What do they do about #2?

Wow, the month has flown by.  Time is really funny here.  Normally time flies by when you are really busy, but here we are working 14-20 hours a week and the days and weeks just fly by.  My theory is that we are going to a different place every week almost, so we are either planning a trip or going on a trip which makes time go.  I can’t believe that it is almost December…and only partially because I live where there is absolutely nothing to hint that Christmas is coming up soon.  It is freezing though, and I know it will only get colder.  We were given nice cozy comforters though, which are fantastic.  Except we sleep with them as extra padding on the stone hard beds.  Cangzhou is growing one me.  We have finally found places we like to eat, shop, bike, etc.  We still get lots of stares but not as much since we see a lot of the same people every day.  There are 4 million people in Cangzhou and 4 westerns so we are literally one in a million, haha.  I find this awesome! But since we live and work only in one part of the city we mainly see the same people so it’s really nice. 
I have started reading ‘Wild Swans’.  It was recommended to my mom by our pastor’s wife and my mom has kept asking me to read it since I said I was going to china.  I however kept putting it off and am glad I did.  I think if I had read it before I got here I would have been scared of China.  But after living here for nearly 2 months and getting to know the people and culture a bit and then reading it I have more perspective.  My mom has told me some things about Mao and read me excerpts from a biography and it is appalling, so when I came over here and saw his picture plastered on national monuments and commemorative plates I was really confused.  I know that a lot of what he did is kept secret from the Chinese but it still they have to know some of what he did.  Putting him on plates and monuments seems equivalent to putting Hitler, Stalin or Voldemort on a plate.  However after reading ‘Wild Swans’ I understand it more.  He freed the Chinese from much oppression and brought about a new order that in many ways improved the life of the Chinese…at least for a time (I’m only a quarter of the way through the book).  It is a really interesting read and I am anxious to finish it. 
I have been feeling quite homesick lately, which is new for me.  I have of course felt homesick before in travels.  But it’s normally like ‘oh, it would be nice to be in familiar places instead of trying to figure this out’, or ‘man I’d kill for a slice of Deli News pizza’.  Even in Ecuador I wasn’t homesick for home, but just to feel safe again.  But now I am actually homesick for people and home.  I love travelling and am so happy that I am blessed with these opportunities, which are truly amazing, but I am ready for something more which I find exciting and weird.  So at the moment with this crazy homesickness going on, I’ve had to take Toby Keith off my playlist as he is wonderfully American and reminds me of home and my family way to much which leads to cleaning out the tear ducts way too often haha.  But I am keeping busy, which is great and this last month has been very eventful. 
I am learning a lot more about China and the Chinese culture and things that are apparently perfectly acceptable to do in public.  We are still adding to the list, but some things we have seen done in public on a regular basis are:
SPITTING.  Not just your normal spitting if a fly flew in your mouth, but full on loogie spitting; and spitting everywhere from the street to on the train floor….even if it lands on someone’s foot.  The only place I didn’t see someone spit of on the airplane, and believe me I kept an eye out for it. 
URINATING. At home you would get a ticket for urinating and in some cases indecent exposure.  Here it barley even warrants a dirty look.  At first we thought it was just children (with their parent’s approval).  But Abi came home a few weeks ago and announced she had seen a grown man peeing in an ally way.   Then in Tianjin Ali, Edi and I were privileged with the same experience except he was peeing on a more public sidewalk, only slightly hidden behind a trash can.  Edwina and I screamed for at the same moment we caught sight of Starbucks (which we were desperately hunting for) and the man quickly turned around and walked away…I was glad to find Starbucks and that we embarrassed him a little bit. 
Aside from peeing, Abi has also witnessed a child defecating on the sidewalk….I mean come on people gross!!!!!
BEATING YOUR CHILD.  Horrible, I know!! In my class I have a very challenging child, William.  He’s really smart but has anger issues and hits other children and lashes out whenever he doesn’t get his way.  Last week was particularly difficult and he was upset with me because I had taken points away from him for hitting and scratching other children.  He normally doesn’t get upset at points be taken away because he knows why he lost them, but that day he just was out of control and kept calling me stupid, etc.  But after he attacked another kid and wouldn’t let go of this kids hair I took 2 additional points off and he attacked me (something he had never done before-I was so surprised) and scratched at my eye.  His mother came in an started kicking him, in front of the whole class and other parents! I was horrified!!! The TA moved in between the mother and William and I moved to Williams’s side trying to block his side because his mother was kicking around the teacher to hit him.  All of us teachers were just amazed that this was allowed.  Other parents were appalled by her behavior and pulled her out of the room but OMG this would never happen in the US or the UK.  This is also not the first time this has happened.  Never to this extent but it is commonly known that William’s mother beats him…not just a spanking to be disciplined, but full on beating.  It’s so sad, but as we are in China, it seems that nothing can be done.  I try my hardest to do positive reinforcement with William and give him chances to earn points back and give him attention when he is good so that maybe he will learn he doesn’t have to be bad to get attention, and it works most days but sometimes it doesn’t and when it happens we hope that another parent is quick enough to grab his mother before she comes into class to hit or kick.  It is hard though to see it and know that you aren’t able to do a thing about it. 
Ok on to less depressing quirks of the Chinese culture.  For a group of people that have a ton of superstitions to avoid sickness they skip the hygiene part of it all, and everyone seems to be sick.  There doesn’t seem to be general physicians, just hospitals….at least whenever Shishi or a TA is sick they always say they are going to the hospital…somewhere I never plan on going as if I ever get sick or hurt I have a plan to jump on the first plane to Japan or South Korea for medical treatment.  Shishi had a sore throat for a while, so she saw a doctor and came home with a prescription for this awful smelling/tasting tea with weird flowers and herbs in them, and burns around her wrists, neck and down her back.  She drank the tea for weeks and never got better, and the burns on her neck and check bubbled up and left scars.  After the tea didn’t work, the doctors cut her throat from the inside so she was unable to talk for about a month.  After this she was able to talk, but we didn’t think the cutting was necessary, she just needed to rest her voice for a few weeks, but she wouldn’t do it, until she couldn’t do it.  There seems to be no concept of sickness prevention, just reacting to sickness.  With all the crap that they put into the air and on the streets you would think people would be a little more concerned with making skin lacerations or anything to expose their body more to the cities of bacteria building up but they don’t.  They all get ‘healed’ with cups and different things that burn or cut.  And it doesn’t seem to fix anything because they are all constantly getting something done.  They also don’t drink anything cold because it is supposed to be bad for you, so they drink boiling hot water and tea….I mean super hot so that I can’t even hold the containers sometimes.  In restaurants we have to remember to order cold water not boiling hot.  Even the filtered water dispensers come with a hot water option.  They think it’s hilarious that we put bottled filtered water in the fridge to drink it cold.  And we 4 westerners are never sick and we do everything that is on the Chinese ‘will make you sick’ list.  Another thing that is very unsanitary are the bathrooms.  The ground is always covered in pee, it’s horribly disgusting.  And I have to give a shout out to my mom and dad, who took us camping a lot; and as everyone knows in camping there is not always a bathroom so the ability to squat and pee is learned quite early.  I never thought the ability to ‘pop a squat’ would be one that I would need in my everyday life, but like some many other things that have surprised me about china, this skill has become quite useful.  95% of toilets we have found are Chinese toilets.  Abi even told us of her experience in a train station bathroom that was just lines of these Chinese toilets with dividers on the sides but none in the front of back.  So basically you are facing someone doing the exact same thing as you….can someone say uncomfortable?  So for bigger cities I have down loaded an app “Sit or Squat’ that lists all public bathrooms in areas and rates them on cleanliness and lists if they are a sit or squat…we’ve only used it once but I think it will be quite useful.  But one thing we have wondered is what the Chinese do about #2? Weird thoughts I know, ones I would never have dreamed I would have but here they are popping up in our heads making us wonder. 
Also one thing that I have noticed about Chinese people is that they have really thick teeth.  Most of them have major decay which is difficult for me, and I spend a lot of time talking to people and trying not to stare at their black and broken teeth.  But I have noticed that they have super thick teeth….like 2-3x thicker than mine it seems. 
Well everyone knows about the one child law.  Each family is allowed to have one child; some are able to have more if they are wealthy enough to pay off the officials.  Not sure which officials they are but apparently there are baby officials.  When I was first here I found out that Shishi was forced to have an abortion some years ago after her son, Fenfen was born.  It was hard though to hear about her story and the fact that she was forced to abort the child at 5 months.  I understand the one child law in some ways but I still think it’s difficult to think that parents are limited in their family size and that most children will never get to experience having siblings.  Even as crazy as we can drive each other at times, I love having a brother and sister. 

(next blog will be all this past adventures of this last month!!)