satisfied with my bag of salt

you know something's a big deal when 3 blogs that you follow write about it.

so apparently the latest hot item to buy here in china is... salt. actually, it's not the just the recent thing to buy, people are going crazy, panicing, and hoarding salt. why? well go ahead and educate yourself with some CNN in your life (sorry, you'll have to copy and paste that link) :)

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/17/china.salt.scramble/

at the same time i just realized that i am actually running low on salt myself... but thankfully, my awesome teammate picked up a bag for me at a random small store! to our surprise, the store HAD salt and didn't even sky rocket the price of it either. it was just 1.3 yuan (about 20 cents)... awesome.

so here i am, lucky and quite satisfied with my bag of salt- that should last me for at least another 7 months and by then, hopefully salt will still be around in china. :)

the good, the bad, the ugly...

my encounters with students in the class room today can be summed up into 3 categories.

the good.
after my post grad class today i was reminiscing with my teammate about how sweet students can be. their faces just light up, bubble, and a giddy smile comes across their face like it's the happiest day of their life when they talk to us sometimes. it's a great feeling, and one that never happens in america, i think. :)

the bad.
we were practicing /th/ sounds today.. one of the phrases was "take a bath", then i asked my students.. how often do you take a bath (shower)? everyday? one person raised his hand. every 2 days? 2 people raised their hands. every 3 days? a few more hands in the air. every 4 days? about half of the class. once a week?? a couple stragglers in the crowd raised their hand. i had them guess how often people in america shower on average... let's just say they were PRETTY shocked that americans shower everyday... or every other. in our china, students have to walk to a bath house, in the snow, ice, whatever to take a shower and then pay for it. us americans have it too good- whenever we want, we have hot water in our home. from either side you look at this.. it looks bad. haha

the ugly.
during my freshman oral class this morning i was walking around monitoring their discussions and such... then i felt something slippery on the bottom of my foot. as i looked down it looks like pieces of mushy food.. i picked up my foot, glanced at the bottom, and found... a jiaozi (dumpling). someone was clearly eating jiaozi for breakfast, dropped one, and then it found it's way under the crevice of my boot shoes. awesome. i ended up giving the class a 2 minute lecture of how i'm NOT their mother and they need to not eat in the classroom or pick up after themselves! btw. the stuffy, overheated class reeked of baozi (steamed buns with meat) and jiaozi- what a lovely environment to teach in. :)

p.s. congratulations to my "cousin" alyssa for reading all 150 something blogs i have in one sitting. that's dedication right there. :)