Rappin' in Front of 800 People

Up on Stage

So our friend Lucy invited us to a dance/talent/singing/performance-type-of-show. It was pretty epic.  They had some skits goin, an awesome Michael Jackson dancer do 'Billy Jean,' some good singers and choreographed dancers, etc. At one point they ask for volunteers and our co-teacher who speaks Chinese translated this to us and then my friends proceeded to urge me to run up there.......so I was like,, eh....why not and bolted up on stage. I tried to take my place at the end of the line of students, but as soon as they saw me the crowd started roaring and the mc's had me come stand next to them, and then proceeded to have me introduce myself to the whole auditorium.  It was a surprise and I wasn't sure what to say, but I pulled it somewhat smoothly I would say....and then when it was time for the game they were pretty much like....ummm, yeah......, you don't speak Chinese so you probably should go now....or that's what I got out of it....a kinda awkward, cross-cultural feel/vibe. But it was still epic because I gave the pretty announcer girl a hug and the Chinese pretty much like anything you do.....epic.com. And then later when someone sings on stage people randomly run up to them and give them gifts or junk that they have around them like chop sticks or balloons, and someone had given us banannas so I was like, eh....your gettin a bananna and ran up on stage again to another raucuos applaud.

Chinese Driving Rules

Rules from Mr. Mike Genau's blog.com......chyeah....thanks

Rule 1: There are No Rules

2 Ignore all road markings, especially the one in the center that is painted in yellow.


3 All signs are suggestions, including stop signs and traffic lights.


4 Drive with your lights on at night only if you can afford to compromise on your mileage.


5Do not use your turn signal. If you must use your turn signal, make sure not to turn it off until you have arrived at your destination.


6 Honk your horn under the following circumstances


You are about to pass someone


You are passing someone


You have just passed someone


Someone is about to pass you


Someone is passing you


Someone has just passed you


You are about to make a turn


You want someone to move out of your way


You are about to hit someone


Someone is about to hit you


You recognize someone you know


There is an ox in the road


You haven't honked your horn in over a minute.


7 All vehicles are allowed on the road regardless of size, shape, or mode of locomotion.


8 If you drive a scooter you should drive unpredictably, go the wrong way half of the time, and make sure to utilize pedestrian walkways and crosswalks whenever possible.


9 When making a left-hand turn across a busy street, slowly ease your way into oncoming traffic, lay on the horn, and hope for the best.

Class Over and Brazilian BBQ

So yesterday my Color Foundation and Two Dimensional Composition class finished.  I start a new class on monday.  In the art school they schedule classes in three-week blocks.
So I threw a party for the last day which I thought would just be food and music....but......that turned into a talent show.  First, two students left and came back dressed up as a karate guru and a witch...they were both males....hilarious.  So that turned into a photo shoot and they all wanted to take pics with me.  Then out of nowhere they started arranging their chairs in a circle.....and I was like....heh? So they pick this one girl to get up and she turns into the mc and does a pretty awesome rendition of a Chinese song.  The Chinese love to sing and perform I have realized. So after her we had about 6 other girls sing, one guy did Taichi, one guy played his guitar, the witch did a jig, a couple girls did a choreographed dance routine, and then they all looked at me and my friend Mike who came.....like, watchu gonna do? I was like.....dayum.  So Mike did a some breakin and I pulled out the three stooges floor spin, and then we did a sample of our Thriller dance were doing for the students on Wednesday.

My students are awesome! They gave me several presents.  For one, they gave me a wooden jar sort of thing for your pens with Chinese characters on it that say, 'work hard.'  Then they gave me a notebook that they all signed and wrote me a note in.  One student gave me a brewski....haha (automatic A+). I was like should I drink a beer in class.........?...that would be epic.....but nah, I'll chill on that. And lastly, that same student made me this amazing mask-like portrait of a famous/traditional Beijing opera character with a wood backing and made out of sand and finished with some sort of glue-like epoxy.  It is awesome! It looks like it could be sold at a fine arts store for a lot of money, it's not some thrown together piece of arts and crafts. I was blown away by their kindness and very appreciative.

And last night we went to a brazilian bbq place where you can eat all you want and drink all of the home-made brew for 39 quy, or roughly 6 bucks. They come around with all this wonderfully seasoned meat on sword like metal sticks and shear off the meat onto your plate write in front of you with a rambo knife! It's awesome to say the least....and yuppp.....I definitely tried the chicken heart and pig tongue....seriously! What!? Quite scrumptious.....

NEW PICS UP!!!

Check 'em out and I'm interested to hear which ones are your favorite.

Thanks,

Dan

I saw a dog carrying a big whole chicken in it's mouth today......that is all

Basketball, the Pagoda and Tabaggan, Thriller Dance, and Norway Girls

So were doing an English Corner at the end of the month and the theme is Halloween. English Corner's are a just a social gathering with us and students where we hang out and they can practice their English.  Our Resource Guide is a drama and theater enthusiast so he came up with the idea for all of the foreign teachers to do Mike Jackson's famous Thriller dance.  We've been learning all the choreographed steps and are going to dress up like zombies.  Were also gonna have a few guys play For Whom the Bell Tolls by Metallica, a guy sing the Ghost Buster song, do pumpkin carving with them, and introduce them to Halloween.

Yesterday a student invited me to play basketball, and I thought we were just going to be playing a simple pick-up game.  Turns out, we played a full fledged game vs some guys with uniforms, subs, a ref, and 4 10-minute quarters.  We are team louw-wy, or the foreigners.  We got off to a rough start going down 8-nothing, but made a shot to stop the bleeding and were okay from there.  We ended up winning 68 to 52 with only one sub. It was fun to compete against the Chinese.

Today we hiked up to the Pagoda again, and rode the Tabaggan this time.  Yes, a tabaggan in the middle of China on top of a mountain.  Once again, another thing I didn't expect Xiangfan to offer.  Somehow the plans to build a metal tabaggan on the hillside passed through somebody, and a long metal track twists and bends throughout the countryside.  You sit on a sled-looking thing with wheels on the bottom and a lever to control your speed and go whisking down the mountain.  It was cool.  Also, I discovered many old buildings that were amazing, like for real, it felt like a miniature Machu-Pichu type place with flower gardens, lakes, temples, shrines, old art and architecture, museums, training temples and academies, etc....I got some great pictures.

There is six Norway girls here doing a two month social service project as part of their major back home in Oslo.  Shout out to Kim Norhoeway....We went out with them last night to a Western restaurant and a few of the foreign bars here.  They were already missing the indulgences of European culture after a 10 days or so, and it was sure nice to hang out with some white girls who spoke english for a change.

Class is going well.  I've taught my class still-life drawings, portraiture, collages, 1 and 2 point perspective, and architectural drawing so far.  This week I'm gonna do some lessons on Surrealism, Abstract art, and logo design.

youku.com, tudou.com, and veetle.com and Chinese Classes

Youku and Tudou are two great Chinese sites that let you watch thousands of movies and TV shows streaming off the web for free and you don't have to download anything. The Chinese don't have copyright laws, you can tell by the thousands of knock-off brands here that imitate other brands, so I've been able to keep up with western movies.  Use Google Chrome as a browser as it is the fastest available and will translate Chinese to English for you in a matter of seconds.
Veetle let's you watch live broadcasts over the internet so I can keep up with the NFL and Lebron and Kobe from anywhere in the world. Check 'em out.

We had our first Chinese class last night. We are going to be taking two 1.5 hour lessons a week for about $15 a month.  It sure isn't easy.  They have 4 tones and lots of noises to make with your tongue and mouth being warped into different positions.

The weather is starting to turn sour, I've been reminded I sure don't like rain and overcast weather and missing the LA sunshine....so I've been playing badmitton inside. It's actually really fun and the Chinese are excellent at it, something we in the west haven't yet taken to very much.

Students and Drawing

Yesterday I taught my students the 5 basic shapes of art that you can use to make any picture, hand sketches, western drawing theory, and had them do a still life sketch project.  So today I had my students do portraiture.  I was going to have them draw a partner for 45 minutes and then switch, but they wanted to draw me instead.

So I was like....alright.

And had 33 students drawing me sitting around me in a semi-circle as I sat in the middle.  It was pretty cool though and we'll be fun to grade.

The students are already excellent artists as freshman so some of the pics were very realistic with the shading and detail they put into their portraits.

Soccer and New Classes Starting

Today I played soccer with the students.  It felt good to get on the pitch again and I still got my feel for the game and passing to set up plays.  It was good exercise and I am going to start playing with them weekly.

Tomorrow I start my new block of classes and will be teaching four classes each day. The course is titled, Two Dimensional Composition and Color Foundation.  It should be a fun course and I have a cool circular room with lots of windows and a good view to teach in this time.

Wu Dang Shan

So we went to Wu Dang Shan for four nights, considered by most as the birthplace of martial arts and Tai Chi.  We stayed at the Wu Dang Kung Fu Academy.  The place is pretty interesting and very old.  At the place we were staying, they trained body guards to protect the leaders of China and the head master is considered one of the world's ten best and is famous.  The world championships are in Wu Dang in two weeks with 60 some countries competing. The school has several court yards, a castle-like wall, a moat with a structure in the middle, several weapon shelves, and a cool dog with 8 2-week-old puppies.  There were only about 12 students there.  One guy named Mateo from Italy came several months ago and is going to stay for at least three years.  The training is very strict and regimented like the military.  The students get up at 5 every day and go running.  Then they have breakfast at 730.  At 830 they train until lunch at 1230.  Then they have a nap and start again at 230 until 530 for dinner and a break and then train after that until about 9 and it's lights out at 1030.  They do this six days a week, and if they screw up they get punished with a smack on the forehead, and Mateo said the masters break bamboo sticks on the kids' backs sometimes.  One kid stole 200 Yuan last month and apparently got the worst beating for over an hour that he'd seen. But the monks are good people and the kids are lucky, it's just a different culture and a different way of life. Going to train there and study Daoist Philosophy is considered higher education and the kids are held to a higher standard.  The Daoist Philosophy is to give up all vices and rid yourself of worldly desire, and to do that is pretty amazing.

Some of the moves the masters and students can do is amazing.  Front and back flips (off tables) are a norm, and the monks move with the fluidity and grace of any top athlete. They are extremely flexible and precise in their movements.  One of the guys can jump over Mateo who is about 6 feet tall.  One of the monks can lightly push a person and they will go stumbling back.  They can master the energy levels in their bodies and then push that out with one movement. We studied the basics of Tai Chi and meditation for two days. We would walk extremely slow going about 20 feet in 5 minutes, or stand with our arms in front of us with knees and elbows bent for 10 minutes, and do a lot of stretching and basic movements.  One technique is to plant your feet on the ground and keep the rest of your body loose like a noodle.  That way your body moves like a tree in the wind when pushed so that the energy just brushes past you and your feet stay rooted in the ground.

I got my neck massaged by our teacher, a daoist monk.  He did some crazy techniques like putting a lot of weight on pressure points, moving his hands real fast like he was making a fire on my neck to make it hot, pulling up on it to realign it as I breathed in and out, and using his strong fingers ( he can cross his legs and raise his whole body on six fingers) to massage certain points. After words it felt pretty well, but it's still not healed. He said to find someone at a hospital who could do something similar.

The last day we hiked to the top of Wu Dang's main peak.  There is about 70 some peaks there and they are considered one of 7 sacred mountains in China. There were thousands of people on the mountain because it's a holiday, which was kind of a let-down but it was amazing.  To get to the top is a hell-of-a-hike. Literally, I kept saying that as we went up.  We probably climbed 10,000 steps....At some points there is staircases that go up for about 100 yards or more without a break, several hundred steps, and they go straight up, no gradual inclines here. I joked that I could open a t-shirt shop at the top with one shirt that said **** Stairs! and be a Chinese millionaire by the end of the year.
But the top is worth it.

At the top are daoist temples and kung fu academys that are like 7,000 years old. We saw the Purple Temple of Heaven which was amazing.  At the very top you can see the peaks for miles all around you. about 6000 feet plus, at some times in the year you are in the clouds. There is a statue of Buddha which everyone bows and prays to.  Lots of people buy a heart shaped lock and attach it to the cement wall with a prayer or wish.  There's a garden, lots of different buildings for training, altars, and housing.  This mountain has been the site for many Kung Fu movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and the latest Karate Kid.

At the bottom we went to a small forest on the river where monkeys reside.  There were lots of monkeys all around, and the come right up next to you and get all the apples, bread, peanuts, and plums you can muster.  The babies are really funny, as they practice jumping from tree to tree.  They are extremely acrobatic, kind of like the daoist monks.

It was a good trip...

Going to Wudang Shan Tomorrow for 3 Nights, the Birthplace of Tai Chi

Mann....China has a lot of people. Today was National Day, and downtown was crowded with people everywhere.  The scene kind of reminded me of a lot of ants walking around.

And not to turtle owners: Don't leave 'em on the kitchen table unattended. They will try to fly.....