they are "considering our applications"

It was my understanding that as long as you didn't do anything totally crazy, you would get your contract renewed. Now, I'm not so sure, and as this is China, we have no definite answer on when we will get our definite answer (despite us reminding the department that this is the middle of peak hiring season, and if we're not getting hired we need to be looking). The head of the Foreign Expert Panel told us that they would consider how we teach, and that we need to be nice to our students, and a bunch of other weird, vaguely ominous things. I'm a new teacher, but I don't think I'm a bad one, so hopefully I will have no problems. Still, I would appreciate prayers as I wait to hear back--I would rather stay where I am right now than have to go through the application/interview/hiring process for the second time in a year.

Apart from that, things are fine. The change in the weather has really lifted my spirits--it's been warm and sunny for over a week--as has my recent quick trip out of town. I went with my friend and colleague Amy to Chengdu, and from there to Ya'an and Bifengxia. We tried yak's meat at a Tibetan restaurant, got to breathe in fresh mountain air and see lots of beautiful green-ness, and most importantly, we touched giant pandas. If you haven't seen the photos at www.flickr.com/photos/meimei09, I highly suggest that you check them out; at the very least check out the ones from the Panda Kindergarten! If you have seen them and read the captions, you already know that the situation turned out to be a little different from what I had read online. Instead of 5 minutes for our 500 yuan (about $77), we got a rushed 3 photos in maybe 45 seconds. Our best guess at the reason is that they put another family with us, a family who apparently paid more for their three children to play with the pandas, so the keepers wanted to get us out of the way. The family also had a translator with them, whereas Amy, who speaks Chinese, was a combination of excited about touching a panda and confused about why they were telling us to hurry (ah yes, we found all this out in the moment, as the panda was sitting in front of us). I hope that when I take my mom and Keen this summer, they won't have the same problem; I plan for us to go on a weekday instead of a Saturday, and if I have to I'll get a translator for the morning. Interesting fact: pandas are not super soft, their fur is more like a Brillo pad, very coarse. Since I've seen pandas pretty close at the Memphis Zoo, I already knew that they're more dirty-and-black instead of white-and-black. Nevertheless, it was a good time, and it's always nice to get out of this city and see more of China.

I think it has been in the time between my last post and this one that my mom and brother have purchased their tickets, and they are officially coming to China this summer! I am so excited, and I'm trying to hold off on going into super trip-planning mode for right now and focus on teaching and the contract. We are going to do all the big touristy things that I haven't had a chance to do yet, and I'll be doing them with the two people I love most which will make it even better. Also, we'll hopefully be moved into the new apartments by the time they get here; we got to see the rooms last week, and they're all shiny and new! I can't wait to move, some of the teachers are going to try to get that going sooner rather than later since almost everyone is going home for the summer and they want to be with their stuff so nothing funny happens (i.e., gets pinched by opportunistic staff/movers, which has happened here before).

Tomorrow morning "the girls" are going to check out the grand opening weekend of a new mall downtown: there's an H&M, which I know is a good store but I've never lived anywhere with one. Of course, no one has money right now to spend, but it'll be fun to scope it out anyway. Then in the afternoon, we are having a "sports test", which is a practice session for the "Sports Meeting" we will be competing in next month. They sent out a list of events for us to select from, but most of them involved running which has never been my strong suit and is even less so now that my joints are starting to give out. I signed up for the Softball Throw, figuring about a decade of playing would give me an edge. I was informed, though, that that event was only for the 50-and-over crowd, so I switched to the Shotput. Tonight at the staff meeting, the secretary asked me if I wanted to do any other events, and she specifically mentioned the Long Jump--does she see what I look like? I have no ups, vertical or horizontal, and I can just see my knees going out mid-prep. I told her I'll do things I can throw or use my arms for, but my legs can't really handle it. (Since getting here, my right hip especially has been troublesome no matter how much I stretch or work it, and I have a strong feeling that if I have it X-rayed the next time I'm home, they'll tell me I need a replacement...no kidding. My joints are that bad. I was so active my whole life until I got here that all of it has hit me now, and I feel like an old lady.) If the weather is good the weekend of the event, I'll sit out both days with a book and get some sun while supporting the school!

The shower I'm about to take is going to feel soooo good after teaching 4 hours in 90 degrees with no A/C.

This week, the email finally came down asking us to renew our contracts for next year! I did have two changes to the contract that I sent back, one being a raise, and I don't know when I'll hear back about that. The secretary needed a reply from everyone by the 15th of this month, so it might not be until after that.

Not much is new here, we had a few days of lovely spring weather before the rain returned, bringing with it the cold temperatures...again. Last weekend was a longer one for us because of a Chinese holiday (Qing Ming Jie, Tomb Sweeping Day), but it turned into a personal "I hate China" weekend. On Friday, we decided to head back to the Hunan Botanical Garden since the cherry blossoms hadn't come out the week before, and on this day, it appeared to be some kind of Childrens' Day. I'm talking thousands of schoolchildren. Manners don't really exist in the Western sense over here, and I've heard that they are actually taught to *yell* "Hello!" at foreigners, so we were taunted all day. I've mentioned on this blog before how children are generally spoiled anyway in China, so we were stared at and shouted at, and some kids even got up in our faces to really get a good look. Because America is a multicultural society, (in most places) people are not stared at for being a different race, so it's an experience and a feeling that can't really be communicated unless it's happened to you. It was even worse because there were four of us, and Jason and Julianne are both much taller than me, so they stand out even more. The point of the day when I hit really miserable was our short trip into the "zoo", where the animals were kept in basic wire cages with little or no visible food or water. These kids were running around like hooligans, chasing birds that weren't in cages (I've never seen a peacock up a tree, but they sure can get up there), and throwing things at the caged animals. At one point in front of the lioness, I actually grabbed a Chinese child after he threw things at her, got in his face, and told him to stop. Then they yelled at us even more, and for some reason started yelling "Yingyuren" (British people). The sad thing was that these normally fierce animals knew to be scared of the children. We skipped out on the demonstration with the alligators, it was apparently some kind of performing thing like one might see at Sea World...but with alligators? I didn't want to participate. Overall, not the best day, for even more reasons than I'm willing to list on this.

On Monday, we made the mistake of going out during the holiday, so everywhere and everything was crowded. Generally, I don't mind crowds (or I wouldn't be surviving here), but there's a big difference fighting crowds on your own versus with the group you're attempting to stay near. On Tuesday, I only left my apartment twice, and that only to take out the trash and recycling. I really needed that day. We only taught Wednesday and Thursday this week, a dangerously lazy schedule to which I could definitely grow accustomed. Amy and I made it out to Pizza Hut last night, and I have delicious American pizza leftovers in the fridge for lunch, which is a good feeling. I had my smallest class yesterday afternoon, and I decided to teach them E.R.S., a slapping card game that I learned in high school. Where was my brain when I decided to teach male military students a slap game, and then play it with them? One of my beefiest students overall is in that class, and while he was confounded every time my small female hand slipped in at the bottom of the pile, he's getting the last laugh today because my hand is sore. It was fun though, and I enjoy that class because it's so much smaller than my others and we can get to know each other and not have to rush through lesson plans.

Amy and I are heading to Chengdu in three weeks, which is exciting!