"Bus" strikes again

I've got this one kid in my class who kills me--there are a lot of funny kids at my Kindergarten, but only one gets me every time. He's one of the smallest in Big Green and I'm pretty sure his English name's James, but that's not his name in my head: it's Bus.

Bus is 100% reliable in the only joke he needs to make. I'm fond of asking questions in class, and I'm pretty sure that most of the times for most of my little 4-, 5- and 6-year olds, the questions are way above their little heads. I figure it pushes them, and plus, sometimes they get them right. This morning I was asking such a question, or maybe it was an easy one, I honestly can't rememeber. I can't remember most of the questions I ask this kid in particular, but I remember his answers: "bus." Every time, any question, doesn't matter in the least: he says "bus."

I was asking for volunteers this morning for said question, and Bus had his hand raised high. He's a tough kid to read as he's always got a glimmer of mishief in his eyes, so honestly I'm not sure if he does it to get a laugh or if the only English he knows is "bus," but when I acknowledged his hand and walked over to recieve his answer, he had it all down, from the comic timing to the baited audience. He paused, I waited, thinking to myself, "please say bus, pleeease say bus," and after just long enough for me to really wonder what was coming, what exactly was going on inside that head of his, it came:

"Bus."

I laughed, he smiled his big old smile, and life in Big Green continued as it should. It's good to be back teaching.

No exploding cars, please

One of my favorite street signs in China--check that, it is my favorite. The red stop sign-looking one is indeed a stop sign with the character "ting" (stop). The other, well, your guess is as good as mine.

A brief lesson on personal space

The man under the yellow arrow has been to China before, the couple under the red arrow have not. This photo was taken in the Bangkok Airport; notice the difference in space between the Asian customers waiting in line and the North Americans. This is one of the cultural differences I notice the most in China... my definition of closing in the gaps is WAY different than the average Asian. Partially, there's a reason for the lack of gaps. I'll explain.

This last week I actually went to the Post Office for the first time; the majority of the packages that are sent my way wind up in my building, this particular one did not. I'd heard stories about Chinese Post Offices and was pretty curious to see if the rumors were true. Chinese people aren't real big on lines, they prefer mass groups of people pushing towards their desired goal (see my post on Chinese fire drills a while back), so when they can they don't have them. My first move when I walk in is to get in line, of course. I find the desired window ("Package Claim") and wait behind the man currently being helped. As I'm standing there, a Chinese man walks up in front of me and hands his slip to the man behind the counter, and I remember like Doc Brown, "where we're going, we don't need lines"... or something like that. Basically if you leave a gap, somebody else fills it in for you.

I continue to wait (though sometimes, admittedly, I do it the Chinese way--I won't this time) and an older man pulls up "in line" behind me. You can tell though he's struggling with the idea. He keeps creeping up, peeking his head around my shoulder. I wait patiently and when my time comes, a nice little "line" has formed behind me, creeping and peeking, waiting for the foreigner to finish so they can push to the front. There's a push from the government, too, to start forming lines. One of my favorite things around are a series of posters in subways and on buses and whatnot, urging people: "Please be civilized, the Olympics are coming." I'll try to get a picture of one sometime; they show people doing just that, waiting in lines at an ATM, standing on the right of an escalator, walking on the left, and crossing the street at crosswalks. Funny stuff.

I got my package no problem, and like always, I get a brief lesson on personal space. Hope the picture helps to give you one as well.

(Special thanks to my pal Susie for unknowingly allowing me to borrow her picture, arrows and the like.)

Dad's visit... revisited

Here are some of my favorite pictures of when Dad was here that I never got a chance to post. Sorry about the glut of posts of late, by the way... I have some free time in the office (actually lots of it this week) and am trying to take care of some stuff I've gotten behind on--the internet being one of them. Read back down if you haven't for a while. There's lots of good stuff.... or at least lots of it.

Why not to mess with a Thai tuk-tuk driver

So we’d been camped out on Kamala Beach for a couple of days now and were ready to explore more of the island. We’d heard rumors that Phuket Town was cheaper than the beaches (which made sense) so we decided we’d head inland to have our long-anticipated seafood feast. (We’d been ordering some great shrimp on the beach but were ready for some crab and maybe lobster.) As much as I loved the tuk-tuks in Phuket, they were pricey. 300 baht to get into Phuket Town (divide by 40 for USD—doesn’t seem much, but for comparison we paid 540 baht for a 2-person room at the YMCA in Chiang Mai; also, it was 300 baht to rent a mo-ped for a day… unfortunately it’s against company policy to rent a mo-ped at all). Anyway, we paid the 300 baht and said “Phuket Town.” As we got into town, we asked the driver if he knew any good seafood places, he said he did, and we headed that direction. I knew we were in trouble as we kept heading farther and farther out of town. Our contingency plan was that if he took us somewhere shady or expensive, we could walk somewhere less shady and less expensive. But, as we turned onto a quarter-mile long dirt road, far from town, we realized that was out of the question. The place he took us to was nice. We were seated on a deck overlooking some water. Too nice, I thought. I was right. The crab on the menu was over 500 baht, lobster even more. We’d been eating for around 100 at Kamala. But, we had already sat down and put in our drink orders before we saw the menu (our mistake), so we waited for the drinks, drank them and left. For whatever reason (maybe this had happened before, I thought), our tuk-tuk driver was still waiting in the parking lot of the restaurant when we left. We’re saved! We told the driver that the place was nice, but too expensive. Can you take us somewhere cheaper, we asked? No problem, he said, he knew just the place—and there was no extra charge. What a great guy. We drove back down the dirt road and back into Phuket Town. When we stopped, the driver pointed us down an alley. Cheap seafood, he said, that way. We skeptically crept down the alley to a large, sliding metal door at the back. It was cracked enough to see couches around the walls with reclining Thai woman and was without a doubt, definitely not a restaurant. This time the tuk-tuk was gone and we knew we’d been punk’d. Apparently in Thai, cheap seafood means cheap prostitutes. We bu yao’d out of there, down the street to a corner restaurant with plenty of sunlight and openness—mei yo shadiness. We opened the menu: right around 100 baht, the same price as our usual places. We had a nice meal and found a tuk-tuk for the ride home. “Kamala Beach, please. We’ve already had dinner.”

(Bu yao is “I don’t want it” in Chinese; mei yo: without.)