One more week of school till the summer holidays! Hooray! For two months, we will have lives again! We'll go places and see things and BLOG again on a regular basis!

The other day, I was on the bus on my way to see my Chinese friends. While stopped at a traffic light (without my camera), I noticed a sign that read something like this: You want to learn English speak? All the time you dine interior of this restaurant, you get coupon to give you 50% discount to make more fun to English speak make here and your friend.

Hmm, would that be 50% off the food or the English lesson? Let's hope the food is better than the grammar.

I've decided to give you all regular lessons in a very commonly spoken language in China -- Chinglish. Its definitely easier to learn than Mandarin and you can look up the complete definition in Wikipedia.

Chinglish (also Chingrish) (simplified Chinese: 中式英语; traditional Chinese: 中式英語; pinyin: zhōng shì yīng yǔ) is a portmanteau of the words Chinese andEnglish and refers to spoken or written English which is influenced by Chinese^[1]. There are an estimated 300 to 500 million users and/or learners of English in the People's Republic of China^[2].

The term "Chinglish" is mostly used in popular contexts and may have pejorative or derogatory connotations^[3]. The terms "Chinese English" and "China English" are also used, mostly in the academic community, to refer to developing Chinese varieties of English^[4] .

Today's lesson however, will be about very important words you should teach children to say in English. Flash cards are a very effective tool in that they help one to link the visual to the spoken, sparking the imagination and helping to reinforce such things as spelling. When looking to buy your own 'Chinglish' flash cards, make sure your set includes important words such as the following:

Will be seen in Transformers 3 -- the cousin of Optimus Prime.

I thought my mum made this one up...guess I was wrong.

So I looked this character up and h`ao means one of three options: day of the month; (suffix used after) name of a ship; (ordinal) number. Seems like they 'missed the mark' on this one...

I do believe it's meant to be 'forceps'. Note to self, if this is what they think forceps are, never have a baby in China!

a

Almost! Props for trying to use your vocabulary but actually the character simply means 'ape'.

Dick said, "Look Dora! There is a Red Ball on the train tracks! Shall I retrieve it?" (and the irony of the situation is that the character has nothing to do with trains, balls, or being red...)

Extremely important for your children to know if they intend to go to school in America.

Someone tore the page with the word "electrograph" out of my dictionary. A good rule of thumb is, if you can't find the word you are looking for in your dictionary, make one up!

Again, when you're 8 years old and learning English, very handy to know.

Because if you teach them the word 'donkey', we wouldn't be able to laugh at them when they come to the West to use their 'Chinglish'.

Consider this a plea to anyone thinking of a career change. If you can speak English, China needs you.

Its not that nothing's going on.  But honestly, I'm sitting here thinking, Its' been a week since we've blogged -- but what have we been doing?

Surviving is a good way to put it.  There's not much else you can do when it's 35 C (95 F) outside and the humidity level is more than 80%.  We're realizing that the thermometer can say 32 C in our living room but there's a huge difference between 50% humidity (when you feel like you can handle this) and 95% (when you feel like the air is so heavy, it will crush you and you're gonna die).  To give the Sacramentens an idea (ok, don't get mad at me for calling you that -- I don't know your official name and I mean it most affectionately!), the humidity level barely gets to be more than 30% for you.  Now I want you to imagine that its 30 C (86 F), the humidity level is 80 - 90%, you're on an over-crowded bus with Chinese people who don't wear deodorant, and its 8:15 in the morning!  Add a few hours, a few more people, bring it up several notches on the thermometer, throw in about twice as many cars and three times as many electric bikes on the road (turning a 1/2 hour trip into an hour) and you can understand what I mean, when I say we are surviving.  We do have a/c and have been trying to save it for the worst of days but considering how much we're actually at home, we don't get to use it much.  If only those dang buses didn't go so slowly!  If only those dang electric bikes didn't think there's a whole other set of road rules just for them, the buses wouldn't have to go so slowly...

On a daily basis, we'll have to take the bus at least twice but often more than that, especially now that walking to our appointments has become rather out of the question (unless one intends to die along the way or at the very least, show up looking like a drowned rat due to perspiration). We usually stop home for lunch before heading off to the next thing.  I often identify with the Wicked Witch of the West (Elphaba for you Gregory McGuire fans, such as myself) in that I feel like I'm melting only I wish someone would poor a bucket of water on me! Ok I'm done with my little whinging session.  Everyone in Australia will have no sympathy for me I know -- just hoping the Americans might feel a little bit sorry for us doing it so hard out here...(read her voice is dripping with sarcasm).  Whoever said that our city retained an average temperature of 28 C year round seriously needs to go back to meteorologist school and not conveniently forget to mention the average humidity level!

On the bright side and seeing how I read 'Pollyanna' many times as a kid -- I'm sweating so much, I have to pee less often when I'm out reducing the need to find the nasty bathrooms.  

Ok.  I promise I am working on a more fun post but I don't have all the photos I need for it yet!  We'll be calling it "Chinglish"...stay tuned!!!

Everyday the sun rises is another day for us to do something with. Lately, the sun has been rising. Some of you may know that I recently had my 27th birthday. Most of you do not know what I did on my birthday. I walked down a cat walk. There I was, fashioning some clothes that a friend of mine designed. Just wait till you see the pictures down below. I actually had to attend some modeling classes for a few weeks to help my posture and walking. Interestingly enough, I found out that I'm not an ambi-turner, just like my role-model Zoolander. As nervous as I was, I still couldn't help but laugh at myself. Is this really what models put themselves through to walk the way they do? It almost feels unnatural. No, it does feel unnatural. That's kind of what helped me figure out if I was walking correctly or not, I just asked myself, "do you feel comfortable?" And that seemed to help. Rachel said I did a good job. I think she did a good job of all the pictures. I spent the whole show back-stage, so I didn't get to see the "real" show, but I did get to see some out-fits before the models had to walk onstage. Rachel said she liked the show very much. She drained our camera's battery with all the pictures she took. It was actually a race to see which would go first, the memory card or the battery. The battery went first, but not before Rachel snapped some 500 or so pictures. So without further ado, here's only a few pictures mostly of me (maybe later we'll publish an album for you all to view). 

Well, first things first, it was my birthday, so Rachel made me a delicious peanut butter pie. This picture was shot right before we finished it. Did I mention it was deliciouso?

Meet the designer. His name is Gary and he's a really cool guy. Here, he's just getting a feel for how he wants my hair.

He then passes me off to the hair guy to complete that task. All the while, the arteest is gathering his thoughts, saying to himself "left, right, left, right . . ."

Next comes the make-up. 

And then comes the finished product. I know I look a little pale, but they like white.

And this is the out-fit my friend designed. I was a little worried when he originally showed me his sketches for my out-fit, but that was replaced by sheer fear when I actually saw the out-fit. When I was backstage getting ready to walk, all suited up, a female model looked at me and said, "Hǎo bái"(好白), which literally translates to "good white". I said she also was "hǎo bái", to which she replies, "xiè xie"(thanks). In Chinese, white is good. Funny enough, that kind of help ease a few nerves.

More hǎo bái-ness

These are another designer's clothes who needed a model. Needless to say, I was happy to put on some pants.

And that sums up my end of the fashion show. I did have to put on my friend's clothes again and go back onstage for the end bit where all the designers come out with a model or two and receive the applause of the crowd. Let's just say this whole experience is not one I'll easily forget.

So, last weekend was yet another festival here in China and we were able to catch some of the action right down the road from our place. I made a short video, so here it is:

You really had to be there. It was quite fun. You can't hear it too much in the video, but as you can see, the boats have a drum beater and the drums are actually quite loud. And I'm sure you caught my counting error. These particular boats in the video have 20 rowers, so they're quite big.  And to add to this High Definition video experience (chuckle), I've included some pictures with a little bit better resolution.

You should've seen the line for the ladies toilet!

Count'em, 20 rowers.

The number 4 boat in this picture is the team from England.

Go, baby, Go!! or is it Row, baby, Row!

After the big boys got done playing, it was time for the small guys to have a go. These boats have 10 rowers each.

We met up with a Chinese friend & her boyfriend whom we shared lunch with after the races were over. Nothin' like a bowl of noodles after dragon boat races.

And then, after all that fun was over, we had a traditional festival dinner that was put on by another Chinese friend. 

And then just for fun, while we were walking around a shopping area, there was no shortage of wedding stuff. Dresses, photography, hair, you could have planned a whole wedding right there. These 4 women are just modeling dresses. Apparently, this festival is a very, as they like to say, auspicious time to get married. I guess I should look up what "auspicious" means. 

Well, this concludes the Dragon Boat Festival. Now it's back to the grinding stone. We're actually moving up to book 2 in our series, so we're a little anxious about that. Apparently, book 2 has a lot more Hanzi, Chinese characters, than it's little brother, so I'm sure we'll be venting in the near future. Thanks once again for tuning in.

Jason

At 4:30 in the morning, one wonders how it is that one has come to be sitting in McDonalds of all places, listening to a Vietnam vet tell story after story, while drinking the worst coffee in the world.

Guangzhou, the capital of neighbouring province, Guangdong --  also known as Canton.  Also known as one enormous shopping mall.  There really isn't much to do in Guangzhou other than shop and we all know how much Rachel LOVES to shop...I'm being completely sarcastic.  The only part about shopping that I like is bargains but I hate actually shopping for bargains with other people let alone half of China.  Plus I'm such a cheapskate and I can always think of things I need more.  And Chinese laobans (shop-keepers) are scary when they get angry at you...did you ever wonder how 'chinese burns' got their name? Lets just say that I know first hand what it means to have one's arm twisted into buying something...literally.

Ok now, I see the confusion on your face.  Well, to cut a really long story, this was our last effort to hopefully annul my request for residency in the USA (that has been going on since January '08).  We just had to get someone at the US Consulate to apply the official seal to all our verified documents to prove that I'm no longer in the USA so they won't deport me (from American)...but I'll stop there before I start ranting and raving.  Not really knowing how long this would take or if they'd need to keep our passports over night like they do when you get visas and stuff, we planned to spend Thursday till Saturday and come home Sunday.  Guangzhou is about 11 hours away from Nanning by bus but our driver apparently had a lead foot because we made it to Guangzhou in record time of 8 hours hence the reason we found ourselves in McDonalds at 4:30am because it was the only thing open.  So we had time to kill till our 10am appointment at the consulate so this delightful old American Vietnam vet. told us his entire life story for the next 4 and 1/2 hours...

The US consulate took all of an hour.  Once the lady said, "ok that's it.  Next," we just kind of kept standing there -- nothing at the consulate has ever only taken an hour before.  "Don't you want our passports?  Don't we need to go through security again?  Shouldn't we wait for our number to be called in about 2 hours?"  "No, you can go now."  "Are you sure?"  "Yes.  Please."  So dumbfounded, we wondered over to the metro to try and figure out what we were going to do till we met our couch-surfing host...oh yes, here's another one for you -- we hadn't met the people we would be staying with yet.  Well, we had on the internet but that was it.  

(These are our Couch hosts and their friends at this quaint little board game place!  We had so much fun listening to all the Bi-hua (Cantonese) being spoken and playing game after game...Jason is a Settler's of Catan addict now.)

When my sister came to visit me in the States, we went to NYC and stayed in some random guy's apartment that I'd met on a website called couchsurfing.com.  Ok Mum, before you start freaking out, check out the site and you'll see what a wonderful thing this is.  Basically its a way to travel on the cheap, stay somewhere for free and make new friends with the premise that they'll show you their city and their culture from their perspective.  I love it.  So this is the second time we've ever done this and we hooked up with this lovely couple -- a guy from Canada who teaches English and his girlfriend, a local from Guangzhou...and their 4 cats and 2 dogs.  It was a full house.  

(Good thing I'm not dyslexic or anything...)

Between the markets, the temples, ending up in opposite places to where we wanted to be, playing video games, great conversations, having animals vying for our attention (well Jason's attention -- animal's LOVE him), monsoonal rains and travelling time (Guangzhou is so huge -- we felt like we had culture shock that first day!) we came home EXHAUSTED.  But as all the furniture we want for our someday apartment where ever that might be is still in Guangzhou (I told you, I never buy anything the first time I see it), I guess we'll be crashing our friends...or someone elses...couch again sometime.

See, they do have freedom of speech here...

On a side note, after yet another sudden, monsoonal down-pour, we found ourselves in the same complex as a Starbucks.  Now, I don't know why I thought that I would like a Starbucks in China when I don't even like them in America but THIS is supposedly an iced coffee.  What it is in fact, is the most expensive tall cup of milk with a slight hint of coffee flavouring I've ever had.  Ah, Starbucks...I still have nothing nice to say about you other than it was my own silly fault!