Chinese Cut

I'm not sure whether I've gone over this or not, but over here Chinese cut has an old meaning.

Remember when you were kids standing in the lunch line and you'd always let your friends "Chinese cut." You don't? Well, let me educate...

In line, one of your friends is late getting to the lunch line; so they ask if they can "Chinese cut," which means that you let them cut in front of you, and they in turn then just let you cut back in front of them. For all technical purposes, this was perfectly legal in most school line across the country. Sure, you'd have some kid shout "Hey, you can't Chinese cut!" but then all you'd have to do is tell them they were a snitch or a rat and they'd be quiet.

The American "Chinese cut" is very different than the Chinese version. Here is a story that has happened now so many times, I care to stop counting.

We'll be waiting in line at just about anywhere (WalMart, McDonald's, Park n Shop, KFC) and suddenly someone just simply cuts in line in front of us and orders.

That, my friends (to take a line from McCain), is the Chinese version of Chinese cutting.

Yes, it is a matter of culture, and it is getting better with each generation. Look for older people to cut line at just about any time as younger generations are learning more western culture of politeness.

I imagine New York City utilizing the Chinese Chinese cut, but where we are from in the South, it just doesn't happen.

Leave me a comment if you'd like concerning your thoughts on Chinese cutting.

Parent-Teacher Conferences - International Flavor

We had a long day today of watching the election results, breathing a sigh of relief, and then settling down for almost 5 hours of parent-teacher conferences. I actually only met with 4 parents and Jamie about the same, but we were at school until 8:45 pm.

Interestingly, some parents do not speak English, so translators must be involved. This is usually not a problem and was not for me tonight. I believe some teachers didn't have a translator, so they had to reschedule. I had one conference where the parent understood about 40% of what I was saying but had a someone there with her to translate into Chinese. It went quite well.

My next conference was double translation. I spoke English to one person who then translated it into Chinese and then someone else translated that into Korean. I'm sure by the time the Korean parent heard it, it sounded something like "Your student is an excellent student!" to "You're mule is a stinky fish face!" Such are the joys of teaching in an international setting. Very interesting though.

Tomorrow, the student have half day, but we then have more parent teacher conferences from 1:00 to 8:45, yikes! All of my conferences are at the beginning, so I am pretty much finished by 4:00 or so. I will be spending the remainder of my time writing student narratives.

Student narratives are a paragraph or two description of the how each child you teach is doing in your class. Some teachers have up to 60 or so to write. I am quite lucky in the fact that I only have 32 or so to write. I believe Jamie has a few more than I do. You basically tell the strengths and weaknesses of the student in narrative form and then state what you are going to do to correct the problem as a teacher or ensure that the child maintains their success. I have not written one yet, but I'm sure they are loads of fun.

We have Friday off. We might go into Hong Kong for the weekend, but we are undecided. We'll be making a trip soon to Macau for some gambling and to see Cirque du Soleil at the Venetian Casino in Macau. Should be a great show. We'll keep you posted on those events.

I believe we have settled on Thailand for our winter break. We might stay about a week and a half or 2 weeks there. We've heard Bangkok is a blast and either Phuket or Koh Chang for the beach. Nonetheless, we'll need the rest and relaxation.

I hope everyone voted yesterday and did your civic duty. I'll get some pictures up showing Jamie and I coloring our electoral maps. I also have some older pictures I haven't posted. I really don't even remember what they are off the top of my head. I'll get them up soon, I promise.

Take care America! No matter how you voted... Yes We Can!!!

Election Day!

Jamie and I are at school this morning watching the results of the election come on on CNN.com. We have both printed our Electoral Map and have our blue and red crayons ready. We took pictures and I will upload them tonight when we get home. The kids were all circled around my desk and are quite curious about the election. I was trying to explain to them about the Electoral College and the how we elect the President; but since the majority of American adults do not understand it, it is difficult for a 12 year old international student to understand it.

Jamie and I have been quite passionate about this election and have been all involved in it since we taught AP Government last year and watched with our high school students the primaries. From the look at the Internet, the voter turnout seemed to be quite large.

However the election turns out, we should all be proud of the fact that we will in a country where you can cast your ballot. Some people may say that one vote doesn't count, but that is simply not the mindset that one needs to have. The fact that we do have disagreements is what makes our country great.

We'll continue to watch today as the results come in. I hope everyone made time out of their day to go and vote. Jamie and I have worn our "I'm a Georgia Voter" stickers for 2 days.

Today is a long day for us as we have parent conferences this afternoon until 8:45 pm. Yikes!

Hold on tight Vol Fans

Going to get interesting. ESPN is reporting that Philip Fulmer will step down and not the head coach for the Tennessee Volunteers in 2009. There is supposed to be a press conference of some sort later on today. Rumors have circulated about this and it is no doubt that last weekend's loss to South Carolina placed increase pressure on Fulmer. It is going to get interesting in Knoxville to see who they bring in as head coach. UT has been a good old boy system for years, but will they finally go outside of the family and bring in a big time football coach. Check the headlines, because the UT coaching spot should be top news for a while.

Truly a sad day for Volunteer fans but this is to be expected. I have mixed feelings about this, but after the Auburn game this year, I have been a proponent of having Phil step down. No word yet on his severage package. He is still due millions of dollars, and you would bet that he'll still receive that somehow.

Many names thrown out there for the coaching job - Mushchamp from Texas, Lane Kiffin, John Gruden from the NFL are among the possibilities. Truly all rumors though.

Should be fun to watch!

Georgia Voters from China

Well, Jamie and I received our ballots today. We filled them out and will mail them tomorrow. They won't actually count because we are too late. There was some sort of mix up in mailing them, so we'll be too late, but at least we can say we filled out a ballot and voted. We'll get it figured out if there is a next time.

Busy week for us as we have parent conferences until 8:45 pm on Wednesday and Thursday. We do get Friday off, but have to be back Sunday night for some professional development and training. The PD will continue on Monday and Tuesday, so the students enjoy a 5 day weekend. We'll enjoy the short week of only 3 days after the PD. Jamie and I are leading one of the sessions on assessment in social studies.

That's all folks. We sincerely hope you all do your civic duty and go vote on Tuesday. We are excited about watching the results come in on Wednesday morning. We've already decided to give our kids busy work as we watch either Slingbox or stay updated on CNN online. At least we won't have to stay up all night to catch the results like you all will.

We hope you are enjoying your Daylight Savings Time. We certainly are not as it pushes our phone calls an hour later in the evening if we want to accomplish anything. The time difference is now 13 hours from EST. Interestingly, if you took a direct flight from China to Atlanta, you would actually arrive one hour before you took off. Pretty cool!

Happy Election Day America! Democracy at its finest.

QSI Autumn Fair Photos

A co-worker at QSI took some of these photos from the Autumn Fair. I'm sure there will be more when I get to work tomorrow, but here are a few of the students dressing up for Halloween and enjoying the festivities of the day.

Click Here!

QSI Autumn Fair

Today, Jamie and I went to the Autumn Fair at the Main Campus at QSI. Our job was to sell the our students' Poetry Books. One student named them Poetry by Prodigies. Actually a pretty clever name. However, we only sold about 10 books and made on 190 RMB. The money is going toward the middle school social account, which is somewhat sad considering 190 RMB will barely purchase 3 pizzas from Papa John's here.

All 5 levels of the school was used for this event and games included the normal fall festival games you'd see in the states plus a Haunted House and silent auction. Tickets into the Fair was 20 RMB presold per person and 30 RMB if you purchased at the door. Someone heard that they had presold 1500 entry tickets. Once inside, you could purchase game tickets for 2 RMB for one tickets. Each game or activity cost anywhere from 1-3 RMB.

Tons of kids and parents were their either volunteering or parcipating or both. We took Jamie's camera but once we arrived we noticed that the battery was dead. Zoinks!

I'll steal some pictures from people who took some around QSI and post them on here. It might not be until Monday though.

Jamie and I are missing our time with Jamie's family in St. Simon's, Georgia for the Georgia-Florida game this year. We splurged on some cheddar cheese so we can make some nachos. We'll be up at 3:30 watching the game. I'm actually hoping UGA wins this game since UT doesn't have a dog in the race anymore. The UT game comes on at 7:00, so we'll watch it too. They are the underdog vs. South Carolina. Geez...

Hope everyone had a good Halloween. If we really wanted to get wild, we would've gone into Hong Kong last night for the festivities there. We decided against it.

As for our winter break, it is looking more and more like we'll be going to Thailand. It is not set in stone yet, but we are thinking several days in Bangkok and a week or so at the beach either in Phuket or Koh Chang. Should be a nice getaway.