A Beijing Christmas

The Paschke Family Christmas Tree

 Who would have ever guessed that I would one day be celebrating Christmas in Beijing?  But that's exactly what I did this past weekend.  The other IECS teachers and I were all invited to celebrate Christmas this weekend with two American families that live and work in Beijing.  The Paschke and Cramer families are good friends of IECS and they treated us with some amazing hospitality.  They opened up their homes to us, they bought us Christmas presents, and even help arrange a bus for us to travel through Beijing in style.  But, I’m getting ahead of the story.

The Christmas weekend started out with traveling early Saturday morning.  It had snowed the day before and now the roads had become incredibly icy.  However, that doesn’t mean that the Langfang taxis slow down.  No, they still traveled their maddening speeds as usual.  We made good time getting to the train station and in no time we were off to Beijing.  This was my first time taking the fast train and the journey only took 20 minutes.  Of course we were traveling at a speed of 300 km/h.

We arrived at the Beijing train station and we were greeted by Laura Cramer in a Santa hat.  She showed us to our bus and to our surprise the bus had been turned into a Christmas wonderland.  Christmas music played over the loud speakers, Santa hats adorned every chair, and garland hung from the ceiling.  This was a great start to the day.  We made our way first to the Pearl Market to do some last minute Christmas shopping.  The ladies at the Pearl Market all speak English but you can give them a real shock by speaking Chinese!  It’s fun.

After a lighting fast shopping spree we were all back on the bus and off to West Beijing for lunch.  We stopped by one of the historic districts in Beijing where a lot of western style restaurants were located.  It was here that we ate real authentic pizza for lunch.  Dan Paschke and his two boys took over as our hosts for the rest of the afternoon and we all took a rickshaw tour of the historic district.  Originally the plan was to go skating but the weather was too warm and the icy lake wasn’t strong enough to hold anyone.  We traveled all over the city and found ourselves ultimately in the Beijing modern art district.  It was pretty cool to get to see all the interested sculptures and paintings of the newer Chinese artists.  

That evening we ended up at the Paschke family’s house in the expatriate community known as the Beijing Rivera.  The Beijing Rivera is a bunch of large western style houses located on stamp-sized yards.  Most of the huge houses were literally within arm’s reach of the next house.  However, the houses are quite spacious on the inside and the Paschke family had done a really good job with decorating.

The Paschke’s private cook had prepared a special Christmas dinner for us.  However, the menu might be considered a bit unorthodox for Christmas.  We ate homemade steak, chicken and hamburger fajitas. We ate homemade tortilla chips with salsa and guacamole.  We had all kinds of fruits and deserts.  Laura Cramer had made for us two pumpkin pies, a batch of brownies, ice cream, pound cake, coconut cream pie, and even Christmas cookies.  It was all delicious!

After dinner we gathered in the family room for games.  We played a game of White Elephant whereby I won a box of Cocoa Puff Cereal.  It’s amazing how the little things from America can make a difference but I was super excited about eating cereal again.  I haven’t eaten any breakfast cereal for four months!

We also played a game whereby we compared most embarrassing team Christmas photos… Team Tianjin won for obvious reasons…(See the photo below.)

The best part of the whole night came when Jess Shamble surprised us all with her Santa sack.  She first acted like there was nothing more for us to do and it was time to turn in.  However, it was then that she “found” an unnoticed sack lying in the other room.  She turned the sack over and more than 500 Christmas cards from America spilled out on the floor.  It was a huge surprise!  I was getting quite teary-eyed when I saw the mess hit the floor.

Christmas in Beijing was amazing.  The Paschke and Cramer families really were super with opening up their homes and hosting us.  For the first time it really felt like Christmas.  I especially miss my friends and family at this time of year but the letters from home really made me happy.  It reminded me of all the love from the home-front and it encourages me to continue pressing on with my work here in China.  Thanks everyone for the Christmas cards and may you and your families have a very Merry Christmas!   

The Christmas Bus!

Hat and cap sold seperatly.

A gang wearing Santa hats makes their way down the streets of Beijing.

The West Beijing Lake

Making our way through the historic district.

I think the artists have been here...

This is a Pizza place...

... with a live fish pond,

and Christmas decorations.

More Christmas decorations at the pizza place.

Buddha and a Christmas tree...?

Rickshaw Pileup

The not-so-frozen lake.

Pam and Sarah

I think the Santa hat has caused me to lose any and all coolness-factor.

The Paschke Boys

Josh and Lacey

Shh... Jamie and Beth are sleeping.

Old and new Beijing clash quite nicely.

The old drum tower.

Lacey and Beth

Christmas fun!

Good ol' Frank

Dan Paschke is directing the White Elephant

It's amazing how wonderful American food can be...

I think Keri was about to cry when she opened this bag of Goldfish brand crackers

The letter bag!

Bag of milk, Cocoa Puffs, and Starbucks coffee.... the breakfast of champions! 

All 37 of my Christmas cards!

Team Tianjin's winning "family" photo.

The Great Snowball Fight!

Langfang Oral English Class #1

It has been snowing in Langfang all throughout the night and on into this morning.  Nearly two inches of snow had accumulated once it was all over.  Several businesses and schools in the area had a morning delay before getting started but not Langfang Teachers College.  We were still right on schedule.  I loaded up my backpack with my teaching supplies, hopped on my bike, zipped up my coat, and slowly peddled my way to class. 

I made my way down the snow covered streets making sure to keep my steering as straight as possible.  I own a speed bike, which is great for going fast, but the light weight frame is terrible on slippery surfaces.  So I made sure to travel at a slow pace.  I slid only a couple of times but mostly I was alright.  I made it to the campus in one piece and that’s all that really matters. 

Finals are quickly approaching and today’s class was a review of the whole semester.  It is tedious work to go through an entire semester’s worth of learning in a single hour.  However, we kept calm and pressed on.  I could visually see the spirits of my students deflate as I explained the nature of the final exam.  It isn’t a hard exam but it is going to be a lot of work.  They know this and it was clearly causing stress.  I can’t blame them.  I always hated review day.  However, it is a necessary evil of the whole college learning process.

Now that the first hour of teaching was complete I just couldn’t take it anymore.  I had been glancing out the classroom window far too many times and the snow’s beacon call was too strong to resist.  It was just too beautiful.  As soon as the second half of the class began I grabbed my coat and invited everyone to join me outside for a snowball fight.  I was first met with short period of disbelief from the students before sheer glee overwhelmed the classroom.  They all cheered, then grabbed their coats, and then we were off outside.

Our class “field trip” took us to the front of building 10 where an undisturbed field of freshly fallen snow was ours for the picking.  We were hardly there for a second before I had ten snowballs flying in my direction.  The fight was on and snowballs filled the air.  The students threw snowballs at me, I threw snowballs at them, and they threw snowballs at each other.  It was a lot of fun.  It was time for the class to end and none of them wanted to stop.  Unfortunately all good things must come to an end but I promised them that we’d do it again sometime.

Some people may be wondering how I can justify sacrificing an hour of class time to play in the snow.  But I don’t view this time as a sacrifice.  On the contrary, I view it as highly motivating.  The students were stressed about the upcoming final exam and it showed.  I could see how burdened and overwhelmed they had become.  A simple snowball fight turned those frowns upside-down.  The students were laughing, having fun, and they were releasing some of that pressure that had been building.  It was good for their health and their morale… Although they had still better watch out because a snowball still might still be coming their way! 

Kids making a snowman in the street.

One of the many bike lots on campus.

Building # 10

Snowball Fight!

Need more snowballs!

Run faster!

Revenge is best served cold and down the pants!

Caught in the crossfire.

This photo was taken merely seconds before the hail of snowballs would come flying.

Don't they look so innocent?  It's all a lie...

Langfang Oral English Class #1

Langfang Oral English Class #3 is getting in on the fight.

Strike a pose.

Watch when landing that plane... the runway is icy.

The Class #3 Ringleaders.

Langfang Oral English Class #3

Langfang Oral English Class #3

Aww... the snowball fell off my hat.

Say hello to my little friend... Mr. Frosty the Coolman.

From Rubbish to Gold

Sonic and I on the Great Wall

Today I want to talk about one of my students and a personal friend, Sonic.  Sonic chose his English name due to its vernacular proximity to his own Chinese name, Suo Qi Wei.  I first met Sonic during my two-week excursion to China back in May.  He, a teacher, and three other students were part of the airport welcoming party for the Langfang teachers.  Sonic grabbed my bags and stuck with the entire time as we made our way to the Langfang school bus.  He was simply full of question after question and he was eager to tell me all about his glorious land.  Since that point to now I’ve maintained a close friendship with this young man.

About two months ago, Sonic approached me with a problem.  He was entering an English competition; however, his teacher had told him that his entrée paper was rubbish.  He asked me for help.  Sonic’s favorite place to eat is a fast food restaurant called Dico’s.  We often go there for conversation and fried chicken.  I sat down with Sonic in Dico’s and I read over his paper.  His teacher was right...  It was rubbish.  However, it was still salvageable.  The premise behind the paper was a good one and the thesis was one that merely needed a little tweaking before it would make a great argument.  The paper was about the health benefits of humor.  I sat with Sonic and helped him work through the finer arts of developing a strong outline.  We debated the premise, started searching for good supporting evidence, and even included a few humorous jokes to drive the point home.  After three hours we finally had an outline to be proud of.  Now all Sonic had to do was rewrite the paper based on the new outline.

Sonic presented the new paper to me and I corrected a few of the imperfections.  The credit for all the improvements really should go to Sonic.  I may have steered him in the right direction but he made the conclusions on his own.  A good teacher doesn’t tell his students what to think but helps them to learn how to think for themselves.  Sonic did that and I couldn’t have been more proud of him.

Finally the time came for the submission of the paper in speech form.  Sonic preformed it well and I was impressed with his progress.  His advisor couldn’t believe the change.  The results came back a week later and Sonic had taken first place!  It was unbelievable.

However, the story does not end there.  Round one of the competition was simply betting out all the other students at LTU.  Round two of the competition was going to be a contest against all the other school in the province.  This time, instead of a paper and speech, Sonic was going to have to win in an importune debate without knowing the topics.  Once again, Sonic came to me for help.

I hate to say that Sonic came to me telling me that his advisor said to him, “You’ve got no critical thinking skills.”  Advisor this person may be but life couch they are not.  So Sonic and I made our way back to Dico’s to work on his critical thinking.  This ended up being a lot more fun than you might think.  Essentially Sonic brought along a list of common news relate items that would probably come up in the debate.  I told him that we needed to argue the pros and cons of each topic.  In order to decide which side one of us would take we simply flipped a coin.  If it was heads then Sonic argued the pros and I argued the cons.  If it was tails then vice versa.  We had fun trying to outdo each other and it served as a real mental challenge.  It didn’t matter if we believed in what we were arguing so much as coming out the clear victor and knocking the other speechless.  Sonic really held his own ground and we were pretty much 50/50 for wins and losses.  I couldn’t believe that Sonic’s advisor said he didn’t have any critical thinking faculties.  By all accounts I would say that Sonic has some serious brain power.  True, it was largely untapped potential but a push in the right direction got him really thinking on his toes.  I was quite impressed with how he held his own against my scrutiny.

Sonic and I also had a long talk about what it meant to win the competition.  Sonic wanted to win, of course, but I didn’t want him to get his hopes up.  I told him that no matter what happens I would still be proud of him because of the progress he had made so far.  Winning isn’t everything and he needed to focus more on enjoying the debate than on winning.  The nervousness would fade if he could only learn to thrive off of the trill of the contest.  It’s the sport of the competition that makes it worth the effort.

The day of the big competition finally came.  Sonic was dressed in a fine suit and looked quite dapper.  He waited alongside the other contestants in a holding room awaiting his turn.  All of the contestants had their cell phones removed and pockets checked.  The officials take a dim view of cheating here in China.  Finally the time came for the debate.  Sonic was given the topic of, “Does age matter in relationships?”  He handled it like a pro and even told a few appropriate jokes to prove his point.  I was super proud of him.

After the debate I waited with Sonic for the results.  I asked him if was nervous at all during the debate.  He told me that he was only partly nervous.  However, he said that it didn’t matter if he won or lost.  It only matter that he tried his best and had fun doing it.  I was floored.  I found myself biting my nails during the performance but Sonic was a cool as a cucumber.

The results finally came in and we couldn’t believe it…  Sonic had placed first! Looking back at it I can’t help but think about what Sonic’s advisor had said about his paper.  He had said it was, “rubbish.”  Well, Sonic had turned that rubbish into gold.  I guess it just goes to show that we should never be too quick to give up on our students.   

Sonic and I at Dico's.

Sonic, Luke and I at the competition.