It's a Very Censored Christmas, Charlie Brown!

I celebrated my first Christmas overseas and without any family members this year and it was a bit hard. I have always been around relatives for the holidays and got to do our traditions like going to midnight mass on Christmas eve, opening presents on Christmas morning, watching a Christmas Story, and drinking apple cider. This year I was able to do some of these traditions but others I could not. Way not.

First, teaching western holidays is part of my school's curriculum. Students get to learn what westerners do on certain days and we can celebrate them if we can. For Thanksgiving my first grade students drew what they were thankful for and created turkey pictures with their hands.
Christmas we were able to make ornaments and hang them around my room. I made cookies and we watched a movie. What we were going to do was have Santa come and give students presents. Students were going to do a scavenger hunt around the school and we were all going to listen to Christmas music. I say going because we did not get do those things. In fact, Santa was banned, any decorations with Merry Christmas wording had to be taken down, and no celebration on the actual day. It seems that a certain entity, who I will call the Grinch, decided that Christmas was too western and not Chinese enough.
We are a little confused on why this was happening for a few reasons.

The first is that when our students go to the mall, watch TV, or take the subway there are advertisements for Christmas everywhere. Students can see Christmas trees and  wreathes displayed in stores or watch cartoons where Mickey dresses like Santa and invites them to see the Shanghai Disney theme park where Christmas will be full blown awesome. It seems as if the "Grinch" is okay selling Christmas but not students learning it. 
Second, Christmas movies are available here. When I asked my adult students if they were familiar with any Christmas films they listed off Home Alone, Elf, and Polar Express as films they had seen before. One person stated Mean Girls, which I will give credit for. On the online movie service here, Youku (no Netflix here sadly, even with VPN) I was able to find every Christmas movie that I usually watch this season (except for the Patrick Stewart Christams Carol which everyone should know is the best version). So it isn't like the Grinch is banning Christmas for viewing or learning about either.
Third, some of my students are Christian and did take off the day to celebrate. Teachers did a gift exchange on their own time and even the company I work for had a Christmas party. The company owned grocery store was able to hang up Santas and say Merry Christmas. However, the school was not able to do any of these things. Why? The company and the individuals working or learning from the company are allowed to do these things which are literally in front of our kids but the school can't do it. It seems that there are loopholes you can get around but my school got caught the rope.

You may have noticed that I mentioned that students asked for the day off for Christmas. Yes, I worked on Christmas and no one in the entire country gets the day off unless you ask for personal leave. It is not a national holiday and probably never will be. (Americans stating there is a war on Christmas can kiss my misletoe.)
One of my co-workers had an attitude that she was going to teach Christmas anyway since she had planned it all out. "What is the worst they can do to me?" I told her that most likely they would fine her or ask for her resignation. If she was considered evangelizing, she could be deported or even do jail time. This is all on the US governement's website by the way. This is not America where you can teach a pleathora of religions for educational use. This is not where you can state your mind and be okay. This is a place where you are not a citizen but you have to follow the laws. Pleading ignorance will get you nowhere either, because once you are in a foreign country you are expected to know the laws.

What about my actual Christmas? On the weekend I went to Shanghai and attended mass and ate my beloved western food at a high end restaurant. I bought some Christmas presents for myself which included a silver bat bracelet, old snuff jars which are cool as heck, and a statue. On Christmas day my co-workers and I went to a restaurant then headed to my apartment to exchange gifts, drink apple cider, eat cookies, and watch A Christmas Story. None of them experienced anything like this before and loved each part of it. I was touched to recieve a Jesus statue from one of my co-workers who knew I was Christian. Others got me a headband and earrings which are things I love a lot! That night my dad and brother video called me and we talked about our holidays. It was a great day.

Overall I was very touched on  Christmas. My co-workers cared enough about me to pay attention to things I liked or in one case was part of my identity and knew that Christmas was coming up to give me these things. I still got to see my family as well and got to do some of my traditions. Being overseas can be hard when it comes to the holidays but there are ways that it can feel like home. So as we say in China, Happy Holidays!

100 Days Of School

When I got my schedule to teach they included all the holidays, days off, and 100 days of school. I found out that I would give a presentation, give two demo lessons, and have parent teacher conferences on that day and my students would have a concert to display things they learned from every subject. Here is how it went down.

I watched the ceremony and let me tell you, it is cool. In the Chinese tradition when a child turns 8 they would have this ceremony but now that everyone goes to school, they changed it to be the 100 days of education for first grade students.

The students wear traditional Han outfits. The girls have to put their right hands over left and boys have to put left hand over right. I was told it was because left means powerful (it looks close to the Chinese character I think) and the men usually had more powerful position in government (due to patriarchy). The students wash their hands in a bowl of water (right hand first for girls, left hand first for boys) to show that they are cleansing themselves of their past. The teachers told me it is similar to baptisms. 

After washing their hands the students will kneel on mats and recite a poem about knowledge. They will approach the stage and write the Chinese character for person. This is to show that the students are moving from childhood to being a fully developed adult. The students take their scrolls and kneel on their mats once again and a teacher walks up to them with red paint. The teachers place a red dot on the foreheads of the students to show that their knowledge chakra has been opened.

After this the students show the parents what they have learned. The students created a lego puzzle from their math class, talked about the planet, played xylophones, sang songs about how awesome parents are, performed karate (they broke pieces of wood!), showed their artwork, and then sang two English songs that I taught them. The first was about rainbows and the second about numbers 1-20.

The last part of the ceremony the teachers brought out cakes and selected students and parents came from the audience and wrote, in English, "Happy 100 Days!" Everyone got a piece of cake and then the parents would continue with parent teacher conferences.

Remember when I said that Chinese parents were known to be intense? Yep, that is a thing. The number one question I got from parents was, "Can my students have more homework?" YES. MORE HOMEWORK. I was told that first grade students should be given no homework and we told parents that too, but they were not satisfied. Right now we are thinking of ways for students to practice more at home. I have already given parents apps to use, books to read, and that they can place sticky notes around the house for students to practice their vocabulary. They seemed pretty happy with that response.
Parents also told me that they thought I should be more strict with their students and punish more. o_O That was unexpected.

A really cool thing that parents told me was that the students loved learning English and were impressed by how much they learned already. It was pretty motivating to hear that.

So it has been 100 days of teaching and I love every moment of it. Here is to 200 days!

Chinese Air is Ruining My Skin

Pollution is a big problem here in China. I have to order clean water to drink, bought an air filter, and have to wear a breathing mask when I go outside. Not to mention that I have to clean my sinuses almost weekly due to my nose getting so stuffy but one thing I did not realize the pollution would affect is my skin.

I have struggled with cruddy skin since puberty but had a pretty good handle on it. I got a moisturizer, face cleanser, and an exfoliator. That was all I needed! I have sensitive skin so many products would dry me out so it was a lot of testing to get this far.
Then I moved to China where apparantly, bad air and sensitive skin do not go well together. My acne came back full force and then the cold weather came in and now I am so dry that I literally have skin flaking off my face. (Sorry for that visual.) I actually have met people that take "skin vacations" where they go to anywhere but China to get relief for their skin. They all say it is due to Chinese pollution. Whenever I see someone here with nice skin I ask them how they treat it because I need help friends.

Right now here is my skin routine. Make up remover for oils, cleanser, exfoliator, moisturizer, moisturizing spray, and a spray my friend gave me for breakouts. I also use facemasks and a volcanic ash black head remover every two days. I recently took a break from all my cleansing products since they can dry me out more and am moisturizing like none other right now.

Hopefully this works out soon because I do not want to look like a crumbling mummy.

It's Called Fashion, Brenda. Look it Up!

In every culture you will notice different fashion styles or trends that you are not used to in your country. I thought about China's current style a lot, keep in mind I know basically nothing about fashion, so it feels like they are either way ahead of everyone else or super behind. Let us get into it.
There have been multiple cases where I have gone shopping from the mall behind my house, street markets, fashion districts, and the high end malls in Shanghai and this is how I would sum up fashion overall.

Fur dyed or non-dyed.

1990s sweaters with looney toon cartoon characters if possible.
Big comfy sweaters in the colors dark pink and mustard yellow.

Big zippers with a huge ring on them.

Earrings that you can pull the chain through your ear back and forth. They are super fun and they look awesome.

Pearls.

Clothes with English on them or at least the alphabet. They do not make sense. My favorite is from my first grade student's jacket which reads, "Art is just a plagarism on life." Or something to that effect. HE IS IN FIRST GRADE.

Glasses. The glasses they have are usually thin wire and highly reflective. The music teacher at our school has a pair of glasses that appear to have an opal shine on them. One of my gym coaches wears glasses for only the aesthetic, he has perfect vision otherwise and he works out with the glasses on. I have never loathed someone so much.

High heels. Honestly Chinese women who wear heels non-stop need to have some sort of award or tell me their secret. It is every woman too who wears heels. Mom is picking up kids from school? Gotta wear those stilletos. Working at the grocery store? Two inch heel for you. Walking around the lake for fun? Four inch heels for you, you go Glen Coco!

Embroderied items especially of birds and flowers.

Scarves. The big see-through kind or the ones that keep you warm. They are usually five feet long and one foot wide.

"Modern Chinese Chic" is the name stores call it but basically it is the traditional Qi Pao and party tunic but with a modern twist. As I stated before, I am ignorant on fashion and new to China, so I am not not sure what the modern twist is that they advertise because it looks traditional. None of my co-workers know either. The clothes sure are cool though!

Overall, the fashion is kind of a mish mosh of items and is hard to describe. I asked my co-workers to summarize it and they said, "Eh, sweaters and qi paos?" I said 90s with bigger statement pieces. One said Modern Chinese Chic. So there you go. China has fun shopping so you should definitly stop by one of their clothing stores. 

I am Considered Tall Here and I Have No Idea How to Handle It

When I was at my principal's house (the one where I ate jellyfish by accident) I realized that I was a little taller than the other people invited there. I joked, "Now I can finally be tall! " My co-workers replied that I actually was two inches taller than average. This was the best news I have heard in a long time. All through college I was teased a lot for being short and often used as an arm rest but NO MORE. There are some interesting things I have discovered now that I am no longer the little people.

For those who do not know I am 5'3" or 161 cm and 130 pounds or 48 kg.

First, I am actually a medium to large size in clothes. In the states I always had to order small, and even those came baggy, but here I had to buy a large jacket in the men's section so it would fit! My shoe size is considered big too (8 1/2). It is kind of cool buying items in the larger sizes.

The second is that when people are short here they are much shorter than I thought they would be. There have been multiple occurences where I saw a family who were all around 4 feet tall (120 cm). I am embarrassed to say how often I thought a full grown adult was a first grader.

The third is that men are only 3-5 inches taller than me usually. It is pretty cool! Most men I know in my family and at my college were about a foot taller than me. It also makes going to the gym way less intimidating as the men aren't hulking giants of muscle. Now they are a little taller than me muscle.

One item I have to get used to is the fact that I am not considered short anymore. In boxing, I used to get close to my opponent and aim for their stomach as that is all I could reach and the opponent would have a hard time hitting downwards. Now in my boxing classes I am told to crouch down, stand further back, and aim higher. Basically, I have to relearn my workout.

Also, I still have to climb on counters and use chairs to reach items and when I complain about being short, I get second glances. That would be like someone who is 5'7" complaining about being short in Nebraska.

Before thinking, "Wow, if Chelsea is big there than I must be a giant!" Let me tell you this. One of the tallest people in the world is from China. Southern Chinese people are considered short but Northern Chinese people are considered super tall. It is obvious to tell if someone is from Northern China because they look like they are seven feet tall.

I like being "tall" here and am a little sad to go back to the USA if for the only reason that I will once again be used as an arm rest. I will enjoy my tall time as much as I can.