we are made of dreams and bones....

i have been teaching my students to sing 'the garden song' this week. i love doing songs in class, and most of the students have been enjoying it, as well. i had one class on tuesday afternoon clapping along and swaying in their seats. bravo.

the words to the song are:

inch by inch, row by row,
gonna make this garden grow,
all it takes is a rake and a hoe,
and a piece of fertile ground.

inch by inch, row by row,
please bless these seeds i sow,
please warm them from below,
'till the rain comes tumbling down.

pullin' weeds and pickin' stones,
we are made of dreams and bones,
i need a place to call my own,
'cause the time is close at hand.

grain for grain, sun and rain,
find my way in nature's chain,
tune my body and my brain
to the music from the land.

plant your rows straight and long,
temper them with prayer and song,
mother earth will keep you strong
if you give her love and care.

old crow watching hungrily
from his perch in yonder tree,
in my garden i'm as free
as that feathered thief up there.

besides being a fabulous song for spring, the lyrics give me an avenue to discuss some important topics with the students, as well as lyrics and slang. ‘cause, gonna, ‘till, pickin’, and pullin’ captured their attention. we have a river (a moat?) that circles our campus and that of the neighboring university. one of the reasons i wanted to come back to hu gong this year was to organize a volunteer project. in class, and in their journals, they students often mention that they have lots of free time and they don't know what to do with themselves. i know what they do, they go to the net bar, and all forty of them show up to class with no homework.....time management is a big issue here. high school is so strenuous for chinese students. they are often in classes from 6:00 am to 10:00 pm. i thought it was an exaggeration the first time i heard it, too. the students, i believe, barely have time to digest the material, and they are exhausted. college entrance exams are a really big deal, and the students are devastated it they don't do well. hu gong isn't a top university, and i have had so many students cry to me that they wish they had done better on the exam, and they and their families are ashamed that they didn't get into a better school. admissions, as far as i can tell, are primarily based on the exam results. there must be other factors, but none that the students control. they are basically told where they will go to school and what their major will be. when i came here, i thought that sounded almost nice. if you score really well on the english section of the test, you are an english major. there is something to be said for matching people and their skills. i think the logic is, that if you score really well on english, you have obviously been interested enough to learn it so well, and you may enjoy further studying english. the international business students i had last year were not happy with their major. we did an exercise about what career you were interested in. very few of the students were in the proper major. i had one little girl, daisy, tear up. she wanted to be a kindergarten teacher, and now that was impossible, she said. lots of kids wanted to go back to their hometowns and work in the banks, or be OG or OL (office girl, or office lady. i haven't any idea where the term came from, but all the students use it).

okay, i'll get back on track. students in university still have classes 40 hours a week, but i thought, since they claim to have so much free time, we could organize a volunteer project to clean up the river. it desperately needs help. the banks are a wall of trash, and the water stinks. in the summer, every teacher dreads having a class near the river because the smell is so strong. the water doesn't move, and it helps the trillion mosquitoes on the campus thrive. it is so sad to see such a polluted waterway, and what could be such an asset to the campus, a garbage dump. i am afraid of this river. when i dreamed of the project one of my concerns was protecting myself and the volunteers from the toxins. duff and i did resume building with the students last year, and it was so difficult. in china, the only way i know, for sure, you can get jobs is through family connections. i think that is how the majority of job placement works here, but i thought volunteering would be an excellent resume building project. maybe it wouldn't help them with jobs, but it would help them with visa applications to western countries, and...oh, yeah...it is a good thing to do for your campus and the environment.

last year i brought the idea up to a few people, and gave me really odd looks. they weren't great english speakers so i assumed i was communicating my intentions poorly. this year, the weeks after i arrived, i brought it up again to a woman with near perfect english. she laughed so hard, she fell out of her chair. so, my idea is ludicrous. when she finally stopped crying and realized i was serious, she said, why should the students do this? do you have the money to pay them? How will you pay them? and i explained that, no, i wouldn't pay them, it was a volunteer project, and they would do it to beautify the campus and protect the environment. we kept talking, but you know how the conversation ended. i have never posted on this blog about the great strides we have made in cleaning up the river.

i brought my idea up a few days ago, again. the school is getting ready for a huge inspection next year, and the whole campus is getting polished. i said, hey, what's going on with the river? let's clean it up. again, no. but won't the inspectors be appalled? they are planting flowers and trees at an alarming rate (some forest and a nursery in rural hubei must have been completely cleared out and all the trees and flowers moved here), building three new buildings, and painting everything in sight. all the teachers and administrators are working over time. again, no. i was told it is the city's responsibility. and it was clear that it was time to drop it.

i used the song to open a discussion with the students about environmental stewardship. this is not a concept that many people get here. one of the biggest problems i see is trash. it is everywhere. people don't bother to find a trash can, they just drop it on the ground. on our campus, there is a small army of elderly peasants who walk around with tongs picking up discarded bottles, chopsticks and plastic bags. the kids, running to class, all fashionably dressed, with cell phones and mp3 players, run right by the stooped old men and women, without seeming to give them any thought. duff told me a story about a grandmother and a little boy he was walking behind on his way home from school. the little boy had garbage, and there was no trash can around. he looked at his grandma, and she glanced for a trash can, too, and then shook her head. so he tossed the trash on the ground. duff says the two smiled at each other, shrugged, and continued on their way.

largely, my students were unresponsive, but i continued to talk. they know 'nature' as a vocabulary word, which my students last year did not. we talked about 'nature's chain' and how everything is connected in nature, and what happens when you break the chain. i introduced them to the concept of mother earth. take care of the planet and it will take care of you. i used the river, and other lakes around here as an example. if we care for the river, it will give us healthy fish that are good to eat. everyone around here loves to eat fish. the foreigners, largely, refrain, because of the water pollution. we are worried about bioaccumulation. i jumped, i made class exciting, and i drew happy fish, and dead fish, and sewage and trash. i at least got the front row in each class thinking. we talked about paying closer attention (i just learned to say this in chinese, a useful tool) to the land. i think we made some progress.

most of the students loved the songs. the chinese really work together. in an american class, i imagine, i would have had a lot of difficulty getting students their age to sing, but everyone did, even the boys. it was really fun. i did have one class that flat out refused to sing. there were only seven kids in the class, out of 40 (at what point should i cancel class?), and they were too shy. heaven, the ringleader of the class, told me if we did john denver, he would sing, even if he was the only one. deal. he asked for country roads. i also got a request for 'red river valley'.

i love to teach the students songs, and i would love any suggestions any of you may have. we don't have any instruments, just me singing. i have done rounds with them before, and that works well. please, if you have any thoughts for suggestions leave them here. we'll do a lot of songs this spring, i hope.

dinner with the students

THIS IS DUFFY WRITING, NOT KATE

well, ok, not a real dinner. you know, the kind with food, and at a restaurant, but the kind that students pretend to have in their oral english class. the kind with plastic cups and bowls and disposable chopsticks with paper fork, spoon and knife heads taped on them. and in one group's case, the kind of dinner that involves a large bottle of hennessey.

last week, after explaining the finer points of eating in america, i assigned my students to write and perform a skit about eating at an american restaurant. after giving them vocabulary words such as "valet" and "dessert cart", and explaining etiquette such as standing when a lady leaves the table, i gave the students a week to write a performance. i got better results than i could have ever imagined.

the rules were simple: one person must be a waiter, a chef, a hostess and at least one boy (since some groups were all girls, this turned out to be very interesting). other than this, the students could rearrange the classroom and write the skit however they wanted. here are some of the most memorable results:

-the first group had a party of four all arrive in a fake car, with all of them jogging in place around the edge of the room. the car was "driven" by a boy holding a bright red trash can lid as a steering wheel. upon arrival, he tossed the lid to the valet like a frisbee, along with his keys.

-all nice chinese restaurants have between 2 and 10 people who stand by the door, and when you enter who bow and say in unison: "Welcome to our restaurant!" the students' fake restaurants were no exception. what was interesting is that one group had their hostesses say "welcome to our seafood restaurant", and then had customers order steak, peking duck, and mutton.

-in keeping with the stereotype of chinese restaurants in america being order by number, whenever a customer would order steak or mutton, the waiter would ask "what number would you like?" this was usually followed by "6 or 7". i was never able to figure out what this meant, but it was included in most presentations.

-one group had actually brought a bottle of whiskey so that their presentation would have more realism. given the amount of drinking that takes place at many chinese meals, it shouldn't have been that surprising.

-by far the most interesting part of the presentations was watching the students hold the chairs for the girls. chinese boys are usually very doting on their girlfriends, but for the presentations they had the hardest time remembering to help the girls into their chairs. there was plenty of running back and forth around the tables, and in one case a boy actually sat down first, remembered that he should help his "date", and promptly pushed her chair out from under the table with his foot. the rest of the class found this hysterical.

-the best script came from a group that included a side plot in their skit about a boy and girl on a date. the boy was rude through dinner, and got the busboy fired for spilling something. after dinner the girl said she was tired, and that the boy did not need to give her a ride home. the recently fired busboy left the restaurant at the same time, and offered to buy the girl a drink, which she accpted and they both pretended to hop onto a moped and drive off into the night together.

i know it doesn't seem like much to get excited about, but after so many weeks of students just going through the motions, it was nice to see them put some work into something and actually have it come out well.

joy!! friends come to china

yay! it is friday! it has been a long week, for no other reason than it has been beautiful and the kids have been dying to get out of class and play outside. the kids are rowdy but everyone is in a great mood. i always smile at people when i walk home from class, and today for the first time, i got everyone to smile back at me! we have a lot of elderly people in our neighborhood, and sometimes they are shy of foreigners. i got two older women to giggle today when i grinned at them, and an old man tipped his hat. have you every noticed, traveling, that the people of some countries smile back at you more than others? when i went to india, everyone was really smiley. i would grin at people and they would always smile back. especially high school aged girls waiting for the bus in their school uniforms. in china, we get far fewer smiles in the city. where we lived last year, we got a lot of stares because we are foreigners, but no one ever smiled back. walking home from work last year, i caught an elderly man on a bicycle off guard. he was so busy staring at me he fell off his bike. luckily, he wasn't hurt, but this kind of thing happens a lot. i was flying a kite last monday, and duff said i almost caused a traffic accident because people were staring. i wasn't even in the street, but got, and held, the attention of two bicyclists, and a motorcyclist. yikes.

and great news: katie and her friend lindsay and coming to china!! they have been traveling in india since last september. they both have blogs that are absolutely amazing. i keep up with their adventures as much as i can. they also have an amazing photo page, well worth a look. if any of you have a chance this weekend, visit their blogs and leave a comment with all the great reasons they should come to china. i know they both love comments. duff and i are terribly excited to have visitors. katie and lindsay will fly into macau from bangkok, and then we will go to yunnan, in southwestern china, for the may break. we have a week. i am looking for flights from guangzhou to kunming. yunnan is supposed to be amazing, with a lot of ethnic minority groups. everyone i have talked with who has visited yunnan says it is the best place they went in china.

katie's blog has been linked for months: whereiskatie.blogspot.com. everything sounds so exciting and exotic the way katie tells it. it will give you the itch to travel. lindsay's blog (indiaorindiana.blogspot.com) is so well written and insightful. an amazing read. their blogs compliment each other well, it is wonderful to read them both to get a good grasp of their experiences. they have just returned to india from a few weeks in sri lanka. i am excited to talk with them about their experience. they mentioned that they hadn't heard much about the civil war. duff and i were only there for a week, but we heard a lot. the tsunami and the war were the two biggest topics of conversation. our second night in ambalangoda, in our guest house, we were chatting with the owners and the tv was on in the background. the news report switched to to footage of explosions in the north. the owners talked passionately night after night about the conflict. i am going that have to address this in a different post, we spoke a lot about the politics, and the feelings of the people, the involvement of the u.s. navy, and the effect of the tsunami on the conflict. we were in an area with lots of billboards and signs with warnings to the tigers. and we were really far away from the north, where the fighting is.

in other news, my friends ariel and eli are off on an amazing trip to europe. you can follow their progress at eliwaite.blogspot.com. ariel's mother and youngest brother, dylan, have been living in edinburgh, scotland for the year. dylan is going to the waldorf school, i believe, and getting scary good at the fiddle, so i hear. i can't wait to hear him play when they get back to seattle. ariel and eli will travel in ireland and scotland, and then tour eastern europe.

oh, and a tree update: they are all dead, or at least really pathetic looking. they have been pruned to death by the workers. i hope they recover. the chinese tend to mess with their trees a lot. they are always wrapping them in ropes, painting the bottoms white, and transplanting them. some of the big trees only have a dozen leaves left, and they were really lush.

we are going to have salty cauliflower and fish-flavored egg plant for lunch.

tree mania

overnight our campus has become a green space. things change just as quickly inside the gates of our school as they do outside. on saturday night, duff and i were in a cab, coming home from our friend lindsey's. we got back by the new-b, a bar we frequented last year, now closed, and discovered a road, on which we have traveled for the past year and a half, is gone. it surprised the taxi driver, it really surprised us. a whole road, gone. we had no idea how to get home, but the cabby retraced our steps and managed to figure it out. it was too dark to see what new thing was taking up the space that was our road, but i bet it is another high-rise apartment building. we were on that road not two weeks ago when we went to the post office to get duff's bodhran!

our school is getting ready for some kind of inspection next year. i have talked with administrators and office workers about it, but i don't have a good understanding of exactly what it is. i understand the national government is checking out the school, and it is a BIG deal. it is probably related to funding, but everyone is in a tizzy. as a result, construction and campus beautification has gone into over-drive. we already have two huge buildings going up. it is often necessary to yell over the sounds of heavy construction in class. luckily, by my apartment, there isn't any building. i can year pile drivers in the distance, but i live in relative peace. i even saw a bird today.

in the last two weeks, the hospital and post office have disappeared. gone. probably a lot more on this campus has vanished, but if it isn't on my usual route it escapes my notice. in the teacher's residential area, the vegetable market is being upgraded. stalls have been built for the fruit vendors (who normally have shanties and tents, with tarps strung to protect against the rain and the wind). some of these stalls will be small restaurants. i was looking at the diorama of the campus plan the other day, and trying to orient myself using familiar buildings was impossible. in the diormam's future depiction of our school the food street where we eat every day is gone. i suspect if these people are able to keep their businesses, they will move to the teacher's residential area into the new stalls. the new campus plan includes parking lots, too. this is really amazing. i have seen parking only a few times in china. i know of only one place in wuhan with street-side parking meters.

so many buildings and small structures have vanished over the last few weeks, but if you didn't live here, you may not notice because of the mind-boggling number of trees that have been planted in the last week. and these aren't saplings, the trees are 20 feet tall, or a little more. on our walk to school, a forest has grown overnight. perhaps 60 trees have been planted. the tallest of these is almost 20 feet tall, but most are 1/2 that size. i never noticed the area before they cleared in and started trucking in soil. i thought they were getting the ground ready for a new building, but no.... i waited a day and there were trees!! in another spot, huge trees have been planted on both sides of a street, turning an ugly pot-holed stretch of road into a lovely, green, avenue. there are 25 trees in this spot. planted sometime between thursday afternoon when i walked home from class and friday night when we went out.

when i came to china the first time with huxley i remember hearing something about the people and mandatory tree planting. i have remembered this tidbit of information from time to time, but i have never asked any one about it. in beijing, the whole area has neat rows of newly planted trees. beijing has some serious air quality issues, and the trees help a lot. also, the 2008 olympics are supposed to be the green olympics, and they are trying to present an environmentally conscious olympics and beijing to match. beijing, historically, has trouble with air quality. the winds and weather come from the northwest, from siberia, across mongolia, and inner mongolia. these areas are naturally very dusty and dry. the winds pick up sand from the gobi desert, and in the dry conditions, beijing can suffer. i remember looking at a diagram of how people can tape up their windows and doors to protect themselves in a dust storm. it is hard to imagine this happening in beijing, but last year in ulan baator, mongolia, we experienced a dust storm and i can see how serious these storms can be. beijing's air quality issues are not wholly natural, smog from cars and industry contribute greatly, i just wanted to point out the natural conditions. the air quality in beijing has come a long way. i believe i notice and improvement every time i visit. perhaps this is just relative to wuhan, though.

so, yay, now we have a lot of trees on campus. i love this, it makes every so green and beautiful, and it will be great this summer to keep cool. last year, kellee and i would walk from our office to the food alley to get lunch, darting from one shady patch to the next. the trees will make a great difference.

duff and i have a fun and relaxing weekend. on friday night we went to a party at our friend bill's. i still have no idea where he lives because we experienced the densest fog ever. the taxi never drove faster than 25 mph. we couldn't see the lines on the road, students and pedestrians would pop out of the gloom right on the front bumper of the car. it was bad going to bill's and still worse leaving. it took us forever to get home, and duff and i were so turned around, we were almost at our front gate before we figured out where we were. duff got some amazing pictures of the fog, i'll post them someday.

our friend lindsey's mother is here from corinth, mississippi. we have had dinner with them the last two nights. and lindsey's boyfriend, harrish. after drunk river moon last night, we went bowling. i have included a picture of duff from a few weeks ago, boasting 5 strikes in a row. i don't ever do nearly as well, but i have gotten 3 strikes in a row before! we don't bowl nearly as much this year as we did last year, now it is like a special treat.

i must plan my lessons for the week. i tried to teach the students 'simon says' under the guise of listening and responding to commands, but they fail to care. i thought something active and fun would capture their interest, but i was wrong. i try simple commands, such as 'stand up', and 'sit down', and 'touch your knee'...and i am met with blank stares. we have worked on the vocabulary for a while, so i know that isn't the issue. i have had simon says work very well with other students, last year it was my class' favorite game. not so with these kids. ah, well, if they don't want to do anything more exciting we'll work on listening comprehension. fun.

shawn and jazmine

meet baby shawn. a few days ago i got new pictures of my niece and new nephew from my sister. baby shawn has really dark eyes. perhaps it is just the pictures, but they look really dark. and pretty. baby shawn is about three weeks old now.

it sounds like everything is going well for alison and her family in sand diego. her husband, ken, who is in the navy, is getting ready to go out to sea for a number of months. a very busy time for alison is on the horizon. my mom will go and spend some time in california to help out. jazmine's hair isn't sticking straight up anymore. i am glad i was able to see her dandelion look when i was home, it was terribly cute.

our day to day lives in wuhan have been very busy for the last few weeks. we have put a lot of time into our classes and teaching, so there isn't a lot of exciting news to report. many of the students are preparing for an english speech competition. i don't know what this means for the rest of the foreign teachers, but for me it means that i am stalked by eager students who want me to edit their speeches. when i am through with that, they will pull out a digital recorder and ask me to read it while they record. then, i can only imagine, the will hole up in their dorm rooms and listen to my voice over and over and study my inflection. speaking in just the manner of a native speaker is a big deal here. when i am working with my friend amy on her english she is always asking me to read passages aloud, and will copy my inflection. she thinks i read very beautifully, like a story teller. this must be related to how the chinese recite poetry, and how important it is to say some words quickly and drag others out. there is a lot that goes into speaking chinese with the proper inflection, never mind the tones.

duff and i haven't had a chinese lesson in many days. amy works in the admissions office and they are giving an exam to over 1000 students this afternoon. our classes are cancelled (yay!!) because of it. the friday afternoon class is always the most difficult. amy works very hard at her job and it is common for her to put in 12 hour days, or more, when she has a big project coming to a close. in addition, business meetings, business trips, and banquets are an important part of the chinese working environment, and her presence is required at many of these. when amy is finished giving the exam this afternoon, she must then go to a hotel (as best i understand. she said resort, i thought she was getting a vacation) where she will remain for the rest of the weekend marking papers. i would go mad. i ran into her while she was running to her office this morning. she said that she is so excited to give us our lesson next monday...it is a type of relaxation to her. yes, this is a woman who works so hard that teaching a 2 hour class twice a week, in heels, to two inquisitive foreigners who interrupt every time they have a question, is relaxation. we love having her for our teacher. she is most excellent. she is such a great teacher, though, i can see how our lessons are relaxing. it is a lot of fun to do something you are really and truly good at.

this weekend duff and i were going to try to go out of town, but the weather is not so good. we have had wild weather fluctuations for the past two weeks. it snowed, and then it was hot and sunny, and now it is cold and rainy again. washington weather. ireland weather. i love it. tonight, for st. patrick's day, we will go to a party at our friend bill's. this is the first year in many that i won't play any gig for st. patrick's day. just me, playing tunes in my apartment. if my hands don't freeze to the finger board due to the lack of heat. still, i'd much rather have this weather than the suffocating heat we will have in a few weeks.

happy st. patrick's day!

the last great race on earth

it is march, and so it is time for the iditarod! if you want to follow the race, as i have, they have a lovely website to help: www.iditarod.com. i have long been fascinated by the race, and still want to run it. i caught myself, once last year, telling my class in an introduction that my current job was a teacher, but my dream job was dog sled racer (i decided not to get into musher vocabulary). a team and sled are still on my list of things that i want, along with a kitchen aid mixer, and a library (with spiral staircase and fireplace).

the mushers are about 1/2 way through the race now. i have a reputation for not being much of a sports fan, but what people don't realize is that i am a passionate sports fan! but the sport i follow takes place once a year, in the snow and over the mountains from anchorage to nome, and it only lasts 10 days to two weeks. i could go on about the iditarod and dog sled racing for days, but i'll let you follow the link if you are interested.

back to china, now. this morning, while walking to the breakfast alley, i encountered cherry and her posse. cherry is a little girl who lives in the next apartment building. she is probably 7 or 8 years old. she always has 4 other little girls following her around. she is the leader of the pack, and they run, playing, all over our little neighborhood. cherry, when she sees us, waves, and yells, "HELLO, MY NAME IS CHERRY!! WHAT'S YOUR NAME?" ...and the runs away screaming, and the whole pack follows her, shrieking. she has been doing this for months. last week, on friday afternoon, she found my classroom, and peeks her head in the door. "hello, my name is cherry! what's your name?" ...and again, runs screaming down the hall. after i got out of class, she was sitting in the grassy-type area in front of the library with her posse. i waved, and she, again, greets me. this time, as often happens, her posse repeats her, or they just jump up and down saying "cherry, cherry!"

whenever we see cherry, we answer her question, but it never sticks. i am not sure if it is because she only knows the question and doesn't know how to listen for the response, or if she's just to busy laughing hysterically because she has spoken to the foreigners. the other little girls are younger and haven't started their english classes yet.

this morning, though, we had a break through. i responded as always, at times i've tried bits and pieces of the general message, "hi, cherry. my name is kate, it is nice to meet you." the little girls all giggled and i continued on my way. walking back to my apartment the girls were still standing in the street. cherry ran up, and so i braced myself for the usual barrage. instead i get, "hello kay-a!"...and then she ran away screaming. i praised her, and tried to talk to her a little more, but she was laughing and running in circles. good job, cherry!

how fun to be a kid.

international women's day

happy international women's day! this is my second fu nu jie in china. international women's day is celebrated as a mini-holiday in china. most women get a half day off work, some get the whole day off. people celebrate with their friends and family. i was supposed to have an english lesson tonight with amy, my chinese teacher, but she is celebrating with the women in her life. except for me. duff and i were instructed to go out for dinner. we see amy three nights a week for chinese and english language classes, we welcomed the chance to have a late dinner.

the students celebrate with cakes and flowers, and i almost wonder if it isn't like another valentine's day for the girls. international women's day was first celebrated as national women's day in america in 1909, and then spread to europe. it wasn't always on march 8th. lenin made march 8th a holiday in russia, to celebrate the 'heroic woman worker'. in 1975, the u.n. started to sponsor international women's day. now, i believe it is mostly celebrated in developing countries. it was, i am sad to say, completely off my radar while in america. in china, the surrounding days are filled with workshops, speeches, dinners, and exhibits.

the evolution of women's rights in china is closely linked with that of the communist party. the communist party has campaigned for greater rights and equality for women since it was first founded in shanghai in 1912. duff tells me his writing students from last year would often write: 'chairman mao has said: let women hold up half the sky.' in 1949 women were granted sufferage, and polygamy was outlawed. women, from this time, were supposed to have free choices as far as marriage and to have equality in their political, economic, cultural, educational and social life. women's rights have come a long way. experiencing modern day china, i can hardly imagine it is the same country as the one i read about in 'wild swans,' by jung chang (an excellent book that follows a family from 1890s in northen china to the modern day), where marriages were arranged, and the women's feet were bound.

the united nations and international women's day use march 8 to remind and promote awareness of women's rights issues worldwide. i pulled the below off a u.n. web page, i closed it though, and lost the link. sorry.

Some of the issues the U.N. and International Women's Day have focused on include the following:

* About 25,000 brides are burned to death each year in India because of insufficient dowries. The groom's family will set the bride on fire, presenting it as an accident or suicide. The groom is then free to remarry.
* In a number of countries, women who have been raped are sometimes killed by their own families to preserve the family's honor. Honor killings have been reported in Jordan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and other Persian Gulf countries.
* According to the World Health Organization, 85 million to 115 million girls and women have undergone some form of female genital mutilation. Today, this practice is carried out in 28 African countries, despite the fact that it is outlawed in a number of these nations.
* Rape as a weapon of war has been used in Chiapas, Mexico, Rwanda, Kuwait, Haiti, Colombia, Yugoslavia, and elsewhere.

yikes. i have more comments about what i have observed in china, but i will wait to share those, and i have lessons to plan. i'll close with the words of james oppenheim's poem, 'bread and roses'. i fondly remember singing this song in girl scouts.

Bread and Roses. Words by James Oppenheim, music by Caroline Kohlsaat.

As we come marching, marching in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: "Bread and roses! Bread and roses!"

As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!

As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient cry for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for -- but we fight for roses, too!

As we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days.
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler -- ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!

rapidly changing wuhan

one of the most pleasant weekends i have ever spent in wuhan has come to a close. i am sad, but i look forward to more like it. after four inches of snow a week ago, the weather is now sunny and in the mid-70s every day. this is wuhan's very brief spring. i can't remember when summer set in last year, but it was brutal. sun, humidity, smog, and temperatures over 100 degrees every day. fellow wuhan dwellers: enjoy spring while you can. in a few months we will be dragging home from class, dripping, and panting to lie under the air conditioner until it is once again time to leave.

duff and i took advantage of the excellent weather to explore more of our surroundings on foot. friday night arrived with most of our friends out of town. we decided not to venture into town and took off in search of a restaurant. last year, i taught at the same school as i do now, but i did not live on campus. five of us came with a group out of olympia, washington, that was placing teachers in wuhan. duff, nick, jon, brain, and i lived in a house in the red light district right by wuchang's long distance bus station. reflections of that experience could fill a book. i took a taxi to work every day. when i first started the year the smog was so bad i wasn't entirely sure what we were driving through. when the cloud lifted for a brief time in the fall, it was clear that i was driving through a war zone. or, at least, that is what it looked like. all year i watched an area turn from agricultural fields to construction tents. there were no roads in many places. the city had paved a grid of roads before they started to develop the area, but with the heavy construction trucks, they were constantly torn up. we passed through pot holes bigger than the taxi i was riding in. as long as the taxi, but sometime they were deeper than the taxi was tall. always an exciting jarring ride to wake you up in the morning, in lieu of coffee.

china's development is amazing. i am often amazed here how quickly the landmarks i use to orient myself disappear. things change here very fast. the area i drove through on the way to school is being developed into upper-income high-rise apartments. last summer, when we left, the skeletons of buildings were up. friday was the first time i returned to the area, it is not on my normal route. duff and i walked two hours in search of a restaurant called the 'shrimp king' i would pass last year on my way to school. we found the restaurant, one of the first in the area. we had a really enjoyable dinner of shrimp and rice. they gave us a pot filled with about 50 shrimp (heads, creepy legs, and all), with a wonderful sauce. The meal took forever because we had to peel them all, but it was so much fun. duff removed the heads, and then i would go at it. even though mom, dad, and i got a taste of shrimping while in south carolina last summer, i still have no love for pulling off the head of a shrimp.

the area with the restaurant had completely changed. surrounding us were high-rise apartment buildings 30 and 40 stories tall. most of them were yet uninhabited, but it will not be long until they are filled. the street level is full of shops, all fit into little nooks. walking in, we passed these shops and small restaurants. since the apartments are uninhabited, the restaurants were filled with camouflage-clad construction workers and their families. the stores didn't sell a lot of groceries, mostly alcohol and cigarettes. people migrate in from the countryside to work on these huge construction projects. their families come along, and for the year or more that it takes to finish, they live in a camp of tarps and tents, or in the unfinished buildings. last year, i could see the buildings going up, but already there would be cots, and sheets hung as walls, and laundry everywhere. when the high-rise residents move in, some of these people will stay on other unfinished construction sites nearby, but many will move on to the next big project, further south or west, as wuhan expands into the countryside.

the rapid pace of china's development is so often discussed. china's economic growth has averaged 10% a year for the past decade. when i visited china with huxley college in 2004, every meeting we attended touched on the topic. i'll never forget standing at the top of the oriental pearl tower in shanghai. there are sky scrapers and high rises as far as you can see. the huang pu river has the most boat and barge traffic i have ever laid eyes on. also, the largest ships i have ever seen. i remember hearing an estimate, and i cannot account for my source, that asia has 80% of the world's construction cranes, and 80% of those are in china. i have also heard that shanghai has 20% of the world's cranes. wow. wuhan is developing rapidly as well. i can think of 8 cranes just on our campus. and then there is the campus next to us, and the new high-rise developments, and the new bridge.... more and more. i can't even remember the last crane i saw in america.

china is huge, and it is just getting bigger. there are more than 200 cities with over million people. on saturday, duff and i took another walk, and visited what will be urbanized wuhan in another 2 or 3 years. our university is on the city fringe, so walking 30 minutes, we are out in small villages and agricultural fields. there are one lane roads, and carts, and rice paddies and orchards connected with dirt paths. take a bus from our campus in the other direction, and you couldn't be in a more urban area. not where we decided to spend our saturday walking. we crossed over railroad tracks on our walk, and we could have been 100 miles or more from the city. in places, the transformation from city to countryside can be pretty abrupt. already, there is a lot of development in this area, but not urban development. in the little village-like settlements we passed through, farmers are building nicer houses. where they used to live in a small, one or two room, one-story brick houses, they are now building a two-story structure. instead of one layer of bare brick, the houses have brick, tile on the outside, and dry wall within. money is creeping into these once remote communities. we were walking through the area that provides our campus with food. people here still do all their farm work by hand. the xiao bai cai we eat (chinese cabbage, but similar to spinach) is picked by hand, placed into a huge basket, carried to the road, loaded onto a cart (probably pulled by a motorbike, or bicycle) and eventually winds its way to our vegetable market. we have some pictures, and a lot more exploring to do in wuhan's hinterland.

after our dusty walk, we continued our weekend by dining with our friend lindsey and her boyfriend harrish. harrish is from mauritius and is a wonderful cook. he also had another friend there from mauritius, his country-mate, but i never mastered the boy's name well enough to repeat it here. harrish made a green curry and a yellow curry with fabulous salads (with tuna!), and fresh cucumbers, and pineapple for dessert. thank you, harrish! his food is amazing, and a great break from our daily fare. duff and i are going to have a dinner party for our friends in wuhan. we brought spices back from india, rather than souvenirs for everyone. duff and i are about to start experimenting with indian cooking, but harrish is going to help us preparing our feast. i can't wait.

sunday was a continuation of the best weekend ever. i sat on my balcony in the sun all day, reading, and catching up on school work for my 10 classes. for dinner we went to hot pot with a katrina, our wickedly clever chinese friend, and two canadian teachers from our school. now, all i have to do is figure out what lesson i am going to teach this week.

bodhran joy

for a week now, duff and i have been playing with the greatest thing ever. duff's uncle denny and aunt barb have sent him a bodhran from ireland. it is a beautiful drum, from malachy kearns, and it sounds great. it has been so much fun to have it, and duff is getting good, fast. last friday we got a text message, in chinese, on the cell phone, and were able to determine that there was a package waiting for one of us at the wuchang train station post office. we sent it to a chinese friend, who confirmed what we suspected. this means that it has been a week since our first, functional, and practical reading of chinese. how exciting. the office worker who helps us was going to the post office on monday, but we couldn't wait. we took the bus and ventured back into the deep, dark, places of a chinese post office to retieve the package. the box said 'the bodhran: the pulse of irish music.' i love that. i have no idea what the post office people must think of us. between the two of us, this year we have gotten mail from ireland, india, france, and the u.s.. and a lot of it. it doesn't seem like they'd notice, but we are foreigners, so i know they do. i can't imagine that there is a huge volume of post from county galway, ireland, to wuhan, china. irish music is popular in japan, but, to my knowledge, it hasn't taken off in china. i haven't found anyone to play with here. wuhan is a huge city! there has to be someone else other than me (an now duff) who plays.

duff is an extremely quick study. the drum came with three tippers, or beaters, and he's getting a feel for all three. we have been working a little every day. we have been working on jigs. most of the tunes i have on my computer are far too fast for him to accompany. i couldn't keep up with the music playing bodhran, and we haven't attempted him accompanying me while i play fiddle, so i sing. i have been lilting, trying not to run out of breath, while he practices keeping the rhythm. i bet by the end of the weekend, i'll have the fiddle out and we'll be playing jig after jig after jig.

spring is the perfect time to learn a new instrument. we can play outside in the park across from the foreign teachers' residence building. when katie, and blayne and lindsay (hopefully!) come in may, we can all have a session together. blayne has how many instruments, now? traveling india and sri lanka with a mandolin, a sitar, and a drum! yay, fun. we'll have to try our luck busking in town. perhaps two foreigners playing irish music will attract a few kuai dropped into our hat.

throwing snow with the students.

so i am a little late with this announcement, it's been a busy week. today is friday, and sunny, and in the mid-50s, but on monday and tuesday...it snowed! i have no classes on monday, and duff and i went into town for lunch after duff's morning classes. it was raining, but by the time we left mcdonald's (yes, i just had to go), it was snowing! i have seen snow a few times in wuahn, and i am always amazed at how large the snowflakes are. we decided not to linger in town and went home and curled up in my apartment and made hot chocolate. when i fell asleep, it was still snowing, and it had accumulated. i fully expected it to be gone by morning. however, when i woke up for my 8:00 class on tuesday, it was still snowing, and we had about four inches.

wuhan rarely gets snow, and it is neat to see everyone so excited. the streets were clear, it really wasn't that cold, but i missed many of the usual morning faces as i went off to the breakfast alley. there are usually a group of women set up to sign shoes, a tea vendor, and a key cutter. gone. a lot of the fruit tents hadn't opened yet, but the breakfast alley crew was there in full force. all of the vendors had rigged big umbrellas to protect from the snow, and steam from their cooking poured into the air. i wish i'd had the camera out, but i was almost late for class. class took longer than normal to get to, shuffling carefully through the snow. the students were gleeful, and there were plenty of snow balls being tossed around. my attendance in class was far better than i had anticipated, and i managed to hold the student’s attention. at least, until i got distracted staring out the window at the falling snow. from the classroom window we could see two girls building a snow man and a big group of boys rolling a huge snowball. it must have been 4 feet tall. when it got to the curb, they all climbed on top, two-by-two, and took pictures with their cell phones. comical, every boy had an umbrella.

i taught 8 hours on tuesday, and by the end of the day most of the snow was trampled. when i got to my last class the kids were really excited. one of the girls, lesley, and some of the boys were pegging each other with snow balls. i taught class, 8 kids (out of 40) were present. we have a break half way through class and one of the students, heaven, asked me to come outside and 'throw snow and take picture.' okay. i was game for a little 'throw snow.' we had a blast. the snow was soft, wet, and great for packing. all the students in class played. my aim isn't really good, but i got a couple good shots in. the kids were not shy at all about pelting me. people were really considerate about hitting in the face. it was sweet. they would wait until the person had turned around and smack them in the back of the head :) heaven proved to be least angelic of all the students, an aggressive snow fighter. we hadn't any gloves, and our hands were bright red and stiff when the bell rang calling us back to class. we continued the fight, however. all of us brought at least two snow balls back to class. i placed mine on the podium and started class again. in china, there is no heat in the classrooms, and the windows don't really shut anyway, so no one removed their coats and hats. the students paid rapt attention, were diligent in their pronunciation exercises, and occasionally tossed a snowball at one of their classmates, or me. i got the three boys in the front row (i have no idea how) with one of my snowballs. i dodged another and it smacked into the board, eventually melting and washing away a few lines of the dialogue we had been practicing. we had a wonderful class, and i think it sets a good mood for how active i wish the class to be. when we were outside throwing snow, the kids were using an odd mixture of chinese and english. they definitely had "look out!" mastered by the end of our 10 minutes. now, if i can only get attendance to improve.

perhaps the only creatures upset by the snow were the chickens who roam and forage all over campus. i passed a large group of them on the way home, pecking in the snow. i saw one extremely disgruntled chicken who hoped onto the sidewalk, wings flapping, and squawking, stamping its feet to get the snow off of them.

the snow had all melted by wednesday morning, and i think spring is here. it is great to have the sun, and i have done a lot of laundry. we even have blue sky, if you look straight up and not straight ahead.

the picture below is of the snow in the teacher's residential area. we live in a building similar to these, but a lot older. all of the teachers, and their families, have apartments here. i think some teachers are allowed to live off campus, but if you are unmarried you must live in the south campus. everyone one we know lives on campus.