The Chinese countryside is different than say, America's heartland, for one big reason. In China, all the farmwork is still done by manpower in China--not because they don't have the technology here, but because they do have the men. Manual labor is cheap, and in a country of 1.3 billion people, people are never hard to come by. So the fields are smaller and have a lot of different crops. It's cheaper for workers to pick all the different crops than for one big combine or something to pick a whole big field. So you just don't see a giant corn field, for example. I suppose that's true because two different people told me that. But that's beside the point.
We dug for sweet potatoes and peanuts, and though these were the rich, city kids down in the dirt, they got into the task--though admittedly not quite as much as the Chinese teachers did. It was the three Americans there who showed the least interest in the task at hand--myself, my fellow foreign teacher Mrs. Paula, and her son Daniel who is a student at the Kindergarten. Daniel was more interested in the bugs. Mrs. Paula in taking pictures, and me in playing with the kids and distracting them from their work. It's amazing the kind of fun you can have when the extent of your conversational skills is what mine and theirs are. Although one student today yelled out a window to me: "Wednesday Happy!" I'm not sure what he meant, but I figured it's a step in the right direction.
One poor little boy couldn't find any potatoes, though. Mrs. Paula asked how many he had found, and he replied "mayo" which means "I don't have any." So if you ask a Chinese person for some Miracle Whip, don't be surprised if they respond, "Mayo mayo." If so, keep looking.
Interesting discovery today by me: I haven't the slightest clue why, but my kids can play Rock, Paper, Scissors in perfect English. All of them. The ones who can't say "hello" can say "rock, paper, scissors... go" and then proceed to smash my scissors or cut my paper with perfect accuracy. So while that was weird, I also found out that little kids are really easy to trick. I successfully hid a peanut in my sleeve from some kids and pulled it out from behind their ears like a million times without them ever catching on. Sometimes they know the weirdest English, I think. Mom, you'll be happy to know they all can say, "wash your hands." They just don't do it :)
Here are some pictures of my kiddos... let's see... first picture are some girls in my Big Purple class, the one in the front on the left is named Kelly, and the other ones I can't remember. I remember Kelly because she speaks pretty well. The second picture is of a little girl named Lisa who can't speak much English, but loves Rock, Paper, Scissors and always wears pigtails. The third pic is a girl named Amy who also speaks pretty well. She's in Middle Pink and likes to yell out the answers. Next is Angel, also in Middle Pink, she's probably four if I had to guess, and likes to laugh when I fall off my chair or sit down and almost miss it (which is often because it's seriously like 6 inches big--I use the same chair they do). She's a cutie. And last is a boy, I think his name's Jonathan. I know there's one boy named Jonathan and I think it's him. Regardless, he's a nice kid.
P.S. Gotta give a shout out to Sweater Cuts, the Mickey's of the East (meaning the place I now go to get my haircut). Not only is it this crazy tacky, over-the-top colorful barbershop that I would never set foot in in America, but they give head/shoulder massages, a shampoo, and a decent cut for a grand total of $5. We call it Sweater Cuts because all the employees wear these identical red sweaters. The place is amazing.
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