A Very Happy Chinese Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! from China...

Well it is safe to say that this Thanksgiving holiday was the most interesting Thanksgiving I have ever experienced.  There were so many different things that made this Thanksgiving a very special and fascinating holiday.  Lets first start with the students….

The Students

For the entire week I gave all of my freshman classes the same Thanksgiving lesson.  I thought that all of the kids would definitely enjoy a change of pace from the listening lessons that they are accustomed too (I was definitely right about that).  

The lesson included a brief video about the history of Thanksgiving and some of the traditions that we practice in America.  I then showed the students a powerpoint with more information about various traditions that we had in America on Thanksgiving.  But the best part of the whole lesson was showing them the food.

Turkey:  They all knew what the turkey was and when the picture came on the screen they all yelled in unison "TURKEY!!!!!!!!" followed by "OOOOOOO" and "AHHHHHHH".  Very funny.

Stuffing:  They were baffled to say the least.  Most students looked at the picture in disgust and said, "What is that? Meat? Ew. It looks gross."  I then proceeded to tell them that it was one of my favorite dishes.  They just looked at me very suspiciously.  I told them it was basically tiny bits of bread with some different vegetables like celery and onions mixed in.  They didn't understand what was so good about it at all… anyway, on to the next…

Mashed Potatoes:  "It's a bowl of milk? Why do you have a bowl of milk on Thanksgiving?"  Then some students would realized its potatoes and exclaim at the top of their lungs, "IT'S POTATOES!!!! But why do they look like that?" I then had to explain that they were mashed potatoes and that we crushed them into a creamy sort of substance.  I told them they were delicious and that we could eat them easily with a spoon.  They were skeptical…

Gravy:  Loved the response to this picture.  "Coffee? You have a bowl of coffee on the table?" To which my response was, "We cover our food in this sauce.  Do you think we would pour coffee all over our food?" The students reacted by saying, "ewwww. No.  I hope that you don't."  I explained that it was gravy and that I loved gravy because it was delicious and salty.  They didn't understand.

The Full Plate:  I then showed them a picture of what a full plate of food on Thanksgiving looks like.  The stared at the picture and their mouths were watering.  All of the students went "OOOOOOOO" and "AHHHHH" followed by "TEACHER, I'M SO HUNGRY." It was hilarious. 

After all of the food pictures I told the students about Thanksgiving with my family and that we typically had about 27 people at our Thanksgiving dinner.  They were absolutely stunned.  I explained that we had A LOT of food.  

Giving Thanks:  I explained that Thanksgiving is all about giving thanks to the things you have in your life and to any special people, such as friends and family.  I got some awesome responses when I asked them what they were thankful for….

"I'm thankful for my parents for bringing me up" was the most common response.

"I'm thankful for all of my disadvantages in life," and I was just thinking to myself, "What? Why? Maybe you don't understand." But they continued to say, "because these disadvantages make me stronger as a person."  Okay maybe they do understand.  A lot of students said things like this.  I was surprised.

The students also decided to get me some gifts or cards for the holiday.  It was extremely nice of them and it made me feel very happy.  I know that the students like me a lot because they tell me all the time; however, the cards that I got from the students and some of the gifts were really touching.  It made me feel very happy to actually be a teacher.

This is one note from a Freshman class:

The note was very sweet.  I love this class.  A lot of very good students.  One of the students is extremely dedicated and comes to me all the time to improve his English skills.  I also decided everyone in this class gets an A… because of this letter…. I can do that right?

The ABSOLUTE best thing came from a junior student in my Western Etiquette class.  The student is probably the best student in the class.  She is extremely dedicated to learning English and she speaks it very well. She sent me this email:  

 Hi Jono, thanks for your information about etiquette this semester. To be frank, at the beginning of the course, I was arrogant, wondering how something like etiquette could be taught for the whole semester. However, it turns out that by taking your class, I realized that I had been provincial. Etiquette has a lot of details, manners, and meanings to be disscussed. Besides, the course gave me a clearer understanding of some certain manners than what I've heard before, like the etiquette of using a phone.

     I've tried to prepare a gift for you a week ago - Autographes of Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh, as your favourite sport is golf. However, so far I havn't received any reply. ( is that because America is too far from here?) For Woods, I sent a message to his employees to ask for an autograph on his official website, and for Vijay I sent a letter to the address mentioned on his website about how fans could get his autograph. Hope I could receive his reply soon. In addition, since Facebook and Twitter is not available in China, it is difficult to get direct contact with them.

     Anyway, I've learned how to behave more properly in your class, and hope you enjoy this Thanksgiving in China.

This was easily the greatest email I have ever received in my entire life.  It was also the nicest thing that any student has ever tried to do for me.  I had to explain to Wendy that getting their autographs was very difficult to do and that to actually get one, people would have to pay a lot of money.  I didn't want her to spend a ridiculous amount of money on a gift for me.  

The students are extremely sweet.  I got a lot of different gifts, cards, and special performances from my students to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday.  I love my students, they are amazing.

A Thanksgiving Dinner? Well, something like it….

The administration prepared a Thanksgiving meal for the foreign teachers.  It was…. ummm… interesting…

They had a Turkey…

At least we think it was a turkey? I'm not totally sure.  Might have been a goose.  Nevertheless, the WHOLE bird was cooked.  So it included the head…

We also had some mashed potatoes along with bread and butter.  It was a pretty decent meal.  Nothing like a Thanksgiving meal in America.  I was very happy for them to have done this.  We ate dinner with the director of foreign affairs as well as the president of the school.  It was very nice.

Our Own Twist on Thanksgiving

Our Chinese teachers had come up with the brilliant idea of making our very own dumplings to celebrate Thanksgiving.  I absolutely love dumplings, so of course, I was game.  

We got all of the ingredients the weekend before and the day after Thanksgiving we finally got an opportunity to make our own dumplings.  YES!

The vegetable mix (left) and the pork mix (right)

And the rolling party begins...

 I was pretty damn good at rolling dumplings… Extreme concentration…

So. Many. Dumplings.

The finished product… Pretty damn good if I say so myself.

Time to eat… yummmmmmmm

These dumplings were so good.  I must have eaten 30 of them in total.  We also had some mashed potatoes, green beans, lots of beer, and some really good whiskey that our friend brought.  It was an awesome meal.  Good food, good people, couldn't ask any better way to spend a Thanksgiving in China.

While our Thanksgiving was very fun and unique, it really did make me miss America.  I wanted to spend time with my family and friends very badly.  I wanted to eat traditional Thanksgiving food.  However, I can't complain about our Thanksgiving situation.  

Thank you for reading and I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well!

Jono

Well... I'm Engaged Now...

Okay, so, I'm not actually engaged.  However, I did attend a single's event this past weekend...  It was quite an experience to say the least.  The girl who was hosting the event invited me to it (not as someone she was interested in dating... I hope...).  I met her at English corner and she invited me to the event.  I didn't even know that it was a singles event until I actually got there.  She told me that it was just going to be barbecue, of course I said yes.  Chinese bbq is pretty damn good.

I brought the other foreign teachers with me because there was no way in hell I was rolling solo to this event.  Upon our arrival we were finally told that it was a single's event.  A single's event is basically an event where a lot of the Chinese students can meet their special someone.  When we were told what the event actually was we were a little freaked out.  We really were not there for that reason, we just wanted some delicious bbq.

The event first started off with some mingling games, which we participated in.  But because we could not speak Chinese very well we were soon out of the game (thank god).

In this game we basically had to get 5 people to stand on a sheet of paper.  Everyone was standing really close to each other as you can see, which was good for mingling.  We were obviously the first people out of this game, so we immediately made our way towards the beer.  

Finding the beer made the bbq immensely better.  I was extremely hungover that day, so the beer was really nice.  As you can tell, I really need a haircut....

All of the students were still playing the game so we just kind of hung out and helped set up some of the barbecues, and drank beer of course.  I was getting really excited to eat.  They had soooo much food there.  

They had all sorts of different vegetables and various other meats.  The thing that I was excited for was the lamb that they were cooking over a giant fire.  It was really cool to watch them cook the lamb this way.  They also threw a bunch of sweet potatoes in the fire when they first started cooking the lamb.  I honestly had no idea what they were putting into the fire, but I knew it was some sort of vegetable.  The sweet potatoes sat in the fire for like 3 hours.  I had no idea how a sweet potato could even sit in a fire for so long, but I guess that's the Chinese way.

Here is a picture of the sweet potato when it was finished:

It actually tasted really good.  And as I said, it sat in the fire for like three hours....

We talked to a lot of the students for a while.  Some of the students there spoke English very well.  It honestly seemed like a really long English corner.  All of the students asked the same questions that we hear at English corner: Where are you from? Why are you in China? Do you like China? How is it different than America? Do you have a girlfriend? Do you want a girlfriend? Etc...

We were also in a beautiful area to have a bbq.  It was right next to the river.  We had a huge area set up where we could all hang out.  Here are some pictures of the scenery:

It was a beautiful day for a barbecue.  The weather was absolutely perfect.  It's usually very overcast in Pengshan.  It never gets too cold.  The last picture shows our chefs for the night.  Chinese BBQ is very different than the American style BBQ.  Usually in Chinese BBQ there aren't even chefs cooking up a large portion of meat.  At Chinese barbecues they set up a few smaller barbecues and everyone cooks their own food.  Typically they have a ton of food that has been cut into smaller portions.  It takes a very long time for the BBQ to actually be over.  Because everything that you are cooking is so small it takes a very long time.  But that gave us more time to drink beer, and also eat amazing food.  

So those are the tiny little barbecues that they use.  You can only cook a few things at a time with them.  It didn't really seem to bother anyone though.  It actually worked out very well, other than it was the most poorly organized way to bbq.... People would have to wait until they could find room around a bbq to actually cook their food.  We finally got some room around a bbq and joined a few girls who could barely speak English.  They couldn't help but to just giggle and stare at us.  They helped us cook our food.  And by help I mean they picked up everything I was cooking and basically threw it away....  Then they cooked some food for us...  It was pretty hilarious.  I basically just burned everything that I was cooking.  It was kind of difficult....

After four hours or so, the lamb was finally ready.  I was stoked.

Of course there was absolutely no light by the time that the lamb was finished.  The chefs relied only on cell phone light in order to cut the meat into tiny pieces, really safe....  The meat was unreal though.  It was probably some of the best lamb that I have ever had in my entire life.  Because we were foreigners we got the first serving of lamb... Couldn't complain about that.  

After the meal was over, the fire that was used for cooking the lamb was turned into a giant bonfire.  All of the students gathered around the bonfire and we were not sure what was about to happen.  I was finished with my food, finished with my beer, I thought it would be a good opportunity to go and pee before anything happened.  Of course as soon as I start walking I get called out and the host of the event asks me to sing a song...

The Chinese sing all the god damn time.  Any opportunity they get to sing songs with each other, they do it.  So I was called out to sing a song in front of about 50 Chinese students.  I was really excited....

Obviously you can see that I still have a "Damn it.  Really? I have to sing a song right now" kind of look on my face.  But I sang anyways.  As you can see all of the students took the opportunity to take a picture of the waiguoren teacher sing a song.  I sang Good Riddance by Green Day, the students loved it.  Thanks to Devin for taking the picture.  

The students also played some sort of song/train game.  We of course participated in the game.

As expected, all of the foreign teachers had to sing a song.  The last picture is of Devin singing a song for the students.  Hate to say it, but mine was totally better.... Devin would probably disagree, but whatever.

The single's bbq was a great time.  We had a lot of fun at the event.  The food was spectacular, people were friendly, and we got free beer.  No complaints from me.  And just to reassure my parents... I AM NOT ACTUALLY ENGAGED.  

Thanks for reading,

Jono