Who the Hell is Boris?

Over the past month or so, our teaching team has undergone some weird new changes.

A lovely new teaching team: none of them are Boris

While we love Jerry and Jeremiah, it was sad to say goodbye to Fahim. Our teaching threesome, while not perfect, managed to create some sense of structure out of the pretty damn confusing jumble we were tossed into. Neither of them are Boris either.

Back to the new folks, this is how Jeremiah eats his noodles

His success rate is currently unknown

New people = a new fascination with this pretty spectacular city

A new interest in things like the Chinese Art Museum, shaped like a traditional Chinese alcohol cup

This is a regular sight. It's really satisfying to know you can make a bed out of just about anything

I asked if it was possible to borrow a toaster oven to teach the students how to bake bread, to which my boss responded "of course! I'll bring it tomorrow and leave it on your desk." The next day, I discovered a toaster and a waffle iron waiting on my desk. We've been making some pretty funky bread.

Decided to spend an evening hacking at a coconut. So much effort, so little reward. My respect for coconut-choppers (if that's a thing) has skyrocketed.

Cool unnecessary addition: one of my taxi seatbelt buckles didn't have a casing, so I played with it for the entire ride. It's actually so fascinating to just watch how the inside of a seatbelt buckle works.

When my coffee arrived with a swan on top inside a golden cup, I laughed too hard not to take an artsy photo. I'm sorry for dragging you into this, Margaret Atwood.

Last week, while semi-listening to Jeremiah ramble in the background as I worked on student vocab lists, he said "I think we make a really great teaching team. I'm so glad we have Jerry instead of Boris. I never really wanted to work with Boris. Who would want to work with a guy named 'Boris' anyway? Jerry's an awesome roommate - not like Boris would have been." Not paying attention, I didn't think about what he had said until after he left the room. Who the hell is Boris? There has never been a "Boris" in this office.

Rather than hang out with his super- cool teachers, Roy has barricaded himself behind his ladder on the unmade upper bunk, warding us away with a pair of underwear 😞

Learning acro-yoga!

The students set up the lights to form a spotlight over us

We later realized that Boris was someone Fahim had mentioned once as a possibility for his replacement. As Boris was supposedly hard to get along with, Jeremiah had dreaded sharing his room with this person constantly until Jerry arrived. Meanwhile, the rest of us forgot he existed.

Weekly private sessions with each student, showing them just how legitimate we wholly-underqualified undergraduate teachers are.

The "two originals" still powering on through all the changes

(Our Attempt At) A Chinese Chinese New Year

A night to behold with a whole lot of lead- up


NEW YEAR PREPARATIONS

We made our poor students create an entire presentation on Chinese New Year and filmed it. That way, us foreign teachers learned more about it while they learned how to talk about it in English. Ahh making children suffer for a good cause.

Then they taught us how to make dumplings! It's an intricate process of folding, squeezing, pressing, and arranging

Then we went "skiing" in an indoor ski hill. It was a 10-foot sloped treadmill with white grass-mat and we wore t-shirts. For Chinese New Year. I don't even know (at least we didn't have to pay for it).

When life gives you lemons, push children down tiny inverted treadmills pretending to be snowhills

ALL ALONE

Students and Chinese coworkers went home to their families for the new year celebrations, leaving the two laowais (foreigners) to fend for themselves in the world’s 2^nd largest city during its most important holiday of the year. QUITE exciting.

This meant learning how to shop for ourselves in a foreign grocery store. They had really cute bananas.

We visited Qibao village, which is a beautiful, preserved older town that was all decorated for the celebrations.

Laundry hanging from balcony stands.

I finally tried the infamous "black burger" at McDonald's!!! It's actually not bad - it's a chicken burger and it's black because it's a sesame burger (I'm pretty sure)

All the people! Some streets in downtown Shanghai were almost entirely dead, which is extremely rare, because everyone left the city to be with their families (it is, after all, the most important Chinese holiday). 

Some lanterns spread over an older street in the city  

Wandering through the half-deserted city of Shanghai.

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However, the more culturally significant places were absolutely packed with people. It felt like leaving a giant theatre after a show, but everywhere.

All the people crowded in the older area of town. The entire street was line-up just to walk down the road.

And a 40-ft blow-up dog (Year of the Dog) towering above us all.

LONGHUA TEMPLE

On the actual night of New Year's Eve, Fahim (the other foreign teacher) and I decided to go to Longhua Temple. Every year, 40 monks ring a giant bell 142 times. Watching it in Shanghai is sort of the equivalent of watching the ball drop in New York City. 

However, on the way there, something happened I never dreamed would happen to me. While running to catch the subway, a felt something tumble out of my pocket. Turning back, Fahim stared gasping at the crack between the subway door and the platform. My cell phone had tumbled through!! My cell phone... holding all of our contact numbers, directions, translator apps, photos, and basically everything else we needed. Since Fahim's cell phone was dead, we were literally stranded without it.

Desperately, we raced to the Metro Information Desk to find they spoke absolutely no English. We played charades and through in the occasional Mandarin word we knew (literally just "cell phone is" and "not good"). The Help Desk woman drew us pictures to ask which door it was and, eventually, we were back on the subway platform with two men in bright red service uniforms.

"Hello!" said one of the servicemen with a giant smile and almost-robotic tone, "You should not be worried today. We will assist you. You mustn't to be afraid. Only happy." They had clearly called in their English-speaker. We thanked them profusely, guilty about our "extreme foreignness" and causing a hassle, as well as ever-growing crowd of people. The serviceman pulled out a massive stick with a claw on the end, waited for the subway to arrive and then leave again, then use the time in between trains to open the door and pull the phone out. As the phone made its way back onto the platform and into my waiting hands, a small applause made its way around our tiny crowd. It was very embarrassing. 

Back on the train, we did eventually make it to Longhua Temple! Leaving out the specifics of how we actually got into the temple grounds, we'll just say it quite spectacular.

While it was extremely costly to enter the actual room where the monks strike the bell, they were visible through a window from the rear parking lot. Peering through the glass, we could see the monks lined up serenely in front of the bell, which was directly in front of us. Why hadn't more people discovered this window???

New Year decorations inside the temple grounds; red is a symbol of good luck

Hundreds of people holding giant incense sticks and standing around a massive Buddha statue. In the opposite direction, the giant temple entrance is visible.

After midnight, people threw their incense sticks into these giant bonfires that popped up all over the place

I think this room needs a couple more Buddhas

LANTERN FESTIVAL

 The last day of the first lunar month is the Lantern Festival. While this was after my backpacking trip to Vietnam (the next blog post), I'm putting it here because it relates to Chinese New Year.

On the night of the Lantern Festival, I made my way to the Yu Gardens, aka Shanghai's primary "old city" where the traditional festivities tend to be bigger. There were some lovely lanterns and a LOT of people (again). Since the official holiday was finished, most people home for the holidays had returned to the city, making it with excitement again. So for a street specifically known for traditional festivities... it was even more packed.

Lantern Festival lights and decorations

There were gates set up through the streets to keep traffic flowing. It was crazy.

ZHUJIAJIAO

Even though it was after both the holiday and Lantern Festival finished, it worth posting some photos of Melissa (another teacher) and my Sunday excursion to Zhujiajiao. It's a small water city outside Shanghai but has essentially been amalgamated into the larger city. While unfortunate that large cities tend to "swallow up" larger ones, it sure made it convenient to have the Shanghai subway bring us all the way to this lovely water town.

China's own Venice

Chinese boats that paddle along the canals

A beautiful old bridge

Alas, we are back to work! Although, before getting into that, my next post will talk about BACKPACKING IN NORTHERN VIETNAM WOOHOO!!

P.S. Our team is better than your team.

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8 Breakfasts With Ayi

Our energetic, kind, and somewhat-bossy hired grandmother/cook/nurse/Chinese teacher.

Ayi is probably one of the most important people in this whole experience. She does everything: cooks all our food, cleans the house, teaches me Chinese, makes sure we're all in good physical health, scolds the boys so we don't have to, administers medicine if we're not feeling well, and is also just generally a wonderful companion.

The word "ayi" means "aunt" but is used as a polite way to refer to any woman older than you. In a household, it's the word for a woman hired to do basically all of the previously listed activities. "Ayi" can be used as both a common and proper noun. Nobody knows Ayi's real name - she is Ayi.

Of the many delicious foods she makes, here are some of Ayi's breakfasts:

1. Noodles

One of my favourites and impossible to go wrong. Well, no, that’s not true. You could over-cook or under-cook the noodles, but Ayi never does that. Her noodles are right on. Then we add our own spices and sauces to her delicious soup base and voila! A delicious lunch that we get to eat for breakfast!

Except we never have this for lunch. It’s only ever for breakfast, but I’d gladly eat it any time of day.

The lovely aesthetics also add to the marvelous taste, of course.

2. Fried Rice

A classic. Of course. I’ve learned to each it with chopsticks, which was damn difficult and feels strange, but at least I’ve learned. Why would you use chopsticks for such tiny pieces? Dumplings or noodles I understand – but rice? It feels so unnecessary.

The fried rice tastes fine, although I’m less excited about fried rice for breakfast than noodles. The rice contains anything from carrot to peas to corn to hot dog chunks.

You can hardly get more Chinese than this.

3. Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches (Chinese-style)

75% sure this is only a thing because we, the teaching team, are foreign. Yet sometimes it’s nice to have a familiar taste.

Ayi briefly fries each piece of bleached white bread on the wok and places them all on a plate on the table, along with a jar of peanut butter, a jar of jelly, and one butter knife. We then make a PBJ sandwich with the cold, half-toasted bread and one butter knife. It’s not like and peanut butter sandwiches I’ve had in Canada and those peanut butter and jelly jars may get contaminated, but the jars are so small that we finish them in one meal anyway so it doesn’t really matter.

4. Steamed Buns

Delicious!! Also, you can grab ‘em with your hands and eat them on the go (although Leah’s being very proper in this photo). Some are filled with orange, spicy beef, some are filled with some mushroom and spinach mix, while others with a sweet red bean paste. My personal favourite is the spicy beef. They can kick-start your day with a delicious punch, although sometimes the orange oil starts dripping down your chin.

In my opinion, they’re like the Chinese version of a sandwich. Not so much in taste, but in principle. Nutrition on the inside – a dry, edible base to hang on to.

You can see the spicy, orange oil starting to seep out.

5. Pad Thai

I don’t know why we have Pad Thai for breakfast so often. Is it a Chinese thing as well? Has Pad Thai really become so popular in China that it’s become a common Chinese breakfast food? I mean, there are a lot of Thai restaurants around. Who knows, man.

Having eaten so much delicious, authentic Pad Thai in Thailand, it’s hard to appreciate non-Thai Pad Thai. It doesn’t taste bad – it just doesn’t taste right.

6. Congi… I think?

No. I can’t do it. I genuinely completely dislike it.

It tastes like if you cook rice with way too much water and some red beans for as long as it takes to basically become thick water with some chunks in it. I can’t even taste the occasional vegetables that appear in it.

Another comparison is if you’re in the process of rinsing out a bowl of rice, but halfway through decided “Huh, I think I’ll just drink this with the water in it.”

Of all Ayi’s delicious foods, I cannot say I enjoy this one.

Essentially water, rice, and red beans.

7. Little Dumplings

MY FAVOURITE!!! I can’t even write this without my mouth watering. Ayi’s not even here right now so I’ll need to buy them somewhere (or maybe there’s some in the freezer…?).

They’re tiny morsels of some sort of spiced meat wrapped inside thin, flubbery dough and steamed until they’re fully cooked. The dumpling is then dipped in soy sauce and eaten.

I cannot describe the heavenly pleasure awarded to my mouth upon eating a dumpling. They taste so beautifully satisfying, it’s really impossible not to eat too many. I regularly need to remind myself that other people need to eat too.

The greatest taste on earth.

New Years Special: Rice Balls

Ayi boils a whole bunch of these in two woks – one for meat-filled balls and one for sesame/peanut butter-filled balls. And they are SO. DAMN. DELICIOUS!

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The rice paste on the outside is extremely gooey and difficult to find something to compare to it. It’s the texture of slime, but white and tastes like rice. The trick is to squeeze the whole thing against the roof of your mouth to allow the sweet, flavourful juice to flow out. Then you chomp down the whole thing and chew it all together.

Rice balls: a traditional New Years breakfast.