Celebrities, Crowds, Cheesecakes and Poptarts

Intro

I realise that it has been quite a long while (or so it seems to me) since I have wandered into my blogger thoughts. So much has happened in the past few weeks I feel as though two months have gone by in an instant. I know that Boxing Day morning might feel like an odd time to venture into what is sure to be an excruciatingly long blog (aha..suckers!) but since we are where we are, the only Christmas box we have here is the box of Kellogg's Poptarts Andrea surprised me with yesterday morning! How great is that? Poptarts!! And not just any poptarts, I'm talk'n blueberry with white frosting and sprinkles on top! They went perfect with the coffee and Baileys we were putting back when we awoke on Christmas. I just wish I had a bit more Baileys left...it went by way too quickly. I bet a few warm cups would make me start to write quite a bit faster! I always tend to get a little 'smarter' after a few mugs of that stuff! Now, where to begin........

Celebrities

Celebrities:

Ah yes, a few weeks ago, some of the rumours I had heard regarding being a working foreigner in China came through in fine style! Before coming here I had read of many stories of individuals being asked to do lots of promotional work for a variety of people, places and reasons. This was our week! It all started on the evening of the 14th, when I came home early from school to treat Andrea with some take-out BBQ from the popular little shop down the street. We were a day behind celebrating our four month anniversary being in China. After Andrea arrived home an hour or so later, we had just started our mouth-watering feast when the phone rang. Jecci, a girl we work with, was calling on behalf of our principal (Hansen), instructing us to quickly return to the school for some sort of advertising thing. Her description of the task was less than vague and we could only guess that perhaps we were being asked to be the subjects of a few photos for Kid Castle and maybe answer a few promotional questions for the company. We dropped our chicken legs and ran off back to school. When we got there, Hansen was standing there with one of my student's mothers...we were clueless as to what was going to happen next. When Hansen informed us that we were going out to drink some tea, I immediately thought that she was likely a rich lady who wanted some extra shmooze time to discuss the progress of her child. The thought of it turned me off because all we could think of was our cooling dinner back home. Much to our surprise, they had a car waiting to whisk us off to God-knows-where. As we headed into the city, we rode along with Hansen, Shawn's mother, and who I'm guessing is her husband's parents. The car was almost as big as a small limo and Hansen's poor English continued to leave us blind as to our destination. The time was nearing 9:30pm and we still had no idea where we were going! Finally after about fifteen minutes on the road, we pulled up to a flashy new place on what seemed like a slightly deserted development property. As they escorted us inside and up the stairs, we couldn't help but notice how unfinished the building appeared, and the lack of staff working anywhere within it. At the top of the stairs, we finally clued into the fact that something unique was happening here. We peered into a large room filled with bright lights, businessmen and young ladies dressed in old gowns. We were about to star in our first commercial!! Hansen had officially pimped our services out to be the poster patrons of this brand new fine tea and reflexology spa! It turned out that Shawn's father is actually a co-owner of the building and I guessed we had made a good impression on them! I just wish we could have had prior warning...there we stood; me in my Lancer sweater and Andrea in her Kid Castle gear! I'm sure we hardly reflected the classy clientelle they hope to attract to this place. Only after meeting another foreigner there, a British man in his 50s named Robert, did we get the full gist of our tasks. All we had to do was sit in these nice chairs and become part of an ancient tea serving ritual famous throughout the time of the Tang Dynasty. For ten minutes we tasted the tea, smiled for the cameras, and listened intently to the description of the serving methods by this sweet girl wearing a purple silk dress. She had her shpiel down pat but unfortunately we could hardly understand a word she was saying. The tea was excellent by the way. The foot massage segment however, was forfeited for a different part focussing on Andrea, Robert and I saying a few words to the camera proclaiming our amazement with the establishment. I even added in a few Chinese words for added flair!! It was an interesting experience and one that we will never forget. The spa offered us gifts aswell for our services; one being a VIP pass to be picked up the next time we go there, and two was a couple packages of really famous, expensive tea that Hansen informed us is the same tea the Chinese astronauts drink in space! How cool is that? What a random night. We came back home within a few hours to find our chicken and bread still mildly warm...or maybe that was just the inch of cumin topping that never ceases to make our mouths go numb! We have yet to see ourselve on T.V but we will try a little harder to look. The past few weeks have been so crazy that we haven't watched too much television...what we do watch is pingpong and lots of it ?I'm going to be deadly when I get home so my sisters better watch out, their reign is over!




The following Friday became our second 15 minutes of fame when we spent our afternoon at a public school in a nearby neighbourhood. Hansen once again offered up our services to the principal of this school, to act as special-guest, foreigner judges for the school's annual English speaking competition. This time Hansen was able to offer us a few days notice and even acknowledged paying us for our time spent. We were a little nervous as Andrea, Tina and I walked to the school, because we had absolutely no idea what to expect and Tina had never been their either. We were a little relieved to see the school was for young children which we have come to really enjoy teaching at Kid Castle. Dealing with youngsters requires very little stress as they are always making us laugh! When we walked into the school the children in the court yard instantly started yelling out their courageous 'Hello's and followed us up the stairs like a large giggling mass of groupies! Everytime I gave a kid a nod or a Hello or a wink, all their friends would laugh and make a little spectacle of that individual! Andrea and I have never been judges before, at least not that we can really remember, so seeing all of the children who were performing; looking so nervous, dressed up nice and caked with makeup, we quickly realised how important this competition was to the kids and their families. Our task included judging the 10 groups on their introductions, performances, and finally their ability to answer questions created by Andrea and myself. Such question ranged from 'what is your favourite colour' to 'what do you most like about China or Christmas'. The ages varied from 5 years old to 10 or 11, all competing against eachother! It's amazing to see how some very young kids can speak with relative fluency compared with the older grades...it all depends how demanding their parents are in finding a successful English private school such as ours. Many of our Kid Castle students are the best English speakers in their public school...that's makes us feel pretty darn proud! One of my senior students was actually a member of the winning group that day. Our afternoon concluded with a request from the MC (an English teacher within the school) for Andrea and I to get up and say a few words. This totally took us by surprise and we scrambled to come up with something to say. We explained how honoured we were to be judging such a great group of talented students, and how events such as this make the adventure of coming here so much more memorable. We also decided to offer our superb rendition of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer! I think this was the biggest hit with the children, and the principal must have been very impressed aswell because he ended up paying us double what we were originally expecting! Looking back, we had nothing better to do that day, we would have done it for free! Tina did a wonderful job as our acting camera lady!

The Christmas Concert!

What an interesting weekend! A week ago Sunday was the culmination of the past many weeks in which the Chinese teachers had been eagerly, albiet stressfully, preparing the many volunteer children for the second annual Kid Castle Christmas concert. I think the best part of last weekend was actually getting both Saturday and Sunday off of work; Saturday for final rehearsal and Sunday for the feature presentation. On Saturday afternoon Hansen shoved us (quite literally) into cabs in the middle of rush hour traffic, taking route towards the Huashan Theater. We sure what to expect of this place, and no one else really did either. Last year's concert was held in a jammed-pacted, tiny conference hall. This years exhibition would be radically different. The theater was gigantic. It seated around one thousand people and even had a mammoth balcony section. Unfortunately it was quite obvious that the place had been lacking a substantial amount of funding for upkeep. I assume that it's not used all that much. The impression we got was nothing less than the Royal Alexandra meets sub-1950. We had to chuckle at the thought of actually filling all of the seats for something like this show. Who could know, maybe we would be surprised! We weren't surprised. Sunday afternoon came and the hall began to fill. When the time came to begin the concert, I would guess that maybe around 400 people were there, which is by all means still a fantastic feat. I admit I didn't see many of my senior students there that day...they're way too 'cool' for a Christmas concert! But there were many more smiling, excited young kids both in the crowd and on the stage. Lucy (an S7 senior) and Sharon (a J2 junior), along with Joey, Andrea and myself began the show by introducing ourselves and welcoming the audience. It was fun being up there in front of all of those people and surprisingly I didn't feel the least bit nervous! Andrea, Lucy, Sharon and I then did a quick skit where Andrea and I sang 'We wish you a Merry Christmas' as the girls sat on our stomachs pretending to have our legs. It was quite amusing but a little tiring, our voices cracked a few times! From there the show began and lasted for a couple hours. There was lots of dancing and even some dialogue from Finding Nemo. Ivy and Jecci also directed the final act which was a shortened edition of Snow white..complete with all of the seven dwarfs! In between acts, Amy, Sophie, Andrea, Joey and I (now dressed as Santa Clause of course) went out on stage and drew names for the giant Kid Castle raffle then offered gifts to the students in the audience..this actually took a long time and was a little annoying to witness but I'm sure it wasn't for the winners. Two lucky students even went home with DVD players! You can bet this assured their futures at Kid Castle...Hansen did some good bribing of parents that day! During the show there was also an English singing competition which was being judged by the Chairman of Kid Castle in China. He must have made the flight from Shanghai for the event, so Hansen and Blanca were both stressed and twitchy all afternoon. The girls were all ready to quit I think! The show ended with myself, as Santa, handing out candy to a few hundred noisy, anxious kids who couldn't form a proper line if their lives depended on it! I was as generous as I could with the chocolate and I know many kids went home very happy with their hauls! But this was just the beginning of our adventures on this wacky Sunday!

Upon wrapping up and leaving the hall, as a way of avoiding paying for taxis to bring us back to the school, Hansen led the large group of staff a few blocks down the street to catch a bus. It was a tough walk due to all of the building reconstructions because the dust was thick and the air resembled that of an old coal mining town. The bus was hilarious. Here the cheapest buses are tiny mini-buses not much larger than big vans that have no heat or air-conditioning. These buses tend to usually be fairly full as a relatively simple way to save a few yuan. The bus Hansen hailed was almost full and he was bound and determined that we were all going to get on, no matter what. We were all standing and Joey was nervous the bus was going to make him sick. There must have 40 people on a bus designed for 20 or 30 at the very most. A clautrophic's hell. I felt bad for the people on the bus who had to walk through our 'guantlet' to get to the exit. Andrea, Tina, Ivy and I ended up getting off a few blocks early and walking. I'm sure we were a funny site to anyone standing at a bus stop! As long as Hansen saved his pennies that's all that matters right?! Perhaps Hansen was smart to do so because he knew how much money he would be forking out (..or maybe it should be 'chop-sticking out') for dinner that night. He respectfully put on his other 'coat' and treated the whole staff, including Sophie's boyfriend to a giant Christmas feast! His stresses and worries instantly faded to show off a simple man who deeply cared for his staff. We all admitted that it was a welcome change to his usual, somewhat strange and always unnecessary edginess. Hansen even cried a little when he offered a nice 'cheers' to Amy who is leaving Kid Castle very shortly after working there for quite some time. The girls were STUNNED. So were Andrea and I. Hansen gained a little more respect from everyone that night. Although perhaps this is because he insisted on refilling our glasses of beer every five minutes! He constantly stood up and wished us a very Merry Christmas and a welcoming holiday in China. We took full advantage of his kindness that night, as did everyone. We were all very happy. Joey and Hansen more so than anyone else, as we ended up sending Hansen home in Sophie's van after he admitted to seeing two or three Joeys, and shortly afterwards Joey lasted just a few minutes at the bar before cabbing it home. Perhaps the funniest part of the night was watching Joey stroll around the restaurant kissing everyone of the Chinese teachers on the cheek. I think he even kissed Blanca (Hansen s wife), much to his dismay! Finally he sent Hansen off with a big kiss on the cheek! What a dinner! Who would have thought it would have been so fun! From there some us headed downtown to Tina's friends bar for a few drinks and to listen to some music. We couldn't believe our luck as we witnessed a guest guitarist from Tibet come and play some authentic Tibetan music live. His voice seemed to make two sounds at once and the harshness and raspiness of his voice sounded mysterious and authentic. Along with his guitar he also strummed on a classic, ornate Chinese instrument that resembled a mandolin. How fortunate we were to experience such a small, live performance such as this. It is a very small bar with great acoustics and the atmosphere made it all the more special. It felt like he was playing just for us! I had to thank him so I bought him a beer for which he bowed in thanks. We were honoured to hear him play. It turned us on to Tibetan music too, so different and unique. We had a great night, a perfect end to a lively weekend!

Christmas Weekend in Xi'an

The past few days have surely been that of a rollercoaster for us. In between all of our outings and get-togethers with friends, we can't help but feel a big void knowing that we aren't home for Christmas. This is the first time for both of us that we have not been home for the holidays so it is very easy to find ourselves getting quite homesick. I just have to keep telling myself that being here is an enormous gift itself, and in a way we're giving ourselves a gift of life and experience by taking this adventure. So everything comes down this being both our best and worst Christmases. Such a push and pull feeling that is.

Anyways, after repeated trips to our local foreigner food stores in Xi'an and spending ridiculous amounts of money on ingredients, Andrea and I (mostly Andrea of course) created a wonderful Christmas dinner for our staff which was held at Joey's apartment late Friday evening after class. If Thanksgiving was a warmup, this meal was the real deal! Along with the classic KFC, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, and coleslaw, Andrea also produced a delicious salmon cheeseball, chocolate fudge cupcakes and an amazing strawberry cheesecake. Ironically, perhaps the biggest hit of the party were the two bowls of jello she made! The girls loved it! They raved on about it all night. My help came in making bacon-wrapped chesnuts (with real roasted chesnuts!) for hors d'ouerves. Everyone ate so much food we could barely sip our wine! After dinner we had a little gift exchange by playing the 'white elephant' game where you can steal another's gift. The staff really enjoyed it but I think they were a little too nervous to start stealling gifts. The three men there, Joey, David and myself ended up with the three funniest gifts; Joey with a cell phone 'charm' (he doesn't have a cell phone), David with a pink and yellow scarf, and I with a package of foot lotion! Can't wait to use that! After a week of preparing and getting the girls all excited with anticipation, our Christmas dinner was a huge success!

Saturday afternoon, Andrea and I took a bus downtown to meet the staff. We all agreed to go out for dinner and spend Christmas Eve with eachother at Tina's friend's bar...also called 'On The Road'. We knew from people talking that the custom (recent custom) in Xi'an on Christmas Eve was for many people in the city to head inside the city wall to wander the streets. We were smart to leave when we did because we only had an hour to stroll before we had to meet up with the staff, and we wanted a chance just to walk around, just her and I. We were amazed to watch how many people filled the sidewalks that day. The scene reminded me of pictures I've seen of the busiest streets in downtown Beijing. People everywhere, forced to move in almost single file. Vendors stood every ten feet selling everything from blinking Santa hats to balloons to Halloween masks. I think some people here get western holidays a little backwards now and again. We made our way to the Bell Tower before turning around back down East St. We stopped and took many pictures of the growing crowds. Although quite bizarre, the experience did feel like home on many occasions as busy storefronts blasted English Christmas songs from giant mounted speaker systems. Lights filled the streets and you could see the 'Christmas cheer' on people's faces. We met the staff for dinner at 6pm and ate at a restaurant that came from Mao Zedong's home town. There were posters of him everywhere and they alone created a somewhat more traditional Chinese atmosphere. From there we headed down the street to On The Road. The bar was all decked out for Christmas and we sat there and hung out for a while being treated to live guitar playing alongside a cello. Great music; authentic Chinese and we're even learning the melodies to some famous traditional songs. Around 10 o'clock, Andrea and I decided to join Joey's old roomate Tony from Ithaca, NY to venture out for a walk up East St. We were so glad we did. What a site! Approaching the street we could see that all traffic had stopped and vacated, as the four main gates of the city wall had been blocked for the evening. People everywhere walked up the middle of the street. There must have been hundred's of thousands of people in the downtown that night. There were people walking as far as the eye could see. Not doing anything specific...just walking! Apparently North St. was even busier!! Music played and people were yelling and laughing everywhere. Giant fireworks were being lit in surrounding neighbourhoods, and people on the street had firecrackers, sparklers, smoke bombs, you name it! We actually had to keep a keen eye out not to step on a lit cracker! We could see them smoking on the ground ahead of us, waiting to blow. As we walked, surprisingly we only saw two cops who were sharing a moped...did they have things under control?? My guess would be, not in the least...but everything was in good fun, and people were just out to have a good time. It was simply a mass of people of all ages out for a late night holler-fest downtown. It was incredible! We took some great pictures and video footage. We couldn't count how many times random revellers passed by yelling 'Hello' and 'Merry Christmas' to us in great English! I think people were happy to see we were having such a great time spending Christmas in their city! Heading back to the bar we couldn't help but wish to keep on walking...it didn't matter where we would go, I don't think anyone on the street had an actual destination! After spending another few hours at the bar we decided to call it quits and find a cab since the streets had finally reopened to traffic. Andrea, Tina, Ivy and I took a taxi to another street and decided to jump out and get a bite to eat from the late-night eateries. This is where the girls introduced us to our first experience of eating duck neck....yes duck neck! It must have been dried and cured and it came to us in cold but spicy pieces. We were so hungry, Andrea and I were eating duck neck like potato chips! After sitting down to some kaorou (beef skewers), youmou (grilled cumin bread) and pickled ginger, we stopped at a vendor and purchased a couple bowls of pear cider similar to hot apple cider back home. The cider at home is a little better, but this was served with kiwi slices, pineapple and white mushroom fungus...bizarre..you never know what you're going to get! We couldn't wait to get home to bed after this. So ended our Christmas Eve in Xi'an. An unforgetable experience to say the least.

Christmas morning was nice and relaxing for us with a few calls from back home. That night Andrea and I went out for a bite to eat at an authentic Tibetan restaurant where we ate a sesame cabbage dish and fantastic noodles with lamb meat. Even the tea was different with a rosy taste to it. Very good. We met our friend David and the rest of his colleagues later on at a brand new jazz club inside the city wall named GZ GroovJazz. Here we had some wine with a big group of Brit's we have met before, as well as this Nigerian guy name Alex, Andy from Hanover, Germany, and Will the guy who owns the bar. The jazz was excellent and so was the company. Fortunately after a few late nights, everyone was tired and there weren't too many who stayed very late. We wanted to get home and seek out a phone call from home via Messenger. It was great to catch everyone at home having breakfast. Wish I was there! Have a great New Year's and everyone behave themselves. I'm going to sign off and go soak my hands, I think I just gave myself Carpal-Tunnel!!