Keeping it Classy

On Saturday we had a going away party for one of our school families with all the students from the school. It was supposed to be an amazing race of games throughout Li Ren Gardens, but it turned into the amazingly rained out race in the gym, so I went to support and help supervise. The final dinner party was at Cup of Joe. I'm not a huge fan of drinking with the students and parents from the school, but I did bring my PG *extra classy* soda can of 4% Chardonnay, a fun gift from Dana that tasted more like white grape juice than anything else :) It was a good conversation starter, but when I went to open the can, I popped the top... and nothing happened. I just stared at it, there was no hole to drink from. One of the older teachers just cracked up, and in a very amused way said, "Welcome to the 70's!" He then explained that I had to pull the top completely off in order to drink it.  Apparently this is the way soda cans USED to open. Oh China, keeping it old school. Of course after that there were many wise cracks about how I'm old fashioned enough to knit, but not enough to know how to open a proper soda can.

Keeping with the *extra classy* theme, as families and students left, the mom that we threw the party for insisted on giving me a bottle of wine to share with the other teachers, I think for helping out so much when things didn't go as planned with the rain. She didn't have any glasses though, so she gave me paper cups to pass around. When it came time to leave, I poured what was left of the wine into my paper cup and took it to go! China is cool that way. Even better, we used the underground maze of the parking garages to walk home out of the rain. I didn't even know they were all connected down there! Learn something new every day I guess, for example, it's perfectly acceptable to walk the tunnels of the parking garages with my to go paper cup of wine!

Yesterday I had a great lesson introducing Chinese New Year, since I think this is the first year most of them will remember. I didn't actually read the book, we just looked at the pictures and described all the ways the families were celebrating. When we got to the fireworks, the boys didn't know what they were called, just that they go BOOM at night. Well.. they're supposed to, but I more often hear fireworks during the day. We went over all the new English vocabulary, and then I told them we were going to make lanterns for the festival like we saw in the book. Of course, in the end, after following my instructions, the boys thought the lanterns made better animals tales, and kites than Chinese New Year lanterns. "Look, Ms. L, I'm a monkey! Now I'm a dog. Now I'm a horse!" Well, they followed the lesson, and then made it their own. What can you do?

Later as we're packing up, the perfect opportunity for review arises. Fireworks! Lots of them, oh yes, at 3:25 pm. Again, I most often hear them during the day. They were close too. Sometimes it's like you can feel the explosions.
Me: "What is that noise you hear? It's from our Chinese New Year book!"
Elf: "Bad guys! Bad guys coming!!!"
Me: *facepalm for my failed vocabulary lesson*

So we're sitting in Riri's apartment, switching from Mandarin lesson to Mad Men Monday/Finer Things Club, and we've been smelling smoke for about 15 minutes. Finally I say, "So ... that smoke smell isn't getting any better." And it's not the you've-burnt-your-dinner smell, it's the something's-on-fire smell. Sure enough, when we go out to the landing, the air is visibly smokey. We make sure the family on that floor from our school isn't home, and we start to make our way down the stairs where we find another family from school hanging out on their landing on the 17th floor, so we do the most sensible things we can do, chill with them on the landing. It's still smokey, but less so. Observation: I feel like in the US, the protocol for seeing smoke is leaving the building. In China, you hang out and wait. Even having actual smoke could still be a false alarm. All of us except John, the smart one, who continued going downstairs. At this point we're joking about how the fire alarm goes off all the time EXCEPT when there is actually smoke, and we wait to hear from our board member from the 15th floor since she can actually speak with the guard station. She comes to report that some dingbat on the 3rd floor decided to boil herbs and leave her apartment for an hour, but she forgot to add water before she left. They opened all the windows and doors to her apartment, and that's why we got inundated with smoke. Cool, kinda false alarm, but no reason to walk down the next 17 flights of stairs. We head back and wait for John, and he has a different story. He met up with another teacher heading down, and when they got to the 11th floor, there actually was a small fire on the landing with several locals jumping up and down and pointing. Our other teacher got a bucket of water, doused the flames, glared at the locals, and walked back up stairs. What are the chances of 2 fires in one night?? And NO fire alarm? I always thought it would be an incompetent foreigner who would burn down our building (mainly me, I suck at electronics here), but I guess it's the locals we have to worry about.