Another Birthday for Jason!

Our last days in the States were quite the whirlwind of getting in a few final visits and frantically helping my parents prepare for my brother's wedding.  Jason was lucky enough to have his birthday land on the day before the wedding...guess how we got to celebrate???

Although his birthday might not have been the best-ever, we tried to make-up for it a few days later with an amazing sushi lunch and afternoon of kayaking around Morro Bay's harbor. 

I married a soccer player

As some of you may know, it's World Cup season which means A LOT of soccer in a very short period of time. Four years ago, Jason was chasing the games through Germany and backpacking around Europe. We met two weeks later at Peace Corps orientation and here we are ... watching the World Cup from Shanghai. I watch about 1 1/2 games each night and then fumble around, completely disoriented when Jason's alarm goes off for the 2:30 am match. I have yet to actually watch one of the late matches ... poor Jason.

Our school had a World Cup day on Tuesday which was topped off with a staff vs. student soccer game. It was my first time getting to watch Jason play in a semi-real game. While watching him, I was reminded how I would have never imagined that I would be married to a soccer player.  In high school & college, soccer players always seemed to be some of the cutest boys around and quite unattainable for someone like me.  And yet here I am, the very proud wife of a very cute soccer player :)

Jason's jersey was a gift from the boys teams that he helped coach this Spring.  They could never remember his last name which resulted in being called "Schtuff" which I think is a compliment considering the other two coaches ended up with "Romeo" & "Juliet!"

Delicacies on Wang Fu Jing

While in Beijing, Jason & I had a free evening and decided to explore a night market which made it onto the Amazing Race a few seasons ago ... a place where all kinds of crazy foods are ready to eat! We could not believe some of the things we saw!

Not wanting to be chicken, we decided to buy a stick of scorpions to snack on.

This is as far as I got ... I couldn't do it! So sad ... I did have a couple legs fall off in my mouth though to munch on! (so sick!) Jason was of course, they champion eater!

Marathon Man.

Jason ran his first marathon in China today! In spite of the poor air quality here, he finished with a personal best time at 3 hours 31 minutes!!!

It was an early start ... he left our place at 5:45. Sadly, I couldn't go with him to the starting line since one of us needed to stay here with our young charges until our Sunday coverage person arrived.
























I was able to go and wait for him near a half-way point. While I waited, I was appalled (although not entirely surprised) at some of the road rules for racing in Shanghai! At some points, officials stopped all the runners to allow traffic to go through and often even though police officers were telling scooters, bikes and pedestrians to stop they continued right through the running lane, forcing runners to break stride and run around them like a bit of an obstacle course!

















Is it a bad thing that my husband looks so happy to be running away from me???



































Our lovely friends, Natalie & Ed, joined me at the finish line to cheer Jason home!!
































Jason's found some new friends!

Crosswalk Rage

One (of many) peculiar and new experiences for me here in China is to be honked at angrily while walking or running in a crosswalk. I have been yelled at for jaywalking before, and for throwing flammable or combustible objects at passing cars, but in those cases I was in the wrong and the honk was justified. To be honked at in a crosswalk as a pedestrian with the right of way, though, seems wrong. The honks aren’t polite, friendly taps on the horn either. They are angry, blaring, prolonged honks that say, “How dare you walk on green, and in a crosswalk no less!”

My wife seems to endorse these reckless driving practices, what having lived in Los Angeles and all. She wouldn’t think twice about hitting me in a crosswalk, green light or not. But for a wide-eyed ingénue like me from rural Washington State (picture Bambi in Times Square), it comes as quite a shock. Even in New York, where cab drivers would sell their soul for a quicker route, I felt relatively safe in crosswalks, my safe haven in the surrounding chaos.

However, here in China there seems to be a sense of frantic urgency, and in a city of twenty million people it’s no wonder. If I were to wait until there was no one around to cross a street it would take me weeks to get home. And who has that kind of time? That said I still find it confusing to see a driver, eight cars back at a stoplight honking angrily at the lead car for not driving over the pregnant woman and her toddler son in the crosswalk.

The attitude feels to me, a slow-paced Westerner, like entitlement, a self-righteous attitude that I am more important than you. I have always felt that in order to justify being self-righteous one must be, well, right. One must be clearly in the right and another clearly in the wrong or self-righteousness isn’t valid. It’s sort of like the burglar who breaks into your house, steals your television and urinates on your favorite Persian rug and then sues you because your Pomeranian bit a hole in his jeans. What is that?

So to be honked at by an impatient driver who has a red light while I am walking in a crosswalk with the green walk symbol steams my veggies, a pet peeve of mine on par with automated help lines or blue tooth phones in restaurants. Most often when I get honked at I want to give the seemingly selfish driver a steely glare, intentionally slowing down in front of him in my passive-aggressive sort of way. Oh look, I need to tie my shoe. I don’t, of course, because I would get a mouthful of bumper, but I want to. After all, it’s my job to enlighten the Chinese people about cultural appropriateness in their own city, right?

I should add that after three months in Shanghai we have only seen one car accident. Maybe America should be taking driving tips from the Chinese. The chaotic nature of driving here seems no less culturally offensive than yelling, both an accepted and normal part of this beautiful and fascinating culture. It may never feel completely comfortable to me but I’m doing my best to blend in. So please don’t laugh at me if I run past you wearing a motorcycle helmet, elbow pads and shin guards.

Volume Control

When I hear people screaming, bellowing emotion from their deepest recesses, I assume that something is wrong, terribly, horribly wrong. Throughout Shanghai I have witnessed women hollering at women, men screeching at men, women shouting at animals, their throats raw from the exertion of their horse-like braying. Usually this type of reaction is reserved for when a monster, a heathen of the worst kind, has lit your teacup poodle on fire or relegated your daughter to her safety school. Here in China, though, these moments of raw emotion, the kind that peel the paint from walls and shatter glass, are often followed by…laughter?

What do you make of a woman who, in one moment is so livid her abrasive voice raises the dead and in the next moment is bartering over the price of peaches or holding her child up to pee into a flower pot? How do you take someone like that seriously? The dangerous conclusion to make is that everyone here who is yelling is a fraud, a faker, like the boy who cried wolf. The danger lies in ignoring the noise, blocking out anything over a certain decibel level. While this may be a valid solution to dealing with used car salesmen or Fran Drescher, it isn’t any way to go through life in China. Sure, that bloodcurdling scream to your left may just be a Chinese woman stating that she likes peonies or that autumn is a wonderful time of year. But her scream may also be saying, “The brakes on my scooter don’t work, so if you don’t want one of my handlebars to impale your colon please step to the side.”

In America, and I assume most cultures other than Norway, volume of speech is a helpful clue as to one’s level of intensity. Raising one’s volume indicates a higher level of intensity, while lowering one’s volume indicates a lower level of intensity, a calmness of sorts. This subtle nuance seems to be missing in China as a man can sandblast you with a seemingly furious tirade and simply be asking for the time. Try this with an interpreter sometime. You will be astounded at how irate “My, what a lovely blouse you are wearing” can sound.

My approach so far has been to respond in a preset sequential order, first assuming danger, then expecting rage and finally reacting to a normal human interaction. For example, if I hear shouting behind me I (1) assume that a burning rickshaw is bearing down on me and dive ceremoniously into the shrubs to my right; (2) throw my hands up around my head, protecting my face like a prize fighter in a boxing ring; (3) look in my language reference guide and try to say “Yes, I am lost, thanks for asking,” to the 3-foot tall toothless woman behind me.

Food For Thought

Living in China has taught me many things. Always carry a few squares of your own toilet paper, for example. And red traffic lights do not mean stop, they mean…well, pretty much whatever you want them to mean. Except stop, that is. But one thing that has really stood out to me during my brief time here is that Americans do not fully utilize the dizzying array of animal parts available for consumption. Cows, goats, chickens, birds, even cats are walking buffet lines with limitless options. Here in China it seems that there is no animal product or bi-product wasted, nothing deemed unclean and certainly no appendage, organ or sexual apparatus left uneaten. Pigeon scrotum, anyone? An inedible cut of meat here is like a vacant parking space in Manhattan or a tasteful woman’s haircut in the South – you just won’t find it.

We recently had the joy of eating something you probably would never think to eat: chicken kneecaps. That’s right, poultry patella. No, there is no meat content, and, yes, it does taste exactly like you think it would. If someone were to hack up a rubber bouncy ball into tiny pieces and fry them in oil I would probably have trouble telling the two apart. The crunchy texture of the kneecaps might not have been so bad had I not known what it was, but I couldn’t help picturing a poor camouflage-clad chicken, amputated from the knee down, sitting in the gutter and rattling change in a battered tin cup. “A little help?” his sad eyes say. Not so loud, friend, or they’ll come back for your “nuggets.”

A good thing to remember when horse penis or chicken kneecap doesn’t make your mouth water is that fasting is always an option. You may not want to eat anyway after you see the “chef” of your favorite neighborhood restaurant thawing your entrée in the same water in which he is rinsing yesterday’s underwear, a lifeless duck in a grayish soup of tattered briefs and socks.

You may also notice your appetite vanishing after stepping in or getting hit by a wad of phlegm the size of Rhode Island. Granted, Rhode Island isn’t that big for a state, but for a loogie it’s pretty substantial. The mucous missiles quiver like gelatin and are similar in color to watered-down turkey gravy. You may find yourself saying, I don’t want to put in my mouth whatever caused him to eject that from his. You would be lucky on two fronts, however. First, the expeller of the glutinous glob has taken the guess work out of the equation, his vile expulsion still thick with evidence of his most recent meal. Is that goat rectum? Second, it’s not what he ate that generated his sticky sneeze. It’s just the local fresh air, which actually has a higher protein content than chicken kneecaps. Little known fact.

So relax, sit back and enjoy the culinary stylings of a country that has introduced the world to such delicacies as ox spleen soup and yak toenail quiche. Or don’t; your choice. A full day of breathing in China will require more chewing than most meals you’ve eaten in your life. Bon appetit.

Coach Jason

For quite some time Jason has been hoping that he'd be able to coach soccer someday ... this past week, he did! Our school runs short, six-week seasons for a variety of sports and was in need of a soccer coach. It works perfectly into our schedule and is a lot of fun for Jason ... and for me as I get to proudly watch my husband in action :)

My First Massage

As I lay on my stomach with a Chinaman sitting on top of me digging his elbow painfully into the most tender spot on by back and breathing heavily into my ear I couldn’t help but ask myself How did I come be here?

For several weeks now my wife has been trying to get me to go with her for a massage. “It will be fun,” she said with a devious grin. “It will be relaxing.”

The facility itself looked harmless enough as we exited the elevator on the second floor of a large commercial building. Low lighting, couches, dark walls, soft music. This looks like where Yani might live, I thought. What could possibly go wrong?
I have to admit I was more than a little apprehensive about the experience, picturing a masseuse as a large Scandinavian woman dousing me with ridiculous quantities of lotions and oils. Instead, we were ushered into a small room with three beds, each with a round hole cut out near the end. Will there be vomiting involved? I asked myself, noting the plastic bucket situated directly under the hole in the bed I was next to.
I had been prepared for the possibility of being naked for the massage. After trying to communicate with the staff about clothing arrangements we were handed large one-size-fits-all pajamas that I’m pretty sure used to belong to my grandfather. We quickly changed into our pajamas and were directed to lie down on our stomachs on adjacent tables.

My masseuse, or in this case man-seuse (I was expecting a female) looked innocent enough and attempted to break the awkwardness with small talk about where we were from in broken English. Apparently that was about the extent of his English because the only other phrases he uttered for the remainder of the time were “relax” and “OK?” The fact that he felt the need to tell me to relax was a little unsettling. But not nearly as unsettling as what came next.
There are a few sounds that I have heard in my life that make me cringe – fingernails on a chalkboard, car horns, the Backstreet Boys. The sound that accompanied my introduction to massage, though, quickly rose to the top of the list. My man-seuse had centered himself directly over and, without so much as a warning, dropped a piano on my back. Or at least that’s what it felt like. I had no way of knowing for sure because I was pressed against a mat with my face crammed into a hole looking at the plastic bucket beneath me. I was growing more and more certain that the bucket was there for a reason. The sound of my back cracking was roughly equivalent to a dozen Turkish men cracking their knuckles at exactly the same time. He did this not once but four times, each time leaving me shocked and gasping for air, my legs twitching in the air like a caterpillar’s antennae.
“Relax,” he said, more a command than a suggestion.
Right.

Moving from my back to my neck, my assailant found the spot that hurt the most and relentlessly continued to poke, prod and kneed it. “OK?” he asked as a formality. My muffled screams and cries for help must have been interpreted as a yes because he continued to dig his fingers into my neck until I thought – hoped even - that I might pass out.

Am I actually paying for this? I asked myself, cringing in pain. Who does this for fun? Perhaps there’s been some kind of mix-up. Have I inadvertently stolen something in Riyadh? Isn’t this why Guantanamo Bay is getting shut down? I replayed in my mind scenes I had seen from movies depicting torture. My man-seuse dug his small Asian elbow into my tender back and held it there. Perhaps he is hoping for a confession.
Apparently “Please, Sir, you’re hurting me” translates into Chinese as “Please, Sir, do more of what you are doing. Much, much more.”
My heart rate increased as I thought about what might come next. I was pretty sure the next step in the “relaxation process” would be to connect jumper cables to my genitals. Did I see a car battery on the way in?

While the jumper cables never made an appearance, my body continued to endure the most painful experience of my life. I was twisted like a pretzel, pulled like taffy and pounded like a batch of rising dough. Again my thought was: I’m actually paying for this? Granted, the cost of a massage in China is only the equivalent of nine US dollars. But it’s the principle of it: I was paying for pain. Does this make me a sadist? I always pictured sadists as creepy, pale, middle-aged deviants wearing black leather. Not wearing grandpa pajamas; not in a building with classy décor and bottled water; not my wife!

Next in my “relaxing” massage was a head rub, which felt good until he began to drill his fingertips into my temples until I couldn’t see straight. Maybe he was trying to purge my western mind of all its evil capitalist notions. Maybe he thought I would enjoy it. Maybe “softer” in English translates to “keep digging harder until you see blood” in Chinese.

I never thought that I would feel worse leaving a massage than when I entered. I never thought that I would need a safe word, especially one in Mandarin Chinese. I haven’t felt that happy to leave a building since I went to see Speed II in the theater. Just awful! Standing outside, feeling the warm sun on my face, free from my masochistic torturer, I thanked God that I was alive. The birds were cheerier, the sky was bluer. Well, less smoggy anyway. As we limped away, happy to be alive, I asked myself Is this what they mean by a “happy ending”?

Everything Jason

Jason had a great time this past year ... doing backflips off of cliffs, climbing trees, growing facial hair and playing with the kids of Angaur. Here are a few images of him doing some of his favorite things :)

Graduation Day!

The DAY finally came!!!

On Wednesday, although it was the students graduation, for us it was a celebration that Jason made it through this entire year at Bronx Prep. He was greatly challenged everyday he went in to work. The hardest to overcome was the daily blatant disrespect his students showed him, each other and themselves in their words, actions and attitudes. Although it was such a difficult year, we know that Jason was able to be an encouraging light to some of the students and we know that what he has gained through this challenge is incomparable. I am so proud of my husband for this great accomplishment!

Some of Jason's students ...
The park that Jason has walked through everyday on his way to work ...

Our celebration meal at home after the graduation! YUMMY!!!