Welcome to the Ray Studio!
Welcome to the Ray Studio! We are a family of artists (and one contractor) who share a studio in a not-so-tucked-away corner of Mercer Island. Sometimes we collaborate, sometimes we work on our own pieces, but we are always messy and busy and rambunctious (much to the angst and irritation of our neighbors).
Between all of us we run the gamut of creative endeavors. Chris works with ceramics, jewelry, tile mosaic murals, collage work, painting, felting, and whatever else she can get her hands on. Savannah paints, creates sculptural work, and is most heavily pursuing fashion design through altered/deconstructed clothing (through her label Zombie Threads) as well as 100% hand-made pieces. Roz dabbles in jewelry (through The Wearable Poetry Project) as well as block printing and altered books, but spends most of her time writing poetry and fiction and working on this website when her mother and sister lock her in a cold, dark room with the promise of cookies later. Much later. . .
Together we're a small family business. On this site you'll find pictures and descriptions of all of our work, as well as a little about our selves, our creative process, and maybe even some lessons here and there on how we do what we do. You'll also find a events calender of places where you might find some of us out in the real world (gasp! real human contact!). Finally, you'll find ways to contact us, either by email or telephone, if you are interested in making an appointment to come to the studio, or you'd like put in an order for purchase or commission, or just to ask us questions. We like to be bothered. Well, some more than others.
Cheers!
Roz's Blog from China
Here's post #1: "Hello Everybody! Welcome to my blog-through-proxy from outside of DuJiangYan, Sichuan Province, China! It's the day before camp starts, and we have internet and power, so here I am.
It's not as hot here as I was thinking it would be. It's overcast and very humid, but overall not too bad yet. Flexibility is the watchword around here. We have yet to stick to any plans we make. We get things switched around on us and there's really no way to argue. Apparently the camps almost didn't happen, too, which I didn't even know about until I got here. There was a rash of shootings in elementary schools around the country, so the larger of the two schools bugged out two weeks before camp started, and the organizers here just had to sit outside the DuJiangYan School Board offices and plead to keep the camp running for the smaller school. They succeeded, but now instead of teaching 5-6th graders, we're teaching 3rd-6th graders. Kind of a big difference. They also obviously were not ready for us to be here. Our rooms weren't clean when we got here, and the cafeteria doesn't open until Sunday, so we've been eating out at the local restaurant/devouring our store of snacks. Also, the rooms weren't cleaned or prepped or anything, so that's what we've been doing today. It's been a lot of hurry-up-and-wait then hurry-to-get-shit-done. Exciting stuff.
The food is a total mixed bag. Most of it is TOTALLY AWESOME, very spicy, lots of local veggies, very good. I've found that pickled things and a fungus called Wood Ear are not for me at all ever, in any situation. Also pig's feet, and kelp. But other than that, two thumbs up."
Here's Post #2: "Day One Down!
Watchword of the day: flexibility.
Opening Ceremony with parents: thwarted because all parents left before opening ceremony could commence.
Playing outside for a quarter of the day: thwarted because of rain, which may or may not last until autumn.
Plans to watch a movie: first thwarted because of a power outage (which happens a lot), second because tech guy wouldn't give up the key to the remote closet for unspecified reason.
Free Time extended: kids eat at the speed of light and wake up at the crack of dawn, thwarting our hour-long meal times and 8am wake up call.
But it's all okay, because I got to hang out with adorable 3rd graders who all want to do everything I say all the time and smile and giggle while they do it, and I also got to hang out with Morgan, a 4th grader, and Jon, a 6th grader, who are best buds and all around totally awesome human beings. We arm wrestled, played thumb wars, and I taught them how to play finger-pong which they're now in love with.
The cafeteria food is cafeteria food. Bleh. But we got plenty of tasty snacks when we were in town yesterday. I'm also not getting bitten by mosquitos very much because I'm working with two veritable mosquito magnets. We also now have a fully functioning bathroom, also awesome, and the teachers are two-to-a-room instead of four. All forward progress is good.
Day Three Down! The last two days have gone SO MUCH BETTER than Day #1. We've adjusted our schedules, switched things around, and it seems like everything that CAN go wrong already went wrong the first day. The power finally came back on today, so we were able to watch a movie tonight (Disney's Aladdin). The kids were pretty happy about that. They are very independent, and aren't really so in to supervised activities outside of the classroom, so we've really loosened up our schedule to accomodate this. What we've come up with is 'voluntary activity time' where we offer activities that not all the kids have to participate in. It also stopped raining, so the last two days we've been out on the field throwing frisbees. Emily, one of our high schoolers from the States, was supposed to be the P.E. person, but she plays softball, and not frisbee, so it's kind of been a team effort between Emily, Colin (our other high schooler) and myself. For my frisbee playing friends: since time immemorial I've never been able to throw an un-wobbly forehand. The first forehand I threw here in China sailed in a perfectly straight line right to the kid, who immediately dropped it. Henceforth I have thrown consistently steady, stable forehands. Go figure. For breakfast in the morning there are these steamed buns that are really good. Cafeteria food being what it is, I took some extra buns in the morning and brought them back in to supplement lunch. The cooks in the kitchen saw me smuggling in the buns, and told Wei-Bin (one of our Chinese liasons/organizers) that they'd heat up fresh buns for me if I'd like, instead of me carrying the buns around all day. So now I'm getting fresh buns at every meal. On the whole people are very nice. I get stared at unabashedly by the people in town and on the streets, and in the school, and back in Chengdu and DuJiangYan. Basically everywhere. It's okay, though. I've only had one picture taken of me (that I know of) without my permission, so that's nice. The kids love having their picture taken (hopefully in the next couple of days I'll figure out how to upload photos). The school is fenced in, and they aren't allowed off the premises to buy snacks, but a man from the market has been coming up to the fence every day to sell them contraband treats several times a day. The guard at the front gate usually sees a large gathering of kids and chases them off after a bit, but even so Pepsi's and candies abound right now. Also, one of the security guards is nicer than the other. I saw a group of kids hanging out with him the other day. It was pretty cute. ALSO! The children have been deceiving us with their tricks and wiles! I spent 20 minutes today on the field with a group of 5th grade girls letting them teach me Chinese, only to discover that they know every single vocabulary word I was going to teach them tomorrow. These kids know way more English than they want us to think. They'll only let on when they really, really want something. I came here having been told that they'd probably only know about half the alphabet, only to discover today that they know all the basic vocabulary and some of them know simple sentance structures. THEY HAVE BEEN FOUND OUT! Tomorrow it's verbs all the way, with no looking back. Memorable quote of the day: This kid named Jon, who's hands down one of my favorites, says "Oh, my Lady Ga-Ga" instead of "Oh my god.
Day Four!
Today we did birthdays. There are four students who have birthdays during camp, so the kids learned the happy birthday song, we ate watermelon and cake and watched Monsters Inc. At breakfast, lunch and dinner the kids eat their food in approximately 5 minutes (this has been timed). The birthday cake was the first thing I've seen them take their time with. That may have been because for a lot of these kids it was the first time they'd ever had a western cake, but it also could have been because they'd just polished off dinner and 7 watermelons before settling down for cake.
We also are all set on what the closing ceremony performance will be. The 3rd & 4th graders will put on a puppet show using Dr. Suess's "The Sneetches", while the 5th & 6th graders will do the same with "The Lorax." "The Sneetches" for those who don't know is about social equality and overcoming differences of appearance and social status and becoming friends in the end, while "The Lorax" is about the environment being decimated by a factory and those who helped to destroy it looking to the next generation to rebuild the environment. Social issues for the little kids, global issues for the bigger kids.
The Sneetches is particularly appropriate at the moment because a wave of misbehavior has ravaged the camp in the last two days. Three different fights have broken out. None of us English-only speakers can really tell what's going on, which makes it difficult to resolve the issues. Even the scattered Chinese-speaking adults can't get much out of the kids. I think conflict mediation might not be that big of a thing here. The people here are also very passionate speakers, so perhaps it's normal for tempers to run high. In any case, if a kid has a fight in the morning, they're usually bright and cheery again (even around the kid with whom they had the fight) by afternoon. Short memories for strife around these parts.
We've been going shopping during nap time. I've been taking pictures, but until I can figure out how to upload them, you're stuck with description. Think of a long row of U-Store-It compartments, complete with sliding garage doors, made out of concrete. That's what the shops in Chengdu, DuJiangYan and Xiang-E are like. The bottom floor of any given building is mostly devoted to these rows of shops. There are very few shelves, often the proprietors will just haul out tables and pile merchandise on top, underneath, and beside the tables. No names of stores or anything like that, it's literally just like "here's the store where we sell snacks," "here's the store where we sell toiletries," "here's the store where we sell shoes and linens, as well as half a dozen other things." Often neighboring stores will overlap merchandise, and they also offer a very wide array of goods, almost anything they can get their hands on, it looks like. The biggest problem we've run into is that poor-quality goods are profligate, and finding the high-quality goods (like pencils whose lead doesn't break and fall out every five minutes) is sometimes a challenge. We've successfully found the snacks we like, however, so life is good (for the record, when a cookie says "dark coffee cream," do not expect it to taste anything like coffee).
A group of girls ran me ragged today playing Badmitton during sports time. If there's one word to describe this group of kids it would be "unrelenting." Actually, that's not true. When it gets hot, most of them poop out pretty early during sports time.
Speaking of pooping out, it's bedtime. Send me your questions, and I'll do my best to answer them! Tomorrow night is a dance party. All we know about the kids' tastes is that they all like Michael Jackson a LOT, so Thriller is definitely on the play list.
Blog entry number 4
ecap of the weekend, or, How Fancy-Pants People Ruined My Day. Not really, but close. So here's the story: The school we are in was built partially with the help of Canadians. So on Sunday, the Prime Minister's daughter (and retinue) came to see the school. That meant that for the three days leading up to her visit, cleaning people were everywhere. So okay. Lots of people stare at Lily and I here because we're the only white people around, and probably the only caucasians they've ever met. The thing is, it's been okay up until the cleaning ladies arrived. All the guys who came and cleaned were pretty respectful, but the ladies just stared at you like you weren't a person. And then they barged into your private dorm room while you were taking a nap to clean your windows, move your shit, and if you were gone, take things. And they locked random doors, including the doors to the computer lab, so I couldn't email you all and whine about how hard my life is. They also went into all the classrooms and dismantled them pretty heartily, they destroyed paper mache scenery that Lily had left out drying, and they stole my garbage can. To top it off, they'd do all of this while talking loudly in your classroom while you were in there trying to teach their children for free. By the end of the weekend I was getting a little surly. The real kicker is that while the PM's daughter was there on Sunday, we had to skidaddle. We couldn't be on the premisis the whole day long, so we went on a field trip that day, which was fine (but I kind of wanted to meet the person who had made my life difficult for three days). All of the teachers plus four students had to go on another field trip last night. We're getting complimentary tickets to a symphony, but in exchange we had to show our faces at this music festival, and Jiaxi (the head teacher, and a classical pianist) and one of the students had to perform. It was held at a gated community/resort type place, very fancy. We attended the opening night of a 5 day festival. It was like the Emmys, the Golden Globes and the Grammy's all rolled into one. There were so many flashing lights, LED color displays, moniters showing abstract crazy patterns, bubble and fog machines (because what Sichuan Province really needs is more humidity), lasers, fireworks, and freakishly loud speakers. It was QUITE the event. I think the kids liked all the frills but got a little bored with the music, which was, with two or three exceptions, kind of dull. Oh well. Okay, so enough complaining, I have to go to class now. Overall, despite the bumps and bruises, things are still going really well, so I'll talk to you all later! --Roz
blog number 5
I'm including this in a separate post because the content is totally different:
Below is something I wrote before camp started. We went out to dinner and one of the teachers, a Mr. Wang (pronounced 'Wong'), joined us. After a few drinks he started telling us about the day of the earthquake. Just so you know, the death toll was very significant, so if you don't want to read the story, by all means skip to the next post, but I thought it was an important story to document. I've tried to stay as accurate as possible.
. . . Tonight Teacher Wang (all the kids say "Teacher" instead of Mr./Ms./Mrs.) told us his story from the day of the quake back in 2008. He was a teacher at the middle school (which is really the high school, they just call them middle schools here) and now he's a teacher at the elementary school. Mr. Wang is not yet 60, he's been teaching for 34 years. Unlike many other farmers' songs, he had clear goals and ambitions. He decided early on he wasn't cut out for farming, didn't have the constitution for it, so he wanted to become a teacher. In those days, as is the case now on a less rigid basis, if you were a farmer's son you had to be a farmer unless you passed a test. When he graduated high school at the age of 15 or 16, Mr. Wang took the placement test and ranked 7th in his district, a high enough ranking that he would only have to farm his land for five years before he could become a school teacher (a regional law dictated that you always serve x number of years on your farm, mitigated by your test score). He tested again the next year, ranked 3rd and shaved a year off his time as a farmer.
Mr. Wang is slightly built, through not so much as others in the village. He is often smiling as he speaks, though throughout this story not as much. He's a heavy drinker, and on more than one occasion we've caught him looking at girly pictures in the school computer lab (he is the computer science teacher, and has his own computer station which is password protected, leading me to believe that he keeps his own private stash of naughty-ness on the hard drive). As he told us about the quake, his gestures became increasingly animated, displaying what is apparently the classical Sichuanese passion for speaking. We've noticed, throughout camp, that spirits tend to run well into the red, often as not.
The quake happened in the morning, just as class was starting. Mr. Wang was off-campus picking up his salary in the next town over. He returned to Xiang-E (where we are now) around noon, heard that the school buildings had collapsed, and headed up toward the high school. The school building had been four stories, all concrete construction with brass-banded plate glass windows, all right angles, no lean-to corners to sway the building to one side or the other when it fell. When the quake hit the top stories just collapsed, one on top of the next on top of the next. As one story hit the next the windows burst apart, being plate rather than safety glass, spraying glass shards in all directions. In no time at all the high school had become a mountain of rubble and bodies. And screams. When Mr. Wang got to the site it was darke from all the concrete dust in the air. No one could see anything, no one had any tools, no shovels, no bulldozers, they used their hands to scrape away the shards of glass and pry away pieces of concrete to reach the children and teachers below. Most of the bodies they pulled out were already dead. The screams for help were endless. They weren't crying for their parents or anyone in particular, just for whoever was outside listening to get them out. Some people died from flying glass, others died because they couldn't breath. Teacher Wang, the parents and villagers cleared away rubble though their hands were sliced and bloody, their skin and lungs clotted with cement dust.
By nightfall the screams had ended. Out of the 400 children attending Xiang-E Middle School, 300 died. Mr. Wang, who has never thought of crying over anything else in his personal or professional life, says he cannot control the tears if he lets himself really think about that 1st day.
The army arrived on the 2nd day. By then a carpenter had also reached the school with some tools. A farmer from down the hill had tried to bring his tractor up to help, but it sank when he tried to cross the muddy embankment separating his plot of land from the main road. The army sent everyone home, but Mr. Wang stayed to help through the 2nd day. They managed to find a few more people alive amidst the destruction. Included amongst the dead, along with the 300 students were nearly all of the teachers, save those few who, like Mr. Wang, had been outside the school running errands.
On the 3rd day all you could hear was crying. Loved ones had come to claim the bodies, parents had taken their children home. The dead aren't cremated in this area, they are usually buried in the back yards of their families, though in many cases, such back yards were as chaotic and rubble-strewn as the plot from which the victims were recovered.
Today the two spots where the elementary and middle schools had been remain bare, scraped clean of concrete, but the sorrow and bad luck has seeped too deep into the soil, and the local residents will not rebuild schools on that land again. In place of the high school there is an empty field, in place of the elementary school, there is a collection of shanties that serve as one of the market places of the village. We walk over the latter plot almost everyday, scouting for school supplies and snacks.
Mr Wang teaches at the new school, built by the government, with the help of the city of Shanghai and the Canadian Government to cutting edge standards. Mr. Wang's two sons were both out of the provice when the quake hit, and though his house sustained significant damage, his wife got away with only a sprained ankle. People still talk about the quake, but only slant-wise, in passing. They comfort and support each other, and quietly push forward, watching as new apartment high rises go up, covering up the bones of their old village so it can be laid to rest, the last victim of the quake to be interred into the earth.
On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 7:08 PM, Roz Ray <roz.ray@gmail.com> wrote:
New Blog Post:
. . . And Advil saves the day.
So I'm sick with a sore throat. It sucks. But! We've determined that Advil makes it all better, so I'll be on 2 Advil every 4 hours for the foreseeable future. Only two days left! Yesterday we went to the Science and Technology Museum, much like the Pacific Science Center, but bigger and kind of crappier. The exhibits were dull and not very kid friendly, and only about half of them work, which sucks when you bring a group of 40 kids to go see this great museum in the big city and it turns out not to be that great. At least we adults didn't think so. I think the kids actually had a pretty good time. They loved, LOVED the "4-D Movie". What is a 4-D Movie, one might ask? Is not the 4th dimension time, and therefore ALL movies are 4-D? We asked these questions, and many more as we sat waiting for the movie to commence. A 4-D movie, as it turns out, is a low-resolution, computer animated movie shown on an arked (what is the past tense of 'arc'?), Imax-esque screen, shown to the audience through 3-D glasses while they sit on chairs that shake and shudder during scary parts, with air-fans that blow cold air during fast-moving parts, and little spigots of water that spritz during wet parts. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the 4-D experience. The kids were totally into it. TOTALLY. Screaming, yelling, laughing and generally freaking out through all 15 minutes.
We ended the day in Chengdu by going to part of a youth music and dance festival. It was a very nice, relaxing way to end the day, especially being in a building with real toilets that are stocked with toilet paper. Some of the performances were better than others. The Chinese aren't big on athleticism in their Westernized dances. It's a lot of moving and posing, moving and posing, moving, waving your arms around and posing. The classical Chinese dances were really good, though, as were the classical music pieces.
Today has been a blur. I was out half the day wallowing in illness, alone in my room (that actually happened a lot yesterday, too, but luckily I had two 2.5 hour bus rides and a concert during which I could chill out). Today we did play rehearsals, and quickly realized that we'll be doing an art-gallery and some songs instead of plays for the parents. The plays the kids will perform for each other, and probably won't be the wiser.
Dude, Chinese television is insane. On the bus we watched this crazy pirate-themed period-piece show. There was no audio, not like it matters to me, but the whole thing was overly dramatic and kind of totally awesome. The day before yesterday we peeked in on a tv playing in a shop, and all the main characters were wearing bright blue, yellow and pink wigs, but it was also a period-piece show.
So, that's all for now. Tomorrow is more play rehearsal, and a dance party (probably Michael Jackson again).
TTFN!
Between all of us we run the gamut of creative endeavors. Chris works with ceramics, jewelry, tile mosaic murals, collage work, painting, felting, and whatever else she can get her hands on. Savannah paints, creates sculptural work, and is most heavily pursuing fashion design through altered/deconstructed clothing (through her label Zombie Threads) as well as 100% hand-made pieces. Roz dabbles in jewelry (through The Wearable Poetry Project) as well as block printing and altered books, but spends most of her time writing poetry and fiction and working on this website when her mother and sister lock her in a cold, dark room with the promise of cookies later. Much later. . .
Together we're a small family business. On this site you'll find pictures and descriptions of all of our work, as well as a little about our selves, our creative process, and maybe even some lessons here and there on how we do what we do. You'll also find a events calender of places where you might find some of us out in the real world (gasp! real human contact!). Finally, you'll find ways to contact us, either by email or telephone, if you are interested in making an appointment to come to the studio, or you'd like put in an order for purchase or commission, or just to ask us questions. We like to be bothered. Well, some more than others.
Cheers!
Roz's Blog from China
Here's post #1: "Hello Everybody! Welcome to my blog-through-proxy from outside of DuJiangYan, Sichuan Province, China! It's the day before camp starts, and we have internet and power, so here I am.
It's not as hot here as I was thinking it would be. It's overcast and very humid, but overall not too bad yet. Flexibility is the watchword around here. We have yet to stick to any plans we make. We get things switched around on us and there's really no way to argue. Apparently the camps almost didn't happen, too, which I didn't even know about until I got here. There was a rash of shootings in elementary schools around the country, so the larger of the two schools bugged out two weeks before camp started, and the organizers here just had to sit outside the DuJiangYan School Board offices and plead to keep the camp running for the smaller school. They succeeded, but now instead of teaching 5-6th graders, we're teaching 3rd-6th graders. Kind of a big difference. They also obviously were not ready for us to be here. Our rooms weren't clean when we got here, and the cafeteria doesn't open until Sunday, so we've been eating out at the local restaurant/devouring our store of snacks. Also, the rooms weren't cleaned or prepped or anything, so that's what we've been doing today. It's been a lot of hurry-up-and-wait then hurry-to-get-shit-done. Exciting stuff.
The food is a total mixed bag. Most of it is TOTALLY AWESOME, very spicy, lots of local veggies, very good. I've found that pickled things and a fungus called Wood Ear are not for me at all ever, in any situation. Also pig's feet, and kelp. But other than that, two thumbs up."
Here's Post #2: "Day One Down!
Watchword of the day: flexibility.
Opening Ceremony with parents: thwarted because all parents left before opening ceremony could commence.
Playing outside for a quarter of the day: thwarted because of rain, which may or may not last until autumn.
Plans to watch a movie: first thwarted because of a power outage (which happens a lot), second because tech guy wouldn't give up the key to the remote closet for unspecified reason.
Free Time extended: kids eat at the speed of light and wake up at the crack of dawn, thwarting our hour-long meal times and 8am wake up call.
But it's all okay, because I got to hang out with adorable 3rd graders who all want to do everything I say all the time and smile and giggle while they do it, and I also got to hang out with Morgan, a 4th grader, and Jon, a 6th grader, who are best buds and all around totally awesome human beings. We arm wrestled, played thumb wars, and I taught them how to play finger-pong which they're now in love with.
The cafeteria food is cafeteria food. Bleh. But we got plenty of tasty snacks when we were in town yesterday. I'm also not getting bitten by mosquitos very much because I'm working with two veritable mosquito magnets. We also now have a fully functioning bathroom, also awesome, and the teachers are two-to-a-room instead of four. All forward progress is good.
Day Three Down! The last two days have gone SO MUCH BETTER than Day #1. We've adjusted our schedules, switched things around, and it seems like everything that CAN go wrong already went wrong the first day. The power finally came back on today, so we were able to watch a movie tonight (Disney's Aladdin). The kids were pretty happy about that. They are very independent, and aren't really so in to supervised activities outside of the classroom, so we've really loosened up our schedule to accomodate this. What we've come up with is 'voluntary activity time' where we offer activities that not all the kids have to participate in. It also stopped raining, so the last two days we've been out on the field throwing frisbees. Emily, one of our high schoolers from the States, was supposed to be the P.E. person, but she plays softball, and not frisbee, so it's kind of been a team effort between Emily, Colin (our other high schooler) and myself. For my frisbee playing friends: since time immemorial I've never been able to throw an un-wobbly forehand. The first forehand I threw here in China sailed in a perfectly straight line right to the kid, who immediately dropped it. Henceforth I have thrown consistently steady, stable forehands. Go figure. For breakfast in the morning there are these steamed buns that are really good. Cafeteria food being what it is, I took some extra buns in the morning and brought them back in to supplement lunch. The cooks in the kitchen saw me smuggling in the buns, and told Wei-Bin (one of our Chinese liasons/organizers) that they'd heat up fresh buns for me if I'd like, instead of me carrying the buns around all day. So now I'm getting fresh buns at every meal. On the whole people are very nice. I get stared at unabashedly by the people in town and on the streets, and in the school, and back in Chengdu and DuJiangYan. Basically everywhere. It's okay, though. I've only had one picture taken of me (that I know of) without my permission, so that's nice. The kids love having their picture taken (hopefully in the next couple of days I'll figure out how to upload photos). The school is fenced in, and they aren't allowed off the premises to buy snacks, but a man from the market has been coming up to the fence every day to sell them contraband treats several times a day. The guard at the front gate usually sees a large gathering of kids and chases them off after a bit, but even so Pepsi's and candies abound right now. Also, one of the security guards is nicer than the other. I saw a group of kids hanging out with him the other day. It was pretty cute. ALSO! The children have been deceiving us with their tricks and wiles! I spent 20 minutes today on the field with a group of 5th grade girls letting them teach me Chinese, only to discover that they know every single vocabulary word I was going to teach them tomorrow. These kids know way more English than they want us to think. They'll only let on when they really, really want something. I came here having been told that they'd probably only know about half the alphabet, only to discover today that they know all the basic vocabulary and some of them know simple sentance structures. THEY HAVE BEEN FOUND OUT! Tomorrow it's verbs all the way, with no looking back. Memorable quote of the day: This kid named Jon, who's hands down one of my favorites, says "Oh, my Lady Ga-Ga" instead of "Oh my god.
Day Four!
Today we did birthdays. There are four students who have birthdays during camp, so the kids learned the happy birthday song, we ate watermelon and cake and watched Monsters Inc. At breakfast, lunch and dinner the kids eat their food in approximately 5 minutes (this has been timed). The birthday cake was the first thing I've seen them take their time with. That may have been because for a lot of these kids it was the first time they'd ever had a western cake, but it also could have been because they'd just polished off dinner and 7 watermelons before settling down for cake.
We also are all set on what the closing ceremony performance will be. The 3rd & 4th graders will put on a puppet show using Dr. Suess's "The Sneetches", while the 5th & 6th graders will do the same with "The Lorax." "The Sneetches" for those who don't know is about social equality and overcoming differences of appearance and social status and becoming friends in the end, while "The Lorax" is about the environment being decimated by a factory and those who helped to destroy it looking to the next generation to rebuild the environment. Social issues for the little kids, global issues for the bigger kids.
The Sneetches is particularly appropriate at the moment because a wave of misbehavior has ravaged the camp in the last two days. Three different fights have broken out. None of us English-only speakers can really tell what's going on, which makes it difficult to resolve the issues. Even the scattered Chinese-speaking adults can't get much out of the kids. I think conflict mediation might not be that big of a thing here. The people here are also very passionate speakers, so perhaps it's normal for tempers to run high. In any case, if a kid has a fight in the morning, they're usually bright and cheery again (even around the kid with whom they had the fight) by afternoon. Short memories for strife around these parts.
We've been going shopping during nap time. I've been taking pictures, but until I can figure out how to upload them, you're stuck with description. Think of a long row of U-Store-It compartments, complete with sliding garage doors, made out of concrete. That's what the shops in Chengdu, DuJiangYan and Xiang-E are like. The bottom floor of any given building is mostly devoted to these rows of shops. There are very few shelves, often the proprietors will just haul out tables and pile merchandise on top, underneath, and beside the tables. No names of stores or anything like that, it's literally just like "here's the store where we sell snacks," "here's the store where we sell toiletries," "here's the store where we sell shoes and linens, as well as half a dozen other things." Often neighboring stores will overlap merchandise, and they also offer a very wide array of goods, almost anything they can get their hands on, it looks like. The biggest problem we've run into is that poor-quality goods are profligate, and finding the high-quality goods (like pencils whose lead doesn't break and fall out every five minutes) is sometimes a challenge. We've successfully found the snacks we like, however, so life is good (for the record, when a cookie says "dark coffee cream," do not expect it to taste anything like coffee).
A group of girls ran me ragged today playing Badmitton during sports time. If there's one word to describe this group of kids it would be "unrelenting." Actually, that's not true. When it gets hot, most of them poop out pretty early during sports time.
Speaking of pooping out, it's bedtime. Send me your questions, and I'll do my best to answer them! Tomorrow night is a dance party. All we know about the kids' tastes is that they all like Michael Jackson a LOT, so Thriller is definitely on the play list.
Blog entry number 4
ecap of the weekend, or, How Fancy-Pants People Ruined My Day. Not really, but close. So here's the story: The school we are in was built partially with the help of Canadians. So on Sunday, the Prime Minister's daughter (and retinue) came to see the school. That meant that for the three days leading up to her visit, cleaning people were everywhere. So okay. Lots of people stare at Lily and I here because we're the only white people around, and probably the only caucasians they've ever met. The thing is, it's been okay up until the cleaning ladies arrived. All the guys who came and cleaned were pretty respectful, but the ladies just stared at you like you weren't a person. And then they barged into your private dorm room while you were taking a nap to clean your windows, move your shit, and if you were gone, take things. And they locked random doors, including the doors to the computer lab, so I couldn't email you all and whine about how hard my life is. They also went into all the classrooms and dismantled them pretty heartily, they destroyed paper mache scenery that Lily had left out drying, and they stole my garbage can. To top it off, they'd do all of this while talking loudly in your classroom while you were in there trying to teach their children for free. By the end of the weekend I was getting a little surly. The real kicker is that while the PM's daughter was there on Sunday, we had to skidaddle. We couldn't be on the premisis the whole day long, so we went on a field trip that day, which was fine (but I kind of wanted to meet the person who had made my life difficult for three days). All of the teachers plus four students had to go on another field trip last night. We're getting complimentary tickets to a symphony, but in exchange we had to show our faces at this music festival, and Jiaxi (the head teacher, and a classical pianist) and one of the students had to perform. It was held at a gated community/resort type place, very fancy. We attended the opening night of a 5 day festival. It was like the Emmys, the Golden Globes and the Grammy's all rolled into one. There were so many flashing lights, LED color displays, moniters showing abstract crazy patterns, bubble and fog machines (because what Sichuan Province really needs is more humidity), lasers, fireworks, and freakishly loud speakers. It was QUITE the event. I think the kids liked all the frills but got a little bored with the music, which was, with two or three exceptions, kind of dull. Oh well. Okay, so enough complaining, I have to go to class now. Overall, despite the bumps and bruises, things are still going really well, so I'll talk to you all later! --Roz
blog number 5
I'm including this in a separate post because the content is totally different:
Below is something I wrote before camp started. We went out to dinner and one of the teachers, a Mr. Wang (pronounced 'Wong'), joined us. After a few drinks he started telling us about the day of the earthquake. Just so you know, the death toll was very significant, so if you don't want to read the story, by all means skip to the next post, but I thought it was an important story to document. I've tried to stay as accurate as possible.
. . . Tonight Teacher Wang (all the kids say "Teacher" instead of Mr./Ms./Mrs.) told us his story from the day of the quake back in 2008. He was a teacher at the middle school (which is really the high school, they just call them middle schools here) and now he's a teacher at the elementary school. Mr. Wang is not yet 60, he's been teaching for 34 years. Unlike many other farmers' songs, he had clear goals and ambitions. He decided early on he wasn't cut out for farming, didn't have the constitution for it, so he wanted to become a teacher. In those days, as is the case now on a less rigid basis, if you were a farmer's son you had to be a farmer unless you passed a test. When he graduated high school at the age of 15 or 16, Mr. Wang took the placement test and ranked 7th in his district, a high enough ranking that he would only have to farm his land for five years before he could become a school teacher (a regional law dictated that you always serve x number of years on your farm, mitigated by your test score). He tested again the next year, ranked 3rd and shaved a year off his time as a farmer.
Mr. Wang is slightly built, through not so much as others in the village. He is often smiling as he speaks, though throughout this story not as much. He's a heavy drinker, and on more than one occasion we've caught him looking at girly pictures in the school computer lab (he is the computer science teacher, and has his own computer station which is password protected, leading me to believe that he keeps his own private stash of naughty-ness on the hard drive). As he told us about the quake, his gestures became increasingly animated, displaying what is apparently the classical Sichuanese passion for speaking. We've noticed, throughout camp, that spirits tend to run well into the red, often as not.
The quake happened in the morning, just as class was starting. Mr. Wang was off-campus picking up his salary in the next town over. He returned to Xiang-E (where we are now) around noon, heard that the school buildings had collapsed, and headed up toward the high school. The school building had been four stories, all concrete construction with brass-banded plate glass windows, all right angles, no lean-to corners to sway the building to one side or the other when it fell. When the quake hit the top stories just collapsed, one on top of the next on top of the next. As one story hit the next the windows burst apart, being plate rather than safety glass, spraying glass shards in all directions. In no time at all the high school had become a mountain of rubble and bodies. And screams. When Mr. Wang got to the site it was darke from all the concrete dust in the air. No one could see anything, no one had any tools, no shovels, no bulldozers, they used their hands to scrape away the shards of glass and pry away pieces of concrete to reach the children and teachers below. Most of the bodies they pulled out were already dead. The screams for help were endless. They weren't crying for their parents or anyone in particular, just for whoever was outside listening to get them out. Some people died from flying glass, others died because they couldn't breath. Teacher Wang, the parents and villagers cleared away rubble though their hands were sliced and bloody, their skin and lungs clotted with cement dust.
By nightfall the screams had ended. Out of the 400 children attending Xiang-E Middle School, 300 died. Mr. Wang, who has never thought of crying over anything else in his personal or professional life, says he cannot control the tears if he lets himself really think about that 1st day.
The army arrived on the 2nd day. By then a carpenter had also reached the school with some tools. A farmer from down the hill had tried to bring his tractor up to help, but it sank when he tried to cross the muddy embankment separating his plot of land from the main road. The army sent everyone home, but Mr. Wang stayed to help through the 2nd day. They managed to find a few more people alive amidst the destruction. Included amongst the dead, along with the 300 students were nearly all of the teachers, save those few who, like Mr. Wang, had been outside the school running errands.
On the 3rd day all you could hear was crying. Loved ones had come to claim the bodies, parents had taken their children home. The dead aren't cremated in this area, they are usually buried in the back yards of their families, though in many cases, such back yards were as chaotic and rubble-strewn as the plot from which the victims were recovered.
Today the two spots where the elementary and middle schools had been remain bare, scraped clean of concrete, but the sorrow and bad luck has seeped too deep into the soil, and the local residents will not rebuild schools on that land again. In place of the high school there is an empty field, in place of the elementary school, there is a collection of shanties that serve as one of the market places of the village. We walk over the latter plot almost everyday, scouting for school supplies and snacks.
Mr Wang teaches at the new school, built by the government, with the help of the city of Shanghai and the Canadian Government to cutting edge standards. Mr. Wang's two sons were both out of the provice when the quake hit, and though his house sustained significant damage, his wife got away with only a sprained ankle. People still talk about the quake, but only slant-wise, in passing. They comfort and support each other, and quietly push forward, watching as new apartment high rises go up, covering up the bones of their old village so it can be laid to rest, the last victim of the quake to be interred into the earth.
On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 7:08 PM, Roz Ray <roz.ray@gmail.com> wrote:
New Blog Post:
. . . And Advil saves the day.
So I'm sick with a sore throat. It sucks. But! We've determined that Advil makes it all better, so I'll be on 2 Advil every 4 hours for the foreseeable future. Only two days left! Yesterday we went to the Science and Technology Museum, much like the Pacific Science Center, but bigger and kind of crappier. The exhibits were dull and not very kid friendly, and only about half of them work, which sucks when you bring a group of 40 kids to go see this great museum in the big city and it turns out not to be that great. At least we adults didn't think so. I think the kids actually had a pretty good time. They loved, LOVED the "4-D Movie". What is a 4-D Movie, one might ask? Is not the 4th dimension time, and therefore ALL movies are 4-D? We asked these questions, and many more as we sat waiting for the movie to commence. A 4-D movie, as it turns out, is a low-resolution, computer animated movie shown on an arked (what is the past tense of 'arc'?), Imax-esque screen, shown to the audience through 3-D glasses while they sit on chairs that shake and shudder during scary parts, with air-fans that blow cold air during fast-moving parts, and little spigots of water that spritz during wet parts. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the 4-D experience. The kids were totally into it. TOTALLY. Screaming, yelling, laughing and generally freaking out through all 15 minutes.
We ended the day in Chengdu by going to part of a youth music and dance festival. It was a very nice, relaxing way to end the day, especially being in a building with real toilets that are stocked with toilet paper. Some of the performances were better than others. The Chinese aren't big on athleticism in their Westernized dances. It's a lot of moving and posing, moving and posing, moving, waving your arms around and posing. The classical Chinese dances were really good, though, as were the classical music pieces.
Today has been a blur. I was out half the day wallowing in illness, alone in my room (that actually happened a lot yesterday, too, but luckily I had two 2.5 hour bus rides and a concert during which I could chill out). Today we did play rehearsals, and quickly realized that we'll be doing an art-gallery and some songs instead of plays for the parents. The plays the kids will perform for each other, and probably won't be the wiser.
Dude, Chinese television is insane. On the bus we watched this crazy pirate-themed period-piece show. There was no audio, not like it matters to me, but the whole thing was overly dramatic and kind of totally awesome. The day before yesterday we peeked in on a tv playing in a shop, and all the main characters were wearing bright blue, yellow and pink wigs, but it was also a period-piece show.
So, that's all for now. Tomorrow is more play rehearsal, and a dance party (probably Michael Jackson again).
TTFN!
