The rest of the staff appeared this past Tuesday. As a treat, the Board of Directors had a gathering from 4-6 pm at a popular hotel, the Ruijin Hotel that is apparently a favorite among tourists even though it is also one of the older hotels. The hotel waiters came around with treats on trays the entire two hours, each time bringing around different hor'dourves. The food was superb, my favorite being the 1/2-size pita bread sandwiches with turkey and avocado in them. I think I was just thrilled to get avocado. The other great thing was that each new teacher was presented with a 'chop' or signature block of our last name written in Chinese and a red pad. Also, each teacher was presented with his or her first name painted on paper. For only $5 we could have this framed. So, I now have my first picture. Amazingly, the painters looked at us and then picked the background border for our name. The majority of people around me had either green or blue. However, when he went to do my name, he switched to gold. I thought, perfect, it'll match my gold couch and indeed it does. There is no way for me to hang this picture on my cement walls, so it is leaning within a gaudy light fixture on the wall. What can I say? It just adds so much class.
The evening was really nice. My very favorite part was getting to share a taxi ride home with returning teachers who decided to get a foot massage. They picked the same place that I had visited for my massage last Saturday night. However, this visit was great as we were put in a room with all four of us and I got to watch what the routine was as the others were familiar with it. Best yet, they all spoke Mandarin fluently and translated for me. Great experience.
Turns out the Shanghai people don't want to do the massages, so people come in from the countryside to learn how to do it. They make "good" money so that they can send some home to their families. The workers all have numbers. If you are ignorant, like I was last Saturday, you get someone with a high number and my guy was #25. They all use numbers not names. Anyway, the people who are the best have the lowest numbers. The teachers requested people by their number and I had #6 for the foot massage. Quite a difference, between the two massages I received there, the first one and now this one, and the second was so much better.
One of our teachers said something in Mandarin and all of the Chinese people just cracked up. Guess what he said was something that he thought was a complement on how the man massaging his feet was performing, but was told that they said it another way, as the words he used are only said to a lover. That worker said something in Japanese to our teacher, and then continued to use different greetings from different languages to see when the teacher would react. Eventually the female teacher stated that that teacher was from Thailand and let the rest of us know what was happening. The Chinese had a bet on what country this teacher originated.
The lady called #6 told us that she thought it was great that I had "Chinese hair". The other three teachers all had dyed hair so I thought it must mean having non-dyed hair, but really they were referring to the thickness of my hair. Thought it interesting what they thought was important, like me having Chinese hair. However, since mine is neither thin nor straight nor solid black, I wondered how she came to that conclusion. Oh, our foot massage here was similar to the one that Courtney treated me to in Bangladesh last summer. While your feet are initially soaking, you get a shoulder and back rub. Then one foot comes out of the soaking solution to get bundle rapped in a towel while the other foot is getting massaged. The foot, ankle and calf get massaged. Oh, forgot to mention that prior to starting the whole procedure we were served fresh cut up cantaloupe and 'flat water'. Flat water is bottle water that is not carbonated.
After the foot massage they wanted to visit a new DVD shop. Are you ready for this? You can buy DVD's here of American movies like "Sex in the City", "Ironman" and the latest "Hellboy" movie for 8 rmb ($1.35 each)! That is cheaper than renting them. However, that is the cheaper quality movie which may stop in places, or have subtitles shown the entire movie like “preview copy and not for sale”. You can purchase what they call DVD-9 quality, for the HQ television sets for 18 rmb. They don't rent here, so no blockbusters. At those prices, no one needs to rent. Imagine your choice, a DVD movie that you can repeatedly watch or one avocado? Fascinates me what is expensive in each culture versus what is inexpensive. Oh, an entire season of a television series was more expensive at $60; don't know how that relates to home, as I don't buy those.
The couple that invited me to join them for a foot massage told me about some of their adventures looking for the "Ark of the Covenant" while in Ethiopia. Was funny as she proclaimed that they were the only white people in the whole country that they saw and that following leads given in different books ended up being a wild goose chase. They also mentioned that they study different religions as they find them fascinating. Just thought it was funny that here I'd end up sharing a 20-minute taxi ride with other people interested in this stuff. Just wondered about the odds of that happening out of this large staff or that the conversation would even go there in the first place as they brought it up! Amazing.
Am learning new words or ways of saying things. Asked the copy lady at work to please collate my papers that I want to hand out on the first day, and she was clueless. So, after much questioning, I found out that collating here is called putting the papers in a set. Here I thought I needed to learn Mandarin, little did I realize that I also need to learn English. : )
