In the Coffee Shop Last Sunday Afternoon

Keeping Therapists in Business for Years to Come

Our school does not have a health class per se at the Middle School. Things that are typically found in a Middle school health class show up in other areas of the curriculum such as biology class.

Every day we have a forty-five minute period called Advisory. This time gets used for a wide variety of things such as team building, independent reading, and the eighth-grade Christmas party. This winter, we have been having an in-depth unit on dating, the human body and –yes- sex. Because we wanted the kids to feel as comfortable as possible, we separated our students into a room full of boys and a room full of girls for this unit.

I’ve never taught this subject material and it has been thirty years since I sat in the back of Mr. Talsma’s eighth-grade classroom in Kalamazoo Michigan watching a low-budget black and white documentary that left me with more questions than answers. (Just for the record, Mr. Talsma was seventy, a retired colonel, and had really bushy eyebrows.)

This past week, we watched a great documentary from the BBC. It was very well done and had information that I wish I had when I was thirteen.
There was one section of the movie though that went into a little bit more detail about the female body than we thought the boys need to know, so we had plans to fast-forward over that section in the boys’ classroom. Likewise, we had a small section of the movie that dealt with the male anatomy that had more information than the girls needed to know at this time.

The teacher who was in with the girls was planning on fast-forwarding over that section. She knew where that clip started. She even knew how much she was supposed to skip ahead. But somehow she got distracted. She looked up from her seat in the back of the room, realized the section had started to play, and made a mad dash for the DVD player in the front of the classroom. She was frazzled and apologetic. She was also too late.

A few minutes later thirty-five very giggly girls poured out of room 420. In the middle of the crowd was Justina who is overly demonstrative and very funny to begin with. She dramatically stopped in the middle of the flow of girls, threw the back of hand against her forehead, pretended to look faint, and cried out “Scarred! Scarred for life!”

That’s right Justina, boys are gross and icky. The further you stay away from them, the better off you’ll be.

-Jack

We had the boys write down their questions at the end of the documentary and submit them. The other two male teachers and I formed a three-person panel. I really, really wish that I could share with you some of the questions the boys asked, but I am afraid that this would fall outside of the scope of what this blog is set up to handle.

The questions would have made a retired colonel blush.

One More Kid in a Tiger Hat

Cookies and Milk

I forgot that it was my turn to bring snacks to our eighth-grade team meeting. I dashed upstairs to the apartment after first period and rifled through the cupboards. Julie doesn’t usually keep too many sweets in the house, but I found an unopened bag of windmill cookies. I grabbed a liter of cold milk and headed back down stairs.

At our meeting, I passed around the cookies. I poured everyone a cup of milk and passed those around too. Everybody’s eyes lit up: ooh, cookies and milk.

Right before our meeting got underway, Kathy, the one Chinese teacher on our team asked me “Why do you serve milk with your cookies?”

What? You’ve heard of or had cookies and milk? I had just enough time before we opened in prayer to quickly say “Oh, milk and cookies is a tradition.”

As the meeting got underway, I made eye contact with Kathy and with exaggerated gestures demonstrated dipping my cookie in my milk and then taking a bite. At first she did nothing, but a minute later I saw her dipping her windmill cookie in her cup of milk and taking a bite.

Mmmmm.

I take my job as ambassador to the East very seriously.

One more person introduced to the joys of cookies and milk.

Maybe next week, I'll bring the ingredients for s'mores.

-Jack

Picture: giving chocolate and cookies (or as they say around here "biscuits") are a popular gift to give when visiting family and friends duing the Chinese New Year. The result is the proliferation of displays like this one.

Hold the Texas Hold ‘Em

Some days it’s easy to forget that we are living in China. Life just keeps moving along: papers to grade, laundry to do, and the kids to help with their homework.
But every once in a while, we get a reminder that no, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

This from last Thursday’s end-of-the-day announcement: “Students, just a friendly reminder that games such as poker and mahjong are not permitted at school.”

Never had to clamp down on rampant mahjong playing back in Illinois.

-Jack

Picture: gambling is a popular pursuit in Hong Kong which is home to several large horse racing tracks. This man is filling out his betting sheet at an outdoor cafe just around the corner from an Off Track Betting (OTB) site.

Look, a Car on Top of a Car!

Won’t You Be Mine?

This year, Chinese New Year’s Day fell on Sunday, February 14; which of course also happens to be Valentine’s Day. I would have guessed that Valentine’s Day and Hong Kong would be a natural fit. Chocolate, flowers, fluffy stuffed critters, and romantic love: all things Hong Kongers seem to love. Hong Kong certainly took to Christmas and even Halloween; but Valentines was barely a blip on the radar.

My theory is that Chinese New Year is such a big stinking deal around here, that Valentines simply gets eclipse. Retailers –who seem to drive so much of the holiday fervor- simply don’t need Valentines. They are doing just fine with the much bigger Chinese New Years.

Traditionally, lai see envelopes and their enclosed cash flow from older, married couples to younger, unmarried individuals. But as I watched some of my students exchange little red lai see envelopes with each other in the hallway before Chines New Year, I was struck by how similar it was to students exchanging valentines.

Which has led me to the following prediction: In the same way that it seems inevitable that we have a syncretistic mash-up of El Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead from Mexico) and Halloween, I am predicting that Chinese New Year will begin to absorb some of the traditions of Valentines Day such as the increased exchange of sentiments and sweets among peers. It can’t be long before little cupids start appearing on some of those lai see envelopes.

Now I wonder if Valentines in the States will start to take on some of the attributes of Chinese New Year? Maybe we’ll start to see valentine cards with dragons on them.

-Jack

Picture: one of the few vestiges of Valentines we saw in Hong Kong: a bouquet of bunnies.