Potato, Patato. Tomato, Tamato?

Life is taken over by school, once again, despite me not getting loaded up with homework for the first six weeks! Classes are always interesting and fun though, because of all the different opinions, insights, and cultural differences that come up in class. All our perspectives are different, according to where we were brought up.

People still acquiring English vocabulary often ask me what a word means, and I have no way of explaining it. Simple words like ‘flattery’, and ‘covet’ and ‘macho’, I have a hard time explain, simply because I feel as if they have always been in my vocabulary.

Native English speakers, from UK, and Canada even use words differently than Americans do, and also pronounce some of them so that they are unrecognizable to me. Especially in Biology, when my British teacher states terms that I WOULD know if she didn’t say them so weird! I have to think hard in some classes, when a teacher will say things like ‘albino’ (pronounced all-bee-no) and crisps, which means chips, chips which means French fries, and biscuits which means cookies. My new Aussie teacher tells us continually to ‘bob-down’, which means to sit down, although non-of us knew what to do the first time she told us to :P she was quite frustrated when we all just stood there blankly after she told us two different times to ‘bob-down’, and I finally just said ‘What does that mean?’. Hahah ohps! Apparently they only use that phrase in Australia, Ms. G! She also was pronounces spectators as spec-tah-tors. When the global news of Haiti was still in school talk, people called Haiti: Hi-Ay-tee. If I think of any other weird things I will try to remember them and right them down.

One of the more common silly disagreements which comes up often is whether it’s ‘football’ or ‘soccer’. Of course, it’s either way, but it’s a continual argument with the Europeans against the Americans, Canadians, Japanese, and Chinese. Even the Italians say that it’s soccer! Sorry Brits, but you lost this one! And there’s always the banana/ba-nah-nah, potato/pah-tah-to, tomato/tah-mah-to, and massage/mess-ahj (pronounced as almost two separated syllabus, as is garage/gay-rahj), burned/burnt, dreamed/dreamt, leaned/leant, learned/learnt, smelled/smelt, spelled/spelt, spilled/split, spoiled/spoilt, and many, many others. If I think of any other funny ones, I’ll add them to the list J

Whether you are saying words the ‘correct’ way or not, it’s fun and special for everyone to be able to say their OWN words and phrases, in their own unique accents! I really love hearing the way non-native English speaker put sentences together, or use funny words that we don’t usually. I also like hearing all the British, Scottish, and Australian phrases, like “blimey”, “mate”, “rubbish”, “quite nice”, “do I look bothered?”, “bloke”, “I can’t bother”, “yanks” (slang/insult to Americans, nice huh :P), “May I use the toilet?”, “bum”, pissed=drunk (not angry), boot=trunk of car, tart=prostitute, ice-lolly=popsicle, and icing sugar=powdered sugar.

Oh, and the phrase ‘full-stop’ means a grammatical period. Like what you put at the end of a sentence you know? And a ‘half-stop’ is a comma. Isn’t that funny!? When saying period out loud like in a sentence, it goes “You’re the prettier girl in school, full stop!”

Hope you guys are well. Not too great of weather these days, but I have a week off this next week, or a holiday, if you wish! Haha I was only on ‘holiday’ two weeks ago…life is good :P

Thailand for Easter Holiday

This past week I got to spent 8 days in Phuket (pronounced Poo-ket),Thailand! Imagine Mexico’s streets with fabulous clear blue water and Thai food instead of burritos, and elephants frolicking along the beach. That, to me, is Thailand. The land of cheap massages, intense sun, baby elephants, and beautiful beaches!

It took three different flights to get to our Easter destination. One from Shanghai to Guangzhou, China. From there to Bangkok, and from Bangkok to Phuket. It took all day, but was totally worth it! On our last flight, from Bangkok to Phuket, Ben lost his first tooth! This was exciting for us, and was a lighter note for the long day of traveling!

The whole week we enjoyed the beautiful and un-polluted skies of Phuket! One would argue that I enjoyed then sun a bit too much! My second day there I got totally fried, due to being on acne medication that makes my skin really sensitive to the sun and also from the lack of sun exposure that I get in China. I wore a tee-shirt for the next 3 days because my thieghs and chest were lobster red and my shoulders were getting blisters…. L

Because of this sunburn, I had the perfect excuse to get a ‘sunburn massage’! This is a massage where they rub aloe vera on your skin and plan iced down aloe vera towels on burned skin! This sounds cold and absolutely miserable, but believe me, with a burn like mine, it felt wonderful!

We had the opportunity to drive around Thailand, and I found that my Uncle is pretty good at driving on the wrong side of the road! We drove by many elephant ride stands and also got to see some fantastic site from an outlook! On our third day, we got to go on a boating trip in a traditional Thai long-boat. We snorkeled at two different beaches and saw tons of fish in the crystal clear water!

After four nights in one hotel, we switched to a hotel about 30 minutes away. The 2^nd hotel was very nice and had a much bigger pool than the last one, but what was even more exciting was that there was a baby elephant there! I was walking down the hall and turn the corner and saw a baby elephant a little less than 5 ft tall!!! I jumped back because I was so startled to see an elephant in a hotel! As we giggled and smiled while we walked by, it reached out it’s trunk and smelled me and my cousin with it’s wet nostrils! Hahah it was soo cute! The next morning we got to feed the little elephant breakfast and younger kids got to ride on her! It totally make my trip to walk to breakfast every morning and see a little elephant eating her breakfast too!

Back to school now. Bleh. Although my cousins school, Dulwich, had a week off for Easter, SSIS didn’t have even one day off for Easter! So I guess that’s what you get for going to an international school…they don’t have time for every religious holiday that comes up on the calendar, or we would constantly be out for school! Anyways so I missed a week for school. I have a bit of catching up to doooo!!!!

Type later,

Allie

Not Like Kroger!

Auchan is not your typical Kroger or Publix, of course, taking into consideration that is IS China. Sure, it has the Milk ail, but its not near the dairy refrigerated section. In fact, it’s not refrigerated at all! All the milk is labeled ‘refrigerate after opening’. Egg aren’t washed and placed into Styrofoam containers. They are put directly from the chicken’s nests into baskets: feathers, poop, germs and all. Sure, you can find the packaged kind, where it looks relatively clean, but it’s more expensive and they come in packages of six. Weird, huh?

The meat section is the most repulsive and, uhmm, well, different part of how it’s not like Kroger. First, you start to smell it. Yes, if you’re thinking what I’m thinking, than yes, it’s what you’re thinking right. There are PILES (yes I mean like mounds!) of bloody, raw, disgusting, slimy, fresh, meat.

It’s revolting, to say the least. What’s worse to me is the DRIED meat section. They have fried, dried WHOLE CHICKENS!!! Just HANGING by the necks. It’s so nasty. On more than one occasion I’ve seen chicken claws sticking out of the back of someone cart. Blehhhh!!

Seafood section I must say is the worst part of Auchan. Chinese are famous for being one of the healthiest countries in the world: Lowest cancer percentage, lowest obesity rate, etcetera, etcetera. But how can they be the healthiest but also one of the DIRTIEST!! I mean for real, does a glass case full of shrimp sanitary?! NO!! I couldn’t imagine eating shrimp that people had DUG through! The ladies picking out the shrimp from the glass case looked like children picked candy out are those candy stand at the mall, you know those ones you pay by the lb? Except, I don’t usually GAG when I see children picking out M&Ms by the handful!!! L

More than once, I’ve walked by the ‘live fish’ section and seen upside down fish in the usual reddish brown water. People just walk up to the almost-over flowing tanks and try to grab the slippery fish of their choosing with their bare hands! It totally reeks in this section, but what’s more scary is that once I saw a fish flop OUT OF THE WATER ONTO THE GROUND!!! It was sooooo scary because I was right next to it!!! I’m sure the Chinese people were giggling as I squealed when I realized that I fish was flopping around right next to my shoes! EWH! I don’t only have to fear fish, I have to look out for eels, crabs, turtles, shrimp, jellyfish, squid, and lobster (although my family would say differently about being ‘afraid’ of lobster J )!!!

Besides all the different kinds of food that I encounter and how expensive your ‘normal’ ‘day-to-day’ items you buy like cheese and ham being totally outrageously expensive, even the people shop differently. As an American living in China, I’ve found that I rush at EVERYTHING! Americans want things done fast, easy, and efficiently. It is doesn’t happen this way, we complain! We are rushed in everything we do. In eating, we have restaurants called FAST food! We have drivethrus so that we don’t have to waste time by getting out of the car. When going grocery shopping, we want to be in, organized, and out again. We get so frustrated when they move an ail moves around, or Kroger is out of our favorite brand of peanut butter. In China, everyone seemed to move so slowly when I got here, but when I realized that it was me that was speed walking to get to every ail and store, I tried to slow down a bit and not be so irritated that everyone was ‘getting in my way’. What’s the rush anyways? Why does it matter if someone is moving a little more slowly than you would like? So what if the old person is standing in front of the tuna for 10 minutes trying to figure out which brand he has the coupon for? Does it matter if it takes a little longer to check out of the checkout because the cashier is new? These are questions I’ve been asking myself since I realized how ‘just get it done quickly’ Americans are. What IS the BIG RUSH?

Anyways, despite the crowds and long lines, I personally still enjoy going to Auchan, the local food store, because of all the interesting people and food I see. It’s funny because usually you are one of the only Western people in the stores, and EVERYONE likes to look in the ‘’beautiful people’s’’ cart and see what we are buying! All eyes on the Westerners and all there weird needs for extravagant amounts of milk and cheese!