Love Land

Firstly, the Chinese government, in its infinite wisdom and benevolence, has now abruptly decided that the residents of the Middle Kingdom shall not be allowed onto Blogger, meaning that I've just spent an enjoyable hour cursing said government and looking for the miniscule number of proxy sites that the shadowy internet monitors (who I like to think of as nefarious, shadowy baddies in suits sequestered in very dark rooms) haven't cottoned onto and blocked yet. And, for now at least, I have found one, so I am still here. Strangely, all of the Guardian's current China-themed articles (including those with titles such as 'Secret Tiananmen Square Memoirs of Chinese Party Leader To Be Published that are, erm, somewhat uncomplimentary about the government) are allowed, and yet my blog, the content of which is not (or has not been until this paragraph) remotely seditious, is blocked. Geh.

Anyway, at the same time as clicking on every proxy link in existence, I was also meandering through said China-themed articles on The Guardian website, when my eye happened to catch upon the headline 'China to open first sex theme park.' Now, take a guess where said theme park is. Yep, no prizes for guessing that it's not only in Chongqing, but is attached to the incomparable Meixin (due to limited proxy access I can't attach a link, but rifle through March or April's entries and you'll find it).

So, the noble plan was that once you've been suitably thrilled by a visit to the world's biggest public toilets, you could go underground, where Love Land promised to offer you 'naked human sculptures, giant replicas of genitals and an exhibition about the history of sex and sexual practices in other countries.' Park director Lu Xiaoqing claimed that the park would be educational and informative, saying that he would 'pay attention and not make the park look vulgar and nasty.' Which evidently explains the centre of his marketing campaign (again, unfortunately I can't do pics or links at the moment, but you must click on this):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/15/china-sex-theme-park-love-land

Unfortunately, The Guardian appears to be a little out of date, for the BBC informs me that in the last couple of days the government has now put the kibosh on the project for fear that it was too 'vulgar.' It's unknown whether the existing attractions of Meixin, including seats with holes instructing small boys where to stick their penises and a plastic Christ the Redeemer statue perched atop a shed, will also fall victim to this sudden and surprising outbreak of classiness. Sadly, however, it does seem that this potential paradise of skag is, for now, not to be :(.

Hammer Man

Not only am I sad that I can't have pictures on the blog for the next few weeks, but am also wishing I had a way to add sound. That way I could better communicate THE ANNOYINGNESS OF A NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOUR WHO HAS SUDDENLY STARTED HAMMERING LOUDLY ON THE WALL ALL THE LIVE LONG DAY.

Yes, our hitherto quiet neighbour, whoever he (or she, but I'm assuming he's a he because men are stupider and like to bash things more) may be, has gone wrong in the head. He for some reason has decided to bang constantly at something in his apartment with a large hammer for about seven hours a day, commencing at the rather anti-social hour of 8am. I hate him.

I have no idea what he is doing - unless he is a blind man who is also in possession of the world's worst set of Ikea instructions, no piece of furniture assembly requires three whole days of near-constant hammering. Maybe he is crazy. Maybe he is tearing down the wall between our apartments breezeblock by breezeblock because he wants to be our new roomie. I do not know. I do not care. I just want him to STOP!

Anyway, Hammer Man TM, as he is now officially known, is a bad neighbour. He has, though, inspired me to write my first song on the guitar, which, on second thoughts, probably makes it a very good thing that this blog does not support sound clips. I haven't written about my adventures in guitar playing, but about a month ago we 'borrowed' a cheap, out-of-tune and unloved old guitar (manufactured by the interestingly-named 'Stains and Music') from school, and Katie has been teaching me how to play it (I can do American Pie n'all now :). Guitar is fun, and it proved very easy to use the minimal number of chords I now know to express my displeasure at the evil lurking next door.

The song is still a work in progress, but its general theme involves ramming the hammer (metal side first) up the sphincter of a certain individual. And I want some help with the lyrics - how should I improve on/continue the following?

There was a man who had a hammer in his hand,
He banged it all day to complete some pointless task.
And all that endless banging drove us fucking mad,
So we thought we'd ram his hammer up his arse.

Whoa--oh, Hammer Man,
We're going to stick that hammer where the sun don't shine,
Whoa-oh, Hammer Ma-an,
Shove that hammer backwards right up your behind.

And yes, before you ask, my quest is to become Phoebe from Friends.

Another Year Older...

So, today I was chatting with the Chinese teachers at are school (who are all lovely), and the conversation turned to what our Chinese zodiac signs were. Now, with the exception of our manager, who has recently hit the big 30, every single employee at our school is between the ages of 21 and 26, and so we were trying to group ourselves into our relatively limited Chinese star sign groups.

When I said I was 24 and was thus a rat according to the Chinese zodiac (supposed characteristics: talkative, pioneering, quick-witted, friendly, terrible with money - actually far better than my crappy western star sign of Capricorn, whose sole characteristics appear to be stolid, conservative dullardness), they looked at me with blank incomprehension. According to them, if I was 24 then I would have to be born in 1985, and thus I would be an ox. I attempted to refute that logic by saying I was born in December 1984, and woulld thus still be 24 for another 8 months, but this was met with jokes that I was trying to deny my age!

So, it turns out that in China your age is dependent on the year of your birth; like racehorses, all Chinese people age a year on January 1st (yet they still celebrate birthdays -I'm not entirely sure what the deal is with that.) For a person like me who is born on December 28th, this effectively adds a whole year to my age. So, until September at least, when I will revert to the comparative youthfulness of 24 for a few more blessed months, I have now officially hit the big fat quarter century...

Goulash - In Outer Mongolia?

I’d like you to think, for a moment, of Ulaanbaatar’s restaurant scene. If you are conjuring up images of stringy pieces of mutton served on a bed of mouldy yak’s milk, then you’re about where I was before I visited. Two weeks ago, if someone had asked me to guess where outside of Central Europe one might happen upon a Czech restaurant, Ulanbaatar would not, it is fair to say, have been my first pick. In fact, it would probably have ranked near Kisii in my internal probability stakes, which as those of you who have suffered me going on about Kenya will understand, is equivalent to ‘absolutely no way in god-forsaken hell.’ But then, what should we spy about two minutes from our hostel in UB but this:



Of course, we had to go. Whilst I wanted to find out quite why there was a Czech restaurant in the middle of UB – with the menu outside rendered in Mongolian, English and Czech -, sadly none of the (Mongolian) waiters or waitresses spoke sufficient English for any progress to be made in solving this mystery. We did, however, have a pretty authentic Czech goulash with bread dumplings, which was, frankly, heaven after two weeks of noodles and frozen pelmenny………………..

Let Us Drink To Moister Laps

Apologies for the lack of updates - I sense the pattern of this blog might be complete inactivity for a few days and then a torrent of posts, making both of my initial predictions of its fate simultaneously true. This may mean that I share the clairvoyant powers of today's blog subject, a thought which is not entirely reassuring.

Today, I would like to introduce you to George. Not my father, who was rather disappointed to find out that for once my comment about sixty-year old disruptive influences was not referring to him. It does however refer to another George, who is pictured above with myself and my flatmate Kate. George (Jiři in Czech, but known to English and Czech alike at Oxford TEFL by his anglicized name) is one of our language students, and is both a comic genius and a complete and utter eccentric. Needless to say he provides English teachers with a lot of entertainment.

At the school where I am training, our students/guinea pigs are locals who pay a minimal fee to experience attend classes taught by a revolving series of trainee English teachers. As each class is held four times a week (although few attend that often), most students tend only to come for a few months. George, however, has been diligently attending evening English classes every month for five years and is a veritable Oxford TEFL legend. His English is not as good as this fact may lead one to believe, but he is very gifted at using it for nefarious purposes, many of which, despite the fact that he has been married for 25 years, involve trying to charm ladies. George is also at the centre of the 'Konvikt' crew, which is the name of the group of teachers, trainees, students and assorted randomers that attend the legendary Thursday pub night, and he organises various socials and trips throughout the year.

Here are a few of George's gems so far. Picture the following coming from the mouth of a sixty-year old man wearing a black and white striped jumper and a rather natty leather waistcoast, accompanied with florid gesticulation, numerous pauses and pensive looks at the sky.

In the lessons:

- 'Yes, she go to Morocco last summer, and she....she was slave' (in class, when asked a question about the lady next to him's worst experience travelling. Needless to say this was not indeed true).
- 'I say Paul bad word because I fall asleep in his lesson and he do not wake me up. All my money goes poof out of window when I am sleeping' (he had indeed dozed off earlier in one of my colleagues' lessons).
- 'No, I am not good today. It is full moon, so nothing is good. People are like wolves and they are not well. Everything is bad' (when asked how he was at the beginning of a class).

At the pub:

- 'Ah, beer. Beer is good. Yes, for ladies beer is very good for chest.'
- 'I am clairvoyant, I am hearing things from sky gods. No, I cannot say. I have signed a contract so I must....I must keep it silent.'
- 'We must drink to moister laps' (George's favourite 'cheers.' David, our Course Director, was previously unsure if George thought he was saying 'moister lips,' but when questioning him on Thursday we ascertained that this was not the case).
- 'Nádraži' (the version of 'cheers' that George teaches the trainees to say. I have since found out that this translates as 'train station,' with the correct form of 'cheers' actually being 'na zdravi).

If you can speak Czech, more of George's unadulterated wisdom can be found at the Konvikt blog, which is at http://konvikt.blog.cz/ (Martina, please read it and tell me what it says!) English speakers can find the useful chat up phrases that we taught George last Thursday faithfully reproduced, as well as a link to George's Picasa web albums which contain lots of pictures of Konvikt carnage.

Tā mē ceart go lōir

One of the many requirements of us as students on the Trinity CertTESOL course is that we spend four hours learning an unfamiliar language in complete immersion classes and then submit a reflective journal about the experience. In itself, this is really quite sensible, as it gives us some idea of how beginners in English feel and watching the teacher gives us some useful ideas on how to teach without using the students' first language in lessons at all.

However, it would surely seem logical, would it not, for this unknown language to be Czech? It's sufficiently scary (7 cases, people) to satisfy Trinity's exacting requirements, none of the students on the course are already able to speak it, and, most importantly, it is the language spoken in the beautiful city we are living in. But no, oh no. That would be far too logical. So, rather than learning basic Czech, we, my friends, have instead had a crash course in Gaeilge, more commonly known to the world as Irish Gaelic.

Whilst I am not altogether sure when my newfound Gaeilge will come in useful, I have to admit that it is a pretty amazing language. Whilst nobody would claim that English is itself a phoentic language, the Irish do not even bother to pretend that the spelling of a word should have any bearing at all on its pronunciation, meaning that for one written sound there are a dizzying and bewildering array of possible pronunciations, each more implausible than the last. How, for example, would you pronounce the word for goat, 'gabhar?' Gab-har? Gabber? Gay-bar? Nope, you pronounce it 'gower.' In defence of Irish, however, it must be said that these phonological idiosyncracies are combined with some pretty fantastic words. My particular favourites are ceart go lōir (cark'ha'lour), which is Gaelic for OK and fēilicheāin (fai'le'horrn), the very lovely Irish word for butterfly. Also good are Irish greetings. Like in many other languages, the standard Irish hello, dia dhuit, literally translates as 'God be with you.' The reply to this, however, is dia's muire dhuit which is 'God and Mary be with you,' and particulary devout Catholics can continue to greet each other indefinitely by simply adding on the names of more and more saints. What's not to love?

Sadly, my adventures in Gaeilge are now over, as our Unknown Language Journals were completed and handed in to Sinēad, our Irish teacher, at 11.15am this morning (no, I did not miss the deadline and yes, I was up until the small hours writing it). I am actually quite sad, and will miss my daily adventures in leprechaun muchly. I should probably attempt to substitute it with a bit of Czech though, or Russian, and Chinese, given that these are languages I will actually need in the short and medium term.

Stay tuned for upcoming posts about sixty-year old disruptive influences, the joys of central European cake (a post that shall be particularly lovingly written), and, of course, the hopeful return of a lost and lonely little bear. There will, I promise mum, also finally be a post about teaching at some point. And there will definitely be new information for Jo about a certain Professor Strawberry.