The Day I Was Mistaken For A Chair

After our grueling one-hour-that-felt-like-ten-hours-flight-with-a-tantrumy-toddler, it was refreshing to easily claim our luggage and start on our way to our hotel. We took an early flight so we had plenty of time before my family arrived in Shanghai. Jeremy suggested we take the subway. He probably wouldn’t have made this suggestion had he realized it was about 12 stops away, but that was fine. We both love subways. They are building one in Qingdao and we can’t wait until it’s finished. Riding the subway in Korea was one of my favorite things. I loved being able to get around so easily. Plus, we thought Raelynn would enjoy the ride too. She is too small to remember the first time we took her on the subway when she was 1 month old.

While Shanghai people are far more polite than those up in Beijing, they aren’t as friendly as Qingdao people can be. In Qingdao, get on any bus with your kids and watch everyone jump up to offer you their seat. In Shanghai, get on a subway with a baby and people will pretend not to notice you as you struggle not to wobble over while simultaneously holding your child. As the train prepared to make a stop, one of the seats opened up and Jeremy told me to take Raelynn and sit while he kept the luggage from rolling away.

I sat down with my kid, who, for whatever reason, decided she did not want to sit. So while in my seat, I have a squirmy kid trying to escape, screaming all the while, and then, I am not joking when I tell you some horrid cow sat on me. Yes, that’s right. She fucking sat on me. I was sitting in a chair on the subway and she sat right on my lap. Being the loud, bitchy American that I am, I of course yell at her. My husband gets involved as I jump from my seat, absolutely astonished that someone would sit on me and then not even notice. She settles into the seat and people have now actually gotten up to let her husband and grandchild sit down. The grandchild is apparently sick and they are taking her to the doctor. Oh good! Bring a sick person onto a train. Why don’t you take a taxi?!? There are tons of taxis in Shanghai. They are quite easy to get. She tells my husband she didn’t see me there. HOW DO YOU NOT SEE ME, YOU OLD BAT?!? She starts apologizing and as Jeremy is relaying what she’s saying, I’m offering my own very snide commentary on the matter. I notice some of the passengers understand English quite well because they are chuckling at my caustic remarks. Another seat opens on the bench next to these people and she’s telling me to please come sit down. I don’t want your sympathy seat, asshat. I don’t care if I never fucking sit again. Cow. And I certainly don’t want to sit next to your grandchild who is ill so that my daughter and I might come down with whatever it is that is ailing that poor child. So yeah, shove it.

I know I’ve lost a bit of weight recently but I had absolutely no idea I was beginning to resemble a chair of all things. Now this situation is a bit amusing to me of course, but I have to ask you all – would you be able to sit on a subway (or even a bus) and not notice there was someone already seated in the seat you were attempting to sit in? And suppose you really truly from the depths of your soul did not notice them, would you continue to sit on them as though they were just a chair, without offering an apology until their spouse demanded one of you? Yeesh. My grandpa was truly right on when he used to say, "it takes all kinds."

Toddlers, Tantrums And Tarmacs

Raelynn at age 2 1/2 on the flight to Shanghai. This photo was taken after she chilled out from throwing an epic tantrum and agreed to read with me. Hooray!

For a year, we’d been planning a trip down to Shanghai to visit with my family. We’d planned it last year when they’d come to visit us here in Qingdao for our vow renewal ceremony. It made saying goodbye a little easier, knowing that we had a date set to see each other again. This time though, my parents wanted us to meet them in Shanghai. I love Shanghai. It’s an amazing city, though I still love Seoul like no other place on earth. Still, there are worse places to be. Far worse. And one of the best is indeed Shanghai.

The first time we went, it was before Raelynn had been born. I was about 6 months pregnant and Jeremy and I went there for a mini-honeymoon. We returned once more after Raelynn was born to get her US citizenship at the consulate there. Despite being an infant, she was very good on the plane. We also took a trip up to Beijing when Raelynn was a bit bigger but she still wasn’t walking yet. And again, she was good on the plane rides.

Shanghai and Beijing are both about an hour flight from Qingdao. Still, for this trip, I prepared and armed myself heavily with things to keep Raelynn occupied. When she was smaller, she slept and breastfed. Now she’s 2 ½. It takes more to entertain her. I also spent weeks preparing her for the trip. I told her about airplanes, staying in a hotel, how we were going to see Papa, Mimi and Uncle Phillip and all kinds of things. We packed her a bag of her own filled with toys, cards and books. We also packed our iPad. And don’t get me started on the snacks – my bag was loaded with goodies of all kinds. Yet, despite all this artillery in my arsenal, we still failed miserably.

For one, Raelynn completely flipped out when I buckled her seatbelt. Put her in the seat and she was fine. Fasten her seatbelt? You’d think I’d just ripped her arm off and clubbed her in the head with it. Fortunately, people in China are far kinder about screaming children than my fellow Americans. We apologized profusely to those around us and were only met with offers of assistance and smiles. Somehow, I finally talked Raelynn into reading a book with me (pictured above). When she calmed down further, we gave her a snack. Jeremy and I smiled at each other. We’d won the battle!

Or so she led us to believe.

Soon after, she pitched a fit about sitting in her own seat. She wanted to sit on me. The flight crew thankfully had no problems with this so I distracted her by showing her the things we could see out the window. By the time we’d landed, we both felt like that one hour was 10 hours.

The return flight to Qingdao was not much better. We had even more things to busy her with but problems arose when she wouldn’t sit in her seat. I held her and off into sleepyland she went. I could actually read! So part of this hour flight was actually lovely. And peaceful. Until she woke up. She wanted water. Easy enough. One of the flight attendants brought us some. Only he poured it right into her Hello Kitty cup. But nooooooooooooooooooooooo! She wanted it from the plastic cup which was now long gone as he retreated to buckle up for landing. She screamed, kicked, cried and totally freaked over a cup. Oh man. It was deeply embarrassing but we teamed up and tried our best to calm her down and distract her. And again, we were met with much sympathy from the surrounding passengers. A Chinese businessman in front of us, in perfect English, told us he has 2 children and that flying with them is very stressful at times. Another foreigner a few rows up told us it happens to him all the time when he travels abroad with his wife and 2 kids. Their encouragement helped us feel better about the deafening shrieks she unleashed upon us all.

At least we don’t have to fly every day. But we’re already worried about how we’ll endure any of the flights we’ll take in our near future. We’d like to go to the states soon and we wonder if we can’t keep her calm for one actual hour how we’ll actually make it through 16 hours of tantrums. We can only hope the other passengers we encounter then will be as gracious as the ones we met on this trip. And for those of you with flights coming up, when you see a family with a small child, please have a heart. No parent wants for their kid to throw tantrums anywhere, especially not on an airplane. We all have places to go and we’re sorry we can’t just get off the plane and leave you in peace. I hope you’ll all bear that in mind if we’re on your next flight.

And The Award For Best Engrish Typo Goes To...

...Christina, my Korean teacher!

(insert round of applause here)

Coming up this week, we'll be having our Open Class for English. Which is really nothing more than a giant circus of bullshit that the school wants us to put on for the parents' amusement. They don't really want to see how I teach their children to learn real things. Oh no. They want a dog and pony show. And they'll get it. I've been busy working on crowd-pleasing crap, meanwhile Christina has been making sure our classroom looks nice.

I mentioned to her that some of the children's name tags had fallen off the cubbies and we should fix them. She agreed and set off to remedy that. Some of those tags, however, had gotten lost, so she printed them and laminated them again.

On Friday afternoon, one of those tags caught my attention instantly. Here it is:

Now, I don't have a student by the name of "Denial," however, I do have one named "Daniel." This typo is absolute gold too, if you know Daniel as I do. This is a kid who always has milk with his snack and who always tosses it into the garbage without first emptying it, creating a huge milk mess in the trash can. And he always DENIES it. Yes. This might be a better name for our dear Daniel.

But just in case his folks figure out what "denial" actually means, perhaps we'd better keep on calling him Daniel.

Like Lipstick On A Pig

Yesterday, we celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday at my in-laws' house. Did you see MIL's Kitchen? God help us!

Anyway, as we climbed up the zillions of stairs to their apartment, I noticed someone in the building had gotten married. How do you know this? Well, here, they cover everything ugly the newlyweds will pass with pink paper. The sewer grates outside. The electrical box in the hallway. Fire extinguishers. You name it, they cover it. It looks kind of cool actually.

Except when they do shit like this...

Yes, because that's sooooooooooooooo much better. This takes the whole doing a half-assed job thing to a whole new level. Bravo!

MIL's Kitchen

A picture is worth 1,000 words. Whoever said this obviously saw MIL's kitchen. Thank you, God, for preventing us from getting the runs. Maybe all the baijiu I drank disinfected everything. Take a good look and tell me what your favorite thing in this photo is. I enlarged the photo for your viewing pleasure.

So, who wants to go to MIL's house for dinner with me next time? Any takers? Yeah, her kitchen scares me too. I need to go to my happy place now. Gak!

Mid-Autumn Engrish

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! Or you can just call it Asian Thanksgiving, because that's more or less what it is. They all call it something different but everyone can agree that it's a holiday of giving thanks and enjoying foods of the harvest.

And mooncakes. Lots and lots of mooncakes. Seriously. Some people just refer to this as Mooncake Day. Mooncakes aren't too bad. The name sounds intriguing, right? In Korea, they eat rice cakes called songpyeon, which are usually shaped like little half moons. They're pretty tasty.

In China, the mooncakes are filled with things like red bean paste and lotus seed paste. It's not as bad as it sounds, honest! Incidentally, if you want to know more about mooncakes, this gives a nice rundown of them.

But you're not reading this for a history lesson on mooncakes, are you? Of course not! Because it's not a history lesson. It's a lesson in Mid-Autumn Engrish. Or rather, how to make the perfect run-on sentence, describing mooncakes. Take a look:

At least they used "propitious" correctly, which was astonishing. I know people who only speak English who would fuck that up. Way to go mooncake people! But then they follow it up with this crazy run-on sentence that just wants to tell you a bit of everything. It's a bit blurry, I admit (sorry, but you try to get a good photo when you're laughing your ass off holding an Engrish product in one hand and a camera in the other) but here's what it says:
The Chinese Moon Cake has carefully produced and crafted with proper condition and enjoy the finest things.

Um, the mooncake produced and crafted itself? Proper condition? What if conditions are not proper? Can I not eat this thing then? Oh and enjoy the finest things, ok? I just don't even know what to do with this. Except bust it open and eat the mooncake. Yes, that's a much better idea.

Donuts...Is There Anything They Can't Do?

I love donuts. They make the best breakfast, snack or dessert, wouldn't you agree? I probably love them as much as Homer Simpson does. In fact, back when I lived in Florida, and one of the hurricanes was getting ready to plow us with days of rain and weeks of no electricity, I showed up to a friend's house bearing a box of donuts and a case of beer. Upon sight of me, he asked me if by chance Homer Simpson was coming to seek refuge from the hurricane too.

Lately, however, I've been avoiding all things dessert as often as I can in favor of shaping up. I haven't mentioned it very much on here because this blog is not a fitspirational blog. It's not even a motivational blog. Unless you're another poor soul like me living abroad with a spouse from a different culture and wacky in-laws, then it's probably motivating. Anyway, other than my 3-year anniversary dinner with my husband, I've pretty much abstained from chocolatey and/or sugary deliciousness.

That is, until Friday. Yes, Friday the 13th. How appropriate that this would happen to me on that day. See, I had to eat a donut. In fact, that's what I'd said to my buddy and fellow Kindergarten teacher, Jon.

"I had to eat a donut."

Jon laughs hysterically. "You make it sound like you were held at gun point. I think this qualifies for quote of the day."

"No, really! It saved my life! Allow me to explain!" I plead.

It truly did. Much like the giant Lard Lad donut helps Homer save the say in the Monorail episode, this donut saved my day too.

Here's how it went down:
If you think school lunches in the states are bad, they're not all that great over here either. Since I work at a Korean school, I get Korean food every day. I love Korean food, but this is not what I'd consider good Korean food. Once in a while, they surprise you with something good, but most of the time, it looks like this.

Anyway, I had some kimchi toward the end of my meal. If you don't know what that is, it's a fermented spicy cabbage that is actually pretty good.

But as I finished my last bite of it, some of the spices got stuck in my throat. Not in a choking to death kind of way, but they stuck about halfway down and wouldn't slide the rest of the way.

So I'm not choking, but suddenly, this burning sensation erupts in my throat and every time I swallow, I feel like I've got a 5-alarm fire ripping through there. Surprisingly, I don't panic. I just head back to my office to drink my tea. The tea stops it from burning repeatedly but it now feels like I'm being stuck with glass in my throat. This is actually an improvement from the burning sensation.

Ok, don't panic, I think to myself. But of course, my stupid brain wants to, perhaps even more so than usual because this week, I'd found out my wonderful friend Ted Mister had passed away. And just like Homer Simpson, I remind my brain to shut up or I'll stab it with a Q-tip.

I have an apple I've brought for a healthy snack and I thought that maybe, just maybe, the apple might help push that stubborn kimchi crap down the rest of my throat. But that didn't work either.

Then, I remembered some very sage advice I was given when I was a kid. Was it Mom that told me? Maybe it was Grandma. Or my dad. It was one of them, that's for sure. The advice in question?
If some food sticks in your throat, eat a piece of bread and it will push it down.

By Jove! OF COURSE! I grab a wad of yuan and run to the school store up in the cafeteria. Now, because of eating healthier and getting back in shape, I have been steering clear of the school store. There are never any healthy offerings. They also stock fresh baked goods from a Korean bakery in town. On this day, I had very few bread choices to work with. There was a chicken sandwich which was out of the question. I tried it once last semester and while it wasn't horrible, I had to remove gobs of mayo from it. There was a package of 4 garlic bread sticks. I didn't want or need that much bread. There were a couple poundcake-looking things. And then, there was one lone chocolate-frosted donut. I decided that if a donut could save Springfield, then a donut could save me too.

And it did. It only took 2 bites of donut to clear my throat. But I kept on eating it until it was gone.