In the Studio

The vacation recap will continue with the coming blogs, but now a story from this week:
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For the past few months I've had a side job at the recording studio on campus. I come in a few times a week and read for English textbooks -- simple sentences, dialogues, monologues, speeches, stories...whatever they have. Usually I read with another American. Last semester it was Kyle from Alaska; this semester it's Kyle from Minnesota. We usually have a pretty good time -- there's always some good chinglish to keep us laughing.
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W: Andy, I will have an important exam tomorrow. Can you give me some advice? M: Sure. Are you feeling a bit nervous?
W: Yes, I feel stressed.
M: Perhaps you should try this white t-shirt. And white can make you feel calm.
W: OK. What do you think of my blue jeans?
M: It's a good idea to wear blue jeans because blue and white are a good match.
W: Anything else?
M: You'd better take your yellow stationary. You know, yellow represents wisdom.
W: Yes. That's right. Thanks.
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But this week is different. This week Kyle and I work separately and there are no simple sentences, no dialogues, no monologues, no speeches, and no stories. This week we are reading from the dictionary. Just word after word -- each one 3 times over: slow, slower, normal. I've never had to takes so many yawning breaks before. And ya know how people joke about things being "as boring as reading the dictionary"... Well, I disagree. Nothing is that boring.
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And it's even worse at 9:30 a.m. About every 20 minutes we "save file" and that gives me a chance to wake up. During one of the breaks I found a soccer ball in the studio and started kicking it around. I was like a puppy that had been penned up for the whole day. The guy who overseas the recording and makes sure we say the right thing came in and asked me if I could be "a little more excited". You're joking, right? We both laughed. But he was being serious. And so now I have to read the words as if I'm seeing them for the first time.
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"ABILITY"! Oh, and "SCHEDULE"! And "CHARACTER"! What a marvelous thing that one could comprise mere letters and conjure up such entertaining sounds!
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This is my life for 2 hours a day. But it's amazing how we still manage to have a good time. The yawning and my Seattle accent keep us on our toes. Sometimes I am requested to say words in a British accent (ex. schedule) because that is the phonetic spelling given in this dictionary, and we all get a kick out of this. So it's back to the studio tomorrow -- on to the C's, D's, and E's.

Jail Cells for Cheap: Guangzhou Pt. 3

The guys left Guangzhou for Hainan; I still had 2 days until my flight to Dhaka. Their last day consisted of meals with friends and finding a wang ba (internet cafe) to print off flight information. China is littered with wang ba's so finding one wouldn't be too difficult -- we use them all the time when we're traveling or our internet goes out. They're just big open rooms with rows and rows of PCs and comfy chairs -- mostly filled with gamers and college students who are so glued to the monitor that a natural disaster couldn't stir them. It's the quitest place you'll find in China.
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Later we had lunch with 3 chinese friends -- 2 girls and a guy, Frank. The meal was phenemonenal! There was a live seafood market below the restaurant where we picked out the fish, shrimp, and scallops we wanted to eat. The staff would fish them out of their tanks and take them straight to the kitchen where the chef would prepare them as we requested.

After the meal, we asked our friends where we could find the nearest net bar...the girls' response was: "Wang ba? maybe it's not safe." ("maybe" always means "definitely") Drew, Keegan, and I just looked at each other. We turned to Frank. "Yeah, there's one by my hotel."
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There turned out to be open rooms at his hotel. "It's not nice, but it's really cheap." That sounded fine to me. Little did I know that I was about to be charged 40 yuan a night ($5.70) to sleep in a converted jail cell. The door was metal and looked like something out of the 1940's. When you turned the key in the lock a little square door opened and your hand shot through. To actually unlock the door you had to lift up the metal bar on the inside of the door and slide it across. The bars on the windows were the added touch. Welcome to jail.
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My bathroom was furnished with a water heater and a bucket. I was a little leary of the water heater since I could distinguish the flames heating the water. It will not explode. It will not explode. It will not explode. There was also the shower head which was conveniently positioned over the squatter (also my sink drain). It was never exactly appetizing to spit my toothpaste into the squatter -- always felt like I needed to brush them again.
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The last full day I was in Guangzhou I was treated to a tour of the city by a few of my friends: Ken, Clark, and Moon. We saw the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park and the famous Beijing Lu (Beijing Street) where you could see the layers of buried roads that had been used during the ancient dynasties.

They also showed my around their campus -- the Guangzhou School of Business. "This is the only field...this is the only gym...this is the only library...this is the only park...everything here is 'only'." It looked quite big to me, but, then again, Guangzhou has a "university city" which is a city comprised of 10 or so university campuses, complete with restaurants and malls and post offices and anything anyone would ever need.
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I went back to my jail cell that night and flipped through the ear-piercing, terrible acting Chinese TV shows but I didn't even notice them, because in less than 12 hours I would on a plane out of this country -- the first time since I arrived in August.

Closest to China's Heart are Squatters & Communism: Guangzhou Pt. 2

The sun was blinding as we stepped out of the subway. It was as if we hadn't seen it for months (which is closer to the truth than not). There we stood in the middle of the sidewalk -- frozen as we stared at something so rare and beautiful: clear blue sky. We walked the entire city (my knee giving out long before Keegan and Drew grew tired). We eventually made our way back to the subeay and headed to "Xia Jiao Station" -- we would meet a friend there later that night for KTV (karaoke). By this point we were starving. As we made our way for the exit, we all agreed "we could go for some McDonald's". That was our plan... But as we ascended the steps, all we could see was clear blue sky. We didn't want sky, we want skyscrapers...and one of them to have a McDonald's. But there we stood on the landing with growling stomachs and an expanse of farmland in front of us. "Where ARE we?!" It was as if we popped up in the middle of the countryside. The tallest builiding was maybe 6 stories. But we did end up finding a restaurant with some of the best eggs and tomatoes we've ever eaten.
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I spent the next day on my own at Starbucks. I love coffee shops -- some of my favorite places in Seattle are coffee shops. (Caffe Ladro, Chocolati, Top Pot...I'll see you in July.) But what I loved about this one was the footprints on the western toilet. The preference to squatters still stands firm in China.
[For more info on squatters: http://www.banterist.com/archivefiles/000348.html ]
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Huo Guo (Hot Pot) dinner with some Chinese friends who Keegan knew. We spent 4 hours at dinner (which only felt like 1). I had an interesting conversation with one of my new friends. He and I both have degrees in business, so we started there, and from there, as all conversations do, it morphed into a variety of topics...religion being a main one. When I asked him of his faith, he replied that he belived in something but didn't know exactly what he believed. He said he went to church "for peace". He continued to explain to me the decline of religion within China; that it's mostly the oldest generation that holds firmest (if at all) to faith. "Communism is the religion of China," he said. So it is.

"Look! Foreigners": Guangzhou Pt.1

Guangzhou was my 1st destination. I traveled there with 2 other teachers, and none of us could wait to reach warmer weather. But, wouldn't ya know it, we were stuck in the Chongqing airport for a few extra hours due to "fright delays".
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Realizing that the idea of a taxi from the subway station to our hotel at 11 at night was far superior to the idea of meandering around in the dark for a few hours in hunt of our lodging, we hailed the next cab. Yeah, we would have never found it. The cab weaved down and back the freeway on-ramps and through a part of town which looked strikingly similar to the road beneath the Viaduct around Pioneer Square and Safeco Field. Chain link fences, railroad tracks, and just some sketchy alleys. But things are never as they seem in China. Safe? Sure. But it sure doesn't feel like it.
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From the taxi we saw 5 black guys walking down the alley. "Look! Waiguoren!" (We always get a little excited when we see foreigners.) One of them was dressed in full Arabic garb. "Cool." They were staying at our hotel which conveniently had an Arabic restaurant.
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Room 702.
We stood in the elevator looking at the buttons for awhile.
"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...where's 7? there's no 7. how can there be no 7?!"
By way of the elevator there's no 7, so we went to the 6th floor -- logical. Coming out of the elevator and turning the corner we saw a stairwell with old chairs stacked on one side. It looked like the staircase to the attic where they put the undesirables.
We were in 702. Quasimodo was in 701.
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Needing a little fresh air and, perhaps, a late night snack, we ventured out.
"Hey look! There's a shop with Arab clothing." "Yeah, and there's another Arabic restaurant...and another...and another...and there's more black people...a lot of them...WHERE ARE WE?!" We would find out the next day from some local friends that our hotel was situated in "Little Africa" -- the Muslim quarter of Guangzhou. Mostly black people, a few Chinese, 2 white guys and a pale girl. Out of all the minorities, we were the minority of the minorities.
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Click on this post's title for pics!