Alrighty, so a lot of things have happened the past couple of days. My kids caught me speaking Chinese and got me in trouble, I saw a Chinese cat fight, gave flowers to cheer up a friend, I had dinner with the barber gang, sang karaoke in the streets, had O-wen walk Cyd and I home, looked like death, scared the primary school, scared the high schoolers, road the bus dressed up as a zombie, visited the barber gang while being dressed up, and have become obsessed with a Chinese singer/actor. Oh! And we’ve invented a new game.
Tehe J
Okay so here I start. I was teaching part of the 14 kids, right. We were talking and there are some rules we have that the kids have basically memorized. Rule one is English only. Rule two is hands to yourself. Rule three is bums on chair, feet on floor. Rule four is listen to teacher. Rule five is stay in line. So in class we were talking and I spoke Chinese by accident. One of the girls that I absolutely adore now, her name is Happy, looked at me wide eyed and said “Teacher Jen! English only!” then she covered her mouth and pointed at the Chinese chair. (Chinese chair is where the kids have to sit, it’s in the corner of the room). Then all the kids pointed at the chair and told me to go over there. So I had to go over to the chair and repeat the rules to them. I taught the lesson from that chair for a few minutes. They were really cute. But I don’t speak Chinese in the classes anymore.
So, one night Cyd and I were walking around our night market and we were going to go say hi to our barber gang, and something was happening there. When we started to walk up to the place we heard yelling. Then everyone on the street started to gather around the barber shop. We saw one lady slap someone and then the crowd got bigger and I couldn’t see what was going on. Cyd and I ended up on the other side of the street eating our street food trying not to stick out to anyone. (Kind of hard when you’re the only white people around). But there was more yelling, then we saw Tony start shoving people out of the shop and O-wen helped get others out of the shop. They closed the door when they got mostly everyone out, people were still yelling inside though. That’s when Cyd and I decided to walk around the block to waste time hoping that the doors would be open by the time we got back. We walked as slow as we could, but when we got there the doors were still closed. Mia spotted us though and came out and sat down at the table and tried to tell us what had happened. She doesn’t know a lick of English so it was hard to translate. What we got out of it, was that Sonny had done a ladies hair straight but the lady wanted it curly… strange, that’s what I thought. Mia stayed outside with us and we talked to each other as much as we could and then the doors opened and people left. Mia told (or motioned) us to go in. We walked in and the environment inside was pretty forlorn. It was SO sad. Everyone’s head was drooped and they were looking at the ground. Usually when we go in it’s so happy and they’re all smiling, but not this time. Marley, Sonny’s wife, was sitting on the couch holding her sleeping baby. She was rocking him back and forth but she was crying, and she wouldn’t stop crying. We felt awful. We didn’t know what had happened, but we found out that the lady had yelled at or hit Marley… something like that (not quite sure) So we went over and gave Marley a hug. But she just still cried so we didn’t know what to do except leave. We said goodbye and started to walk away. I was talking to Cyd about it as we walked away and finally I just said that we had to get her flowers. We walked around the block as quick as we could and found a flower shop. We bought the most beautiful bouquet, didn’t even try to barter for it, and got out of there. We showed up with the flowers and after I ran into the door walking in with them, Marley just started to cry harder. But we could tell she was only crying because she knew that we cared for her. Tony and O-wen had us sit down on the couch and we started to talk. We sat there till 10 at night just talking about every simple thing we could. Mia kept leaving the shop and coming back with food and drinks for us. It was really cute. Cyd and I were both stuffed from eating dinner and a bunch of street food but we still ate all that we possible could. By the end of that night Marley was smiling little kids were running in and out of the shop playing cowboys with me and people were laughing again. I would like to say that was a good accomplishment for me and Cyd.
That night they had invited us to come back and they would cook dinner for us. Well we were more excited when Sonny had asked us to come back, because we knew everyone else liked us we just weren’t sure about Sonny. So it was really exciting when he invited us to come back and have dinner with them. A couple of days later Cyd and I went back. When we got there they had us sit down in the shop. We sat there for two hours talking to any of them that weren’t doing hair. I had my aviators and they were all trying them on and posing. That was way funny. O-wen was looking through Cyd’s translation book and he found the romance section. Now O-wen can speak a decent amount of English but it’s not the best. But him reading some of the romance sentences was a hoot!!! He just got the biggest kick out of it. It really was a “had to be there moment” But after the two hours they invited us outside to eat what Marley had cooked for us. There was shrimp, green beans, mushrooms, a whole fish with eyes and everything, some other fish that had legs and you had to shell, tomato and egg soup, rice, and baozi. It was all really good. Tony decided to put orange soda in his rice… when he saw Cyd and I looking at him in a weird way he giggled and added more. Strange boy. We went back inside and started to talk again. Down the street there is a Karaoke stand that we were hearing. So we tried to get Sonny to go and sing. But he would not. Not at all. So we ended up getting Tony and O-wen to go out and sing. That’s when it turned into a Karaoke night. Cyd and I sang My Heart Will Go On with O-wen. That was fun. Then O-wen sang a Chinese song, which was way adorable. Let me tell ya this, that man can sing! So around ten o-clock Cyd and I started to walk home. It’s about a twenty minute walk from the barber place if the buses stop running. And after 9 they stop running. So anyways… we start walking home and we hear a “HelllllO!” O-wen was running after us. He wanted to walk us home. We told him we thought he was crazy but he insisted. Our twenty minute walk turned into a thirty minute walk. Chinese people walk really slow. While we were talking on our extremely slow walk, we found out he has a picture of a girl for his QQ (Chinese version of MSN messenger) profile picture. So we asked him who is was and he told us he didn’t know, he just found the picture on the internet and copied it. So we asked him why he had a picture of the girl he doesn’t even know and his reply was “Because,… I like… GIRLS!!” It was really hilarious. This Chinese man screaming out “GIRLS!” then crouching down and laughing.
When we got to the school our night guard (the cute night guard) was asleep. So we sat there for a minute deciding whether or not to wake him up. We kind of had to because he needed to open the gate to let us into campus. So we woke him up and we felt awful, just because it was the night shift and this poor guy was tired and accidentally fell asleep on his shift.
Now, Halloween. Our original plan for Halloween was to have our ILP kids walk through our office which we turned into a mini haunted house. Let me just tell you that this office rocked! We had it so it was pitch black, Emileigh would be the guide and shine a flash light on the rest of us so the kids could see us scare them. But first they had to get on their hands and knees and crawl through a tunnel which we made out of our big long office table. Kelan would grab their ankles from outside of the table which was hilarious. Then when they got out of the tunnel they would get up and Ariel would be sitting in the corner with a scream mask on and she would just yell/scream at them, it would freak them out. Then they would walk around the room and come to me, where I was lying on a table all bloody, ripped shorts, and cut up. Thanks to Cyd and her makeup skills, the kids did not even want to pass by me.
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