HeatherFife's blog

I'm happy, for right now.

HeatherFife — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 03:11:06 +0000

So, this is a blog where I basically just complain about how hot and how hard it is to do anything here and also I try to make myself look really cool and independent. But I needed to write it to validate the last two days of my life.

So, here is what I have to do re-learn this summer: Never assume anything and that I love and hate this place.On Wednesday I went to the Vietnam Embassy to pick up my visa. The embassy is about an hour away by public transportation and you have to stand the whole time, switch subways, and go to a totally different station at one point. And keep in mind it is ridiculously hot and humid. Anyway, I shouldn't have assumed my visa would be ready after 4 working days. They told me to come back on Monday. So since I was sort of in the area I took the subway to the Beijing Train Station to buy my train ticket from Beijing to Hanoi. When you get off the station there are like a million people all saying "Fa Piao" over and over and over again. It is like you are in some Buddhist Temple and everyone is saying their mantra out loud. "Fa Piao" means "receipt" they are illegally selling people fake receipts so that people can use them to get money from their companies, I think. That is what I read in some book. But I don't understand why they all wait by the train station. Anyway, I wait in line for a good 40 minutes, there is a lot of pushing, there are a million people everywhere sleeping, selling things, and don't forget the loud speaker with the annoying shrill voice screaming things the entire time to everyone. I finally get to the window and I tell the lady the speech I have practically memorized by now: I want to go from Beijing to Hanoi on a hard sleeper on August 24." She says through her microphone so everyone and their mother can here, "We don't sell those tickets." I guess I shouldn't have assumed that the train station would be the best place to buy a train ticket. I know a lot of people just go to travel companies and pay an extra amount of money so that they don't have to deal with the hassle but I hardly ever do because A. I am totally cheap and B. I sort of like getting the tickets on my own (which I am changing my mind about right now...) Anyway, I ask the lady where I can buy a ticket. She says, "I don't know, why don't you check a tourist company." By then it was 4:30 in the afternoon, it would take me an hour to get home, and I was so exhausted so I just had a Popsicle and went home. (I eat 3-5 Popsicles a day to get me through the heat)

Memoirs of a Geisha

HeatherFife — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 08:21:42 +0000

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div>Obviously, this is not going to be a very academic argument. I read Memoirs ten years ago and although this was my pre-liberal arts education time and my mind had not yet been ideologically molded to fit films into theory I was still aware that there was something incredibly disturbing about the book. A white man writing about what life is like as a glorified Asian prostitute. Asian women who find their only power through sex (or what I would now label "hypersexual behavior").

Would you want to be the child of a diplomat?

HeatherFife — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 06:39:37 +0000

So this last weekend I met three youngsters, as my dad would call them, two 13 year olds and one 11 year old. All three were spending their summer in Beijing living with a Chinese family and studying Chinese. They were American and they lived in Singapore. They went to an American school there and their parents were diplomats. One of the youngsters' parent used to be the ambassador to Honk Kong. They were very smart. Very mature. Two of them were already learning their third language. One of them had an older sister who spoke four languages at the age of 22-French, Mandarin Chinese, English, and Arabic. They were nice and cool and polite and I was extremely jealous.

Sometimes you think you are understanding everything, but you don't understand anything

HeatherFife — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 21:35:38 +0000

My Chinese cooking teacher told me there was store in town that you could buy shoes woman used to wear when they had bound feet and they had a history of bound feet in all of the different dynasties with pictures. So today it was pouring rain (winter officially began yesterday I think) and I dragged the other foreign teacher into town with me to check out this shoe store/museum. After taking the bus and asking a million people where this shoe place was—we found it! And guess what, it was just a really big shoe store.

I have no idea where the place she was talking about was. I am pretty sure that we were at the place she said to go, and the other teacher asked me, “So what exactly did she tell you this was?” When I told her what I thought she said it was, she asked, “Did she tell you this all in Chinese or English?” I said “Chinese.” And then I kind of figured out my Chinese must be really horrible! I completely misunderstood her. How can you think you are having a discussion about something but in fact you are talking about completely other things? I guess I misunderstood her. Well we still found a big shoe store and even though China is sometimes not a slave to fashion I think China has some really cool shoes! After looking at shoes we explored some of the markets around town, you can buy live turtles for soup and all sorts of live animal and sea creatures are crawling around everywhere.

Visiting Revolutionary Sites

HeatherFife — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 21:12:51 +0000

Chinese Students and Military

Entertaining myself in the classroom

HeatherFife — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 21:22:03 +0000

Chinese University Coordination

How does it feel to be a pig?

HeatherFife — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 21:20:36 +0000

On Friday I was teaching my children and I think the novelty of me as a foreign teacher has worn off, in terms of the discipline of the students. I caught one child throwing a paper airplane. I was teaching different adjectives like “short, tall, happy, sad, fast, slow, beautiful, ugly.” I made a sad face and said “I am…” waiting for the response “sad.”

One of my children yelled out “ugly!” Then everyone laughed. I also found one student writing a note and I took it from her. I tried to read it later but it was in Chinese and I didn’t understand it. I had a student translate it for me.

Teaching Environment in China

HeatherFife — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 21:37:01 +0000

Classrom Technology in China

I am currently trying to prepare a lecture on “American’s character,” by talking about the frontier heritage and some basic American values that go along with that. Things would be so much easier if I had some tiny bit of access to any kind of technology. Even an overhead projector, or even a picture of a cowboy in a Marlboro add. But all I have is me, myself, and a chalkboard, and a lot of chalk stained clothes. I still teach four of my classes in “the ghetto,” which is what the other teachers and I call the building that has no technology and smells like the squat toilets right next door.

A Chinese "Party"

HeatherFife — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 21:30:29 +0000

Chinese Party Invitation

Last week I received a phone call from a man named “Wallace” (his English name). He told me he was good friends with a foreign teacher who was here last year and was a student at a nearby University. He also wanted to invite me to a party at his university that was celebrating the English language. I agreed to go to the party and asked when the party would be.

He said, “How is Tuesday night?”

I said, “I can’t, I teach on Tuesday.”

Then he said, “But I already wrote your name on all the flyers!”

Flyers? I thought, what kind of party was this going to be?

KTV in China: Chinese-Karaoke

HeatherFife — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 21:04:13 +0000

Chinese Moon Festival Party and KTV

Things over here are going very well. Saturday was the Chinese Moon Festival, so my class had a lot of parties and invited me to them. Now when I say "party" what do you think of? Music? Dancing? Talking? Drinking? Games? What exactly does it mean to have fun? How does our cultural environment influence what we think is fun? Is it also defined by age? (Ok, I think I have been teaching a little too much, I've turned into "Question Heather") The point is, I went to college parties thrown by students of my age, but this "party" consisted of sitting around, eating moon cakes, drinking Pepsi and grape juice with 3% alcohol (yes I tried to get a buzz but it did not work) and making people stand in the middle and sing a song or recite a poem.