July 7, 2011

Bathrooms! The school has us using the same bathrooms as the kids. You can smell them from a far! That’s cause you can’t put paper in the toilet, so the trash reeks. There are about 10 stalls, and one of them is a western toilet, but the rest are squat. And NOT ONE of the stalls has a working lock on it. So, you have to hold it shut if you want privacy. Course that doesn’t stop the lookers. The stalls don’t come up very far and just by standing there you can see over the next stall. One teacher was using the squat when some students looked over the stall and were saying to her, “Hi teacher, how are you?”. Needless to say, it was a shock. There is of course is no toilet paper, so bring your own. But at least this year there is soap to wash your hands with. It is just not fun to use the bathroom.

Today I taught some lessons to the classes using M&M’s. I gave them each a small cup with about 15 in it, They had to count them, and then separate them into groups of colors, and write how many of each. Then graph them, and talk with a partner about them. I think it went really well. I wish I had brought the M&M counting book. That would have been even better.
I have 2 classes. One 2nd grade, and one 3rd grade. The 2nd graders are better behaved and there are some pills in each class. One student today disobeyed me, and then did it again. The teacher wasn’t in there with me, but when he came back he pulled the kids cheek.

We only taught one class in the afternoon, and then the school took us on a “field trip” to an embroidery town, including visits to several factories and a museum. It was about a 20 minute drive to a small town outside of Suzhou. We passed by a mountain, and the largest lake in China, which was really beautiful.

We first went to visit with a very famous lady in China. She is known They told us she is a millionaire. (She owns the towns and the “sweatshops”. She trained when she was young to do embroidery, and had many beautiful pieces on display. We then watched several different women working on it in factories. They work 8 hours a day with needles and thin pieces of silk, hour after hour making beautiful designs. I can’t imagine how difficult that would be to sit there day after day. You can see the designs from both sides of the fabric, and both sides are equally beautiful. I bought a couple of them the last time I was in China, but would have liked to have gotten one a little larger, but they didn’t take us shopping, which was probably a good thing.

We then went to dinner in the small town. There were at least 16 of us sitting around a table with a “lazy susan” in the center with a diameter of at least 10 feet. It was the biggest round table I had ever seen. Someone counted 28 dishes before dessert (watermelon) came. Everything from vegetables, to shrimp, eggplant, chicken soup with the feet, cashews with water chestnuts, 3 whole fish, liver, There was green tea, this yummy apple juice with bits of floating apples in it, and of course the beer and wine, of which there were plenty of toasts, and a couple of teachers drinking too much.

I have eaten way too much on this trip, and my stomach is bloated. Several people have had the runs for several days, but I have felt fine… Knock on wood! I’m thinking tomorrow I’m not going to eat! Just drink water and see if I lose this gut.