a deep, prolonged silence

as many friends and family members have come to expect from one stephanie routh, it has been a vast expanse of time since i have written in this here journal. to all three devoted perusers, i offer my usual profound apologies.

THE BRIEF SYNOPSIS
an overview of the past few months in chilly changchun:
well, the ktv foreigner christmas special aired on christmas eve. the critics (meaning my pint-size students and hutong neighbors) received it favorably and sang me snippets from my solo with smiling faces. potential embarassment averted. the cast party included russians, koreans, irish, canadians, and nigerians. great fun and a lot of dancing.
i just finished spending about 3 weeks with my mom and a bunch of linfield students careening around beijing, xi'an, hangzhou, suzhou, and shanghai. this will require at least one full journal entry, so i will leave it for the near future. let's just say it was quite the grand experience.
after much searching, michelle murray aka meng ling and i are planning to swing over to dalian next semester to sling yet some more english. we have been assured by a kickin' cat named bernard that our students will be eye-level with us, as it is a college. excited to be teaching folks with whom i may converse beyond "i want to eat an apple", but will so miss my bourgeoning english speakers at bai da wei! this, too, will require its own entry as well as pictures so that everyone can fully understand the cute factor. no, you cannot have them because they will forever and always be mine.

look forward to a recount of spring festival, or "how i learned to the love the fireworks". must go swimming now but shall expand on this abstract of a tale in the near future. meaning this millenium.
best to all, and may we all learn to get along in perfect harmony.

6th floor isolation

it's been quite a raucus few days around here and thought i'd relay it to you, dear unsuspecting reader.

6TH FLOOR ISOLATION
this morning was an uncertain one for folks destined to rifle some english jabber into 6 year-old noggins. every monday morning, five of us depart for public school classes at 7:20am from bai da wei school. before such time, many of us run up to our school on the 6th floor to grab supplies and a cup of coffee. the elevator doesn't open until 7:30, so we get a little morning stair climb to wake ourselves. this morning, however, our vertical chariot was ready and waiting! little did we know that the reason for this was that the guy with the stairwell keys either was late in coming or just hadn't gotten around to opening the fricking doors. this becomes important when the elevator guy shuts off the elevator and the stairwell guy is still AWOL. the clock ticked louder as the cleaning ladies and stranded teachers all started mulling over the situation in not-so-subdued chinese. fire hazard came up a lot in those minutes of conversation, and i finally called our headmaster so that he could call the first floor so the stair guy could feel so inclined to use the keys given him. another word that came up a lot (in english, though after this episode i am bent on learning the chinese translation) was incompetence. i suppose if it had come down to it, one of the stranded foreigners is adept at rappelling (sp?) and might have jimmy-rigged some appropriate apparatus. happily, though, none of us missed classes.

SEYMORE LAOSHI
so that was early morning. my last public school class of the day occurs right before lunch and held its own little twist. one fellow in my 1.4 class (1st grade) is named seymore, and he's a pretty bright chap by any account. today, however, he spent more time talking to his neighbor than paying attention in class, and belinda (the ji che chang teacher) put both he and gillian in front of the class for a few minutes as punishment. they were able to go back to their seats after promising not to talk anymore, and i kept at lessons with "what's this? how do you spell it? how many are there?" but seymore apparently just couldn't withstand the temptation to rattle on and on and . . . so i brought him up in front of class and asked him if he would like to be the teacher since he liked talking so much in class. he replied that he certainly wouldn't mind (i'm paraphrasing), and i sat down in his seat. so he got a dog flashcard (it was the last object on our worksheet today) and asked "what's this?" the class responded. "how do you spell?" he called on one of his friends who gave the correct answer, which he then WROTE on the board! "how many dogs?" he called on someone else to answer. it was stunning!!! i was shocked and giddy, although the original purpose was to get him to stop talking in class. he told belinda after class that he wants to be teacher next class, too, and might just talk to his heart's content until he's allowed. may i remind you all that this boy is 6 years old. we'll see what happens.

THE WHITE CHICK FROM XINJIANG
last week sandy and i hung at the bathhouse together, including submerging ourselves under hot pebbles for 30 minutes (fantastic, but can i just say "sweat"?). as we were taking our final shower, one woman (there is usually at least one every time i take a communal shower) was remarking on how white i was. when she asked sandy where i was from, i replied that i was chinese. sandy then told her that i was a minority from the xinjiang province and chinese was my second language. she looked at me and my white belly in shock. i thought she got the joke until she pointed me out to a friend who had just come in and remarked about how white they were in the xinjiang province. i felt kind of guilty listening to this and told her before towelling off that i am actually american. she blinked a few times and went on again about my whiteness. sandy and i both chuckled over it on the way home.

THE RECORDING STUDIO
we recorded the chorus numbers and the duet last night at jilin broadcasting studio. it was the first time i've ever recorded in such a place. great fun, though sadly mr. star search couldn't make it (see previous entry). we tried to get along without him the best we could. the recording supervisor (i couldn't ascertain his exact area of expertise) spent a good deal of time hollaring chinese into the headsets, and david kept telling him, "hold on just a minute" in chinese. there were a few koreans and a russian and a nigerian who only spoke chinese, no english. the recording staff was chinese as well, so translation between english and chinese definitely added amusement. we couldn't get rolling until 7:30pm because of class schedules, so the wrapup finally came at 10pm. our last song of the night was "auld lang syne," which sounded like a dirge hindered by the doppler effect upon playback. but the staff was tired, so the dirge take is what will be playing on national television. oy veh!

that's about all i can think of at present. tonight i am watching "amelie" on vcd with a chinese friend of mine. it's in french with chinese subtitles, and i can understand just enough spoken french and read just enough chinese to get the general idea, but there are a few holes that i'm looking forward to filling in. my big question mark is what the contents of the letter were to amelie's downstairs neighbor that made her kiss the bullfighter's portrait. anyone know?

hope all is well. sandy says hello and you're not wearing enough clothes, wherever you are.

a KTV christmas

well, it's still bone-crackin' cold here in northern china with a high today of -4 celsius. happy unthanksgiving to all and hope those of you who indulged in post-thanksgiving consumerism were not trampled into wafers.

STRANGE SIGHTINGS
Acrobats--four high school students were seen travelling on one bicycle last week.
Hazy Shade of Winter--a few weeks ago the snow started up, and all us shivering inhabitants fell asleep to the glow of a white world only to wake up the next morning to an orange one. occasionally the wind direction changes and we get a visit from the gobi desert's more nomadic elements. the change in hue was, to say the least, notable.
Michelle's Restaurant--okay, this one is second-hand. michelle, another bai da wei teacher, lives above a restaurant which formerly belonged to a friend of ours. as she was walking home last week, she noticed one of the cooks take out some garbage to the dump in back, remove some meat on top of his bag, sniff at it, shrug, and walk back into the kitchen with sniffed meat in hand. despite this invitation to avoid eating there, michelle tried their fare and, shockingly enough (sarcastically), it wasn't very good. shockingly enough (sincerely), she didn't get retchingly ill from the experience.

GANENJIE ("THANKSGIVING")
everyone at bai da wei had america's thanksgiving day off for which we were all very thankful. the restaurant on the first floor affiliated with the school was also closed, and we were able to prepare a thanksgiving meal for 45 people in the kitchen. greg was in charge of the lamb, turkey and stuffing, nell in charge of pavlova, shea in charge of buttermilk biscuits, new michelle in charge of gravy, and i heading up the mashed potato front. the turkey was about a 35-pounder (according to my conversion from jin to kilograms to pounds) and came with claws, head and brains. sadly, my vegetarian self was not around to see the dead bird with head and feet intact, but shea tells me it was quite a sight to behold. the head and brains were on display in the fridge for all to see, and the claws were cooked with the rest of the carcass. serving the food had only one hitch, being that most of the chinese guests had any idea what stuffing or gravy were.

the pavlova was a hoot! pavlova is a baked australian
confection covered with fruit and whipped cream. nell the australian opted for kiwi as the fruit of choice, and she was in the process of slicing up the kiwi when kim the new zealander entered the kitchen. as you probably know, new zealanders are often referred to as kiwis since both the bird and the fruit are native to new zealand. so greg the south african told kim the kiwi to see what nell the australian was cutting up, and poor kim ran away screaming in outrage or fear (couldn't tell which). i won't belabor recounting our thanksgiving, but it was quite a gas and salved being so far removed from american freinds and family.

A KTV CHRISTMAS
so i guess i'm going to be on a nationally televised christmas program in china. david, the headmaster of my school, is directing the show and asked a bunch of us teachers to be in the special. nell and old michelle are performing a snowman dance (i'm looking forward to it) and the chorus is doing a few numbers in chinese and english. i am doing a solo and a duet in addition to the chorus stuff. the solo is "mai tang yuan," a vendor song about a kind of soup used to celebrate the lantern festival, and the duet is in catalan with a kick-ass woman named roser (her hometown is not far from cardona, marc torres-gual's hometown). none of the music is live for one reason or another, so we recorded the solo yesterday and are recording the other music today. during the solo recording, we went through it once straight and david then said to add character. "imagine you're missing teeth and have the clap." i'm looking forward to seeing the costume. perhaps the most interesting guy in this whole scene is robert, whom i will hereafter refer to as "mr. star search." during the intial organization meeting, mr. star search asked repeatedly when prospective soloists could expect a call and what opportunities for extra numbers there were and could we expect to be on national television more than once and could we receive individual copies of the program. i hear that one of his desired solos was sinatra's "my way." sadly, this wasn't deemed christmasy enough.

DINNER WITH KATE
i had dinner the other evening with kate, an english teacher at jilin university, and her friend darlington. after hearing about her students chronically cheating and her hardships with learning the language due in part to knowing so many chinese students who speak english well and in part to living on campus, i am beginning to rethink teaching at a university. my kids may not know much english but they are cute as hell. plus, i live in a small hutong and have to use chinese on a regular basis. decision pending.
darlington is from southern china, and he tapped two fingers on the table after i poured beer into his glass. i told him i had never seen anyone say thanks like that before, and kate asked me how i knew what that meant. i finally remembered that neal stephenson had referred to it in "the diamond age". the man does his homework.

sweet god, this entry is long!!! sorry. i'll finish by relaying that my mensa class (they're my smartest class) loves "you're older than you've ever been" by they might be giants. hope your thanksgiving was marvy and talk to you soon!