The Ghetto Blaster



The "ballroom" dancers. Kind of like Zumba.
I'm not sure where the ghetto blaster is.

So the ghetto blaster, they weren't kidding!! Up here on the 12th floor with the windows closed, I can hear the music. And I can understand the lyrics in English!! It's like 90's pop music.

Beilun at night. You can see the dancers on the bball courts.

I think everyone knows that the Chinese stare at us foreigners with our very white skin and our very different hair. But one day when Dana and I were walking through the apartment complex, there was a man walking backwards about 20 yards ahead of us. I know they like to look, but this seems a little extreme. Apparently, he wasn't actually doing it to stare. Dana says a lot of the Chinese in our complex go for evening walks in the gardens, but they have this thing with balance. So on the first half of the walk, they walk normal, and on their way back, they just reverse the whole process.

The school made me 2 giant stacks of business cards. So I am now official! I just don't know what I would do with business cards ...

I taught one of my TAs the words "cranky" and "grumpy" today because some of the kiddos have been way oversleeping nap time, and I get the unhappy consequences. She finally told me that I've been coming in to wake them a full 15 minutes before they're used to. This has been going on for a week and a half!!! Whoops ...

Today was just too perfect. This morning at work time, two of my kiddos decided to dress up as a police officer and a firefighter. They then proceded to hold hands and skip around the classroom. Enter our damsel in distress. My little chica dressed as Snow White noticed a centipede in the classroom and said "Uh oh!". My TA Alice tried squeamishly stepping on it five times, but to no avail. The thing still wriggled. So she went to fetch my other TA. I took the hard police hat (riot police maybe???) and put it on top, like trapping a spider, and waited for my superhero TAs. At first my little firefighter was very upset that his police officer buddy didn't have a hat and he kept trying to pick it up. But then he followed my lead and stood guard over the hat and directed students around it like a traffic cop. Jean came back with a broom and dust pan, and all 3 of us adult women (Alice, Jean, and I) jumped and squeaked everytime Jean made an attempt to sweep the centipede up. Maybe we would've felt braver if we had police and firefighter costumes.