Jade Monkey is the Guest of Honor

Yesterday was Saturday.  I hung around in the early afternoon to get some things done (paperwork for evaluations, laundry, etc.) and then at 3:00 I met my homeroom class at the main gate to Campus, as we had arranged after class on Friday.  Most of them showed up, so there was a crowd of us, and we had our picture taken together in front of the gate (a famous place to get your picture taken here).  One of the students has a sister (which makes me wonder, with the one child only policy) who owns a bar, so she offered it to us for the afternoon.  The funniest thing was finding a small fleet of taxis to drive us to the place.  So we managed to find four red taxis and caravaned about 10-15 minutes to the bar. 
 
Taxi drivers in China would scare your hair straight.  But despite the seeming chaos they always get you there safely.  The unwritten rules of the road are such that it's always the responsibility of  the person behind you to get out of the way.  This means that no matter if you're in a car, taxi, bus or bicycle, you do what ever you need to: swerve into the other lane, etc...   Cars and taxis honk their horns constantly, sort of as an announcement "I'm here"  as well as to say "out of my way!"  It's an interesting system, to say the least!
 
So we arrived at the bar, which turned out to be very tiny.  The name of the place was "the Only" bar.  THey had the small room arranged with tables lined up in an "L" shape with tables clothes, votive candles, pitchers of beer on ice with lemon, and the students brought tons of snacks, sodas, juices and teas.  Of course most of the afternoon was dedicated to karaoke, and there some English songs which I was expected to sing.  I managed - the students were thrilled to have me singing in their midst.
 
The bar owner pulled out a couple games of Jenga, so we had fun playing that in between songs and just sort of hanging out.  I had to sort of float between two groups of students so no one felt left out.  THere's the more vocal group and the quieter group, of course.
 
After a while, Jane, the student with the best English and most leadership ability, asked to have music played so we could dance.  Now I kid you not, this was like an 8th grade dance, I swear.  These college kids are NOT like college kids in America.  The culture demands that they don't begin dating until after they graduate from COLLEGE, but many of them ignore this rule.  But by and large they are very innocent and sweet.  In their innocense, though, they are less ashamed to try things out, so surprisingly after about 5 minutes the guys started dancing.  The girls dance like teeny boppers from 1956, though.  It's so cute!
 
Because they are doing some play for the video we're making together (another story for a later blog entry), they wanted to know how to slow dance.  So I taught them the waltz and the two step (as best I can, I'm no expert for sure).  They enjoyed this tremendously.
 
After about 3 hours, we moved our party to a nearby restaurant, where we had "hot pot".  Hot pot is a huge metal bowl divided in half, boiled over hot plates set into the tables, and they bring raw veggies, fish, tofu and meat to put into the boiling soups. One is extremely spicy (more spicy than Korean food) the other is mild, sort of an onion broth.  It's delicious, but terribly hot (boiling!). 
 
From there I returned to the hotel for the evening, after about 5 and a half hours of partying with my students.  But first we agreed to meet again, and one of them is starting a website with all the pictures from our party.  I'm not sure if I can link it to the blog, because it's through Wuhan Univ. website and I think you need a registration code to access it.  But I'll see what I can do.
 
So my first social foray with my students was a great success, and I only regret that we waited this long to hang out.  In many ways I wish I could stay here longer.  That's what always happens to me - I become attached to my students.  Same thing happened in Korea.  Speaking of which, I heard from one of my middle school girls in Korea the other day.  She's in high school now.  It was so great to hear from her.  I keep thinking that if I do go overseas again, I'd like to return to Korea and teach at a university.  We'll see what Don has to say about that!  I think he would love Korea, but who knows.
 
Until next time, zai jian!

Sent Sun, 1 Aug 2004 03:41:49 +0100 (BST)
By the way -- she's sent pictures! I'll post them as soon as I can get them down to a manageable size. --D