Night out on the town on my own

I had planned to write about some odd things about China and I will definitely do so but I just got back from a night out and I think it merits an entry as does the updates to this point.

I'll start with the updates: I'm not teaching more classes again but only teaching one grade (grade 4).  I had been told I'd only teach 20 classes but it would be gr 4/5, now it's 24 but just 4.  This means less lesson planning but more time with kids.  We'll see how that works out.
Today we had to do practice lessons.  Each of the new people had to do one while the others watched.  It was insanely hard because they were grade 1 kids with almost no English plus it was just for one class so we were unable to establish a relationship with the kids or set out rules.  I went 5th out of 6th.  Of the first 4 one was a trainwreck and 3 were pretty good.  I was confident that mine would also be a trainwreck.  I was half right.  The kids came into my class already completely wired.  I managed to settle them down and get half a useful lesson out of them before they completely lost it.  It was pretty bad but I'm glad I'm not teaching grade 1.


Today the couple that had been in the dorm moved out so for the next few nights it's JUST me here which kind of sucks.  I was hungry tonight so I started wandering around Dongying.  It's incredibly hard to eat by yourself in China, especially for dinner.  Almost all the meals are group affairs with many dishes that are shared.  Also very few, ok, almost NONE, of the menus or signs have any English or even Pin Ying (English spelling of Chinese words) on them.  I had wandered pretty far and seem some cool things but still hadn't eaten.  Most of the people I passed ignored me entirely.  A few eyed me with passive curiosity, especially the kids.  Only one person looked interested enough for me to say "Ni Hao" to.  By this point I was a bit disappointed but it was still somewhat interesting.
After I had started to head back I saw a man with his wife and daughter outside their appliance store, they were watching me so I said Ni Hao, they responded and I kept walking but they started calling after me.  I turned and they were indicating for me to come back.  I went back and it was clear he wanted me to have tea with him.  I made it clear my Mandarin was very bad.  None of them seemed to care despite the fact that the ONLY English they knew between the three of them was "hello" and "sit down".
I managed to get across a few points such as where I'm from, what I'm doing in China and so on but mostly it consisted of them (mostly the man) talking and me looking confused.  It didn't seem to deter him in the least.  I took a picture of his family (on Picasa) and he wanted me to show him my other pics on my camera so we plugged it into his computer and went through a bunch of them.  Later I gave his daughter a loonie I had on me.  She really liked it and of course that lead to more pictures which they wanted me to copy to their computer.  After lots of tea I headed in the direction I believed was home.
I found the street I needed but was still a bit hungry so I kept walking and passed a few "BBQ's" which are basically places that set up randomly with small tables around.  They have various things on a stick and they BBQ it for you.  I didn't stop at these as, again, it's hard to eat with one person.  I found a nightime fruit market and managed to buy some apples and peaches.
I kept walking a ways when I heard people yelling, I turned and saw 2 guys beckoning me to join them for part of their BBQ.  I joined them for awhile and had quite a few drinks on their insistence as well as lots of awesome food.  Once again the conversation was entirely Mandarin and very one-sided but still a great time.
When I was done there I stood up, got about 20 feet and was called back by the table beside them who also wanted me to join them.  This table had a guy who could at least SOUND OUT English.  I have a very small book with Mandarin phrases and such and he was able to read it in broken English although this wasn't overly useful as I could read the English well enough.  Still, that was the maximum English I heard all night.  I was out 3 or 4 hours and didn't hear any English or see ANY white people.  Good times!
It's quite odd to understand so little.  I've been to places where I don't speak the language but there are lots of overlapping words to English in many places where they speak French, Spanish, German, etc.  This is SO different where there are NO words you can hone in on in order to understand.
Well, that was my night out! Hope you enjoyed living it with me.
Wiseguy1