Tuesday, April 10, 2012

You might still be in China if...

…a crotch in your pants is a privilege, not a right.  You earn it once you’re potty-trained.
…every “No Smoking” sign is coupled with a  “No Spitting” sign.
…couples dress alike.
…’perched’ is a common neutral position.
…your olive oil freezes in your poorly heated apartment.
…repairmen leave bigger messes than they fix.
…Jackie Chan is the frontman for every toiletry in your house.
…the majority of your students’ glasses are just thick frames with no lenses in them.
…you need to use both hands to count the number of electric fires in your house.
…you spend more money on dessert than on breakfast, lunch, and dinner combined.
…there is literally no inappropriate time to pick up your phone.*
…despite freezing temperatures, nobody ever wears hats…except babies.
…despite blinding brightness, nobody ever wears sunglasses…except foreign teachers. 
…50 students hand in their homework, and no two pieces of paper have the same dimensions.

*So far the best examples of this are a friend picking up his phone MID-point in a tennis match, a student picking up his phone while singing a song during an audition for K-VOX, and a man stopping to read a text in the middle of giving a speech.

2 comments:

  1. I don't know about you, but that last one really bothers me. Also I tried to start wearing frameless glasses in an attempt to kindly 'mock' my students, but it just ended up with them telling me, "You look very fashion today!"

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  2. Uhhhh the subtleties of mocking are overlooked and underutilized in China. Oh the irony! I just meet some people and think... "You would have been a lot better off had somebody made fun of you when you were younger."

    I ended up fixing the paper dilemma buy just handing out pieces of paper for students to do their work on. After the first three times, I couldn't stand it anymore. My least favorite was the full page of answers, a dictation, and a composition written on a post-it note.

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