I have been learning my way around Nanjing and have found the important western stores, like Wal-Mart, which looks almost exactly like the Wal-Mart at home, KFC (there is seriously one on every corner here - Chinese people LOVE KFC), and Starbucks. And I've also learned some of the more Chinese places to go - like which breakfast stand has the best food and where I should buy meat on a stick or burned DVDs.
Although school last week was a little rough (my kids were SO bad), I had a great weekend. Saturday I went shopping with Maia and her Chinese tutor Twinkle, and Twinkle's cousin. Then we went out to dinner at a "mexican-inspired" restaurant with Katie and Scott (two English university professors in Nanjing), and a bunch of other English teachers from a town near Nanjing. Since there were so many of us, the owner let us do an all-you-can-eat and drink deal for 70 yuan per person (about $10). So we had unlimited mexican food, beer and sangria.
Today Maia, Katie, Scott and I went to Purple Mountain (a famous landmark in Nanjing) to see the Plum Blossom festival.
Here is a picture of purple mountain:
It had been so cold here, but today the temperature was around 60 and it was SO nice outside. The walk up to the Plum Blossom area was really pretty, and all the plum trees were too.
They had a lot food stands, so I tried got some pineapple on a stick (my first official food on a stick in China) and I tried a piece of meat on a stick as well (hey, I didn't get that Hepatitis A shot for nothing!).
There was also a section of giant stone animals. We climbed up one of the animals to take a picture on it, and provided much entertainment for all the Chinese people.
Chinese people are absolutely fascinated by us, and it is SO weird. I had been warned that people would stare, but I really didn't know how blatantly they would stare. They do it all the time, even if I'm just riding the bus home from school, but even more people tend to stare when we all go out in a group. People will just stop right in their tracks and stare with their mouths open. When we were sitting on the animals (which other Chinese people were doing, so we know it isn't forbidden), all the Chinese people around us were taking pictures of us with their cameras too. Sometimes it is really funny, like when Katie, Maia and I were posing for a picture in front of a pear blossom tree, and some random Chinese guy kind of popped up behind Scott and took our picture too. We joke around about how we feel like famous people.
But it can also be really annoying. There are a few words for foreigner (two I know are "waiguoren" or "laowai"), and when we hear those words, we KNOW people are talking about us. And that can get really old. I mean, how much can there really be to say about us? We were at the grocery store one night, and Katie, Maia, Scott, Nathan and I were all getting ogled by some Chinese man. We noticed that there was a redhead, two blonds, and two brunets. I was like, "all we need is Pierre (a black teacher we know in Nanjing), and we can be an American rainbow." We were saying that because we get stared at and talked about so much here, we are going to be paranoid when we get home. We'll go into an American grocery store, and randomly yell, "Stop talking about me! Everyone is talking about me!!!", and everyone will think we are really vain! But here it is so true!
I am working on my lesson for next week's classes this evening. I don't want to spend too much time on them, because the students don't really seem to care. They told me last week that they would rather just play games. Although they are really old enough that they should be able to read and speak English, rather than just do games, I don't really feel like fighting with them about it. So I think for my lesson this week, I am going to play different kinds of American music (rap, pop, country, classic rock) and then have them discuss what kind they like best and compare it with Chinese music. Then I'll probably just let them play a game, like musical chairs.
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