"If you're going through hell ... keep on going!"

I'm not sure if you've ever heard the country song that is the namesake of this blog post, but it's definitely been my theme song for the last 7 days. Despite the housing fiasco ... Lara and I have both kept on going this week, because the school kept on going, and the students kept on coming! So setting apartment ggggggggrrrrrr-ness aside, here's what's up at school!

First, somehow I was duped, hoodwinked, nay, deceived!!!!! (yes I could still be talking about the housing situation, but I'm not) into coaching the middle school boys soccer team. Actually grades 5-7. Now, I love soccer, but one age group I've never worked with would be middle school. And if there is one sect of middle school that I especially don't understand, it's definitely the boys.

And the boys, after learning that I was going to be their coach, shared their mutual confusion with me as well. You see, we don't exactly have the best relationship to begin with. Everyday for recess, they play soccer. And everyday when I blow the whistle to end recess, inevitably something happens (they couldn't hear the whistle, someone kicked it as far as they could ... etc.) that takes the boys 10 minutes to sluggishly tear themselves away from the game, and get in line. I question how they can move so fast during their game, and magically loose their lightning speed the moment they hear my whistle. Now I have a schedule to keep, so if they don't pick the ball up when they hear the whistle, I take it from them. This was fine with them for about two weeks, since they would just bring another ball from home. But after I finally collected all the soccer balls, they started complying when I blew the whistle.

So, Day 1 of practice when I lead the team over to the soccer field (as if it wasn't obvious enough who would be coaching), they asked me, who will be coaching? I said me. They stared, and then there was a flurry of chatter in numerous languages, none of which were English, but I didn't have to understand their words. Their faces said it all. *BUT SHE HATES SOCCER!!!* Bahaha, if only they knew that I think soccer is the best athletic competition in the world! I just hate disrespectful little punks who try to pull crap with me everyday.

Respect for me clearly grew as I started running drills, and showing them the skills they would learn. Having 16 boys, I made it very clear to them that any disrespect or laziness would get them booted from the team. You can say "The End" to any behavior problems. Soccer means the world to them.

There's just two major problems. Problem number one: Asian cultures dislike rain, mud, sweat, and anything that will make them look unpresentable. It's all about face. But of course in soccer you need rain, mud, and sweat for any respectable soccer match (at least in the Pacific Northwest). So many complaints about the rain, so many complaints about being too muddy (and requests to go wash up mid practice), complaints about unsightly bruises (that were barely bruises) and just all around an aversion for running as it messes up their hair and causes sweating (on water breaks they prefer to run to the bathroom to fix their hair and see how they look).

Problem number two: They're boys. There has to be a goal. I set up a simple possession game with two teams, and two all time offense players. So, which ever team has possession of the ball, they will always have two extra players, encouraging them to always look for the open person to pass the ball. I can't tell you how many times the boys asked ... but where's the goal? Where do we shoot? How do we score? ... No goal? But, what's the point? I mentally put my head in my hands and shook it. There's a lot of bad habits I need to undo ... and we're starting with idea that one must go straight to goal, do not pass go, do not pass to a teammate, and do not collect $200. Oy.

In other news, the aversion to rain is not just left for the soccer field. On picture day I had an elf come in frantically first thing and asked if it would still be picture day. I was confused at first, what could've possibly changed today being picture day? You guessed it ... It was raining!!!

And ending on a happy note, a quite excellent quote from that same rain-concerned elf. We were playing that game with yes or no questions as students try to guess what character they are. Elf 1 was Pinocchio, and all she knew was that she was a boy. She asked, "Am I real?" And all the elves said "No!!!" But rain-concerned elf responded in a very positive and encouraging voice, "But you could be!"

:) Made me laugh!

Jett Puppy Update.

Nicknames for Jett:
Baby
Jett puppy
Boba Jett (in reference to Boba Fett in Star Wars)
Jett Pack.
And many many others.

This handsome young man unfortunetly made the trip to get fixed on Valentine's Day, but he wore the *cone of shame* proudly!

Owning a pet dog is a very recent thing in China, maybe the last 10 years. And I think it's more of a mark of looking more Western than it is for love between dog and man. We see so many people just in Li Ren who have no idea how to take care of a dog. Granted, I have no idea how to take care of a dog ... but I do know he needs a warm place to sleep, food and water, medicine, exercise, love, and he NEEDS to stay out of the trash!!!!!!!!!!!!! Lara usually helps me to check his toenails, check to see if he has worms, and shows me how to clean after his Valentine's Day man trauma.

But this is just a small sampling of what happens when our Chinese friends ask about Jett:
Friend: "I saw your roommate yesterday! She was walking Jett."
Me: "Oh was it Kate or Lara?"
Friend: "I'm not sure, she had her hood on. And Jett also had a kind of hat."
Me: "Did it look like this?" *mime the shape of a cone*
Friend: "Yes, just like that! For the rain!"
Me: ".............................................................................."

It was sooo incredibly hard not to laugh. First, it shows the Chinese aversion to rain, the thought that we would get a rain cap for our dog. While we're at it, we should get him a poncho too! And second, I tried to describe what we had done to Jett, but the most I could get across was that he has a cut that we don't want him to lick, so the cone prevents him from doing that.

Neutering in China is not a common thing at all, so it was very hard to explain when I had nothing familiar to reference for them.
Also, picking up poop after your dog just never happens.

Last weekend we took Jett to a "mountain", and by mountain I mean foothill, for a 4 hour hike. I heard no less than 50 terrified screams from children and women at the sight of him. Which is quite laughable considering that Jett was too afraid to even approach the stream to have a drink. He's such a ferocious dog :) People just are not used to seeing dogs out and about with owners.

We get a LOT of stares whenever we take him outside, and we've even been yelled at before for taking him on a bike ride. Apparently we're being cruel to him. Too bad that guy doesn't know that a bike ride is Jett's favorite part of the day! Except for maybe this ...

We feed him in two or three shifts, just so he doesn't gobble it so fast and get the hiccups.

And after the fact.

 

Kampuchea and Kingdom of Thai by Video

When the Chinese celebrate their new year at the Lunar Festival, it is considered the largest form of human migration on the planet since almost every Chinese person travels home to be with family. Foreigners on the other hand head anywhere we hopefully won't be bombarded with fireworks. For Lara and I, that was Kampuchea (Cambodia) and the Kingdom of Thai (Thailand).

But before we were able to leave China, we had a very typical Chinese moment. On the bus to Shanghai, a grandma walked her 2 year old grandson up to the front of the bus, sat him on the stairs, pulled down his pants, and let the kid pee down the stairs. Yup. On the bus. Very typical. The kicker? We were still at the rest stop!

Leaving that behind, we happily left China and spent the next few days being introduced to two different Kampucheas, the old one that was an Empire during the 9th-15th centuries, and the new one, that has spent the last 30 years recovering from genocide.

Our journey started in Phnom Penh with an old Whitworth friend of Lara's who is currently working in the Peace Corps. He gave us a tour of Phnom Penh, the current capital of Kampuchea where we like we were at the true heart of Kampuchea modern life. We arrived so grateful to escape the fireworks, yet we noticed that there were still so many Chinese lanterns. So we asked Lara's friend...
Lara: "Does Kampuchea celebrate Chinese New Year?"
Friend: "Nope. But they do celebrate the Lunar Festival."
This just cracked us up as we shared a look that said, the Chinese follow the lunar calendar so Chinese New Year and the Lunar Festival are the *SAME THING* But we didn't tell him that, we just let it go.

Streets of Phnom Penh as seen through a tuctuc:

After seeing the streets, and meeting the people, and being so pleasantly surprised by how gracious and helpful the Khmer (pronounced Kmy, meaning Cambodians) are, I was very taken aback to learn about their recent history. Despite hearing vague details over the course of my education, I never truly understood how devastating it was. (In case you already know, you may want to skip this paragraph). From 1975-1979, the Pol Pot Regime took over Kampuchea, named it "Democratic Kampuchea" and proceeded to systematically execute all intellectuals in the country while using all others as industrial slaves. It is estimated that about 3 million doctors, professors, politicians and anyone who had a voice were marched to the Killing Fields. It was Nazi concentration camps all over again. All of Khmer culture and education were lost during those years. Ten million landmines were laid, and only half so far have been found... either purposely sought or accidentally detonated by villagers.

A middle schooler's impression of the current state of her country entitled, "A sandglass to the future".

From Phnom Penh, with slightly heavy hearts, we moved up to Siem Reap. Video of the Khmer countryside as we bussed up to Siem Reap:

In Siem Reap, we learned of a totally different Kampuchea...  A confident, dominating Kampuchea which was the Khmer Empire that ruled most of Vietnam, Laos, Siam (currently Thailand), and even Burma (currently Myanmar). As you can see, the region changes boarders and names very frequently. The city Siem Reap actually means "Siam Defeated", and was the site of a key battle to maintain the Khmer Empire. The story of this battle was told through carvings on the walls of my favorite temple, Bayon.

Streets of Siem Reap as seen by mountain bike (sorry, it was really rocky).

The Khmer built their Empire with Angkor as their capitol, and constructed a 402 sq km city with one million people and countless temples. May it be noted that when the temple of Bayon was built, it had characteristics of both Hindu and Buddhist temples, and the people lived peacefully as they saw they could actually share their faiths in one temple. This is what we got to explore by mountain bike with our personal guide, Vireak, a local Khmer. He is so knowledgeable about all the temples, he knows all the myths, stories, history, battles, religions and culture. In 15 minute he gave the most comprehensive lesson on the difference between Buddhism and Hindu (Sorry, Core 150 at Whitworth just didn't quite cut it). And half the time all I can think of is, this man has no grandparents because of the Pol Pot Regime. No one in Kampuchea does. Many like Vireak took up free lodgings at monasteries, worked for the monks, and spent their free time earning an education at the university in order to counter the devastation of the Pol Pot Regime. As we learned from Vireak the history of the city of Angkor, we had a keen sense of where the country started, how they had fallen, and we were looking for signs to see how the country was rebuilding itself.

An Apsara dance show. Young people learn the dances of their ancestors in order to tell their history. This is a fishing dance, meant to be flirtatious.

We spent the days biking through all the old temples. Some we stopped and walked through. Some we just biked by. It would take weeks to truly explore them all.

The temples were widespread throughout the city, so sometimes we just spent time in the countryside.

We had very few breaks those first few days in Kampuchea ... and this is what we discovered on one of those breaks ...

We pulled in to a small village who's entire livelihood is based on growing rice and harvesting palm tree juice. This is a typical house in that village.

On another lunch break, Vireak took us to eat at the river. We didn't realize it was the local swimming hole for the morning shift. These kiddos go to school from 7am - 11am. And then everyday they come here.

After three days of biking, we headed for Thailand, for a little R and R on the beach. We saw more dancing shows, and I've actually tried this type of dance last Chinese New Year!

We fed elephants, sometimes they wanted bananas, sometimes they were more curious about the camera  ...

When we finally got home, we went straight to see Kate and Jett. Kate had taken him to the vet to get neutered, so when we arrived he was wearing the *cone of shame*, poor thing! Sorry the video is a little shakey. Each time I fall over and make a squeak, it means Jett tried to kiss my face.

Safe and Sound in Kampuchea

Did you know that no one in Cambodia will call the country by that name? The name of the country is actually Kampuchea, or more specifically, the People's Republic of Kampuchea. I'm not sure why we never call countries by their real names. It seems the respectful thing to do. Like calling Spain, España or calling China, Zhong Guo. I remember I was mortified when I realized the day before leaving for China the very first time that I had no idea how to call the name of the country I was soon to be in, cause I sure knew they weren't going to be saying China!

Anyways, back to the main idea... Thanks to Lara's phone, I can give you some updates. We arrived a few days ago and spent some time with a Whitworth friend in Phnom Penh who is working for the Peace Corps.

Next we bussed up to Siem Reap which we elected to see by mountain bike. We'll spend the next few days touring Ankor Wat by bike before we head out to Thailand for a little R and R on the beach! Sound like a good plan?

Cooking with Erich(ka)





First, the funnies:

1. Language problems. I don't know how much you would notice from looking at a Chinese character ... sometimes it is just one character, but sometimes one character can be made up of several characters put together. When you take an individual character to combine with another one, it's called a radical.

 

Radicals can actually make learning characters SO much easier. There is a radical that means water, and it appears in all the characters for river, lake, ocean, etc. There is a radical that means animal, and it appears in the characters for cat and dog. So it seems like an excellent way to memorize the meanings of seemingly meaningless shapes and lines. But the next lesson in my book introduced the radical for "stone" which was supposed to be associated with sturdy vocabulary. The first character taught? "Broken". Sometimes Chinese makes SO much sense. And sometimes, it just doesn't! Arrggg!!!

 

 

2. An enlightening conversations with Chen. Chen is one of the owners of Cup of Joe. She sat down and told me she felt terrible. She had taken 12 shots of wine the night before. Yes, shots of wine. It is one of the more frustrating things between foreigners and the Chinese at a business dinner. The Chinese always want to shoot the wine, and think it's super weird that the foreigners sip it. Cue conversation -

Chen: Chinese are bad people. Drink shots. Foreigners are good people. Only drink a little wine.

Me: Well, it's not about good or bad. I think foreigners really like to enjoy the wine. So we sip it *I mime sipping*

Chen: *Uncontrollable laughter* (apparently sipping is so ridiculous she couldn't breathe from laughter)

Me: I like to enjoy it. Drink it slow. If I drink so fast, then there is no more.

Chen: No problem! Here! *Chen mimes pouring another shot of wine and then insists that I shoot it* There is always more!

Me: *Bangs head on table*. So not the point!!!

 

3. Alrighty, Cooking with Erich(ka). I have to say Erich(ka) because all the Chinese staff can't pronounce English words that have a consonent at the end, so they always add a vowel.

 

Erich does a BBQ every Sunday nght, and I've decided that I need to learn how to prepare food. The first thing was making shrimp ... 

 

 

 

EEEWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!  I have to do what? Take their heads off???!!!! AND their legs???????!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

But Erich was super proud because I clearly got over it. Although my hands smelled like shrimp for 3 days.


 

Next came drinking beer. I thought Erich was kidding, but we had to get rid of a little beer before we put this handsome chicken on the can.



 

Next came prepping for the fajitas!!!



 

Look at all this beautiful food! It took us about 6 hours. But I learned to deep fry shrimp, and spice and cook a chicken! Woot!!



Chinese New Year

First ... a look at our school's decoration! Yay Taiwanese moms! They are AWESOME.

Next, a look at our own decorations: "Linky the 100 Caterpillar and his Ocean Island Habitat". As ara says, this is one of those projects where the teacher clearly took a step back and let all the ideas coming from the students!

However absurd, the judges noted that they did put in a lot of hard work (a good five days of lessons!) and awarded Grade 2 an Honorable Mention! Woot, the only one in school.

First Place: Grade 1 - 100 ways to make 100 (pictures of them creating 100 in different ways)
Second Place: Kindergarten - 100 people (illustrations of people they know at home or school)
Third Place: 6th Grade: 100 origami cranes (Kate's class made 100 pieces of origami to hang from her door.


For our actual celebrations, the students got to do some cooking, my elves made egg rolls, and then after that they got some carmalized suckers that this guy who drew in liquid honey in about 10 seconds.

Last we had an assembly. All of our grades studied a different form of Chinese art to share. I ended up sharing my camera with 2 four year olds. The first one took this picture, the second is modeling in it.

 

 

Needless to say, it was difficult getting all the video I wanted during a 2 hour assembly with 2 four years olds on my lap. But here were the two favorite performances by far: (check back later for video, internet has been sketchy)

 

5th graders on Chinese Yoyos

 

 

 

 

 

Our ELL teacher Line singing Beijing Opera accompanied by the principals's secreatry Shirley with 4th and 5th grade girls.