The Adventures of Ichabod and Mrs. Toad (Part 2) - Great Escapes and Easy Infiltrations

Previously on Ichabod and Mrs. Toad: Mrs. Toad is swiped off the streets of Shapingba district. After a torturous cab ride in the pocket of a giant, she settles into her new pot for the night. Little does the giant know, she's already plotting her freedom. If you haven't read Part 1, you might want to go back and read that now. It sows the seeds of resentment necessary to understand Mrs. Toad's next move.

Day one, I've survived the journey to my new prison. The walls are cold and slick but the top of my cage appears to be loose. Yes, I've been rattling it for the last half an hour which for some reason upset the giant. He lifted the lid and yelled at me but I puffed up really big and flung mud everywhere until he went back to bed. Tomorrow....

The next morning, I jumped out of bed like an excited kid on Christmas and ran over to Mrs. Toad sitting on my desk. Unfortunately, I didn't know she was sleeping and if you think I'M grumpy when I get woken up unexpectedly, you haven't seen Mrs. Toad. I clearly startled her from her slumber because she immediately puffed up to almost twice her original size and let out the most high-pitched, girly croak I've ever heard. She overreacted so much, in fact, that she flipped right over onto her back and spent a solid minute trying to right herself. 

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mrs. Toad (Part 1) - First Impressions

Hello once again to my friends across the world! Sincere apologies that I haven't posted in such a long time, but this last month has been a whirlwind of traveling and work and it's been hard to keep my head above water.

"I'm not here by choice"

"This isn't a real flower?"

But! One thing that's really helped keep me sane for the last week or so are my two new roommates. Say hello to my new pet toad and....um.....beetle? I'm honestly not sure what this thing is suffice to say it's a pretty cool bug that broke into my apartment one day. The toad still does not have a real name but I've thrown around Mrs. Toad, Buffy (Bufo.....get it bio lovers?), and Guanyin after the Chinese goddess. She (I also arbitrarily decided it was a she after googling 'how to sex a toad' got really iffy really fast) is kind of cranky. I mean, to be fair, I'd be upset too if some giant picked me up off the street and decided to enslave me in a tupperware container for his pleasure.

But she's learning to love me. The same cannot be said for the bug, Ichabod, who was already in the dog house for showing up in my apartment uninvited and then announcing his presence by flying at my face only seconds after I walked in the door. I'm trying to teach him how to make better first impressions but he usually ends up just biting me when I hold him... Anyway, these two have worked their way into my daily routine now and the story of how we came to cohabitate is worth telling.

For the sake of clarity, let me start from the beginning and tell you all how I came to be in such great company...

南山植物园 （South Mountain Botanical Garden)

A few weeks ago, the weather really started turning around here in Chongqing. It had been cold and rainy, overcast all day. Not that I was complaining; the Oregonian in me wasn't at all upset with the wet gray blanket that Chongqing had turned into. 

That said, when I saw my first blue sky here in the 'Foggy City' (we all know it's the really the 'Smoggy City', c'mon), I couldn't help but smile and want to take advantage of the wonderful weather. In this spirit, our little gang decided we needed to do some sort of outdoor activity. At a suggestion from our student/friend Jerry, we settled on the South Mountain Botanical Gardens which was just outside the city. It didn't hurt that he knew exactly where it was, offered to drive us, and buy us all dinner, either. Don't think for a second that we were using him; we really like Jerry, but this was also the first time we had had an activity with one of our students outside of class, so I was interested to see how that dynamic would go.

Anyway, apparently, all of Chongqing also decided that this was the perfect time to go to the gardens because it took us something like two hours to get there with all of the traffic. I've already complained about the traffic here, so I'll try not to get into it too much. But we were on a mountain people! Outside the city! And it was bumper to bumper. Anyway, it was definitely not supposed to be that long of a drive but I'd say that it was eventually worth it to get outside of the city in the sunshine and nature. Nature is certainly something that I'm missing with living in such a big city. Even their parks lack real open space and grass to lay in and the massive buildings block out direct sunlight unless you get there exactly at noon.

This is South Mountain

That Day I Was Treated Like a Celebrity

I'm a 'foreign consultant' here in China which pretty much translates to a glorified English teacher. But one of my responsibilities is traveling with my company to recruit students to join our flight attendant training program. About a week ago, I had the experience of going on my first recruiting trip for the company that I work for. Here is the story....

Translation: You won't be abel to see your dear New Yorker today, study hard!

Everything started off normally. I was traveling with my
supervisor, Maggie, and an intern that Alexis (the other American in my office) and I named Christy because she just looked like a Christy if you know what I mean. A van arrived outside our office around 8:00am to take us, I was told, an hour north of the city to a district (county) called Hechuan. The first bump in road came about half an hour into our journey while we were still in the city proper. Traffic.

Our driver having a smoke during the traffic jam

Now, we're talking about China here people so if you're thinking, oh I've sat in frustrating traffic before, Jared. I know exactly how horrible that is. Stop. Just stop. You think bumper to bumper molasses crawl on a road is traffic? Try literally four hours of not moving. At the beginning of the trip I was having a great time just looking out the window and seeing the city go by. When we came to a stop, that activity quickly died. But I didn't realize anything was wrong until our driver decided he was going to 'go for a walk' and just left the car running in the middle of the road. So I decide to nap, when I wake up almost TWO HOURS LATER we still haven't moved and our driver is enjoying a cigarette outside. At this time I panic just a little and envision myself emerging from this van/jail with a cast-away-like beard and squinting at the first daylight I've seen in days. But I tend to overreact and after about another hour, things finally start to move. Let me tell you, after sitting there for that long, the jogging pace that our car reached felt like we were flying. Then there were other small adventures during the car ride.

The Great White Whale

Photo courtesy of Kristin Mark, check out her blog too

One of the most bizarre experiences I've had here so far is what I'd call 'foreign privilege'. Think of the old saying, "A big fish in a small pond". Although China is anything but a 'small pond', being a foreigner here makes me quite a 'big fish', a veritable white whale if you will. And they're doubly shocked when I can speak Chinese. This privilege manifests in many different ways, sometimes flatteringly, sometimes annoyingly, sometimes frustratingly, but always interestingly.

In small ways, it's an open stare in public. Sometimes I overhear people shouting "Look! A foreigner. A white guy!" and I want to turn around and use my broken Chinese to tell them, "Yes, I understand what you're saying. No I won't take a picture with you. No I won't teach you English". Often people will shout 'hello!' or 'Hollywood!' or (my favorite) 'I love you!' while they pass me on the street or in the subway. Then there are those people who unabashedly snap pictures of me right in my face, flash and all, no 'hello'. At first, it was pretty unsettling. Sure I like attention sometimes, but the constant paparazzi-like demand to interact with random people would exhaust anyone. Considering the fact that I can hardly stand being social more than two days in a row, for me it's down right overwhelming.

Aggressive Chinese Romance

Here is a short video from class last week. I did a lesson about American dating and after they learned about pick-up lines, how to approach someone, what to talk about, how to get a phone number, and how to turn someone down, we all did presentations where one person had to ask the other person out on a date in English. This was the result. These girls have some serious game. 

Home Sweet Home

I apologize for not posting in so long. I don't have a great excuse, suffice to say that things have been busy while settling in!

Life in China is finally beginning to take shape though as I establish a regular routine at work and home. After work everyday, I come home to my little apartment a few blocks away on the 28th floor and unwind with a book in my bed or TV.

Here it is!

It's one loft-style open floor plan with a kitchen and bathroom off the main room. It came pretty much furnished with a coffee table, bed frame, dresser, night stand, desk, refrigerator, and washing machine. Many of the things here are not quite the same though...


Night one was pretty rough; when we moved in there was no padding at all on the bed and I didn't realize that my 'air conditioner', as they called it, also doubled as a heater. So the first night I huddled under my covers on a pretty uncomfortable wooden frame, but I was just happy to finally be in China and it didn't damper my spirits at all.