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I was surfing and found this excellent post about how to cross the street in Wuhan. It really does hit the nail on the head. I haven’t been conditioned to cross the street like a local still and I’m in my second year. I live right across the street from my school so I cross the street every morning. A vehicle could be 150m down the road going about 50 km/h, I’ll stop  even though I know I can make it across in time if I walked briskly. I think I just hate hearing the horn go off.

Speaking of horns, I hate walking down Liufang, it’s “the village” just up the street from us. I hate it when I’m walking down the narrow streets and hear a van come down it while s/he’s blaring the horn to let you know that they’re there. It’s LOUD! Try standing at the bus stop and have a bus honk their horn 20m away. That’s even louder!

If there are others with me while crossing the street, I let them take the lead. I still hesitate when they decide to cross but I do my little freak-out skip across the street instead of the calm and collected prance of my neighbour.

I don’t think it’s a China-only thing. When I cross at a crosswalk in Toronto, I still don’t cross if there’s a car that looks like they’re still going 30 km/h and barely slowing down. I wait for them to come to a near stop before I walk out. I’d rather be safe than sorry. I can’t assume that they noticed the blinking crosswalk lights with all the distractions in cars.

I’m bored and without sound on my laptop. The sound card appears to have come loose or just went plop and died. No sound from the speakers, no sound from the headphones but I can use the microphone. Any guesses? Listening to your iPod over and over again just isn’t the same as having 680 News running in the background. I can’t watch my TV shows either and we’re at the end of the season. *violin plays in the background*

This week, I’m working on a project for my students. Little paper craft houses for our little town. I’m glad I have a small class just finishing up the last few and then I’m off to bed. Anyone want to purchase property in our little town of 12? Contact Karen Realty, you know where to find me.

It’s 07:00 in the morning and it’s pouring rain. Mr. Chen arrives in his van to pick me up to take me to the airport. It’s my bumpiest ride to the airport ever. The first bridge that we cross in Wuchang is all pot holes. There’s a pot hole every five centimetres, I kid you not. I don’t remember ever going over a bridge like that in Wuhan. The rest of the ride to the airport is smooth though. I am scheduled to pick up my paper ticket at the Ctrip Counter #38 between 08:00 to 09:00 in Terminal 2. I arrive on time. So good, so far. I stand in front of the monitors looking for my flight number to figure out which area I go to check in my luggage. After about 10 refreshes, I find it! Sections A08-16. I head there and find a tour group of 20 standing around in front of the counters in a haphazard queue, if any. Check in just opened, I have lots of time so I wait patiently behind them. It’s finally my turn after some random guy–not part of the tour group–decides to cut in line right in front of me. I keep my mouth shut, though my mind rolls its eye at him for being so rude.

My luggage is checked. I head to the waiting area but remember that I have a bottle of grapefruit juice in my bag. I sit down and finish my drink while listening to some music playing on someone’s laptop and watching whatever is playing on the huge monitor in front of me–it looks like some Victoria Secret fashion show of Santa lingerie. All done. I find myself a recycling bin and head to the “Safety Check Area.” No liquids? Check. No lighters? Check. Some man is boarding in 10 minutes, I let him go ahead of me. Carry-on scan time! “I have a laptop.” “Okay, take it out, please.” I walk through the detector, green light, I’m clear. I don’t have to take off my shoes this time because I’m wearing my Crocs. I pack up my laptop and head to the departure gate. I set up shop a couple rows from my departure gate. I’m in denial and think that Wuhan has turned to the light and decided to offer free Internet at their airport. No luck. The only unsecured wireless network is China Mobile’s and they require a CMCC account. It’s about 08:30 and my flight isn’t scheduled to take off until 10:20 so I end up listening to music until about 09:30. I look at the monitor above my departure gate: “ETD 11:50″ Delayed 1h20m! Fine. Listen to more music, stand up and stretch a million times, open up a bag of Chinese chip-style rice-cake-like snack to nibble on because I’m getting hungry. (more…)

Last night was the finals for the 2nd Annual Guānggǔ Music Festival (光谷音乐节). The students came in second place in the children’s division! They were great on stage! First place went to a 4-year old girl that did a dance number. Our second performance ranked third in the scoring but since we won second place already they gave it to another girl that sang the Beijing Olympic song. It was a long night. It ran from 6:30 P.M. to almost midnight!

The Guānggǔ Music Festival is a televised event in Wuhan. I’m not sure about the rest of China. It seemed like a big thing. The production had stage monitors, fancy-shmancy lighting, pyrotechnics like fireworks and flamethrowers, smoke machines, bubble machines, and exploding containers of gold paper that would shower the stage. They were passing out signs for the audience to hold up to the cameras when it passed by and whistles and glow sticks and colourful lightsabers. They cued fake applause, cheers and whistles. The works! It was pretty cool to see it all first hand.

I haven’t been able to find any articles on last night’s show yet, but here is the old one.

“光谷音乐节” on 武汉晚报 (May 24, 2009) (*.pdf) You can read the article in shoddy English here.

The Dragonboat Festival is on Thursday and it’s a statutory holiday–our day off from school. We pulled some strings and got Friday off so it was suppose to be a 4-day weekend. That’s not the case anymore. On Saturday, the students are going to be performing again at Lǔ Xiàng Square (鲁巷广场) again for the Guānggǔ Music Festival (光谷音乐节). They made it to the finals. We were told that there will be five children acts and five adult acts. The winner of the music festival wins ¥5000! We weren’t told if the students were competing against the adult acts, we assume we’re not. It would be unfair, the children would win based on the cuteness factor.

We don’t have a 4-day weekend, but we still have time to travel. Some of the teachers and I are going to head to Hángzhōu (杭州) to do the tourist thing. I really don’t know what we’re doing when we get there, but they have it all planned. We’re taking off by plane tomorrow after work and then coming back by train Saturday morning, just in time for the music festival. I did some digging around and Hángzhōu happens to be the home of the Lóngjǐng tea or Dragonwell tea (龙井茶). I’ll have to buy myself some of that. It looks like it will cost me about ¥300/box. o.O

Every Monday, we have flag ceremony in the morning instead of homeroom. After standing at attention for the Chinese national anthem a student stands under the flag and says a speech about a relevant topic for the week. This Monday, it was the Dragonboat Festival. Crystal talked about the best-known origins of the festival, the story of Qu Yuan.

Qu Yuan was a scholar and a minister to the King from the Southern Chu during the Warring States Periods. The King from the Southern Chu allied with a stronger state. Qu opposed the alliance and was banished and accused of treason. Years later, the alliance state conquered the Chu capital. After this news, Qu committed suicide on the fifth day of the fifth month by drowning himself in the Mìluó River (汨罗江).

The story says that locals that admired Qu Yuan tried to retrieve his body from the river by paddling out on boats. This is said to be the origin of the dragonboats. In hopes to stop the fish from feeding on his body, the locals threw rice into the river to feed the fish. This is said to be the origin of the rice dumpling, zòngzi (粽子) that is commonly eaten during the festival. I have some in my fridge right now. They’re so teeny tiny and cute.

The students at my school performed at the Guānggǔ Music Festival (光谷音乐节) at Lǔ Xiàng Square (鲁巷广场) on Friday. Originally, I–and some other teachers–thought the performance was just a normal school performance. Lo-and-behold, we show up on Friday and we find people at two tables set up in front of the stage. Looks like a judging panel! As we get closer to the start of the show, a cameraman sets up a camera on a tripod behind the judges. We even made the Wuhan evening news (see “光谷音乐节“). It’s crazy!

We find out over the weekend that the judges have selected 3 performances from our school. Now, we have to prep for the big show on Saturday because there’s a ¥5000 prize money for the first-place performance!

A couple days ago, I came home from work and saw a little miniature moth-like insect flying around my room. It landed it on my pearly-white walls. I was so concentrated on trying to kill the thing that I didn’t realize what I did until I did it! I smacked my slipper on the wall to kill it because I had no other weapon in hand. Now I have a black slipper mark on the wall. I haven’t cleaned it off yet. It’s a warning to all the insects to come after that no wall is too white to smoosh them on.

The last couple weeks I have set aside a brochure I was making for the school. This week, our students are performing at a nearby shopping centre and it would be silly of us not to have brochures or something to hand out to curious parents. We have a flyer for our English Immersion Summer Camp but none of the school itself. So this week I have been scrambling to get it completed. I was only able to finish it because of the prompt translations, the remade logo by Felix because I was too lazy to do it myself, and all the great pictures we had stored away on everyone’s computers. The brochure is off to the printer and hopefully ready before our performance. I’m hoping no one will notice the fake grass that I clone in front of the school. It’s better than the dirt and building materials that was in the original!