April 8th: a peak teaching moment and Rhys hunt

Day 204

Woke, met Heather, Rhys and Jeni at the hotel for breakfast. There was an ugly American in a corner booth extolling the virtues of marriage to a potential mail-order bride. He looked like the type of peanut-headed potbelly who had an autographed copy of "Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Women I Learned From Porn." There are so few of we Americans with passports and this pig-vulture was leaving a ticker tape parade of bad first impressions in his wake. I seethed with hatred as I chewed bacon.

I went to my first class feeling loagy from foodstacy. It helped my demeanor. For lunch, I just ate pineapple and a little rice, still trying to metabolize the boulder in my gut. A few girls even asked me why I only had fruit, using mostly broken English and pointing. They asked me what I was teaching them and when I told them it would be a new song, they smiled and exclaimed, "Yes!" Now that's the kind of reaction you want as a teacher. There is a world of difference between the junior 1 and junior 2 grades.

In the last class of the day (my favorite class with Jimmy, Pete and co.) after we had finished the lesson, they wanted to sing "Wishy Washy Washer Woman" from the week before. And then, "All Together Now" and then "Yellow Submarine." Any damage done by Thursday was cleansed in this incredibly touching display. I had reached them, they had learned and had fun doing it. This was definitely the best experience thus far in China (inside the classroom).

I rode up to the middle school and played some badminton on the roof with Heather and Mike. When the sun began to dip, I went to the music store and played a few songs until my voice couldn't manage.

We went to the sheep place as per Friday routine. They had the cucumber beer there, too. It's apparently the new cool shit. I put on music, but a table of youths kept vetoing whatever I put on. I went from Dusted to Queen to Goldfrapp, but didn't have anything high energy and cheesy enough to satiate them. It's an eatery, not a bloody disco. I ganbei'd them and it started a war, which eventually ended when they had no one to send over but the girlfriend, whom they taught the English phrase "Hello, cheers." Highly cute.

Afterwards, Rhys, Jeni, Heather and I went to the club. We tried the raffle game thrice and got successively better prizes each time: a can of Sprite, a hair dryer, a big stuffed dog, whom Jeni adored and whose name is (I believe) Bumfy? Rhys left early to go blog, we stayed behind. I held down the fort while the girls danced. Marco ended the night with that remix of Goldfrapp's "Twist" which I don't remember giving to him, unless he ripped it from Alen.

When we got back, Rhys was not in and Jeni became panicked that something might have happened to him. We rode around town looking in familiar haunts that were still open, eateries and such, even the hospital. We went back to the school and saw that Mike was also out, bike absent, so the two were likely out together somewhere. Ever the purveyor of brightsidedness, I assured Jeni she was fortunate to have someone in her life so important to be worried sick about. They had been in the park and pedaled in around 2am. Heather and I quietly excused ourselves so she could "kill him" and sleep came shortly after.