Sluggish Spring

This morning's meeting at the busstop decribed the common mood of us foreign students at the moment. I was well aware that the time was getting close to the beginning of the first class of the morning, but somehow I wasn't able to get my butt up from the sofa and finish the cup of coffee I had just made. Then, at a point when I should have already been at school, I managed to pull myself away from the online newspaper and made my way downstairs and across the street to the corner where you can catch a little minibus going past the university to the centre.

I was thinking that others are so often late, it doen't matter if I'm late sometimes too. As long as someone is there at the beginning of the class... But who did I find at the busstop if not two of my classmates who live in the same compound as me, yawning and blurry-eyed just like me.

I know what it is, though, it happens every year to most of the student population everywhere.

Spring.

When the sun comes out, and you're almost done with the studies, your mind tends to wonder towards summer plans and what comes after the studies. You feel like you've pushed yourself this far, it's about time for a break. And no, the brain does not easily listen to the little, whispering voice of reason that says: "just a few more weeks, you can keep pushing". Nope, the brain is on holiday.

All this translates into reduced class sizes, students flip-flopping in in the middle of the class -- if at all, increased yawning frequency in the classroom and sudden dissapearance of all homework notebooks.

But hey, at the moment my holidaying brain is giving the voice of reason a rather good argument about how I've already done quite a lot this term: Yesterday I found out that I got the highest grade in the official intermediate Chinese proficiency test. So now I am officially a Chinese speaker! 太棒了！

Visible!

I know that to all the computer savvy people out there I must seem a little slow, but I've only just figured out a way that I can actually access the site of my blog. Yea!

As I've mentioned before, I have no problems getting into the site for posting and editing the blog, but cannot open the page of the actual blog on Blogspot.

But here's a way around it:
http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://elinainchina.blogspot.com

I know that this makes no difference to those people who are reading this now, you are obviously already accessing the site ok. But I thought I'd just share my discovery with you anyway :) And I know that this might be of help to some people who I know have the same problem, this goes especially to you Ms. Bell! ;)

Lost in Translation

Ugh, I seem to be getting confused with all these different languages fighting for space in my brain. Today at school, I was asked to help the university out with some publicity DVD they are doing, all I needed to do was to say "Southwest University welcomes you" in Finnish, and look foreign.

Turned out that the last part was easy, but I got the first bit completely messed up. In the Finnish language there are 8 different words for the points of the compass. That means, apart from north, south, west and east there are 4 more that go in between, ie. south-west has a proper noun of its own. Still, the 4 later ones are used less frequently, and you often see people pointing their finger to directions on an imaginary compass in the air in front of them, at the same time following the litany we've learned, just to figure out which is which.

Anyhow, to cut the story short, the university is not putting out a video where I look smilingly into the camera and warmly welcome everyone to the Northeast University.

Not that the potential Finnish audience will be big, I probably could just as well said "Remember to wear a hat" and it would have been all the same.

But still....

Educational Entertainment

Last weekend, after the sports meet, it was time for another countryside adventure. During our travels around Christmas time, I had met a Chinese girl, Candy, whose home is in Dazu in the Chongqing area. She had been asking me for quite some time to visit the school where she found a new job and finally we agreed on last weekend.

So, having otten just a couple of hours of sleep after staying up for the Eurovision extravaganza, Fabio and I headed to the bus station on Sunday morning to catch the rusty, smelly bus that takes people from Beibei to Dazu, a trip that takes a few hours as the bus successfully manages to avoid ever getting on the highway.

When finally in Dazu, we were treated to a fantastic dinner in the small flat of Candy's family. Both of the parents had been busy preparing all sort of vegetarian treats, and of course were very generous with the home-made herb liquor.

These people are again that sort of people who completely overwhelm you with their hospitality. I know I've written about the same type of Chinese people many times again, but meeting them always manages to get me all warm and fuzzy inside. :)

(Candy and another teacher's daughter ---------->)

But the main reason for the trip was to make a laowai appearance at the school. And this school was not just like any other school. First of all, it's located truly in the middle of nowhere. Another couple of hours of bumpy busride from the already small town of Dazu. And there, in the middle of the fields, is this grey concrete building, with the usual flagpole in the middle of the courtyard and the big, red characters proclaiming empty big meanings.

Candy had been telling me about the school on the way there. With that, she had managed to already scare me a little, what with the stories of totally unmotivated, rude and irrespectful students who spent their time sleeping in class and shouting death threats at the teachers if woken up. Quite a long way away from the culture of respecting teachers and valuing education. Candy herself got her job after the previous English teacher got into a big fight with her students and was fired.


But I guess our appearance managed to keep most of the student awake for at least half a day. The whole school was brought to an assembly in the courtyard and we had to give them speeches about the importance of learning English. And then, doing the entertaining foreign monkey... I mean teacher.... for a few classes each. The way I dealt with the sleeping students was to tiptoe quietly right next to them and then shout "GOOD MORNING!" straight into their ear ...Which was pretty much how much English these middle school students did understand. Among the giggles there were a lot of blank stares clearly saying "What?!?!" to whatever I said, no matter how simple. But in the end we managed to all entertain each other, by singing and jokes and little questions. And by learning to say "I love you" in 8 different languages.

By the end of it all, we were taken out for lunch by the headmaster. That is to say, we sat around the same table. He hardly said two words to us during the whole time, he had some of his own friends along, who were never even introduced to us, and they were quite happy to talk among themselves. Although, the headmaster did not even know how to speak Mandarin, which already limited the possibilities of communication to a minimum. I suppose he himself never went to school?!?

To top it all, Candy managed to get us some extra money. We had agreed beforehand that the school will pay for our bus tickets and our accommodation in Dazu. But the cunning Candy said that we should claim to have paid a couple of hundred more for the hotel than we actually did, just to get some extra money out of it ...Which I'm sure the headmaster assumed we would do anyway! :)

Euro-Trashed

WOOHOOO! :) :)

It was fully worth staying up until 6 am our time just to see the gentle monsters rock the stage otherwise filled with cheese, trash and half-naked plastic girls. For once, someone won by showing less skin rather than more ;)

One World, One Dream

So, a few days ago someone from the international office walked over to our classrooms once again with one of those A4s, and put it up on the message board. It said: All foreign students are required to participate in the opening ceremony of the University Sports Meet. A couple of days later we were handed over T-shirts the size of a small country, white for girls and yellow for boys, and told to turn up at 7:5o on thursday morning, ready to march out to the stadium.

And this was exactly what we did, more or less. The opening ceremony begun by the teams of all colleges marching out after their flagbearer, dressed in various uniforms or sports outfits. It was all done in the style of the olympics, or at least there was an attempt to. We, of course, we the only group where most of us had nothing to do with the actual sports event, the other people marching were actual athletes whereas the opening ceremony was the only bit we had to take part in.

The Chinese students, having probably be trained for this their whole lives during various events and drills, marched in perfect unison, lines and rows straight as if drawn with a ruler. And then us: wobbling on in our flip-flops, as this indeed was what most of us, including me, had chosen for our sporty footwear for the occasion. But other than that, I think we managed pretty well to behave like athletic stars, waving at the full stadium of cheering audience and pointing our cameras at everything.

Afterwards, as we were all standing in the middle of the field, arranged in our respective groups, listening to the speeches, there suddenly was an announcement: "everyone in the stands, stand up and face the flag!" *whooosh* The whole audience stood up. "All athletes in the field, tuuuurn back!" *whoosh* All the Chinese teams turned around with one controlled move.

And us, at the edge of the field, were left turning around aimlessly for a few seconds, until finally settling into vaguely the right position, waiting for the flag to be raised while the national anthem was sung.

And so on.

All in all, one more funny experience in the serious of events that make up living in China.

But tonight, everyone in front of their tv:s, ready for the Eurovision Song Contest! Fingers crossed for Lordi :D
Even we here are going to watch it, thanks to it being shown online in real time. That's what the green-tea flavoured chips are for, too. Can't go wrong with those.

Post-Holiday Post

After quite a long silence, here's a little virtual wave from Chongqing again. While I have been ignoring the blog, I have been out there in the real world (!!!) holidaying, job hunting and so on. I spent two weeks in Beijing, firstly just having a brilliant holiday and secondly scouting for job opportunities. And brought back some sort of bug as a souvenir, which very efficiently kept me in bed with a cold for about a week.

But here I am emerging from the haze and blurrr, waking up to realise that summer has hit us with fukll volume. The temperatures are climbing up to 40C and the skimpy shorts are out!

We've had no classes for a couple of days due to the university's Sports Meet, a school-wide track & field event. I'll come back tomorrow with stories and pictures of the wanna-be Olympics opening ceremony that I also had to participate in.

But today I will simply leave you with this: I have just come back from the neighbourhood supermarket, where I bought a bag of green-tea flavoured potato chips. Now there's Chinasation taken into new heights!