El Stinko (Marcus)

There's a stink in the bathroom of late that's starting to become concerning. It's not the toilet itself, nor the little basket of 'goodies' that sits beside it. It's not the cleanliness of the room itself or anything actually obvious. We can't work out what the hell it is. I have read things about China with the drain/water within it stinking, but that doesn't seem to be it either. Basically we don't know what the hell it is.

We have one theory. The wall appears to be rotting away from the inside, all thanks to the outside of the bath not appearing to be sealed properly. The plaster is flaking away and at times it is damp to touch. So it's quite possible that within the wall, it's a stinky damp mess.

It's hard to even detect the smell. It's one of those things that you don't notice until you enter the bathroom after being out of the apartment for an hour or so, then open the door and it's pee-ewwww. It's hard to put a finger on WHAT it even smells like - but it's just rank. And no - to stamp out a theory before you run with it - it is not the sweet smell of turds.

So we showed Mr Pan the wall and he said he'd have the maintenance guy look at it. He's clearly forgotten so I will remind him when I see him next. I don't really care about the state, health and well-being of this apartment providing it doesn't fall down on us while we're living in it. Beyond that, it can get stuffed basically. It was thoroughly filthy when we moved into it, and I will make sure it is something like that when we move out. Hell the room I am sitting in right now is absolutely covered in dead mosquitoes squashed on the walls - some of them even by my hand now - who am I to break a trend?

Most of our China experience to date has been made up of things like this, and I guess in hindsight it's all a part of the fun. The whole country is filled with things that are what we now just plain and simple identify as Chinese. Nothing works like you'd expect it, there's always a bad smell and it's usually covered in 2 layers of impossible to open with human hands plastic wrapping.

In other news, the classes this week have been fairly good. As Courtney said previously we have been doing our Senior classes based around the Beatles song - Yesterday -with varied success. None of my classes have sung it as it's been on unfortunately - I feel a little jibbed there.

In my Junior gifted class I had two teachers 'spectating' me today. When I am under the spotlight I like to kick into a higher performance mode where I really show my English speaking power with new improved added theatrics. I ran a tightly controlled game of Chinese Whispers - which of course around these folk we only call Whispers. This was fairly unsuccessful. On one hand they understood what to do and followed through until the end, but on the other, they just didn't understand the guist of the game. When it came time to pick a winner, they didn't agree with who I picked.

In case you don't know how to play Chinese Whispers - basically I form teams of the class using their seating rows vertically (front to back). I take the front row outside and tell them a sentence - in this case it was: The big cat sat on the mat with a rat who was wearing a hat.

The kids then go in and whisper it to the person behind them - trying to remember it and getting it right. The next kid whispers it to the next then the next then the next and so on, until the last kid actually writes it down.

In all cases they have surprised me with how well they have done. We did this game in our TESOL course and quite frankly I found it hard to play, and 1.) I am an adult, and 2.) a NATIVE english speaker. So yeah.

Most teams had it very close to what I told them originally - and when I tried to pick a winner, they would go, No No!!!!! as one unit - that's wrong!! It's wrong!! And I would say - but they are ALL wrong!! That's the game, it will NEVER be completely right! The idea is to get as close as possible - it's listening and memory etc etc - but I don't think they really understood that concept. That's where it can be hard to really get the more complicated games across to them. It was fun though, and they enjoyed it.

Then finally we played hang-man - but for the first time i let the kids run it. The first kid chose the word...Elephant..so far so good. The second kid's word...Allah ..what the hell? These kids aren't even religious. The third kid? Some soccer players name..Ronaldero or whatever it is, not Ronaldo - that other guy, Ronaldiho or something?! I hadn't even heard of him until recently, I thought it was Chinglish on a t-shirt until Courtney told me who the hell he was. Then the final kid's word? "The UN" - where the hell do they get this stuff? Courtney had a kid pick George W Bush. Who can predict these little darlings, seriously.

Anyhow it makes me wonder what the teachers thought of the political correctness of Hang-man...you know - failing to guess a word while the kids happily draw a man who is hanging from the neck. Oh well.

And finally, tangent number 5 - we had lunch with Raymen - the head of English today in the canteen. He was talking about the Senior 3(oldest students) getting ready for their university entrance exams next month. He told us what was involved in the english exams, and I have to say, they sound nasty. We said that we would be curious to see how we would do on them - and he said we could maybe try them next month if we wish. We told him how we weren't even taught grammar from beyond grade 5 or so, and he laughed and said, "This is why we only hire foreign teachers for oral english." I grinned, but deep down I think i wanted to smash him!

Anyway that raises an interesting question - HOW would we do on this exam? He said most foreigners only score around 60% on it - which in Chinese terms(ie if you were a chinese student) would mean you wouldn't get into university.

Do we give it a shot? It has potential for massive embarrassment. I don't care about face, but I feel if i scored badly(which is highly possibly), my face would in fact slide off my body, completely lost. Though if we blitzed it - hell i think it's asking for payrise time.

Decisions decisions.