their category before they say one of yours. Some examples: things you might say to someone at a bus stop, things you don't want to sit in, mostly-flightless birds, things you pluck (people were confusing those two), things you can use to check your reflection, specialty doctors. Things like that.

Later, at Lenore's, we found a book that we read passages from, dramatically and by candlelight.  I love these people.

A bit of explanation is in order. The old school has finally been shut down for renovation, and the new school (30 minutes of heavy traffic to the north) is the sole locale for children's classes. “The hotel” (the sixth floor of a building connected to a hotel) remains open for older kids' classes and Michelin adult one-to-ones. And then there is the converted apartment where Kai and Zack used to live, and Eric and Jake before them. In reality, not much “converting” happened. I suppose the beds were removed; in their place are small tables with a chair on either side, with a rolling white board nearby. If you are the first to arrive for lessons that day (escorted by a TA with a key, who may not be familiar with the locking mechanism), you get to choose the “classroom” you'll be occupying for the next four hours. Each of the three bedrooms has atrocious curtains and closets with some questionable abandoned items... bedspreads, dress shoes, strangely-shaped, lifelike pillows (ahem), and luggage. Shari and I stumbled upon these one day while waiting for our students to arrive. The kitchen is still well-stocked... more so than our currently lived-in kitchen. There is no logic in this setup, but we've come to expect illogicality paired with a lack of explanation. There's also no computer or printer, so no supplemental worksheets can be printed off during breaks. The setup also makes it difficult to decide where to take one's break: in the living room, where another one-to-one lesson is in progress? In the small kitchen for no other reason than a change in scenery? Or in the same room that you've just been teaching, with the same student you'll be with for another three hours? Why not stay in the room and chat, you ask? There's only so many things to chat about in limited English, and I want to save those topics for actual lesson time.

I'm not sure if it's temporary or not. We are not told much, and it's sometimes too much trouble to ask.

In contrast, “the new school” is an organized, clean-looking, teched-out, modern school. I had my first lesson there on Friday, just five minutes after a crash course in smart board use. Here's a crash course for you: there are four wands sitting in specified compartments in a tray. If you pick one up, you will see the colored bottom of that tray. This is the color you will be writing in. The eraser is a short, stubby wand that you can use to circle the area you want erased. This is really helpful for entire sentences. BUT if you forget to replace the eraser wand, and pick up a pen wand to write with, you'll now be “writing” in eraser mode, because the screen performs the last function if it gets confused. You can also hit “clear all.” That's going to be a favorite.

The kids were chomping at the bit to use the smart board. If I made a mistake – say, forgot to replace the eraser wand – each of them was chiming in with their advice. Their butts were hovering in their chairs, but they were obedient and didn't get up. I could tell Cici had told them to sit down and control themselves, but after awhile this seemed tortuous. Finally, toward the end of class I decided to play Tic Tac Toe with some new vocabulary, and I let them come up and draw their own X or O for a right answer. When the top row proved too tall for most students, I decided to see if this board was really as intuitive as it's cracked up to be. With all five fingertips, I pressed on the screen and pulled it down. The whole Tic Tac Toe board moved as a unit, and the kid was able to draw his X or O. About mid-game, I also remembered Antony explaining a function that changes skewed, bloblike O's into perfect circles and less-than-symmetrical X's into impeccable X's. The kids thought this button was great – especially when one of their classmates drew such a horrible O that the computer didn't recognize it as a circle at all, or zapped it into an oval, or a rectangle.


Below is the reception desk of the school and beyond that is the "life club room," featuring its own smart board and DDR panels installed in the floor, which can be hidden by sliding panels. Beyond that is a long hallway with rooms (each with their own bright color scheme) off to the right and a balcony off to the left.  Upstairs is the teacher's office.

Bouts of coughing last night woke me up maybe six times, and sips of water didn't quell it. I started my morning with a look at WebMD. I read up on some common causes for chronic cough, and ruled out bronchitis, strep throat, and a number of other respiratory sicknesses. Then I decided to click on whooping cough – why not? Starts with a sore throat, then progresses into a dry, irritating cough that may wax or wane over the next couple weeks. The coughing will subside for long periods of time but come back in fits. The disease can last for two or three months. Hmmmm. This gave me pause, and then Zack mentioned that Asia is notorious for whooping cough, and that our childhood vaccines actually wear off. People bound for China often get another shot.  Iiiiinteresting.

Armed with this knowledge, we went for a quick lunch and I made several calls to our standbys (Antony and Jack) and decided I would go to the children's center at 3:00, at which point a TA would take me to the doctor. Zack came along as well, and we followed Catherine the three blocks to the hospital. Luckily, though our passports still hadn't been returned by the residency office, the hospital officials admitted us. I paid 4 kuai (60 cents) to see a doctor, and as I followed Catherine from check-in window to pay-window I tried to brief her on my symptoms, so that I could have the best diagnosis possible. She listened while I told her about my three-week cough that wakes me up at night (I even performed a mock coughing fit with a sharp intake of air at the end), the green mucus, the hoarse voice, etc. She wasn't afraid to give her opinion. “Just-a drink some hot water,” she said. This was frustrating. It didn't matter what your symptoms were, or how long you'd been sick. Chinese people will make you feel like you're overreacting. Hot water would cure all, if only you'd take their advice. I was pretty annoyed.

When we sat down next to a doctor at a computer, I listened to Catherine (I assumed) explaining my symptoms. She did so in less than ten seconds. The woman doctor listened to my breathing for another ten seconds and then she waved me away – I had to give up my seat for the man who was standing a few yards away. I was incredulous. How could she have become familiar with my symptoms in less than a minute? Catherine then turned to me and asked if I would like to have X-rays done. The decision was completely up to me – she would not sway me one way or the other. “Is it necessary?” we wanted to know. But the doctor was already busy with the next patient. “How much is it?” It was maybe $15. I said OK. We went up to another floor and Catherine spent some time trying to find the technician (the room was abandoned) and then I was walked over to the machine and was not instructed to remove only my sweater. No lead vest, either. After the X-Ray, Catherine again approached me with a question. She seemed embarrassed and was laughing nervously. “Have you had a change?” she asked, gesturing to her own chest. I enlisted Zack to help me understand. She said the doctor wanted to know if I had had a "change." I thought maybe the plastic parts of my bra were messing up my X-ray. “No, no – not bra,” she said. We finally got it out of her that the doctor wanted to know if I had had breast implants. (What?  ME?) So much confusion. I told her of course not.

Back to the woman doctor, who took my X-rays over to the window to evaluate. After a minute or two, she said a word with such confidence that even I knew she had made a diagnosis. Problem was, we couldn't translate the condition, even with Catherine's help. I asked Catherine if she would prescribe any medication. Yes. So I pointed to the words “over the counter” and “antibiotic” in my phrase book. They affirmed that it would be an antibiotic. (This is ironic, I thought. I had been reading up on China's unhealthy obsession with antibiotics, and how their overuse was giving rise to superbugs that could resist double and triple doses of penicillin. I had been hesitant to take them, especially when the pharmacist seemed ready to give me some over-the-counter when I complained of a sore throat). But after three weeks of this, I was defeated and ready to take the stuff. 

On the way out, prescription in hand, Catherine ran into an old EF student who was now a doctor. She was wearing a sweatshirt and a backpack and volunteered right away to assess my symptoms and give her advice. She was very approachable and could speak decent English. She took it upon herself to look at my X-rays, and spent more than a few seconds listening to my woes, eventually ruling out whooping cough and bronchitis, which was what the other doctor had apparently diagnosed. The prescription the other doctor had given was much stronger than what I needed, she said. She offered to accompany us to the pharmacy and get me what I did needed: some strong cough medicine (both liquid and dissolving pill-form) and some less-strong antibiotics for what appeared to be a bacterial infection. She warned me not to take one licorice-flavored cough pill at a time, maybe every three hours, otherwise they might make me “kind of high.” And to stop taking the amoxicillin as soon as my symptoms cleared up. And to boil sliced pears in hot water and add sugar. Yes, taken together, this would be a sure-fire cure. Chinese medicine is such a confusing mixture of at-home remedies (like hot water and pears) and strong, sometimes unnecessary doses of population-harming drugs.  

Given my hoarse voice, I decided not to teach my two classes that night. It would have been my last with those kids who had grown on me these last six weeks.  I regretted not being able to say goodbye. Still, I needed some rest -- as much for my sickness as for my frustration.