Basketball Diaries

When I got here, some of the head honchos asked me if I liked to play basketball. I am tall and from America (the birthplace of the game,) so they figured that I did. I told them that, yes, I do indeed enjoy playing. They were happy and asked me if I would play in the school tournament. I said sure, it sounded like fun, all the while imagining that it would be a bunch of casual pick-up games with the reward being bragging rights. We met for "practice" a couple of times and played against the students a couple of times too. I was told that I represented the English Dept. and there were 6 guys on our team.

We were shooting around when my new teammate/colleague/friend, Murray, said that there was a dinner party to attend. I said "Great! When?" He responded that it was in 15 minutes (Hey, that's China!) and that I should go change clothes, tell Michelle to get ready, and meet him. Shell and I scurried around getting nice clothes on and barely made it in time. The "dinner party" turned out to be a banquet of over 300 people from all over the city. It also turned out that I was on the schoolwide basketball team as well as the English department team. The team was mostly the PE majors who have been practicing for a while, so I was second string. There were dignitaries and businessmen attending this thing and I found out a few interesting things about the tournament. First of all, there is money at stake: 5,000 renminbi (about $625) goes to the winner and 3,000 goes to the 2nd place team. Second, we would be playing the next morning after the beginning ceremony. Third, it is part of a larger set of games that also include badminton and ping pong. It was a county-wide olympics of sorts!

The next morning I showed up in the pouring rain and was given a very fast breakfast. I was told that the classes I teach would be postponed and I was taken to city hall where there was a band and all of the other teams. It was a parade! We marched through town (still raining) to the stadium where we lined up military-style and listened to the dignitaries speak, as well as the national anthem. Then they released a couple hundred pigeons (not doves.) Somebody even gave me home and away jerseys. I didn't play a whole lot in the tournament because of some politics around here. I played in only one game when the score had been run up by quite a bit. It was just after halftime and the coach put me in. I trotted out onto the court in front of hundreds of spectators and...

Everyone laughed.

It was a bit embarrassing but I scored 4 points right away and soon I was getting my own cheers. Sure, they were in Chinese and I couldn't understand them, but they said my name! After the break we will go back to the department games without the pressure. It'll be nice.

Pics:

Photo 1: Want to buy a balloon? This is a balloon salesman in Tianshui at the market. It must be nice to give a little bit of fun to people...sort of like being a flower delivery person, I'd imagine.

Photo 2: Want to buy a squid? Delicious!

Photo 3: This is in our apartment. I invited my oral English class over to watch a movie. Of the 38 students in the class about 36 showed up. We all scrunched together and watched the movie The Truman Show.

I'm Sorry Sacajawea

It was a dark and stormy night. I had just sat down at the computer to update my blog. I had found my pictures and placed them on my desktop and I was collecting my thoughts when the storm hit. They come here with a certain ferocity that you don't really expect. In the distance lightning is constantly flashing and it just gets closer and closer until it is right on top of you. The power went out for about 20 minutes (a short time for Cheng Xian power outages) and when it came back on the internet wouldn't work. It took three days of wrangling, but we are back in business!

After our first week in school we decided to hop on the bus to Tianshui (literal translation "Sky Water") to get a few odds and ends from there, the closest large city to us. During the two-hour trip one has quite a bit of time to look out the window at the scenery. I was looking for something in particular on this trip though. A couple of nights before our trip, I was having dinner with the other foreign teachers here when one of them told me something that I couldn't believe. I had to check it out for myself.

She was right.

It is legal to grow marijuana in China to use for hemp. According to what I have been told, a person can grow one plant to use for hemp and the people are also allowed to chew the seeds as well, but smoking it is forbidden. On my bus ride I began to see all of these enormous plants lining the road. I was surprised to see this, but it was everywhere, just growing out in the middle of corn fields and in front of the village homes. I was definitely caught off guard by this revelation.

Along the road there are various small villages with people that line the main street selling food, clothing, and other items. Apparently our bus driver suddenly had a craving for walnuts and decided to pull off in one town, park the bus for about 5 minutes and buy some. This is a fairly common practice here. Bus drivers will stop to make purchases, pick up friends, drop off packages and sometimes just talk to people. While this is all going on, the bus is full of passengers who just hang out and wait for the bus to get going again. Nobody gets angry and it is sort of taken as a given here. Like doing many other things in China, it takes patience to get tasks accomplished.

The school here has purchased bikes for us as well! Mine is silver with a small luggage-type rack on the back and a basket on the front for carrying groceries. It doesn't look particularly masculine, not that there's anything wrong with that. I have named it Killer, in the hopes that my bike will feel tougher and scarier. Killer's basket will carry groceries, tools, and sports equipment. Killer will never carry flowers, dolls, or anything pink. I don't have a photo of Killer yet, but stay tuned.

In other news, I have been drafted to join the English Dept. basketball team. We play other departments and clubs on campus in a big competition. There are now six of us on the team and guess who the giant laowai playing center is! We had our first game today and we won, 87-62. It is a rather strange experience to play here because students line up to watch whatever basketball game I am playing in. They ignore the other games in progress for the most part. But that isn't the strange part. They applaud whenever I score or do anything well, and they don't really applaud for anyone else. It is unnerving to say the least.

Finally, I'll relay a funny conversation I had today with Mr. Pu. He was looking through a photo book of Idaho that I brought with me. On one page there was a photograph of a statue of Sacajawea, the Shoshone woman from Idaho who helped lead the Lewis and Clark expedition safely through the journey west and back. The following conversation transpired:

Mr. Pu: Who is this person?
Me: That is Sacajawea, a famous woman in American history.
Mr. Pu: Oh, I see. What is her name again?
Me (pointing out the spelling in the book): Sacajawea
Mr. Pu (slowly): Skank-a-ja-we-a
Me: No, no it is pronounced SAC-a-ja-we-a
Mr. Pu: SKANKajawea
Me: SACajawea
Mr. Pu: SKANKajawea
Me (giving up): Okay, good. Look at the next picture!

Oh well. You win some and you lose some.

Photos:

Photo 1: This is a large mural that is painted on the outside of one of the buildings in the market here in Cheng Xian. It is a clothing store and from what I could tell, other than the mural, it really didn't have anything to do with Smurfs (or Smurfs's) at all.

Photo 2: This is what happens when best friends cross the street together in China! (Taken in Tianshui.)

Photo 3: I saw these kids sitting on the bike and it was just too fun to resist taking a picture.

Photo 4: This is my teacher, Wang Quanyi, and I at the host family banquet. We are thinking together.

Photo 5: This one is just for Emily. It is the Hello Kitty mobile! I have seen many cars decorated on a theme like this. There was a Snoopy car, fried egg car (pictures of fried eggs all over it) and others that I can't think of now. Hello Kitty is very popular here.

Dispersed

We are home.

We have been sworn in as official Peace Corps volunteers. There was an elaborate ceremony with dignitaries such as John Darrah, the PC China Director and Asst. Sec. of State Christopher Hill was in attendance (It isn't every day that you can meet a person who has personally spoken to Slobodan Milosevic and Kim Jong Il.) It was a nice ceremony. Right after it was over many of our friends had to leave. It was tough to see them go after such a long time together, but we knew it was coming.

We finally made it to Cheng Xian. It was a rough journey (see Michelle's blog for that whole story) but we made it.

Now everything slows down a bit.

We got here on Saturday, were escorted around by Mr. Li (English Dept. Dean,) and Mr. Pu (Waiban Director) all day Sunday and we taught on Monday. Mr. Pu invited us to a performance with singing and dancing at the auditorium here. We were given seats in the front and center and we were applauded when we arrived. Mr. Pu also asked us to sing a song for everybody. I declined because I don't believe in abusing my students.

So I teach six sections of Oral English to colllege sophomores here. The same class all week. I only have to prepare one lesson for the week. Coming from Liberty, where I was juggling five different lessons a day, my workload has dropped precipitously. So I am trying to decide what I will do for a hobby. Any suggestions? There are many options. I am leaning toward learning calligraphy I think. It is artistic and it will help me learn Hanzi (Chinese characters) better. Despite my basic knowledge of the language, I am still functionally illiterate here. It is hard to know where you are going if you can't read. I can learn Tai Chi or an instrument or a host of other choices. I am pretty sure we are starting an English language film club here. We have access to a 3000 seat auditorium and the students get bored here at nights so it should work out. We bought somewhere in the vicinity of 30 DVDs in Chengdu that we can use for the club.

It is getting cold here in the mornings and evenings and the heat doesn't get turned on for 2 months yet so we need to get some cold-weather gear soon. We'll be buying space-heaters and electric blankets soon. I hear that winters here can get a bit chilly, particularly before the powers-that-be turn on the heat. We are lucky though. All of the other provinces don't have the luxury of heat at all during the winter so we are grateful.

For those of you who are interested, I have access to hundreds of Chinese students who would like to have an American pen pal. If you'd like to try it out drop me a line and I'll arrange it.

Also, some of you have asked for our address, now that we have stopped moving around so much. Here you go:

Thad Ross
Longnan Teacher's College
Construction Road, Hedong Area
Cheng Xian, Gansu
China 732500

Please don't write to the old address. We'll still get it there, but it will take much longer to get mail.

Pic 1: My bad self, John Darrah PC Country Director, and Michelle.

Pic 2: On the train bunks: Front to back, left: Danielle, half of Emily, Ben, Kristen. Right: half of Thomas, Michelle, Pierce, and Niffy. We were all chatting about the little problem Michelle and I experienced getting on the train and it looked like a good photo opportunity.

Until next time: keep your powder dry!

Crazy English

I'll tell you about Crazy English next time. We are at a hotel in Chengdu and we are getting ready to hop on the 17 hour train ride to Cheng Xian. We were sworn in as official Peace Corps Volunteers! Photos and stories to come...

While you sleep I'll be riding the rails!