another reason to love Mandarin....

安

Ān

1. content
2. calm
3. quiet
4. secure
5. in good health
6. to find a place for
7. to install
8. to fix
9. to make a fitting for
10. to bring a charge against someone
11. to sue
12. to pacify
13. ampere
14. An, a common surname
    

Things That Make You Go Hmmmmm

I went to the airport today to pick up a new facilitator and I arrived a little early so I went to Burger King (one of four in the entire country) and as I'm eating my oh-so-tasty lunch, a Chinese man asks if he can sit down because of the lack of available space. Sure, says I, thank you, says he. We chat a little as we eat and he asks if he can practice his english with me, which is already quite good. He says that a hobby of his is idioms. So I answer a few, such as "as the crow flies," "blowing smoke" etc as he takes out a journal and writes them all down. Most Chinese are quite studious like this so I pay no mind.Gradually, I notice they seem to be taking on more of a violent/military nature such as "armed to the teeth" and "down the hatch" I was a bit curious and asked what job he had, he said casually he was in the army and quickly asked me another idiom. Wanting more information here, I decided to stroke his ego a little bit. "Really? the army? wow, that's impressive. What is your rank?"
"Captain. I graduated from the Military Academy four years ago."
At this point it hit me that I was talking to an active officer in the Chinese military, and one who had graduated from something similar to our West Point.
Intrigued I go on answering a few more idioms but try to read what little English he has written in his journal upside down. There was about a dozen english idioms and the definition in Chinese and then a source "All Hands, September 2009" "Chips, April-June 2010" "All Hands, February 2010. This was in the middle of the journal and every page up to that point seemed to be neatly filled the same way.

"So you collect idioms?"
"Yes, my hobby is to translate them so they make sense in Chinese."
Before too much longer he announced he needed to leave for his flight, as he was on holiday and needed to get back to work soon. I had an extremely busy day but afterwards I came back and Googled the sources this Chinese military officer with a keen interest in idioms had so painstakingly listed. All Hands is the official US Navy publication for sailors and their families and Chips is the US Navy official technical journal. Now if I weren't so easily trusting, I would think he gets a hold of these magazines and translates them into Chinese and got stuck on a few of the idioms that only make sense to a native English speaker. The fact that he's an officer in military would have nothing to do with it, and his co-worker's hobby of hacking into the Pentagon would be a sheer coincidence.

Summer

Summer is upon us and with that our busiest season once again. We are preparing for more than twice the amount of students then we have ever had before. As for me, I am preparing for the influx of American volunteers who will come for 1 or 2 months. I went shopping for some supplies today and am storing them in my room for about a week. As a result, if the zombie apocalypse ever happens, my room is the safest place to be. I have enough supplies for forty people for two months. Needless to say, my day was hectic.

Soon to be a big hit in America!

some things are better off not translated.

World Cup

Apparently there's this soccer thing going on right now. I don't know, I'm American so thus I don't follow soccer. It goes with the list of inherent things that I mentioned the other day. Anyway we have two Dutch coworkers who found out that the games would be showed at our favorite local restaurant. Not having anything better to do and wanting to take a break from housing logisitics, I went to get some food. "Come watch some football!" they said. Now knowing perfectly well what they meant, but still wanting to protest in my own way, I wore my Mizzou football jersey. They said football, so I wore a proper football jersey. They had the TV outside and it's well they did, for the place was packed, even people lining up on the little bridge that crosses the road outside to watch. Now thinking that with 90% of the world lined up on the streets here to watch this glorified version of kick the can, it might be interesting. It wasn't. I couldn't find highlights of the game between South Korea and Greece, but here's the next best thing of what it's like to watch the World Cup.


Zzzzzzz

Sometimes I wonder...

how all these can possibly share the same planet at the same time. For example,

Namyang, North Korea is 12,364 miles away from Asheville, North Carolina

Dire Dawe, Ethiopia is 16,278 miles from Tokyo, Japan

Myitkyina, Burma is 8,942 miles from Des Moines, Iowa

Los Angeles, California is 2,225 miles from Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

Islamabad, Pakistan is 6,152 miles from Berlin, Germany

and the family that lives here is less than a mile away from me.

Things You Can't Make Up

It takes just a cursory glance in a history book to know that relations between China and Japan have never been exactly cordial. From the unspeakable atrocities in the second world war to the Chinese calling Tokyo their "Eastern Capital" (it is literally translated East Capital) tensions have always been in place. So when it comes to Japan's Ministry of Tourism appointing a Tourist Ambassador between China and Japan as well as Hong Kong, this would be a serious, diplomatic job with a lot of tightly worded documents and official visits in a highly stressful environment of political correctness.

Or so one would think. In May 2008, Hello Kitty was appointed as the ambassador. No, I'm not kidding. And yes, there was a real live human being that apparently did such a poor job at it that the Japanese Ministry of Tourism thought a cartoon character would do better. So if you're unemployed, just count your blessings you weren't replaced by Snoopy or Garfield.....or Hello Kitty. This isn't some goodwill gesture or bureaucratic humor, she is the official Japanese Ambassador of Tourism to Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China.

I wonder if they gave her business cards with the full title on them?

new room and bookshelf

With a lot of coworkers leaving, this opens up some rooms and I have decided to move right next door and get my own room again. This hasn't happened since October. One of the first issues I had to deal with is what to do with all this space. I now have an extra desk and a whole wardrobe. As anyone who knows me can attest, I love books. I have a dozen or so of my favorites and others that I have picked up while in China. In my new room, I first decided to put them on my second desk in a single row. However, while it looked good, it wasn't exactly a space saver and this desk was pressed against the radiator. Not a problem now, but come winter I didn't my (paper) books making contact with the (metal) radiator. There are many ugly metal racks about the campus (picture the kind used on a military base)but the requisition process to get one for personal use is long and just not worth it. So I went to Carefour and saw that they had nice looking four tiered storage compartments that would look pretty good and they were on sale from 144RMB to 98RMB.(about $15)
So with eager anticipation, I bought a kit, lugged it home and took out all the various pieces. The first thought to hit my mind was that I was definitely expecting it to be bigger. (that's what she said, btw ;) the second thought was that there sure were a lot of pieces to a simple looking wood bookshelf. I located the instructions and surprise, surprise, they're in Chinese with those maddening pictures and diagrams that make the Chinese characters look more appealing. "Oh well, come on!" I said to myself in a burst of pride, "You're American!...you are born with certain innate skills, among them being changing a tire, locating any Starbucks in a 10 mile range and most importantly assembling furniture!" Besides, I've been following in the footsteps of a certain Carpenter for a while now, so how hard could it be? With this resolve, I spent the next hour or so trying to put the 螺旋 into 孔数三 and connect 划分 A with 槽 B and finally managed to create something that looked at a passing glance to a decent bookshelf. The big test of propping it up and seeing that all the shelves were straight worked so I loaded it full of books and lo and behold, it's low and it be holding books.

It is impossible to watch this and not tear up...

While visiting the American cemetery in Normandy, a French gentleman and his friends came upon Amos, an elderly American, and when he realized that Amos was a WW2 veteran who fought at Normandy, the French gentleman gave Amos a letter. Amos's son, Joe read the letter to us and as they heard it, everyone cried. You can see the thankfulness in the French gentleman, as he holds Amos's hand and thanks him as he leaves.

news

It is amazing just how much you DON'T hear from the Chinese media. If it hadn't been for the Internet and the ability to access Western news media, I wouldn't know a thing about the current situation that Israel finds herself on. Unless it is about the NBA, the media really couldn't care about what goes on in the western world.

Goodbye

Today we said goodbye to Ed, the elderly volunteer who has made such a big impact here in such a small, quiet, unassuming way. This afternoon, another facilitator, Dan G will head back to America. Tomorrow, Elizabeth and Riley Goodrich will leave. By the end of the summer, nearly all of the people that I have worked beside for the whole year will be gone. In their place will be a dozen or so new facilitators from America, who are excited, eager and a little bit nervous about the prospect of staying one whole year in such a foreign place and teaching students who they think will be so different from them. Goodbyes are always tough, but necessary. Geoff will remain here as will a few others and together we will begin the training process again to build the relationships which will eventually lead to more tough goodbyes.