Knee How Ma?

Some of you will remember this kid from my last post:

"Ms. L, your Chinese isn't very good."

So I've been practicing even more than usual.
- Riri lent me a book that is basically Chinese MadGab called "Knee how ma", which is the phonetic spelling of "Ni hao ma" meaning "how are you?". It's a whole book of Chinese phrases written in English words. My favorite one is "You're welcome" which is "Bu ke qi" which is pronounced "Book itchy". Now that can never be unlearned!
- I picked up a really old grammar book from Cup o Joe. It's been the most helpful thing, tying all the strings of random Mandarin knowledge together. The coffee shop is cool like that. They have a lending library shelves of all sorts of books and dvds.
- I've been working on Chinese characters because of all the darn homophones. One guy was really impressed I'm bothering with the characters, but I responded by complaining that I'm really not learning useful characters. The first one on was list is "mountain". Really? How often am I going to see the word "mountain" written on signs as I walk the streets? I can think of many more common words that I would more likely recognize and actually use. Wouldn't you know, not 45 minutes later, June made a comment after seeing that I had copied my name in Chinese characters into my work book. Mountain is one of the characters in my name. I had no idea. And if you're really curious, the characters that make up Kari are: stuck, king, mountain, but.

I'm also working on the culture notes.
- I picked Alice's brain about what it's like to go home for Chinese New Year. It sounds like a week long superbowl game, just replace football with fireworks. She says the family makes about 28 different dished that you pass around, and you just eat and eat and eat the whole week. You're expected to eat from each dish. She also says in order to show wealth, the families will make every kind of meat dish possible, even though people typically eat mostly vegetables. So they stuff themselves the whole week with meat and feel sick because their bodies aren't used to it.
- Travelling over Chinese New Year is supposed to be a nightmare. The infrastructure can't handle the whole population going on pilgrimages to their home town. And I learned at international quiz night that in 1988, China had exactly zero expressways. This is also the first year that the people have been allowed to purchase train and bus tickets online. So many of the younger people got tickets, while the older less tech savvy people went to the stations only to find all the tickets had already sold out.
- There is a community group here that helps the foreign experts adjust to Chinese culture and feel more welcome. According to an email sent to all staff today, this group would like to welcome us into the New Year by giving us a big FU. I'm proud to say that I was the only colleague who did not read that as "Eff You" at first glance. Fu is a Chinese word meant to bring good luck. The group would like to come to our apartments and decorate our doors with FU. We can't stop laughing. Pictures to come soon.

Cafeteria food:
- Today the cafeteria served spaghetti with red sauce, beef stew, and steamed vegetables. None of the TAs would eat it. I was surprised to see them all go hungry. It's a long day with kids, and usually I need a full row of brownies minimum to keep up my energy level. Wendi said the food was "too American" for them today. So they left and got KFC delivered instead. Oh if they only knew the irony.
- Another thing they served was what appeared to be a roll cut in half with cream cheese. Wendi soon told me with a disgusted face that it was whip cream. We think they maybe saw a picture of a bagel with cream cheese, and just assumed with was whip cream. I guess that mistake has also been made with baked potatoes and what was supposed to be sour cream.
- I had to watch my kids carefully today because we also had strawberries. I often forget that this could the first time they experience different types of food, so I wanted to makes sure they didn't eat the green part of the strawberry, not that it would kill them. But one time one of my kiddos popped the whole hard boiled egg into his mouth and started to bite, not realizing he had to peel it first. Eating is always a learning experience.

Kari Points:
This is a game that Jessi and Kirk created. It comes from the time when I used to live with Lara and Jessi and I would lose everything in our apartment. Not that it was messy, we lived with Lara :), but I would place things, like my keys, in random illogical places. The girls would either take a mental note, or move the keys to a more prominent place in the apartment where I was more likely to find them again on my own without having to ask. So, if you can find whatever I lost before I do, you get a Kari point. This has become especially fun in the classroom (most often I set my coffee cup down somewhere) because my TA Jean is always the one to get the Kari point, and she doesn't even speak English. I feel like that's the ultimate Kari point, because I never even have to say, "Now where did I put my [insert inanimate object here]". She just knows. She sees me wandering around looking confused and directs me to my precious lost thing. Today she directed me to Wendi's classroom where I found my kindle. I'm not sure how she knew that was the exact missing object I was pursuing. She just knows!