Amazing kids!

Recently we held the final round of our speaking competition.  I judged the first round with 2 Chinese managers from our school.  The judges for the final round were me, Linda (the other foreign teacher), and Gabriel (our teacher trainer).

It was a hot day at the top of a mall.  There were windows on the ceiling and the sun came right in. It was sooooo hot.  Like I've said before, the Chinese don't think there is ever an inappropriate time to use an umbrella.

 

Before the competition the girls had their makeup done.

 

The MC's for the competition were one of the Chinese teachers I work with and one of the girls that works at the front desk.

21 students made it to the final round.  Each student had 4 parts to complete.  First, they introduced themselves.  Their introductions usually went like this 'My English name is Angel.  I have a happy family.  There are 3 people in my family.  My mother, my father, and me.  I'm a cute girl.  Everybody likes me, do you like me?'   Then they had to tell a story in English.  After that we asked them 3 questions.   Finally, they had to display a talent.  I had no idea the kids were so talented.   For the talent portion they told jokes, recited 'I have a dream', played the accordion, did a dance, sang a song, and performed magic tricks.  I didn't realize they were so talented.   I was nervous for them but none of them looked nervous.  It's funny how some have more confidence up on a stage then they do in class.

  Oh these boys, some days I hate them and some days I love them.  Bill, on the right, is one of my favorites.  Sometimes I misjudge his out of control behavior in class as naughty behavior.  But actually he just gets really excited and eager.  Jason, on the left, is just naughty sometimes.  However, he worked really hard and won the competition among the younger students. 

Emily is one of my favorite students.  She is 11 years old and really enjoys speaking English.  One day I had this conversation with her:
Emily:  Why don't you wear your own clothes?
Me:  Because I have to wear this blue shirt for work.
Emily:  But I think it is not beautiful.   You should wear your own clothes because they are beautiful.
Me: Emily, you're right.
She has a big personality and literally can't keep her mouth shut sometimes. I hope we can keep in touch because I would really like to see what sort of a woman she grows up to be. She came in 2nd place. 

The winner of the older kids was Jerry.  He is also very talented and wrote his own story in English.  It was impressive and I gave him the highest score.

'Modesty helps one to go forward, where as conceit makes one lag behind.'

Practicing patience

Overall I think I've become a more patient person while living in China.   I am an easily annoy-able person and I've always disliked that about myself.  China has tested my patience in many ways and I'm grateful for the opportunity to practice patience.

When you're living in a foreign country there are many situations that may cause impatience and annoyance.  Everything is different from what you're used to in your home country - from the language to the money to the day to day pace of the country to cultural differences you wouldn't have even thought of.  Since I'm not much of a patient / tolerant person back home when I came to China and the newness wore off, my lack of patience was intensified.  I believe if you can practice patience in your life happiness can be achieved much easier on a day to day basis - especially in a foreign country.

I often have to remind myself of this quote:  “When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.” – Clifton Fadiman

What's ironic is that what bothers me the most about Chinese people is their lack of patience in many situations.  While traveling in Sichuan and being surrounded by so many impatient Chinese tourists I realized I have gotten out of the habit of practicing patience and therefore haven't been as happy as I could be.

I often read zenhabits.net.  It's a wonderful blog about lots of topics that you can easily apply to your daily life.  Not everything applies to me but he has a lot that I can relate to and use in my life.  He wrote a post on achieving happiness that I often refer back to when I find myself especially impatient. 

He started with the basic assumption: 'that we are all human beings capable of goodness, of love, of pain, of broken hearts and passionate love. That we all have bad days, that inside our jaded exteriors is a person who just wants love.'

The following quote really hit me:   '.......we take other people for granted, and we judge others and become irritated with them for almost no good reasons, and we expect everyone to make us happy or at least behave the way we want them to, and if they don’t, our day is ruined. That’s crazy. People are living their own lives, and aren’t trying to please us or act in accordance with our expectations, and once we accept that, we can be happy.'   I think this is obvious but something I wish I had realized years ago.  It can especially apply to my life in China though.   Overall Chinese people are very selfish.    They live in a country with 1.3 billion people.  Most were raised as an only child.  They don't worry or even think about anyone but themselves.  So when they leave the toilet a mess, throw garbage on the ground, push to get on the bus, cut in line, talk loudly on their cell phones- I have to remember where I'm living, that I have chosen to live here, and this is the way the people are.

Back to patience and happiness.

Zenhabits recommends these 3 steps:
1.  Think “I love you, and I’m thankful for you” to every single person today.
2.  Smile at that person, and look them in the eye.
3.  If you feel comfortable, say it aloud to that person.

These steps are pretty difficult to follow in China.  I have no idea how many people I pass on a daily basis but it's a lot.  It's easier to follow in my apartment complex.  I usually walk with my head down while they comment that I'm a foreigner or listen to music while they stare at me in the elevator.   But looking them in the eye and smiling at them makes them real people again.  People that are living their life just as I'm living my life.

Mount Emei

Instead of seeing this at the top of Mount Emei we saw this:

It was a long journey to the top so we were a bit disappointed. 

First we took a bus up the mountain for a couple of hours.  Then we climbed for a couple of hours in the rain and fog.   I was impressed by the people more than twice my age climbing the mountain.

 

This isn't real mountain climbing - it's walking up a lot of steps as is nearly every mountain in China.

When we first got to the summit it looked like this:

And eventually it cleared enough to look like this:

I noticed that the Chinese tourists didn't seem to mind the fog or the rain.  No one looked as upset about it as we did.   I looked around and realized they had a different objective then we did for getting to the top.  They wanted to pray to the Buddha.

乐山大佛 － LeShan's Giant Buddha (and a giant headache)

This day started without a western breakfast or coffee like the hostel promised us.  This wasn't that big of a deal but since we had been looking forward to it we were disappointed.  If our day wouldn't have continued like that I probably wouldn't have thought about it again but it was one thing after another.  We couldn't find the bus (our hostel was the worst), stood in line at the train station and not the bus station, got off at the wrong bus stop, no one could tell us how to get to the Buddha (SERIOUSLY?! it's the main attraction),  all the maps at the bus stops said we were in exactly the same place, finally found a taxi but was dropped off at the wrong entrance, paid way more than what we should have paid because we were at the wrong entrance, walked sooo much more in the heat than we needed to, too many Chinese tourists, an eye infection, etc.  I know this stuff happens when you're traveling but at the time that didn't help.  Being around Chinese tourists is very trying towards your patience -especially when you live in China.  There's just too many people and the impatience and pushing is at it's worst.  Plus people staring at us, wanting pictures with us, having no sense of personal space, etc.  Sometimes it's just too much!  Of course, looking back it wasn't as bad as it seemed at the time.  I think the heat really put us in a bad mood and getting lost so many times in the heat didn't help.  

This experience combined with the rest of our trip has brought forth a new goal for my time in China.  I'll write about that soon.  Our day WAS successful - we made it there, we saw what we came to see, and got some exercise in the process.  It was very impressive around, 1000 years old, stands 233 feet tall, and is carved out of the hillside.

The staircase along the side of the Buddha was very narrow and there were too many people on it.

I was happy that Simone used her umbrella for the sun.

We did get some nice pictures of the big guy.

When is the best time to see a panda?

Thinking it was better to see the pandas on a sunny day we waited till what we thought was a perfect sunny afternoon.

Unfortunately this is what we found on our sunny day:

Turns out it was too hot for pandas.    However, the red pandas were out and enjoying visitors. To our surprise they didn't stay in their enclosures......

We decided to try seeing the pandas again on another day. We got up really early and arrived at 8:30am.  This was MUCH better.  We saw many happy pandas just waiting for us to take pictures of them.

If I hadn't been with my friend I probably wouldn't have visited the pandas - much less gone twice.  But that is one of the benefits of traveling with someone - you do things you wouldn't normally do and it always turns out to be good.  The grounds of the panda base are beautiful and I was glad we went back for the 2nd visit.