学校郊游Xuexiao Jiaoyou (School Outing)

By this time you have probably read Frank’s account of our field trip so I won’t have anything new to add except pictures. Our school took us on a free field trip to a local lakeside park. We had the opportunity to spend all day talking to people in almost complete Chinese. I don’t think I have spoken that much Chinese in one day since we arrived. The weather was perfect and I did not dress for it. I was bundled up in a sweater and hat with handwarmers just in case and ended up cooking in all of it. One of the students brought a Frisbee and we played in the recently watered, muddy grass and somehow managed not to slip. I thought for sure, I would be the one but, for once, I escaped with only muddy hands. They had a lunch set out for us of barbecue stuff on a stick. We are pros at cooking outside, thank you mom and dad and so our lunch was soon underway. We got a kick out of watching other tables’ lunch go up in smoke or burst into flames. Maybe we should have helped but it was more fun to watch other foreigners offer to help only to make things worse. The only item we were hesitant to try was the “hot dogs”. Let me rephrase that, I refused to try them because been there done that, and sweet weird tasting hot dogs on a stick just ain’t my thang! Frank, the least adventurous eater of us all, was the one who learned the hard way. One bite was all it took and into the trash it went. Our teacher was surprised. “This is American food. We never had hot dogs in China before the western influence.” We had to explain that like many western things China tries to imitate, it lacks a certain….westerness. The only western thing about them was their shape. After lunch we all retired to a huge field where some played soccer, threw the Frisbee or participated in silly games. I got the highest student record in the chopstick ball bearing game. Pick up as many ball bearings as you can with your chopsticks in one minute. I reached 24. The only person higher was a teacher, Chinese. Pretty cool! We also could write characters, identify measure words or answer Chinese riddles. Every time you won, you got a ticket and they could be used to buy prizes. My teachers huddled around me and even though I had no clue what some of the answers were, they would tell me so I could get more tickets. Mind you, I was doing pretty good on my own but they were having more fun trying to get me as many tickets as possible. There was an enormous teddy bear that was 35 tickets which I was getting close to but didn’t want. Want am I going to do with a 3ft tall dust magnet? They really wanted me to get it though. It felt weird to take their tickets when I didn’t win them so in the end I split them with a friend and we both got a smaller teddy bear and a bunch of little things. We spent all day at the park, enjoying the sun. I even got some crocheting done. It was very relaxing. For dinner they took us to a large restaurant that served farmer’s fare which is, we discovered, what we have been eating regularly since we moved here. On one wall was an enormous picture of Mao. The food kept coming and we ate until we could eat no more. This may have been the only field trip I have ever been on where I actually learned something.

Mandy