Christmas Eve Bicycle Accident
Nothing bad. Don't worry. Whats funny about it was that I was wearing my Santa Claus outfit as I was riding the bike. I was coming up the back way in the alleys. I rode up an incline and then I had to pull a sharp turn and I was going to fast, I flipped the bike, while wearing a Santa Claus costume. And then a woman with a baby strapped to her back (but completely under a pink blanket) on a scooter drove by. She stopped. Looked at me, said something, smiled, and took off. Just that image of a flipped over bicycle and a guy in a Santa Claus outfit getting off the ground is pretty darn funny. Add to the fact that it was in China and a white guy in a Santa Suit is very rarely seen, you have great humour. Its prolly never gonna happen to another person as long as they live.
Then as I rode to class, I passed a kindergarten. All the children were outside, linning up, ready to go into class. They all saw me, eyes widened, jaws dropped, and they started jumping up and down and screaming. So I waved to them. They were going nuts and the teachers there had big ol' smiles on their faces. I was really surprised at the reaction from the kids. I wonder how this is how its gonna be throughout the day.
As I rode to school, I realized something. Being a white guy in China, people stare at you. But then, the place gets used to you. However, when that white guy throws on a Santa Claus outfit, those stares are 100 fold. I mean, people were looking at me like they usually do, but with more intent/hatred. It was very interesting how many eyes I felt on me. More than I have felt since I have been here. However, it didn't feel as irritating as usual since I had a reason for getting stared at.
I got to school and the reaction I got was totally not one I expected. The kids were going nuts. In between classes, kids were coming to the office just to see me in the outfit. When I would walk into a classroom, the kids would all jump out of their chairs and freak out. I came into school during Morning Exercises so none of the teachers really saw me. But some of the kids did. When execises finished all the teachers came back to the office where they all saw me. They got all excited as well. "You look so Beautiful!" Um...thanks? I guess. "So handsome." Apparently the chinese like red. As I walked the halls, kids would be staring out of the classrooms to look at me. Wow. I didnt expect to disrupt classes.
During a couple classes, I continued with my usual lessons. But I added some Christmas cheer with talking about Santa Claus for a few moments. I also got the 3rd and 4th graders to sing Christmas songs. I had them sing "Jingle Bells" and "Deck the Halls". And yes, it was like in "A Christmas Story", when the family is having dinner in the chinese resturant and the chinese waitstaff is trying to sing Deck the Halls..."Deck the harls with barls of Holry...Fa ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra!" To say the least, the kids liked my outfit. I think the headmasters were pleased with me as well. They seemed unusually warm.
During lunch time, as I was preparing to go out, the kids were all hanging around where my bike was kept and they were all looking at me and trying to steal my hat. It was like a big crowd. I couldn't move.
I went to McDonald's. There were a couple kids in there that got excited. Almost as much as the people that worked at McDonald's. They were playing some really interesting music. It was a medley of a bunch of church songs. But it was really creepy because it was done with chinese lack of emotion and it was playing in McDonald's. If you think white people ruin black music, you would be horrified to hear what chinese people do to black and white music. Its absolutely horrendous. The songs that I heard were "Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Oh When the Saints Go Marching In, etc". It was weird. After that I rode home to finish some wrapping of gifts.
Things hadn't really changed when I got back to school. Sammy had bought me 2 bottles of wine and placed them on my chair. How sweet of her. The really amazing thing happened though when I went to the 1st and 2nd grader part of the school. There are two buildings, one is for 1-3rd grade and the bigger one I am at all the time is for 3rd-6th graders. As I walked to the other building and got closer, All the 1st and 2nd graders started to pile up at the doors and stare at me and wave wildly. I waved back. I climbed the stairs and got to my 3rd grade class and all the kids were surprised to see me. I did the lesson and taught some Christmas songs. They enjoyed themselves.
As I left the building heading to my bike so I could go prepare for Kindergarten, all the 2nd graders were having recess and they started to come up to me and say hello. They kept coming up and multiplying it seemed like. I turned around and was awe-struck. There were 60-70 kids following me. It was like they grew exponentially...like when people turn into zombies, it just blows up. It spreads so quickly. I was amazed. I looked at a couple other chinese teachers they were laughing and pointing at all the kids. So, I decided to have some fun with them, I started to run, and all 70 kids started to run. I would stop and then run into the crowd and they would all do as well and then I would run out of the crowd carrying a kid or two. Then I would drop them and do it again. They were going crazy, jumping around and having fun. Its hard to describe the feeling you get from seeing that. I then finally made it to my bike by that time and it was worse then before, there was no room for me to leave. The kids wouldn't allow it. They were all just standing around and looking. Until Coco came to the rescue. She wanted to let me know that the English department would go out for lunch tomorrow afternoon and she wanted to know what I wanted as a gift and I said, you dont have to get me anything and she refused to hear that. So, I told her gung fu. You know what I like. :D So she smiled and said, mmmmYes. A book. thats what we will get.
Um...Coco, you aren't supposed to tell me. :D
I finally got out of the kids after Coco told some of them to back off. As I rode the bike out, some of the kids were chasing after me just like they did during lunch. It was a gas.
Kindergarten was really fun too. However, i noticed during the day that I was coming down with a slight cold. The weather was fairly warm the past 2 weeks then all of a sudden it got cold again. And of course I wasn't prepared for it. I wasn't in the mood to yell at the kindergarten kids and they were wild as usual. The 10 Kid Spaz Class loved my outfit. A couple kids fell on the ground laughing when I showed up. I wanted to kick them.
The children all at the school were watching me come in and go to class and leave and they were all happy to see me. Daisy stopped by at the end of my my class with her stuff reindeer that played music. She was all smiles. She told me, "Merry Christmas". Awwwww....so cute.
I then went with Owen to the Bond office where we were to wait for everyone to show at 6pm so we could go to the ShiQi office for a Christmas party. I walked into the office and John just laughed pretty hard when he saw me in the Santa outfit. Most of us were there at 6pm however, we didn't leave until 630pm because someone, being chinese, didn't count the number of poeple attending the party and prepare enuff transporation for all of us. There were 9 foreigners and 4 chinese people. After awhile, one of the chinese finally made a decision and sent us 9 foreigners in the van which holds 8 people, so it was a bit cramped. And of course, there was a traffic jam on the way there. So we finally arrived at 720pm. The party started at 6pm. so there was barely any food left. The chinese are so inefficient. Headquarters was packed with kids. They had people MC-ing which I took part in around 8pm. Lots of kids doing Karaoke. Very funny. There was this huge 5 foot tall cake that was going to be cut for later. I mean, there were lots of kids. Rumi got some fotos of me MC-ing that I will post.
At 738pm I was able to commandier a TV in the reception area. I made Alice find the Zhongshan TV Stations so I could watch the news show about he Lion/Dragon Dance troop that I was going ot be on. Sweet. So, it came on and bascially the news story was introducing the head coach and his family. It talked about how many awards they have won. And it seems that they are one of the better troops in the area. Then I got on TV after about 15 minutes. Wow, they cut out alot. I mean, my time was about 5 minutes, maybe a bit less, but they only left in one thing I said from all the questions and it was what I said about the USA being the fattest country in the world. Ugh. The power of editing. They didnt give me a chinese dub, they just had subtitles. They showed me doing a very short bit of form work with the teacher and some kicks and then showed me learning the Dragon Head and doing that.
I hope those people give me a copy. I would love to have it.
So, then, geeked out about it, I headed back to get some beverage, but I got sidetracked and MC-ed for about 15 minutes. Luckily about 99.9% of the people there didn't understand me when I was singing in my metal voice that "White people rule! We be teaching english to you! AIYA!" It was goofy. Apparently John was cracking up over that.
After that I was just hanging out. There was this little baldheaded boy, 5 years old, that was super cute and his english was quite good. He was following me around alot so I chatted with him. Some of the MC's downstairs were passing out candy from bags. So i motioned for one of them to throw me a bag, I was a floor up. He threw the bag to me so I could chuck candy down onto the kids and that little 5 year old helped me. Then after the cake was cut and the kids left at 9pm, all of the Bond staff posed for a picture. I had center front row because of the santa outfit. And of course, Julius jumped on my lap for the pose. This boy is John Zhang's kid. He is great, but he can get annoying when he hits alot. So, the picture looked great apparently. Too bad I don't have a copy yet.
Then all the Xiaolan folk decided to head back. So all 9 foreigners crammed back into the van. Then the Chinese crammed into it as well. Why didn't we do this coming down here? We would have saved 30 minutes. ugh. The trip back was funny because Toby decided to argue in his condescending way to Peter and John about how bad Bond is. Peter just was not putting with his crap and at one point blew his noisemaker for a span of about 10 seconds to get Toby to shut up. IT WAS HILARIOUS! Apparently Toby doesn't think Bond does anything wrong. He obviously doesn't believe in Professionalism, Being True to your Word, or Caring about your Employees. When John and Peter were trying to explain stuff, Toby kept interupting. Peter said, "I get angry with assholes like you who don't listen or pay attention." And then John tried saying something and kept getting interrupted and he said, "That's it, I'm done. Stop now." Then Toby started singing some terrible British song. He can't sing, but he loves to.
We finally got back to Xiaolan. Most everyone came over to the Big House. The chinese folk decided to go get some food. Which meant that Jolleen went with them. John was pissed because she wasn't gonna spend Christmas Eve with her boyfriend. And of course, Jolleen is clueless. So, we called up Antwoine and met up with him at this club.
This club was funny. I got a picture of it. First think I see when I walk in is a giant Winnie The Pooh stuffed animal on a stage with scantilly clad chinese girls dancing to terrible chinese music. I lauged super hard. Got a couple fotos. Very funny. We hung out there for a bit.
Then about 15 minutes before Christmas Day, one of the chinese fellas we met at the bar took us to another place at the Tour hotel in his SUV. It was my first experience driving with a chinese in his car outside of BOND. It was freaky. We got to the Tour hotel ok. We were taken up to this Karaoke pub area. There was like only 20 people there and the room was huge. There were some chinese people making horrible noises on the mic. It was wretched. I was also getting mad because all the chinese would introduce themselves to us, men and women, but would not even acknowledge the fact that Yumi was there with us. I wanted to smack them for being rude.
I was super tired so I left early. It was a long day and I wasn't feeling 100%. I went home and dreamt of sugar plums.