20 March 2007

我当英文老师


So I don't have alot of pictures, but alot of interesting stuff has happened to me in the past day so I'll try to catch you guys up to speed. I should have known something was up when I woke up and it was sunny, or as close to sunny as it gets in Chengdu. I decided to wear the new red sweater that I bought yesterday for 59 kuai (like 6 dollars). It looks hand made. During the break between classes a teacher who works in the foreign office called me to see if I would like a job teaching English. She said it was for one day every two weeks in a school a little outside of Chengdu. I would teach kids from ages 7-12 English conversation and each day I would get 500 kuai. I decided that I could not pass this up, it's not that big of a commitment and it's alot of money. Plus it will be fun! So then another woman called me that afternoon to arrange a time and I will be teaching my first classes on this Friday. Then we will decide the next time on a day by day basis, based on my schedule. So I have now joined the rank of thousands of foreigners in China who teach conversational English, but I'm okay with that.
Then this afternoon I went to attempt to calibrate my equipment in the lab, but it didn't work like I had hoped. The burette was there and was exactly what I needed. There was just the problem of getting the burette to be in-line with the sampler and having that be air tight. My solution was to stick the sampler and the end of the tube going to the burette in a nalgene and tape a plastic bag to the top of the Nalgene and to both the tubes to make it air tight. Turns out it wasn't really air tight, but by then it was getting late and I couldn't really think of a better idea so I decided to pack it all up and go home and think it over. So if you have any suggestions, let me know.
Then I went swimming, since that is the place I think best, especially when I'm frustrated. I swam 3000m and when I got out I felt much better and even have a few ideas for the burette-sampler connection problem.
After swimming I went to with Huangjie to eat fish head hot pot. The name of the restaurant was 三只耳(three ears) which I thought was ironic because fish don't really have ears. The restaurant was actually named that because the owner's name is a character that looks like 3 ears (耳)together. The fish head hot pot was actually really good, much better than regular hot pot I thought. And the one we ordered wasn't all fish heads, it was just a half a fish including the half a head. The fish meat was delicious and picked up the spice rally nicely. The flaky, delicate meat was a really nice contrast to the strong mala flavor. Huangjie said I could have the head if I wanted because she had eaten it tons of times before, so I decided to go for it. I ate the whole head (or all the not-bone parts), even the eye. There was some weird gelatinous-y parts and the eye had an interesting shell-like covering on it, but all in all not as bad as I expected, not that I'll be rushing to eat it again anytime soon. The worst part was the intestines, which I also tried out of posterity and to say that I tried everything. It was rubbery and chewy and I couldn't eat it. So I just tucked in my check so it looked like I swallowed it and went to the bathroom and spit it out. It was one of the grossest things I've had in China, and that's saying alot. So that was my exciting day. Beat that, new sweater, new job, and new food all in the same day.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

that is disgusting. i really hope you dont make me eat anything with a fish head when i'm in china....