50/50 – 外国人！(Foreigners)

How many times have we heard the shrill voice of a Chinese child call out in glee (or sometime fear) “外国人!”

What started as five people from two different schools eventually narrowed to a group of three. I apologize to Ben for leaving him out of this post. Ben was great, and helped me so much during the year, but when it comes down to it we didn’t spend nearly the amount of time together that Josh, Marlie and I did.

Marlie and Josh were always up for a good time, whether it was a ridiculous walk to the Kaifeng coal-fire plant, a night of watching 10 year old Survivor episodes, sitting back and drinking beer while watching the 14 year old Superman cartoon, or just getting into some other ridiculous shenanigans.

I will miss you both incredibly much. I wish you the greatest success in your future endeavors and I hope that our paths cross again in the future. Take care, and good luck.

49/50 – Mr. Hou Jian

In my mind, there are no words to really describe Mr. Hou (pronounced ‘hoe). He has been my teaching assistant for the past year and has been a continuous source of interest. He generally arrives at my apartment unannounced, asks me to proofread a paper for a translation contest, asks me some abstract questions about philosophy, and then disappears for another month.

Mr. Hou has a good heart, and in his own way he’s managed to accomplish quite a lot for me. Although I often wish that he’d do things in a more ‘American’ way, I think I’m close enough to the end of this experience to reflect back and see that this is, in fact, just another problem I have with China.

48/50 – Frisbee

Every Thursday and Sunday for the past year a core group of students have been getting together to play the wonderful game of Ultimate Frisbee. The students that participate are mostly from the Sophomore reading classes I’ve mentioned before, but we have a few students from Freshman and Junior classes as well.

Although I ended up teaching a lot more this semester outside of the university and I was unable to attend most of the games, I will always fondly remember the many hours spent on the field.

Many of the core group of players now thinks of Sunday frisbee as tradition. They told us last week that it had become unimaginable to sit inside and study on a nice Sunday afternoon. I will miss our little league.

47/50 – 三轮车 (Three-Wheeled-Carts)

One might optimistically label these vehicles as deathtraps. If you look back at my video on driving rules in China you will see that nobody follows any sort of transportation rules when they take to the road, and these 3-wheeled carts are the worst offenders. Still, they have been a quick and easy means to get about. They’ve been frightening and entertaining over the past year, but as I enter my last two days in China I am relatively sure that I will not be going anywhere near them again.

 

46/50 – South Gate Restaurants

Just outside of the South gate of Henan University there area  variety of small, family owned restaurants. The South gate restaurants have always been our main source of food, serving us many quick dishes of potatoes on rice, kung pao chicken (not for me), greenies and mushrooms, and many, many more. Josh and I are pictured above at one such restaurant known as ‘Troll Neighbor.’ We named Troll Neighbor such because directly next door there is a restaurant where a very large, loud, and rude Chinese man lives. We named him Trollman, and thus the restaurant next door became Troll Neighbor.

Troll Neighbor is full of spunk and always happening in a far out way. She and her husband are pictured below, along with Josh, Marlie, and myself.

45/50 – PROTECT THE DAMN GRASS!

Perhaps one of the most ironic things about China, is that despite its lack or interest in taking care of the environment in any way, shape, or form, there is clearly some good citizen in the city planning department that thought they should post signs about keeping the grass nice. These signs are all over the Kaifeng parks and all over the Henan University campus. They almost always result in some ridiculous Chinglish. Whenever I spot a new one it’s the highlight of my day!

 

44/50 – The Chinese Shirt Roll

Pictured above from left to right are Qin, Joe, and Eli. Joe is participating in something called the shirt roll– a technique used by men to cool themselves down on a particularly hot day. I have seen so many gross Chinese stomachs that I almost want to DIG my eyes out.

Jabbas.