Travels in China

Thank You

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 19:26:58 GMT

I would like to first and foremost thank everyone who came back to this page time and time again to read about my experiences in China. Every time I have traveled to a foreign country I have always kept a journal so I could record my experiences. This journal, however, was a lot more detailed and required more work than any others I've kept. If it weren't for all of you coming back for more, I don't think this journal would have been as well maintained as it was.

I would also like to do a big public thank you to my parents. When I started to study Chinese it wasn't as accepted as it is today. They allowed me to really explore my love of China in a wonderfully tolerant environment and encouraged me every step of the way. I don't think I would have been able to do this without their 110% support. I just hope I was able to show them why I have fallen in love with China during their visit. I am very honored to be their daughter.

To everyone who has written to me, kept me in the loop, chatted with me on-line, sent me mail, called me - I appreciate every moment of it. I was rather isolated at the school and every bit of love from back home was great.

And now, onto my next adventure...whatever it may be!

My Last Week in China

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 19:02:34 GMT

After a good night’s sleep, we got up once again to explore the capital city of Beijing. At this point we were on our own and without a tour guide, other than myself. So I picked out a couple of highlights of the city and off we went. First stop? The Tibetan Lama Temple. One thing I do remember about this temple is that it was one of the very few traditional sites in Beijing that was protected during the Cultural Revolution by Zhou Enlai. So none of the statues are defaced and everything is intact. I personally feel that the Lama Temple is one of the more interesting things to see in Beijing. The temple is large and feels like it’s just planted in the middle of the city. It’s practically all open and it’s an active monastery, so there are monks that practice there. However, being Tibetan, there are some things that aren’t as widely accepted - like the Dalai Lama. But, the temple itself is really beautiful. One cool thing is that there is a Buddha statue in the last building that stands 28 meters tall, 8 of that underground. The visible 18 meters is maybe 2 meters wide - carved of one white ash tree. Absolutely gorgeous. And when you see it, it’s hard to believe that all that wood is just one tree.

Here's mom in the Tibetan Lama Temple. You can actually spin these things and its supposed to bring you good luck.

Next we visited Guozijian and the Confucian Temple. These were two places I visited back in February and while Guozijian was more uncovered, the actual Confucian Temple was completely under restoration. In case you don’t remember, this is where students would come to study Confucian texts and other important manuscripts so they could become high ranking officials and scholars. In the Confucian Temple there was an exhibit about different Confucian temples all over China that my parents were able to check out while I sat down and relaxed, having read through it before.

Now we went to search for a restaurant. Before coming to China, my father had bought a book on Beijing and there was a restaurant near this area that it recommended. Once we actually found it, however, we were informed that it is not open on Monday. Not knowing the area well, we hopped in a cab back to the area around the hotel to find something else. Our next choice was also closed, but then finally we found an open restaurant and were able to enjoy a very tasty meal in an outdoor traditional garden setting.

We were going to meet up with Yvonne that evening, so we walked back to the hotel. But along the way we went into the Friendship Store. This store is actually quite famous is China. It has all the traditional handicrafts of China and you can be 100% they are genuine because it is a government run store. I remember going there back in 1998 late one night and exploring it with my friends. I showed my parents the top floor because that is where all the expensive items are - jade, pearls, cloisonné, and so on. After exploring for a while, we headed back to the hotel to await Yvonne’s call.

Once we heard from Yvonne, we went to meet her in an area called Houhai. This is around the ancient part of town where the majority of the homes are traditional style, with courtyards and all. Along the river/lake there, many bars have popped up over the years so it’s turned into quite the fashionable place to hang out. Yvonne suggested a restaurant there and we met with her for a rather tasty meal. One funny moment before she arrived was that my father ordered a beer of the menu - something he had never seen before called “baiwei” so he decided to give it a shot. Turns out Baiwei is the Chinese name for Budweiser. And you could also order it by the box!

Here is the infamous drink menu where dad accidentally ordered a Bud Ice. I love how one of the choices has a -15, so apparently they pay you to drink it.

The next day we had some more places to visit. Unfortunately the day was fairly overcast so when I took them to Jingshan Park - the mountain behind the Forbidden City, the view wasn’t as good as it could have been. Jingshan Park overlooks the Forbidden City and it really gives you a good idea of how large it is. If you look off the opposite side, you can see the drum and bell towers. Very cool park to visit and a whopping 2 yuan to get in - which is like 25 cents. After we left the park, we started to walk over to Beihai Park. This used to be a kind of playground for the imperial family. There’s a huge manmade lake with an island in the middle, which is where there the Buddhist temple. The park itself is very large with various structures inside. However, this is also the park where they get you with lots of mini-fees and so on. You can get into the park itself, but each structure requires a new entry fee ranging from 2 yuan to 20. But there really is a lot to do within the park.

Mom and dad in Beihai Park. You can see the White Pagoda in the background.

The first place we visited was the circular city. I’ve actually never been inside it before, but it’s a circular compound (as the name would imply) with a temple inside it. After that we headed to the main island where there’s a temple at the top of the mountain that you need to climb up to. What I find interesting about this temple is that at the very top there is a white pagoda with nothing (as far as I know) inside of it. There is a little pavilion directly in front of it that you can find Buddha statue, but that’s about it. Once again, due to the overcast weather, the view from up there wasn’t phenomenal. At this point we were considering lunch, so we left the park and headed down the mountain to find a restaurant that the concierge at the hotel recommended.

This restaurant actually used the old kitchens that were used to cook food for the imperial family. They used the traditional recipes and served them in quite a lavish setting - all gold, yellow, and a little bit of red. The meal was a little on the pricey side and you had to order sets of food, but it was a very neat experience.

We took a boat across the lake to the 5 Pavilions and then did a little bit of exploring on that side. There were a number of temples and gardens, along with the 9 Dragon Screen. There was one temple I had never been inside before and my parents explored before me because I was feeding the fish. The statue inside of the building was huge - not only in height, but all dimensions. It kind of looked like a chunk of land and clouds with hundreds of different figures all around it. You weren’t allowed to walk completely around the display, but it was impressive. We walked around a little bit more until we found the 9 Dragon Screen. To me, this structure is amazing because not only is it old, but it’s all fired ceramic tiles. Because it was so large, they had to break the designs into pieces to have them fired and then glued them all together again. Very, very cool to just walk around and look at.

Here's the 9 Dragon Screen.

After that we were picked up for our afternoon tour that we booked through the hotel. A tour of old Beijing - the hutong’s. I must admit, this is one of my favorite areas of Beijing. It gives you a sense of how the people of Beijing used to live with the narrow alleyways and houses with courtyards. This is also the same area where Yvonne had met us for dinner the previous night. We had a tour guide and he took us through the district on bike rickshaws. We then walked to the drum tower. Now, with being in China, I have been to my fair share of creepy steep stairways. This one takes the cake. I remember it from 1998 - it freaked me out then, and it freaked me out this time. We just missed the drumming demonstration, but we were able to explore quite a bit. Then we walked over to the bell tower (which you can’t climb…thank god) and enjoyed a tea service inside. Our tour guide took use back to our bike rickshaws and then we visited someone’s actual home. She showed us the courtyard and the different rooms in her home and after that, we were taken back to where we had been picked up, and took a cab back to the hotel.

Here's the duck we ate for dinner.

I wanted my parents to experience traditional Beijing roast duck. There are many different places that prepare this, but the most famous is Quanjude. I don’t know why it’s the most famous - maybe it was the first, maybe someone important liked it there more than anywhere else, but there are now branches of it all over Beijing. In 2004, I visited the original Quanjude, but this time that one was closed for repairs, so we went to the one on the main shopping street - Wangfujin. The dinner itself wasn’t fantastic other than the duck. They cook the duck and then they bring it out to the table and carve it up right there for you to see. You get these little rice flour wraps and you put the duck inside with this bean paste sauce, then you can put ginger, scallions, cucumber, or garlic in the wrap as well. Very yummy.

After dinner we explored the street, which is now sadly under construction. I could not find the alleyway in which I had bought many souvenirs in 2004, but most of the main stores are still there. One very cool thing about Wangfujin at night is snack street. There are actually a couple of alleyways with restaurants and booths, but the coolest is at the end of the main road where there is booth after booth that there is all kinds of meat on skewers ready for roasting. They will try almost anything to get you to buy their food. There is also a couple of stands dedicated to fruit. Really a fun place to visit.

Here's a nice shot of snack street.

The next morning we visited the Ancient Observatory, which was right next to our hotel. It was built in 1400 something and was the world’s first observatory. Now, with all the smog and pollution, I’m not sure you could see anything anymore. The instruments are made of bronze with ornate designs of dragons. The courtyard has been redone so that it’s a museum to astronomy. Once we were finished exploring there, we tried to find the Silk Street. The last time I visited the Silk Street was in 1998 when it was open and on the street in the embassy district. So we walked back there and after a while we were basically told that we could go any further. Thus, we gave up on the Silk Street and took a cab to a golf store dad had seen an advertisement for in the newspaper. Once there, my dad expressed an interest in being able to shop for more sports related things and the owner told us to go to the Pearl Market. He said it was a “short walk” and after giving us directions, we were on our way. This “short walk” was close to 2 miles and when we reached the Pearl Market, it became apparent that this was also Silk Street. We ate lunch there and then went inside to brave the market.

A shot of my parents exploring the Ancient Observatory.

Me being a complete nerd with one of the trashcans at the Ancient Observatory.

Let’s just say, that the Silk Market has changed a lot over the years. Before it was very laid back and they let you come to them. This was very similar to the market I went to in Shanghai with Chris and Kim. There was booth after booth after booth of basically the same kinds of things with narrow passage ways between them. As you walked down the passage ways phrases like “hey lady, you like jeans? Come take a look.” “You want shirts? We have shirts.” “Come inside, lady, take a look,” were called out to us as we made our way though. One woman actually grabbed my father by the wrist and pulled him into her booth, proceeded to rub his stomach and called him “Buddha man.” This walk through the market is what I refer to as “running the gauntlet.” I had to stress to my parents some of the rules of shopping in such a place, such as - don’t touch it if you aren’t interested, don’t ask about price unless you want to buy it, walk around and look at everyone’s stuff before you step into a booth, and so on. It’s hard because the moment you show interest, they’ll follow you out the store to try and get you to come back to buy. Dad was finding a bunch of stuff he wanted and although I knew my mother wanted to get a table cloth, she said she didn’t want to go through the process. I had to assure her that once you step inside one booth the other booths give up. She ended up finding what she wanted and I got to bargain for them for everything they wanted.

We rested at the hotel before Yvonne joined us for dinner and then we headed out to see an acrobat show. These shows cease to amaze me with the flexibility and agility some of these kids have. There was lots of tumbling and flips, some juggling, and many other different kinds of skills that I had no idea there was a demand for. Not the best acrobatic show I’ve ever seen, but it was pretty cool. That night I said my goodbye to Yvonne because I knew there wasn’t really going to be another chance to see her again before I left.

On Wednesday morning we got up and took the subway to Tiananmen Square. It was there that we tried to get into the National Museum, but it was closed for renovation. Sensing a trend? Our next adventure was trying to find a shopping street called “culture street” which has all these neat little shops in it that I wanted to show my parents. On the way we stopped in the Olympic Store off of the Square to check out the merchandise and did some purchasing. We walked quite a ways to find the street and found one, but it wasn’t the one I had meant to show my parents. After stopping for a delicious noodle lunch, we went to Tiananmen Gate to take a look. You can go on top of the gate to overlook the square, however it’s possibly one of the few places where they take security very seriously - you have a clear shot of the square and the government buildings. We had to check our bags to be able to go up. Because it was such a clear day, it was a wonderful view.

Next we decided to finish some of our shopping. We went to Wangfujin to check out the stores one last time before heading back to the hotel to start the packing process. For me this was a little harder because of all the things I had, but I got it all home. We went to Grandma’s Kitchen, an American restaurant, for dinner before crashing once again in the hotel.

Our last full day in Beijing was possibly our least active one. We went to a museum in the morning and must had gotten there right after the doors had opened on a new exhibit. Important people were there with flowers, there were photographers, and they were giving away free stuff. The exhibit was from a famous artist who passed away a couple of years prior to that and most of the people there had been his students. There were only a couple of other exhibits in the museum open and after we finished there, we went to the Silk Market to finish up our purchases there. After a quick lunch, we headed to the Friendship Store to finish our buying there. And then we headed back to the hotel, finished packing, and went out for a Sichuan style dinner.

Me and Summer.

The next day I met up with my good friend Summer who I’ve known, like Yvonne, since my first trip to China in 1998. He met me while I was in Guiyang and it’s his parents who I’ve been spending a weekend here and there with. He actually coordinated his trip to Beijing so he could see me there before I left. It was just great to see him and catch up a little bit, because now he lives in London, England. And then after lunch we were picked up and taken to the airport to bring us home once again.

Two Days of Tours

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 18:12:06 GMT

When we arrived in Beijing a person was waiting for us as we stepped off the plane to help us navigate the airport - which after my many visits there, wasn't needed. But it was nice. We found our tourguide and waited for our car to arrive. Once we loaded, we had a while to wait to get to the hotel. Not because it was far away, but because it was rush hour traffic in Beijing. Traffic in Beijing is absolutely atrocious and it gets worse every day because more and more people are buying private cars. My dad compared it to having to deal with Dream Cruise traffic every single day.

Once we arrived at the hotel and checked in, we weren't really in the exploring mode. We ate dinner at the hotel at a wonderful seafood buffet, then went and made some purchases at a local supermarket. The person who picked us up at the airport told us that our booked tours were going to be Saturday and Sunday, so we turned in early to rest up for a long day.

Our Saturday tour consisted of the Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and Summer Palace. When my father told me this a month or so back, I told him to try and find another tour because that was way too much in one day. Unfortunately, it was a package deal with the hotel, so there was no getting out of one park. What ended up happening is our tour guide took us to the main highlights of each place and that's it. And with tour packages like this, they have to take you to state run stores that feature local items - on this day it was a pearl store then a silk carpet factory. But on to the main attractions.

The first stop of the day was the Temple of Heaven. This was a place where the emperor would go to pray for a successful harvest. The Temple of Heaven, for all intents and purposes, is a series of three structures. The first being a circular platform of white marble. On the top level there is a disc in the very center. This was the place where the emperor could best communicate with heaven. I've also heard it referred to as the "center of the universe". The second structure is probably my favorite. It's, once again, a circle. (In Chinese architecture the circle means heaven whereas squares represent earth). There is a wall around the building which stores some tablets. The wall is really interesting because if you stand on one side and someone you know stands on the other, and you talk, they can hear you. We got this to really work - dad went to one end and mom and I went to the other. He sounded a little muffled, but we could hear him. The other area of interest at this place is right in front of the building where they store the tablets. There are three stone on the ground. If you clap on the one furthest from the building you hear the echo three times. You stand on the next one closer and you hear it twice. You stand on the stone closest to the building and you hear the echo only once.

The last main structure at the Temple of Heaven is the Temple of Heaven. For all you Disney lovers, this might look familiar because its the building they decided to recreate in Epcot at China in the World Showcase. There's a lot of symbolism involved with the inside of the temple, most of which I forget, but a lot of it dealt with pillars to symbolize the lunar months, days, and so on. It was completely repainted and it looked like a completely different building than from the last time I saw it. Beijing is on this huge repaint kick because they want everything to look fantastic for the Olympics. I am 100% for restoration of historical places like this, but it kind of stinks for the people who want to come anytime before the Olympics because it seems like everything is covered or being restored or what have you. This sort of renovation should have been started years ago in a "one national tourist spot at a time" mentality, but I'm not in charge.

Here's me, mom, and dad in front of the Temple of Heaven.

Next up? Tiananmen Square. Now the square itself isn't exactly too exciting. What can I say? It's a big open square. Largest public square in the world, apparently. There are a couple of important buildings/monuments in/around it. On the west side is the National Museum which now sports the Olympic countdown clock. On the east side is the main government building. In the center is the Monument to the People. Also in the square is a mausoleum where Chairman Mao's tomb is. It's a glass tomb so when we found out it was closed for renovation, I wasn't entirely disappointed. Twice is enough for one lifetime. To the south of the square are the ancient gates to the city. And to the north? The Forbidden City, our next stop.

Here's mom and dad in Tiananmen Square with Tiananmen in the background. Tiananmen translates to the Gate of Heavenly Peace and acts as the entrance to the Forbidden City. This is also the place that Chairman Mao declared the People's Republic of China.

Now the Forbidden City is one of my favorite places to visit. Why? Because its so huge and while you can't explore everywhere, a lot of it is open and you can walk around for hours. Not on this tour. Our guide took us straight down the middle of the Forbidden City, showing us only the main 6 or so buildings.

Much to my annoyance, the one building I had been hoping to not be under renovation was. So this would have been the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City. It's really awesome if you get to see if without, you know, all the tarps and such.

The Forbidden City was CROWDED. I know this picture doesn't show it, but that's because all the crowds were walking down the left or the right side. If you really want a good view of the Forbidden City, there are tons of movies out there - "The Last Emperor" was filmed there, so there you go. After walking down the center of the Forbidden City, we once again boarded the bus. But before we did, we were attacked by people selling things. This instance stands out in memory simply because our group was waiting to cross the street and a bunch of people were waiting on the other side. As soon as the light changed, they charged forward reaching in their bags to pull out what they were selling. I had thought they were just waiting to cross the street - but no, they wanted to sell us something.

On our way to lunch, we passed this structure. It's called the "bird's nest" and it is the main arena for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Now, I know I've joked about this before, but in reality Beijing was seriously lacking in state of the art sports arenas and they plan to really put this (and the other buildings they're building) into good use once the games are over. Personally, I think this building looks pretty cool.

We boarded the bus and went to lunch. After living for a year in Guiyang, the food at lunch didn't taste like real Chinese food - but the stuff you can get here in restaurants. Once lunch was over, we made a stop at a pearl factory. As I mentioned before, on these kinds of tours they are required to take you to places like this. We were first given a demonstration of the fact that in the lake at the Summer Palace, there are clams with fresh water pearls. So all of the fresh water pearls in the factory were made in that lake. We were able to look around and shop and once that was done, we headed to the Summer Palace.

The Summer Palace is basically that, a palace the royal family would go to in the summer. The original one was destroyed during the Opium Wars, so this one was built only about 100 years or so ago - relatively new by Chinese standards. The park itself is huge including some living quarters, buildings for meetings, a temple, the lake, the outdoor corridor (a path where the empress could take a walk to avoid the sun), an island, a bridge...really, the whole park is huge and it would probably take a whole day to fully explore the entire thing. The picture I chose here is of the temple - which we didn't go into. Really, we didn't do much in here which was a bit disappointing, even though we were tired.

The Summer Palace itself is a little distance outside the city, so we had a bit of a bus ride back in. But we had one more stop - the silk carpet factory. The factory's guide told us about natural dyes and how long it takes to make a carpet and about the different quality grades. Really interesting stuff and the carpets were absolutely gorgeous, but a little out of my price range. The one cool thing was that if you flip the carpet around the colors change, hence - magic carpet. This may not be new to you, but it was to me. And I found it amusing.

That night we were fairly whipped and ended up eating sushi at the hotel - which was Japanese run. We turned in early and got notes that read "wait in your room and I'll call you in the morning" from our tour guide. Well, after breakfast we waited in our rooms. And waited. And waited. So finally I got the note and called the tour guide's cell phone - turns out she was waiting in the lobby for us. Grrrreeat. We finally got on our way and headed out to the Ming Tombs. The Ming Tombs is quite a drive and the stop after that was the Great Wall, so this was the real day trip we had in Beijing.

The Ming Tombs were built for the Ming emperor who moved the capital from Nanjing in the south to Beijing (formally known as BeiPing). The Ming Tombs really include a lot - not only is part of the tomb excavated, but there's Sacred Street which is lined with huge stone carvings, a museum, and other areas that are open for visit. We went to the museum. And that's it. This annoyed me because all the other parts are so amazing to look at, but I wasn't in charge. The only thing that was really interesting was the columns in the main hall were grown in Guizhou and transported there for the tomb.

Highlight of the Ming Tombs. This sign made me giggle for hours.

For lunch we went to a jade factory - first there was the tour where were able to see people carving jade and we were taught how to tell the difference between fake and real jade. There are also many different colors - the most expensive being white jade, not the green. After the tour we were able to shop around and then we ate lunch there. Not as good as the lunch the day before, but when you're hungry, you're hungry. We then continued on until we reached the section of the Great Wall we were visiting known as Badaling. It's not my favorite section of the Great Wall because it's very commercialized, but it still gives you a great idea of what it's like.

We took this utterly bizarre ride up to the wall itself. We each had these seats and first went through a tunnel as it pulled us up. Once we reached the wall, our tour guide informed us we had one hour to explore and then we had to meet her back down by the entrance.

Here we are! It was a little hazy, but there was a nice breeze so it wasn't too hot. We were able to walk quite a ways and although it was more crowded than I've ever had to experience, it was still really a lot of fun.

The Great Wall was built to keep the barbarians to the north out and if you look at the picture, you'll see that on the one side there are no cut aways and it's flat, and on the other there are taller pieces that you can hide behind, etc. The side with the cut aways faces the outside. Why anyone would climb a mountain to scale this wall is beyond me, but for quite a while the wall worked. Until the "barbarians" bribed a Chinese general to open the door for them. But hey, it happens. The Great Wall is also known as the longest graveyard in the world. With all that hard work, approximately a million people died building it and instead of building graves of sorts, the workers were simply buried in the wall itself. Nice, right?

One thing that I always love about the Great Wall is just being able to watch it weave its way across the horizon. Can't see it terribly well in this picture, but it was hazy.

We headed back down and boarded the bus once again to go into town. Once we reached town, we were taken to a normal silk factory that specialized in bed covers and blankets. Very beautiful stuff. We did a little bit of shopping, collapsed on the bus again, and made it back to the hotel. Dad had been wanting to go to a restaurant in a park nearby - Ritan Park. Now there are four parks like this - Ritan (temple of the sun), Tiantan (Temple of Heaven), Ditan (temple of the earth), and Yuetan (temple of the moon) situated in the four cardinal coordinates. There wasn't much to Ritan - basically a park, but it's near the embassy district so there are many excellent restaurants in the area. We ate our fill, walked through the park, and then crashed for the evening.

And that, my friends, is day one and day two in Beijing.

Guiyang with Parents, Part 2

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 20:38:17 GMT

There are two tales I forgot to tell about Monday. After we finished up at Qianling Park, we decided to simply just take a cab back to the hotel. Our hotel had a unique location in a sense that you couldn’t take a left turn from the main road to get to it. So you can either drive past it and pull a “Michigan left” later or turn left into a district near it and go through the back streets. However, there was a rather long line up to take the second option - maybe 30 cars, waiting to make this left turn. Our cab driver didn’t want to wait that long, so he pulled over to the opposite side of the road. Thank goodness there was barely any oncoming traffic before he turned into the area. My parents started laughing, so the driver asked me if they were laughing at him. I admitted that they were and that doing what he just did was illegal in the U.S. He grinned and said “well, it’s illegal here.” After dropping us off he offered to be our driver for the rest of our stay, if we were interested.

Tale number two: When you check into Gui Zhou hotel, they give you a little voucher for a free “welcome drink” at the sight-seeing hotel on the top floor. We figured we’d give it a shot and went up to the 29th floor to check it out. When we arrived the lighting was dark and we couldn’t see or hear anyone. We checked the board near the elevator and found the bar was open from 7pm till 1 in the morning and by our watches, it was 8pm. So I called out if anyone was there. A man came from around the corner and said that yes, they were serving and let us choose a table. Now, this “sight-seeing” bar had curtains blocking the view. We got them to open some for us and the view was nice. I explained to the waiter that we had we had two vouchers for the free drinks only to learn that the two free options were orange juice and lemonade. There were no mixed drinks on the menu, so we tried to explain to the man that I wanted a glass of orange juice with a serving of vodka inside. This was a foreign idea to him and it took a while to get the point across. Once he got it and went to take care of our drinks, he came back to inform us that the only hard liquor was a kind of whiskey and Kailua. So much for a well stocked bar. Mom and I finished our orange juices, dad his beer, and we went back downstairs.

Tuesday morning we woke up to see that it had poured while we were sleeping and many areas around the hotel were covered in water. There was nothing officially on the agenda for the day, but I had told them about a park we could go to - Tianhetan. We went to the bus station, armed with umbrellas, and took the hour bus ride to the park. By the time we got there, it was close to lunch time so we sat down in a restaurant I had visited the last time I had been there in the fall. Good food. We were quite the spectacle for the locals, but there you have it. After a filling lunch, we bought a 3rd umbrella for dad - “Hello Kitty” - and continued on our way around the park

I went to Tianhetan in the fall with Ms. Zhang, Jerry, and some of their friends. This time it was just me, mom, and dad. Because of the rain, there were very few tourists so we were able to enjoy the two main waterfalls, whose water level was high and made me a little nervous for the big waterfall we were going to see later that week. We were the only people on the boat in the wet cave and then we were with a group of maybe 15 to walk through the dry caves. Because of all the rain, it wasn’t so “dry”, but it was still beautiful to walk through.

Here's mom and dad with the main waterfall at Tianhetan.

On the bus ride back into town I started receiving phone calls from Yvonne’s mother, who was preparing our dinner that evening. She was asking after what things my parents enjoyed eating, then later called to see if she had to buy forks among other things. After refreshing ourselves at the hotel, we walked over to their home. I had spoken on the phone with Yvonne a couple of times about the dinner. I wanted the food to be a sampling of the daily dishes the Chinese commonly have. There are a number of things that a Chinese host is supposed to cook for a guest and I stressed that my parents could get that in a restaurant any time they wanted. The other thing I had stressed was keeping it a small affair, meaning me, my parents, and her parents. I won on the food part, but a couple of uncles and aunts were invited along. Before Yvonne’s father arrived, none of them could speak English. So conversation was challenging as I had to translate everything to my parents and then back.

Here's a picture of Yvonne's parents and my mom and dad. Yvonne's mother cooked the meal and is retired. Yvonne's father is a professor at a local university and teaches biophysics, specifically dealing with the brain. Yeah.

When Yvonne’s father arrived and after introductions, asked my father a very important question. “Do you like wine?” to which my father answered that he did. His face lit up like he was 5 years old and it was Christmas morning and then he hurried into the kitchen to find something for them to drink. They were taking a while, so I went in after them and found them searching the cupboards for a bottle of mao-tai. When something was found (not mao-tai, but pretty close), Yvonne’s father poured my father a whole wine glass full. Dad took his first sip and his eyes about bugged out of his head. The meal was delicious, the company was good, and we had a wonderful time. Yvonne’s uncle ended up driving us back to the hotel, but without the defroster on. It was a wonder the man could see the street.

Wednesday morning we ate breakfast together and then mom and I left to do some shopping, while dad waited to be picked up for golf. Arranging the whole golf thing had been quite the experience. Dr. Li had put me in contact with Mr. Wen, the man who owns the photo studio I had my pictures taken at. Mr. Wen couldn’t go golfing with dad because he had meetings that day, so he arranged for some of his friends to accompany my father. Because none of these men could speak English, Mr. Wen had assumed I would go to act as translator. I explained that it wasn’t possible because I had lessons that afternoon. So Mr. Wen tried to get Betty to rearrange her classes so she could go with my father. We made it clear that if that was going to happen, my dad was no longer interested in going. He had simply wanted to go for fun and to inconvenience anyone would not make it worth it. In the end, we won out and dad was able to go minus translator and had a great time.

Mom and I bought a couple of things uptown, I had her try siwawa for lunch, and then we headed out to the school. I finished packing everything that was left at the school and then got ready to finish up the exams with the students. This was also the last day of classes for the J3 students, so many of them would come up to me, say goodbye, then run off with their parents to go home. They had their exams that weekend, so it was like a mini-vacation for them to rest before taking them.

J2C2 didn’t have many exams left and I didn’t have anything planned for the rest of the lesson, so we went down to the basketball courts where the boys played basketball and I played a couple of games with the girls. I had some time to kill before the next lesson, so I spent some time with the teachers and prepared the raffle I would be having later. It was the same set up as I had done for the J3’s - any student who answered all the questions correctly on the exam had their name put into a cup and once I drew their name, they could come and get a prize. I finished testing the rest of J2C1 and then the raffle began.

Now here was one excited group. I explained the premise again to everyone to make sure they understood and once that was done, I started drawing names. The first boy actually got a round of applause and unlike with the J3’s, everyone stayed and paid attention to what everyone else got. There were some more coveted items that got taken fairly early, but they all had a good time. Once the raffle was over I thanked them for being such wonderful students and that I hoped one day I could meet them again, and dismissed class. My eyes watered, but I didn’t cry. Mom is my witness.

This, however, did not last. Some of the students I had been closer with lingered behind and while I has started to clean up the classroom, Liu Yichan (one of the girls I had gone home with) started to get really sad. I told her not to worry, that I was staying for dinner and it wasn’t goodbye just yet. She started to wail. I kid you not. I have never heard someone cry as hard as she started to cry (other than me) and for a moment I was absolutely shocked. Her crying set off a bunch of the other girls off so there were about half a dozen girls crying and then about ten other students just hanging around looking sad. This set me off. I pulled Liu Yichan into a hug and she just sobbed into my shirt. I then went around and hugged all the girls who were crying and although I was crying, tried to tell them that this wasn’t goodbye forever. And I promised to eat with them at dinner. I got the first group to go and then maybe five minutes later another group showed up - no crying in this group, but some definitely watery eyes.

Dinner was fried rice, as is all Wednesday nights at the school cafeteria. I wasn’t too hungry and most of the students were silent. I went back to my room, gathered my things, and then went to leave the school. But first, I had to stop at my classroom. After I made sure I had everything, some students came into the room and asked if they could walk me to the main gate. They also had spent the last half hour scouring the clovers to find me four 4 leaf clovers and one 5 leaf clover to wish me good luck on my journey home. As I started to make my way to the gate, I had maybe 10 students walking me. The closer I got, the more students there were. When I turned around as I was leaving to wave goodbye there were about 30 students just standing there watching me go. It was a very touching goodbye and I’ll miss them all dearly.

The next morning we got up early and were picked up by the school’s driver, Betty, Sunshine, Ms. Wang, Ms. Feng, and Ms. Han. Because the J3’s were done with classes, some of these teachers no longer had a school year. Betty doesn’t teach on Thursdays and she pulled Sunshine out of school for the day. We had two planned destinations: Huangguoshu Waterfall and the Dragon Palace. As is expected, this did not exactly go according to plan. We got to the main gate from the waterfall only to find out that we couldn’t buy tickets there. We had to go back to a new ticket center to buy the tickets. Once there we found out that we couldn’t just buy a ticket to the waterfall separately. We had to buy tickets for the waterfall and two other attractions in the area. If we wanted to just go to the waterfall, we’d have to buy the group ticket anyway. So there really was no choice, we had to buy the expensive 3 park ticket. Now the Chinese don’t want to see their money go to waste, so we ended up going to all three parks.

The first park is new in the area. There’s a good sized waterfall and a path that leads to it, but other than that, not much to offer aside from all the peacocks walking around. I actually saw my first albino peacock, which was very beautiful. But really, not worth going to and I don’t remember the name of it.

Here's a picture of me with the teachers who joined us on this day trip. From left to right, it's Ms. Feng, Ms. Han, Betty, me, and Ms. Wang.

Second park was the Huangguoshu Waterfall. My parents were intrigued by the bonsai tree and rock garden on the way there. Let me add, that the bonsai trees are people sized and almost every one of them is different. Once we reached the actual waterfall, the water level was high but not high enough to make it overly dangerous. It was Sunshine’s first time to the waterfall and because of the water spray, Betty ended up getting her one of those cheap one time use ponchos. And due to the wind she’d sometimes blow up like a balloon. The park wasn’t very crowded, which was refreshing. We were able to walk through rather quick without delay.

Here's mom and dad with Huangguoshu Waterfall.

After the waterfall, we stopped to eat lunch. Mr. Zhang picked out of the place and ordered while we were in the park, so everything was basically ready once we got there. After a filling meal, we headed on to our next destination which was Tianxing Bridge Park. This is the park with the stepping stones, the stone forest, and waterfalls. Very awesome park, but I originally had no intention of going there simply because of all the walking it required. Well, due to the fact that there weren’t many people in the park, we were able to go through it rather “quickly” - around 2 hours.

From this area it’s about a 2 hour drive back to Guiyang which means we’d get back around 6. However, we still hadn’t visited the Dragon Palace - which is a very, very large cave group. I had actually never been there which is why it was a destination to begin with, so because everyone was tired I said we could skip it. Then Sunshine got upset that we weren’t going and then the driver said that I should visit it at least once. So off we went to the caves. We only wanted to do the boat part to go through the caves, so it ended up being cheaper than the whole ticket. I must admit, the cave was one of the larges I’ve ever seen and they were very beautiful. In fact, when we were exiting a woman sharing our boat had a flashlight and she pointed it to the ceiling and we still couldn’t see the top. In hindsight, I wish I would have stuck with my first decision to go back to Guiyang, but it was still interesting.

Here's Sunshine in the Dragon Palace. She was quite the trooper making it through the entire day without real incident.

The original plan had been to have a formal goodbye dinner from the administration of the school to thank me for being their teacher. With our late arrival back into town, the original restaurant was no longer an option. So we ate at a place near our hotel that had hotpot along with other dishes to eat. Bill (one of the former foreign teachers from my school) ended up joining us for the meal and then the administration dropped by as well, including Mr. Huang and Zhang Wei. Really, it was a fun dinner. And afterwards, even though the hotel was an intersection away, they insisted on driving us back.

In the morning, before our hotel took us to the airport, Mr. Wu (the headmaster) and Betty came to our hotel to see us off and Mr. Wu gave us a thank you present. After chatting for a while, we got into the van to the airport where I was able to get the airline to waive the one checked bag limit. We arrived into Beijing with no trouble and were picked up and dropped off at our new hotel.

With My Parents in Guiyang

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 19:59:26 GMT

I woke up Saturday morning, finished packing, and doing things around the room, and waited for the driver to pick me up. In the meantime, I received an email from my brother Jeff stating that my parents had a 2 hour delay in Newark and more than likely wouldn’t make their connecting flight to Guiyang. I made some phone calls only to find out that there was nothing I could do on my end. I made it to the hotel, had a little issue with the room (apparently the rooms aren’t “equipped” for 3 people - so I had to have them add a bed or get a second room…so we got a third bed). I settled into the room and called Yvonne. We had plans to eat dinner together and I told her about my parents’ situation, so she told me to come over and she’d help me figure it out.

Once I arrived we started making phone calls and basically it ended in the same place I had earlier: nowhere. It was at that time my dad called to say that they had in fact missed their original flight, but got a seat on the next one which would arrive at ten or so that night. I ate dinner with her family and then Yvonne’s father took us to the airport to pick up my very tired parents. I have to admit, it was absolutely fabulous to be able to see them again after so long. We got back to the hotel and after catching up a little bit, we settled in for the night.

The next morning we got up early and after eating a breakfast at the hotel, were picked up by Ms. Zhang, Jerry, and Mr. He (the driver). After introductions, we headed out to Hong Feng Lake. Now, if anyone remembers this is a place that the PE couple took me back in December, but the weather was not so great, so we didn’t spend much time there. This time the weather was a little overcast, but not terrible. We first went to the main entrance to inquire about tickets. Now, the main entrance is not very close to where I had wanted to take my parents - the Miao and Dong village. So we had to get back into the car and head to the correct entrance.

The women at the Miao village welcoming us in.

Ms. Zhang took us to into the Miao village first where we were welcomed by about 6 girls. They put heart necklaces around dad and Jerry and touched Ms. Zhang’s, mom’s, and my hair to welcome us to the village. There was a little tour and then they wanted us to partake in a wedding game with either Jerry or dad as the mock groom. We declined and then they kind of disappeared. After exploring the village a little longer, we headed back to where boats would take us to the Dong village on one of the many islands. She insisted to the boat driver to go slow, but it was like he was in a race against himself.

Once we got off the boat we walked through an area where there were a number of different merchants selling all sorts of souvenirs, we saw something I haven’t seen before. This man and woman were sitting under a tree with a table between them. I walked past them to take a picture of the Dong style bridge and out of the corner of my eye, saw Ms. Zhang scurry away in the other direction. Once I turned around, I saw what she ran from - on the table had been a blanket under which was a python you could pose and take pictures with. We all declined, of course and hurried away.

The three of us with the Dong bridge.

There are two things that make a Dong village stand out. One is the bridge and the other is the drum tower. They were a little run down and not very well taken care of, but these weren’t really authentic villages - Miao or Dong. I had wanted to take mom and dad to see Kaili where the villages ARE authentic, but it was difficult to arrange a car that would take us that far and knew where the different villages were. Oh well, we made due with what we had.

Ms. Zhang has a friend who ran a restaurant in town, so that was our next stop and my parents were able to enjoy their first real Chinese meal in China. They admitted after the fact that they were a little concerned with the décor, but the food ended up being delicious. Once we got back into town, we returned to the hotel but it was still rather early in the day. So dad asked me to show them the major sights in town.

Now, this is fairly limited. So I took them to Hebin Park and we walked around there for a while. Hebin Park is very close to the center of town and while there isn’t much to see inside, it provides cleaner air and a nice space to walk. There are many paths and once we had made our way around for a while, I took them to the People’s Square which is right across the street from the park. I had bought fruit the night before and needed to get a knife, so we ventured into the underground Walmart and they were able to see how chaotic it was on a weekend. As always, it managed to be really warm inside. Once outside again, we walked to Jia Xiu Tower, which happens to be the landmark of the city.

Here’s mom and dad with the tower.

After exploring the tower, we headed back to the hotel and waited to hear from Helen who was going to take us out to dinner. I wanted my parents to try hotpot and Helen had mentioned that there was a nice place to try out near our hotel. Mom, at this point, was still having issues managing her chopsticks so for the most part I just helped serving her and dad when he was having trouble. The meal was very nice and laid back, and after we had our fill, we bid Helen goodnight and went back to the hotel to rest.

Me, Helen, and mom around the hotpot table. My father was more into the spicy than my mother was, but both of them were more than willing to experiment.

Monday morning I have class, so we had to make the trip all the way out to Bagongli. The trip was going fairly well until we were getting close to the school where we got stuck in by far the worst traffic jam I have ever experienced. We ended up having to get out of the cab and walking the rest of the way. My parents were then able to see the drastic difference between the area surrounding the school and that of the school inside. The school is very “isolated” from the suburbs around it. I took them first to my bedroom and then had them help me prepare the classroom.

Because this was my last week at the school it was the time I was giving my exam. Last semester I always had a teacher sit in the classroom with the students not currently testing, but this time I had both my parents with me. I first had them go around the room and have the students introduce themselves to them and then the girls sat with my mother, the boys with my father, and they could ask questions and practice their conversation skills. Afterwards they told me what a handful the kids were, but they were able to reinforce some things I had trouble putting into words before. J2C2 doesn’t speak English as well as J2C1, but they’re much more friendly. Not to mention, J2C1 is very cliquey. Some of the boys in J2C2 actually arm wrestled my dad - they came out to me and said “Katie, your father is so strong!” It made me wonder, but I had to wait to ask later. Anyway, the students seemed to really enjoy being able to meet my parents and speak with them.

Dad playing basketball with some of the boys.

We ate lunch at campus and then Huang Chao from J2C1 approached my father and asked if he would be willing to play basketball with the boys for a while. It proved entertaining to watch and the boys really enjoyed being able to play with him. I then showed my mom and dad around the school and we gathered a bunch of my things up and headed back into town. The afternoon we spent at Qian Ling Park.

I took them to the top of the mountain by the cableway and then to the pavilion at the very top of the mountain overlooking the city. The day was a bit overcast so we weren’t able to see the whole skyline, but it was still a nice view for them. Next stop was the temple. I pointed out all the basics I could think of and once we finished exploring, we headed down to the lake by the road path which had plenty of monkeys running around. Now, some of you might remember the signs that had been around the park with the terrible English translations. I’m assuming enough people who spoke English complained to someone and all the signs have been changed, so I’m very glad I took pictures of the signs when I did. I am also glad the signs have changed because although they were amusing, it wasn’t good to the park’s image. However, one sign managed to have one tiny mistake in it which read: “The consequence of taking earth randomly is desert everywhore.” Oh, how one little letter can make a difference.

Here’s my mother and father in Qian Ling Park playing the coin game. In the water are a number of containers that you try to drop coins you buy from the temple into. It’s really a lot of fun. My father and I tied, 7 to 7.

That evening we met up with Betty, Sunshine, and Jack for dinner at an ethnic restaurant on the same street as our hotel that specialized in Miao and Dong foods. The dinner was very pleasant and Sunshine was as charming as ever. I asked her if she’d be willing to dance for my parents, so she broke into a routine in the restaurant. Once we were finished eating, Jack dropped us off uptown so I could show my parents the night market. In case anyone forgot, the night market in Guiyang is where merchants set up booths all along the streets at night selling an array of things from DVDs and electronics, to pillows and t-shirts. It’s crowded and interesting to walk through at least once, even if you aren’t buying anything. These past few weeks I’ve heard rumors that the city is actually trying to shut it down because they think it makes the streets too crowded and that it gives a bad image to the city. However, Guiyang is actually known for its night market. So I guess time will tell.

Well, I believe that is where I will stop for now. More to come soon! Take care till next time.

My Last Week Teaching

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 14:01:11 GMT

So my last normal week of school was spent finishing up lessons, reassuring students that it was still one week until I left, teaching them how to write to their pen pals on their own, and "finalizing" an itinerary for my parents' visit. I thought I was going to be super sad to finish teaching, but I think that with my parents coming, I'm just so excited about their arrival that the sadness about leaving the kids hasn't fully sunk in. I'm sure it will next week. I did have a moment with one of my favorite students. She was asking me when I was leaving and almost started to cry - which means she'll cry next week, meaning I'll end up crying, too. Anyone who knows me knows that my tear ducts always manage to be put to good use.

Teaching the students how to address an envelope to their pen pals was hilarious. They were asking what every single dot and number meant, but the only thing I had trouble explaining was the zip code. I actually had to draw a diagram on the blackboard after class and explain where everything goes. Most of them don't send letters so this is a completely new experience for them. For some reason, some of the pen pal letters were missing and/or their American friend forgot their return address. Yikes. So I have 4 students who I need to find new pen pals for once I get home, but I'll won't worry about it till then. 3 girls and 1 boy, so if anyone reading this wants a Chinese pen pal, let me know.

Monday night for dinner me and Ms. Xiao went to eat our traditional bowl of noodles. I forgot to bring my camera so I didn't get a picture of them. But I guess I have enough pictures of other things, right? Tuesday night a bunch of the teachers and I got together to make dinner together at the PE couple's room. They play cards, I wander around and watch TV, then we all eat together.

Here's Ms. Zhao, Ms. Xiao, me, Betty, Ms. Yang, and Ms. Wu eating together. If you look at the dish directly in front of Ms. Wu you'll find actual green chilli peppers. Cooked in hot oil. Call me a pansy, but it's one dish I can't handle. It's like fire in my mouth.

Wednesday afternoon a photographer came to school to take the group graduation pictures. There are two classes that are graduating in a week J3C1 and J3C2. So they took pictures as a class with all their teachers in them and then took a big group picture with their two class mothers - Ms. Dai on the far left and Ms. Wang on the far right. These kids are a riot and I hope that I can meet some of them again someday. We'll see though. And one thing I have a lot of trouble getting used to is that they don't like to smile for these kinds of pictures. They actually asked me not to smile for the ones I was in, which was hard for me.

Group shot. I love how a few of them are looking at something behind where I'm taking the picture. I'm guessing this is when the headmaster and Ms. Zhang were having a heated discussion about recruitment efforts. Apparently the most recent trip was not as successful as the school would have wanted it. I could go through the trouble of naming everyone, but I won't do that except for 2 students who are pen pals with Tess and one of her friends. Tess, your pen pal is sitting in the first row 4 in from the left with the "gdc" on her shirt - Fang Yuli. The friend who's pen pal is Kate (Yang Wanling) is in the second row, the 6 th in from the left with the dark blue shirt.

Thursday I was busy with packing, organizing things, preparing the students' exam, and making sure all arrangements were still good to go. One thing that China has taught me is that anything is subject to change. In fact, I had sent my parents a tentative schedule of their time while they're here in Guiyang with a disclaimer that it might switch. Shock, less than 24 hours after sending out the email it changed. Hey, I tried.

In the middle of all this students and teachers have been giving me going away presents. One student got me this fairly large stuffed animal, teachers have been getting me box sets of tea, purses, and so on. Of course, none of these are small. I'm thinking I'll need to make another trip to the post office despite my parents brining empty suitcases. For a moment or so there I was sure there wouldn't be a problem. Now, not so much.

Friday I slept in a little, then started handing out letters that I had written to all the teachers. Most of them were really worried about whether I had written to them in English - and then they were relieved when they saw that I had written to them in Chinese. I think these letters were actually more challenging for me than writing to all of my students - which by the way, I have already finished writing my replies. The letters from the lower grade were overall shorter, but just as touching. After eating lunch I finished up some repacking in my room. The original plan had been for me to stay the night at Betty's after treating all the teachers to dinner. However, her mother-in-law called the night before and said she was coming to Guiyang to see a doctor and needed somewhere to stay. Thus, I was asked if I would like to go back to the school.

We left the school around 2:30 - and when I say we, I mean 13 teachers and Mr. Zhang (the school driver) all crammed into his van. We got to the restaurant where some people started to play cards and me with some other teachers played mahjong. As always, I bowed out earlier than everyone else because there is only so long I can play and still be entertained. I managed to walk away a winner though, which doesn't happen to often when I play Ms. Feng. Other people started to show and when dinner was served there were 21 people in all, so we had to have two tables. We had a private room and after a while it got fairly rowdy. Especially when Mr. Huang didn't approve of the alcohol I had Mr. Liu bring - he actually went out to his car and brought up a couple bottles of the really good stuff. And from there, the noise in the room escalated. Actually the amount of noise in a party in China relates directly to how much fun everyone has. They feel the noisier, the more the host will know they're holding a good party. Zhang Wei (a woman I stayed with one weekend) and Mr. Huang love to banter, so they were competing with each other to see who could get their table louder. Then they started taking different people around the room to toast everyone. Zhang Wei actually made Jerry go around and tell all of his teachers how he would improve his studies in their class. Poor Jerry, his mother's friends in Guiyang are his teachers.

Here's Betty toasting some people at one of the tables.

Mr. Huang (the man to the far right) made all the men from our table come to the other table to toast everyone to show "what gentlemen they were". I love how this managed to turn into a battle. You can see that Zhang Wei (woman in the black shirt right next to Mr. Huang) is already plotting her next move.

Basically everyone had a good time joking around, drinking, and eating. In the middle of all this Sunshine was running around toasting everyone with Pepsi. A highlight I have to admit was when Betty leaned over to me and said "Katie, I'm drunk." They made me wear one of my new Chinese style dresses, so anyone who passed our room actually stopped and looked again to make sure their eyes weren't playing tricks on them. A foreigner in Chinese clothes!

Jack, me, Sunshine, and Betty.

After a while, many people started to run out of steam and a large group left early. We had to wait for the main car to take us back to the school. Once the bill was settled (about $120 US for the food and the drinks we bought beforehand - pull that off in the States for 21 well-fed people), we all climbed back into Mr. Zhang's car and he drove us all the way out here again. As we made our way I couldn't help but realize it was probably my last nighttime ride to Fuxing for possibly a long time. When I first arrived back in September my first ride to the school was at night and I have to admit, the area around the school is rather scary at night. I actually cried myself to sleep that first night. It's amazing to see how long ago that feels and at the same time, how fast these past few months have gone by.

My parents will arrive tomorrow night and I can hardly wait. I'm thinking about making them write a paragraph in the journal to tell you all about their impressions of China. My next update might not be until I get to Beijing. I also will probably not be as responsive to emails while they are here. Take care until next time!

A Weekend of Goodbyes

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 15:41:06 GMT

This past week has been rather fast paced. I've been getting things organized for when my parents are here and making sure I'm going to be able to fit in all my goodbyes. Then Yvonne sent me a message to let me know she was going to be in town this weekend. On top of all this I've been writing goodbye letters to all the teachers I've become close with - which means many of them have to be in Chinese. Ms. Xiao has been helping me a lot in that department, so slowly everything is getting done.

Monday I had classes as usual, but the younger students are slowly coming to the realization that I'm leaving soon. Many of them have come up to me (one even in the middle of a lesson) to ask if I was leaving them. I do plan to have these students write letters to me as well, and I've already prepared my basic letter on the computer and printed it out. I'll just add more to some of them. Let's just say that Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday my hand is going to be sore because I want to finish writing them before my parents come Saturday evening.

Tuesday afternoon Luo Hong came to the school to see me one last time. Now, as much as I enjoy the school here, it really doesn't have that much to offer when entertaining guests. I gave her a tour of the campus and then took her to my room and showed her a few things. After that, because it was the middle of the afternoon, all there really was to do was chat. So after talking for a little while I walked her to the gate and we said our goodbyes. The rest of the afternoon I worked on finishing a couple of projects like the letters and taking care of preparing for the rest of my lessons.

On Wednesday I tried to do as little as possible. Why? Because this was how my weekend schedule looked: Thursday day trip with Ruina and Lily then dinner with them and possibly John. Friday afternoon with Helen and the evening with Yvonne and her family. Saturday all day with Summer's mom Dede. Sunday lunch with some teachers. So, I tried to conserve energy because I knew how crazy the weekend would be.

Thursday afternoon I met up with Ruina at 4 at the main gate to Hebin Park in town. Lily came and picked us up to take us a place called Jin Long Gu - or the Golden Dragon Canyon. It's actually quite near the place that I went on the day trip with J3C1 a couple of weeks ago. The road was a little windy and unpaved to get there, but we made it in one piece. The park itself was fairly deserted. I think we were the only people there. Basically there was a path that led along a valley with a river running between it. Very nice, but the water was terribly polluted, which is a shame. We explored for a while and then the air got more and more humid, so we all knew it was going to rain and rain hard. Ruina's feet were getting sore, so we headed back to the parking lot.

Me in the valley. I thought it was cool that you could really see the layers in the rock.

The park is right next to a Buyi Village - Buyi being another ethnic minority in China. Some of the homes are really commercialized for people who come to the park so they have somewhere to eat. A woman actually came out of one of the restaurants and walked us to the parking lot saying how appreciative she was that we came and we should come again after a big rain because the water is better and wouldn't we like a snack or a meal before we left? She wasn't pushy at all, which was refreshing. Unfortunately we already had plans for the evening, so we had to decline.

Ruina went to rest in the car and Lily took me to explore the village. It's a small village, but the majority of it is made of stone. This isn't a huge tourist spot, so as I told Lily it "felt real". There were no stalls, no people trying to sell you things, just people living their every day lives. And what was really interesting to me about this village was the fact that it was built during the Cultural Revolution. So carved and painted into the stone walls are slogans along the lines of "long live the party." Lily had to translate many of them for me because I don't know much political jargon. I thought it was just an interesting combination to see.

Just a basic house in the area. Another different aspect about this village (and possibly Buyi people in general) is that they don't burn coal like practically everyone else in China. They burn wood to cook and in this picture you can see it stacked up next to the house.

I thought this really captured the progress in China. You have one side being the old style home and then bam, right next to it is a brand spanking new house. It's one of the things that still amazes me each day - seeing the old combined with the new. You'll go to the countryside and see a man plowing the fields, he'll stop and answer his cell phone. It's just utterly bizarre at times, but China is still really developing. It's going to be interesting to see what happens in the next 10 years.

After we explored the village, we made the trip back into town to meet up with John for dinner. We stopped for a moment or so along the way by a herd of water buffalo. China always keeps you on your toes. The first restaurant was crowded and had a line, so we switched gears and went to a steak restaurant. It was at this point that the photo place I had gone to on Sunday decided to deliver my photos, so they came to the restaurant. At this point its pouring down rain outside, but we're eating and enjoying each other's company. It was honestly the first time I've seen John in about 5 months. He's been so busy with work and his home life. About half way through the meal the power went out. Complete darkness. (Of course, this is when I dropped my fork, too.) But the serving staff were prepared with candles. Once they were all placed on tables and I got a new fork, we continued the rest of the meal by candlelight. When we paid, John joked with the server that we should get a discount for it being so dark. I said my goodbyes to Ruina, then Lily and John took me back out to the school.

The next day was June 1st, "International Children's Day." Now, I have no clue if this is in fact international, but kids in China have this day off from school. So that meant that Sunshine and all the other teachers' children were running around the school when I got up in the morning. I waited for Helen to call me and when she did, I headed into town to meet up with her. Kids were everywhere, most of them with new toys and they were swinging them around - I got whacked a couple of times. It was a little too much for me to handle. Anyway, Helen took me to a milk tea place and we sat around talking. After we were finished we took a walk around town then we parted ways and I headed to Yvonne's home.

I swear, Yvonne's mom is the cutest thing ever. I arrived and while Yvonne was showing me pictures from her 3 week trip to the States (she wrote a paper and was asked to attend a conference in Florida to present it), her mom kept shuffling in and giving me different things to eat or showing me different things she had recently bought. Yvonne really enjoyed her time in the States and now she's considering applying to different schools to get her PHD. We had a very pleasant evening eating and catching up. Her father had some work to do, so her cousin was actually the person to drive me back to the school. He chose the wrong road - there are a couple of different routes to go and one is about 15 minutes longer than all the others. This was the one he chose and I kept trying to tell him that the road was bad and it was shorter to turn around and go a different way. He kept saying he lives in Guiyang so he knows the way. Once we finally got to the school he basically asked me the faster way. Made me laugh.

The next morning Summer's uncle picked me up and took me to the restaurant. Dede had a going away party planned for me and invited a bunch of foreigners to come. I didn't see the logic in inviting a bunch of people for me to meet right before I went home, but there you have it. Three foreigners came, all from the States, and they were all very nice. Andy, Kara, and Susie are all teachers at universities in the city. It was their first full day to spend with Dede, so it was interesting to see that I am not the only person who finds her a little wearing after a while. First we all made jiaozi (dumplings) and got acquainted with each other. After finishing those up, cooking them, then eating them, Dede took us upstairs for a party. She organized many different games that the children were much more interested in, so it was fun to watch them play. Andy, Kara, and I ended up playing Chinese checkers for a while.

Afterwards I told Dede it would be a good idea to climb the mountain behind the restaurant. Turns out this was a better idea that I had thought. The last time I had climbed the mountain there was an activity center under construction. Well, it's completely finished. So we were able to play basketball, ping pong, badminton, and so on. Andy and I had a fun game of intense ping pong with a ball that was dented on one side. So for the most part it bounced like normal, but every once in a while it was bounce weird. Made the game interesting.

Here's me playing ping pong with the restaurant's cook. He's really into the game and he's very good at it. It we would have been playing a real game, he would have annihilated me.

Here's Susie, me, two of Dede's friends, Kara, and Andy. Andy and I made our game even more challenging by holding the cups of scalding hot tea in them. But we only made them half full to avoid full on burns.

We took a little walk around the compound then headed back down to the room where we had had the party. I mentioned casually that the other rooms had mahjong tables. Kara mentioned that she had always wanted to learn, so I offered to teach her. So the four of us went into one of the private rooms and I taught them how to play. Apparently Andy had tried to learn before, but it was from someone who is Chinese. I don't know if this is a national trait, or just with the people who teach mahjong, but they get so impatient with the person learning and say "oh, just play this tile." It was funny because Dede tried to help me teach, but she couldn't handle how slow we were going and had to leave the room! We played a couple open hands, then tried a couple of closed. They all got it - which gives me hope about teaching some of my family members how to play. After a few games it was time to eat.

Here's my ping pong partner roasting the fish that the restaurant is well known for. The cut the fish down the stomach and just roast him/her over the flame all the while dousing it with different spices. Completely delicious and I know I'll miss it. I'm hoping my dad and I can make a version of this when we go home. Betty wrote me a couple of recipes that I'm hoping we'll be able to pull off. Granted, she wrote these in Chinese and I had an interesting time translating them.

After a most delicious dinner, we finished a few rounds of mahjong and then each headed our separate ways. Sunday I didn't really have any plans other than eating lunch with Ms. Zhao. I also had my first try at packing, basically to give me an idea of how screwed I was going to be. The answer? VERY. If my parents weren't coming with empty luggage I don't know what I would have done.

Well, I'll let you know how my last "normal" week at the school goes! Until next time!

Another Week in Guiyang

Mon, 28 May 2007 05:08:50 GMT

After I got back from my trip to Shanghai, I battled illness once again. At first I thought it was strictly change of diet issues. However, students and teachers started getting just as ill with the same symptoms. Perhaps there was a bug going around in Guiyang? Although, I'm sure the change in diet didn't exactly help.

I would like to make one somewhat addition to my previous post about the trip to Shanghai. Now, I know I'm fairly inexperienced in the realms of MBA programs, having never been through one personally. But even over a week after meeting this group of people, I'm still rather impressed by them. Some of them were sent to the program on behalf of their work, some had their own business. I spoke with people involved in auditing, the car industry, textiles, and so on. It was just nice to see such a well mannered group of people exploring the business opportunities of China and representing the west in a business setting.

By the way, as a warning, this entry is kind of jumping all over the place, just like my week.

I am officially done teaching the J3's. One student was ill last Thursday (same illness), so he couldn't test. I finished up with him and finished up all the grades. Before the exam, I told the students that if they got all the answers correct, I would put their name into a cup and had a number of different prizes they could choose from. This was favoritism in disguise. Most of my favorite students have very good English or they would study well for the exam. However, I made the test a bit too difficult and not as many students got 100% as I had thought would. So I also let the people who got only 1 question wrong into a drawing after I finished the 100% group. I had about 40 gifts and 24 students to go through them. On Tuesday night I had them come to my classroom at 6:30. 3 girls were actually waiting outside my room. Then the rest came running down. It was just fun to see them look at all the things and pick out something - the items were things like books in English, bookmarks, US coins and dollar bills, pins, stamps, comics, dictionaries, and holiday related items.

One thing I also did was have them write me a "goodbye" letter while they were waiting for me to test them. Most of those letters were so incredibly touching and I'm planning to keep all of them. So I took the time and wrote goodbye letters in response. 48 some letters by hand. After that, I'm doing the one's for J2 on the computer. But I included my email and home address so they can keep in contact with me. In addition, I made little baggies for every student that included a Mickey Mouse pencil, some Disney chocolate coins, and a bunch of candy I bought here at the supermarket. I thought the kids would be into the pencils. However, they were more into the chocolate Disney coins. With two foil sides, they actually started trading them with each other. One girl actually came down and told her classmates which bags to take so she could trade things for the coins with them - no exaggeration.

It was a pleasant, yet bittersweet, exchange. These kids were so easy for me to teach because their English is that much better than the lower grade. I guess it just is a reminder that my time here is swiftly drawing to a close. As excited as I am to come home, this is making me incredibly sad to leave all these kids who I've spent the last year with. Some of them even wrote things like "I think of you as a big sister, not a teacher", "I used to think learning English was boring, but you showed me it could be fun, too" and "I like learning English now." I hope the batch from the lower grade is just as rewarding.

The consistent warm weather has lead to one thing I absolutely dread about the summer: mosquitoes. One guy got in my room one night and feasted on my legs. We're talking six bites. I hope I rolled over on him in my sleep. I mentioned this to Ms. Zhang and she's like "you don't have the medicine?" I beg your pardon? What she was referring to was a kind of incense that you burn in your room to kill those pesky insects. So she gives me some and I figure I'd put it to work. I light it and, to me, it smells like the stuff I used to burn in middle school. After I make sure it's burning okay, I jump in the shower. I came out and find about 20 insect carcasses all over my floor including a spider, like a bug war zone or something. I have no idea what's in this stuff - I'd rather not know, but how could that be safe for me to breath when it made a spider from the ceiling fall down and die? I'm probably only going to use it on particularly sticky nights.

Another great story from this week came late Tuesday night. I was feeling better so I was catching up on a few things on the internet. 11 o'clock rolls around and bam…no lights. I wait. Usually when the power goes out at night, it comes back on within 5 minutes. 5 minutes come and go. Luckily I have a candle, so by the light of my laptop screen I light it and then figure it's late as it is, and climb in bed. The next morning? Still no power. And no explanation. The entire area is out. I get some chores done and spend time chatting with the teachers. Finally at 3, the power came back on. I love how this happens randomly all the time.

Thursday night I promised to take Huang Li and a couple of other girls from J3C2 out to dinner - Xia Min, Zhou Junyan, Li Mengxue, and Jiang Siyu. I've done a couple trips with J3C1, so I figured it was time to go out with these girls. We went to a local restaurant and had a good time. They were so happy to not have to eat the cafeteria food, which I must admit is losing its charm for me as well. Afterwards, I let them go to the local store to buy some snacks. Just another memory to add to the list.

Now you all might remember that a couple weeks ago I went and got some professional pictures done. During the week, Ms. Xiao called the studio to ask what was going on because no one had called to tell us they were ready to pick up. Turns out they had been done for over a week and they for some reason or another, hadn't gotten around to calling us. So Friday, after Ms. Xiao was done teaching, we headed into town and picked up my book and the CD of pictures. I'm going to share a few of them - there's about 85 in total. The files are huge, so let's really thank Sarah this time for uploading the pictures for me.

The Chinese outfit from last time. For the most part, I don't like how these turned out but it seems like everyone else does. Go figure.

Up close with some fake flowers! Okay, I wish I was smiling, but I like the eyes.

Third outfit, the blue dress. With foliage.

The tight red dress. I could not slouch much in this one. I had to slide down to sit for this shot.

So there you have it! I hope you like them all. Overall, I'm really happy with how they all turned out. I have to thank Dr. Li again for setting this up for me. It was a wonderful gift and experience that I will always remember!

After picking up the pictures, Ms. Xiao and I went out for siwawa (the wrap things), I bought a couple of things, and went back to the school for the evening. In the morning, I got up and went into town to meet my friend Luo Hong for lunch at noon. Luo Hong is the girl I met through the volunteer organization during the Spring Festival. She can't speak English, so it's always great practice to spend time with her. After we finished eating, we went to the Foreign Language Bookstore so I could finish buying a set of learning DVDs that I'll use after I come home. I then went over to Betty's weekend school. She was finishing up grading some papers and after chatting with Jack and playing with Sunshine, we went back to her home so she and Sunshine could nap and I watched TV. I don't know why, but I just felt so incredibly sad while they were sleeping. I'll probably see Sunshine and Jack once or twice more before I leave. Oh, and in case you were wondering, they gave Dudu away to Jack's brother because Betty couldn't handle the puppy anymore. So no more Dudu for me to play with.

When they got up, we all headed to Sunshine's violin lesson. I was surprised at how well she's doing considering she just started playing in November or December. Her lesson lasted 45 minutes and then we all headed to a restaurant for dinner to celebrate the caretaker's family getting their new house. I hadn't found out about this until Friday afternoon, but I was prepared this time with a red envelope. When I got there, the woman (who I just call Mrs. Huang) was so incredibly happy that I came. We're talking shaking my hand over and over again repeating "thank you! Thank you!" She actually walked me to a table and helped me sit down, like I was a guest of honor. Dinner was a blast. I was at a table with Ms. Zhang, Jerry, Ms. Liang, and Ms. Feng. We all had a good time chatting, eating, and if you're at the same table as Ms. Feng, drinking. A lot of the guests filtered out quickly, so we combined tables with some of the other teachers who were staying longer. When it was time to leave, a bunch of the teachers wanted to go play mahjong. Me, Mr. Liu, and Jerry passed and went back to the school.

Sunday I went into town to meet up with Helen for lunch. We chatted for a little while and then she took me to a place to get my photos from this whole trip developed. People have asked me why I don't just leave them on my computer, but I'm a photo album kind of girl. Plus, I don't want to drag my laptop everywhere to show people my pictures. I narrowed it a lot - so far I've taken close to 2000 pictures. I'm proud I got that down to 700. And that it only cost me about $60 to get them developed AND delivered to the school. After some trouble getting home (Helen left her glasses in my purse…so we had a very strange time exchanging them back), I rested and got ready for another week of teaching.

Until next time!

My Weekend in Shanghai

Thu, 24 May 2007 03:53:34 GMT

Giving the J3's their exams turned out to be a fairly big challenge. I think I ended up making the exam a little too hard for the majority of the students. It's funny how some of them would come to me and answer me right away with the questions and others would shuffle their feet not wanting to admit they didn't know. On Thursday I finished with the last student, ran to my room, got my suitcase, and got into the school car to go to the airport.

The flight was delayed about 30 minutes. For me, compared to past experiences, this wasn't a big deal. However, out of the Guiyang airport, delays are very rare. People started throwing a fit - complaining to the staff and pacing. I guess after the whole Hawaii trip (for details, just ask) and everything I went through coming home in January, I can take 30 minutes any day. Once I landed in Shanghai, I found a bus to take me into the city and after that stopped, I got a cab to the hotel. I got to the hotel, got the package Chris left me at the concierge desk, and went up to meet them at a gathering they were having on the 2 nd floor to see the my first family member in almost 4 months!

After dropping my things off at the room and freshening up a little bit, I went back downstairs and mingled for a while and was introduced to a large amount of people. I've never been good with names, so luckily most of them had nametags on for this part. Kim G. suggested that we go to a bar, and out we all went. This was a section of town called Xintiandi filled with all sorts of bars and restaurants that many foreigners frequent. I have to admit, I was a little bit on foreigner overload considering how few foreigners I meet in Guiyang. The bar we ended up going to had a nice atmosphere, it was a balcony overlooking the area - the music selection was a little bizarre ("Achy Breaky Heart" to Ricky Martin). However, I think they were a little understaffed. And it appeared like they only had one English speaking server so when they sent up another girl to help out, she kind of froze when people started to order. I went up to her and spoke to her in Chinese, asking her if she could speak any English - the answer was no. You could visibly see how relaxed she got when she knew someone in the group could speak Chinese - so when it came to ordering, I made sure people relayed to me what they wanted and I'd tell her. Fun night out. I was glad I could be useful.

The next morning Chris and Kim had some things they had to do for their program. I was meeting my friend Xiao Yang and he was going to take me around town to see a couple of places. First stop? Yuyuan Garden. On my last trip to Shanghai, it was the only place I had truly enjoyed in the city. Actually, it might have been the only place period that I enjoyed in the city. I just remember the weather was awful the last time I had been there - rainy, humid. Plus, I wasn't a fan of the tour guide we had. Overall, my last trip to Shanghai didn't exactly leave a positive impression.

Back to this trip. The garden I wanted to visit is locating in a very tourist area that the "old Shanghai" filled with many traditional looking buildings. Many of these have shops selling the basic items you would expect to find in China. There's also a Starbucks, a KFC, and I think I saw a McDonalds. The area is fun to just walk around to see the new and old mixing together.

This is actually a teahouse. If you look closely at the path leading up to it, you'll see that its not a straight line, but a zigzag. If memory serves me right, this is because evil spirits can only travel in straight lines. So the bridge to the teahouse was built this way to keep it safe from those pesky evil spirits.

Here's a shot of me in the garden. This was actually a private garden that somehow managed to be kept safe over the years. I don't know exactly how/when it was opened to the public, but it's gorgeous. Lots of old Chinese art, stone and wood carvings, interesting furniture, and plenty of ways to get lost. Well, not really for the last part. But without a guide it was a bit more challenging to navigate. The garden itself was super crowded - me and my friend were playing "guess that language" as we passed all the tour groups. I'm actually still amazed that we got this picture without anyone else in it. Another thing I found amazing is the fact that those rocks in the background aren't natural. They were brought to Shanghai from another part of China, and pieced together by an architect. If you look really close at them, you can see how they were put together.

Once we left the garden, we headed to the Bund. The Bund is the area along the Huangpu River. One side is predominantly historic western style buildings, the other is the Shanghai skyline you see in pictures. If you scroll down I chose to include a nighttime shot of that and am using a daytime shot of the western side. Now most of the older buildings are bank, after bank, after bank. It's cool to just walk up and down the side of the river and look at either side. There's also a memorial to the people who liberated Shanghai from western control. I would be able to tell you more, but the museum dedicated to the history of the Bund was closed for restoration. The last time I tried to visit there in 2004 our tour guide brought us there after it had closed for the evening. Perhaps it was never meant to be.

Me and Xiao Yang stopped to eat some dumplings for lunch on Nanjing Street. This is THE shopping district in town. All sorts of top brands (western and Chinese) have department stores on this street and it's actually closed off from cars, so you don't have to worry about dodging traffic except when crossing intersections and the trolleys that can take you from one end of the street to another. We didn't stop into any of the stores because I knew that the following day would be dedicated to shopping. He dropped me back off at my hotel - which happened to be located right near the end of the shopping street and I was able to rest for about half an hour before embarking on my next adventure.

During their program here, Chris and Kim's group made many company visits. The last one was with Kim's company, PWC, so she invited me along. It was a little bit of a challenge to find the place because the address I was given didn't have the Chinese characters on it. The first taxi driver didn't know where it was, so I had to get another cab. The driver of this cab had to get directions from one of the people working at the hotel. I ended up arriving at the place about 10 minutes before everyone else. The presentation was very interesting and informative about doing business in China. It managed to reinforce certain information and introduce some new stuff, too. Afterwards, we headed over to the same area we had gone to the night before for some drinks.

Here's Chris, me, and Kim at "happy hour". I was able to have some interesting conversations with people who live in the Shanghai area about living in China and the different challenges it presents each day. Some of them even admitted to me that it was sometimes hard to live in Shanghai, they couldn't imagine living where I was. Hah! Most of them had no clue where Guiyang, Guizhou was. Me, Chris, Kim, and two other guys stayed behind to hang out with the people from PWC while everyone else went to a fabric market to get suits and other things made.

We got back to the hotel, changed, and got ready for dinner. Kim G. had lived in Shanghai for 3 months before on another trip, and had made reservations at a restaurant for us. This place had Malaysian cuisine, and was by far had one of the coolest atmosphere's ever - hidden in a little park right on a pond with stepping stones and really cool decorations. We ended up having a set menu (simply because there were so many people) and we all had a good time. Once we were all full, we headed to a bar overlooking the Bund. It's absolutely gorgeous at night and at 11 o'clock they turned off all the lights, so I'm glad I took pictures right when we got there. After some people got their party on, Chris herded us out so we could turn in "early". When we got back to the hotel, however, we met up with someone else in the group and we went to the top floor of the hotel (47 th, I believe) and had another drink. The view from up there was great. I headed down before everyone else and settled in before they got back.

The next day: project shopping. First stop was the silk market. It was me, Chris, Kim, and their friend Bill. This is a market where they will actually measure you on the spot and make the suit for you within 24 hours. We did a preliminary sweep of the area - stall after stall of people making suits, dress shirts, coats, dresses, traditional Chinese outfits, and so on. Chris found a material he liked and after talking with the owner, I stressed to them that we'd be leaving very early the next morning. For an extra 100 yuan, they could have it delivered to our hotel by 9 that evening. Kim was able to find a couple of button down shirts and a cashmere winter coat, Chris got his suit and some ties, and I was able to get a button down shirt along with a couple of gifts for people. I really had a good time haggling for everyone.

We went back to the hotel, dropped off our already huge load, and headed out for lunch. This is when I officially started to feel really awful. I think it might have had something to do with the abrupt change in diet, but my digestive tract was not a happy camper. I shouldn't have ordered anything, in hindsight, but oh well. We ended up at the Marriott hotel for lunch and the view was great. Towards the end of the meal, we saw a blimp that was flying around rather erratically. Entertaining to watch. Once everyone else was finished eating, we headed to the fake market. Watches, shoes, luggage, DVDs, you name it. This place is any official businessman's nightmare. I didn't really need/want anything, so I tagged along and haggled for Chris, Kim, and some of their friends when they wanted something. It was very funny in some instances because the salespeople were surprised by the fact that I could speak standard Chinese. While Chris was buying a Mahjong set, I asked the girl if she ever hears anyone speaking correctly. She said I was the first foreigner in over a week she'd heard pronounce something the right way. Made me laugh.

We went back to the hotel again so we could rest until dinner. The rest was cut short by the maid coming to clean up the room. We headed down to the lobby and Kim started to check out the gift shops there. One of these shops sold silk rugs. The salesgirl was just absolutely thrilled that I could speak to her in Chinese, so she'd tell me the features and I'd translate to Kim. There were these placemat sized rugs that were a couple thousand US - 100% woven silk. Absolutely gorgeous. A little out of our price range. Anyway, it was cute because the girl was like "if your sister-in-law is interested in a rug, I can give her a discount." Later, she said "I will call my boss and see if I can get it even lower for you." She was bargaining for me. Hah! Kim ended up getting a rug later that evening.

After sneaking in a little nap, we all went out to dinner as a group. I couldn't ride on the group bus due to liability - which was completely understandable. So Chris, Kim, and I took a cab. We got to the restaurant first and the view was very much like the one we had at the bar the night before.

It's a little blurry, but it really gives you a good idea of how the Bund looks at night.

We all ate our dinner together outside. It ended up getting a bit chilly, but the food was good. We laughed some laughs, took some pictures, and really enjoyed ourselves. We had to head out early with another guy because the suits would be delivered around 9:30. We waited in the hotel lobby and maybe 5 minutes later a girl approached me and said "you can speak Chinese, right? You came earlier to our store, right?" Apparently, she had been waiting for almost an hour. Oops. In our defense, I had stressed and made her repeat 9:30 over and over again on the phone. Well, Chris's suit turned out good and maybe 10 minutes later, the other guy's suits arrived. The bus of people came back and everyone wanted to go to the top floor for a drink. We went back to the room and it was decided we'd skip the drink and pack. By this point I was feeling fairly awful again so I was glad about the decision.

The next morning, bright and early, Chris and Kim headed out to the airport. I ended up calling my friend who I had plans with again that day and told him I was sick and couldn't do anything that day. I rested in the hotel room and he came with his father at 12:30 to pick me up and take me to the airport. I was a little nervous I'd get really sick on the plane, but I made it back to Guiyang without incident. I did however call Betty once I was back and told her I might not be able to teach the next day and could she have me switch lessons with other teachers. It's funny because she came when she got to the school around 8 in the morning and woke me up. After she left, I went back to sleep. When I woke up again later I had absolutely no idea whether her coming to my room had been a dream or if it had been real. I had to ask her to make sure. Turns out she just gave the lessons to other teachers, so now I don't have a lesson until late Wednesday afternoon. Hopefully that will give me time to recover from whatever is currently wracking my immune system.

Overall: Shanghai was good times, despite the illness. It made a much better impression on me this time and I saw the side of the city that many foreigners enjoy. It has all the comforts of the western world, but it doesn't really feel like China to me. A lot of people talked to me about the "real China" and how nice it was to see that someone (me) was really experiencing it. But I won't lie, it was a wonderful break. Till next time!

Back to Work...Well, Kind of...

Tue, 15 May 2007 18:24:26 GMT

So it's been a while since my last update. For some reason or another, I just didn't feel like sitting down and writing about what's been going on - which in all honesty, hasn't been that much. Sorry to those who really look forward to these updates!!

I left off when I got back from my trip to Chi Shui. Because of all the walking and mountain climbing, my legs were just as sore as they would be after the first week of track practice. I was walking like a cowboy and going up to the 5 th floor to visit the PE couple was absolute torture. Luckily, by Sunday I was almost back to normal. I did manage to go to Walmart to buy some cereal and found tuna in a can, which I already know is going to be awesome. It's the little things that can make you happy! I spent Sunday pretty much in my room preparing for the week.

Now, I was told the vacation was from May 1st to the 7th. When I hear such a statement, I believe that classes start again on the 7th. So I got up early Monday morning, prepared the classroom only to notice that there were no students. I won't lie, I was fairly peeved. But I called Ms. Liang and she took me out shopping. Ms. Liang can't speak any English, but she's such a sweet woman that it's just fun to be around her. She's friends with some people who own wedding clothes shops here. Not wedding clothes like a traditional white wedding dress, but the traditional Chinese style wedding dress called a qi pao and other Chinese style clothes. On the day of her wedding, the bride will actually change clothes many times. I have lost more weight so I can actually fit into some of these clothes now. I went a little crazy - bought 2 dresses, a skirt, and two shirts. I just have to be careful when I come home to not gain back said weight too fast so I can enjoy these outfits for longer.

That night Ms. Feng invited a bunch of teachers out to dinner, so me and Ms. Liang headed to the restaurant. After some good eats, the two of us headed back to the school where I crashed. However, because I could fit into these clothes I decided to do a little experiment. When you lose weight, it's gradual so you can't really see it. I decided to look at pictures from when I first came in September to pictures taken over the May holiday. Here is the result:

Now I am by no means saying I was fat before, but it was just amazing to physically see how much weight I've lost. The second picture is a little out of focus, but it was the closest I could find to the same pose as the first. I have no idea how much this is in pounds, but there you have it. Come to China if you want to lose weight!

Because there were no classes on Monday (which happens to be my busiest day), I was left with only Tuesday and Wednesday classes. Why? Because it was an exam week, so I knew that Thursday I wouldn't have class. Talk about a short week. I only had 3 lessons, one on Tuesday and two on Wednesday. I kind of went stir crazy. I guess I could have taken the time then to write the next entry, but at that point there wasn't much to write about. Basically I spent the week preparing the upper level exam and hung out with the teachers and students. Tuesday we all went out for dinner as usual. I also arranged the hotel for when my parents are in town and am now going to make sure we get the school car for certain things and try and get people to come with us.

Thursday the teachers made me wear one of my new dresses. This was funny because the first time the students saw me was when I walked into the cafeteria to each lunch. Enter many different exclamations, in English AND Chinese here. I felt a little embarrassed, but I knew if I didn't wear it then, they'd make me wear it another day.

Friday I had made plans to go into town with Ms. Xiao, but one of her close friends flew into town and understandably she asked for a rain check. I spent the day with Jerry, Ms. Zhang, and the PE couple and after a nice dinner we went back to the offices because J3 still had exams Saturday morning.

Somewhere during the week (I don't remember exactly what day) I was browsing facebook when I came across a conversation about learning Chinese and to check out a certain website. I went and checked it out. I must admit, I am so glad I found this website because I was starting to worry about what would happen to my Chinese after I got home. It's a community of people learning the language at all different levels and the hosts of the program s well as community members respond to questions you have. Basically, I'm making a plug for it:

http://www.chinesepod.com. If you are even remotely interested in learning Chinese or brushing up on old skills, go and check out the website. You get a free 2 week trial at the premium level then after that there's a free option and then different levels (the most expensive is a little ridiculous - but I guess it's like an intensive course). You can download conversations and put them on you iPod, which is pretty sweet if you ask me.

Back to my week! Saturday I actually had something planned. Ruina and Lily came to pick me up in the morning. Now, every other day that week had been clear and beautiful. Of course the one day I have something planned, the weather gets overcast and a little chilly. The original plan had been to take me to some kind of valley near the city and spend the day exploring. No dice. So they took me to Jin Yang which is considered "the new Guiyang." Now, I'm not entirely sure if this is a separate city or just a suburb of Guiyang, but this is where the city is expanding to. This is also where the new main campus for Guiyang No. 1 High School is located. It was my first time to see the new campus for the school. In Jin Yang there are also all the city and provincial government buildings.

Lily first took us to see the government buildings. The grounds were really gorgeous. If you look closely at the sign in the picture it says "tender affection for tender life." In other words, be nice to the plants. To the right of this picture is a mountain. I kept staring at it because it didn't look right. Mainly, the color was off. After I stared at it for a while Lily informed me it was artificial. Hah. No wonder. Apparently the side of the mountain facing the compound was all stone and ugly, so they actually used wire to round it out and added fake grass on the side. I kind of wish I took a picture.

Next, Lily said she wanted to take us to "Shi Lin" which means stone forest. I didn't understand because the Shi Lin I've been to before was in Yunnan. Turns out when they started to develop the Jin Yang area, they actually found a stone forest similar to that of Yunnan. The stones are a bit different and it's smaller, but it had the same feel. Very interesting to know they found it on accident.

Here's Ruina, me, and Lily. Ruina has gained a lot of weight due to her pregnancy. She's due in mid-August. And Lily is kind of like my local tour guide. If I have a question about the city or about things to see near the city, 9 times out of 10 she's been there or knows the answer.

After walking around for a little while, we made the trip back to Guiyang for some Pizza Hut. I think Ruina and Lily use me as an excuse to eat western food! They both lived in the States for a year for study and, to my knowledge, haven't been able to come back at all. Neither one of them had been to the Pizza Hut in town, so that's where we went. There ended up being quite a wait, so I snuck out my camera again to take a picture of the intersection.

This is Pen Shui Chi. 10 minutes before I took this picture they had the fountain on, but oh well. This intersection is actually one of the only things I remember about the city from my first trip in 1998. THAT'S how much it's changed. Anyway, now all I need to do is get a picture of Da Shi Zi and I'm set.

Sunday I replenished my food supply and then Monday I started to give the J3's their oral exam. I think I might have made it too hard, but oh well. We'll see as the week goes on. It's a little sad that I'm going to be done teaching the older kids after this week. They were so much easier for me to teach because their English was that much better and they're a lot of fun. I do like J2, too. But sometimes its just too hard to keep their attention. It looks like none of the teachers want to take over the lessons so I think I might turn their classes into movie time. But we'll see.

Well, on Thursday I head out to Shanghai to see Chris and Kim. I must admit, I'm pretty excited! I'm not a big Shanghai fan, but I'm not going to see the city. Until next time!

Chi Shui, Part 2

Wed, 09 May 2007 03:47:33 GMT

The next morning we got up bright and early once again. Not because an alarm went off, but because our hotel happened to be on a river. Right next to a place where they repair boats. They started banging away around 7:00, so much against our will we climbed out of bed and caught the end of the group breakfast.

Once we had our fill of food, we went into town to go to a market. We wanted to buy some fruit and replenish our supply of snacks. When we were there, Helen started wandering around and I asked her what she was doing. She wanted to find the center of town so I made her ask. Turns out it was far away, so we went back to the hotel, made sure we had packed everything, then went downstairs to wait for the bus - it was our first one, but fixed now. Once it got there we boarded and settled in for an hour drive.

The place we visited that day is called Sidonggou Scenic Area. It's a park along a river that has 4 waterfalls you can see. It was overcast this day, but I figured the weather would break like it had the day before, so I left my sweatshirt on the bus and brought my umbrella just in case. Helen, me, Auntie, and Uncle were trucking along until we got to the first waterfall. Right when I passed a sign that said "beware the falling rocks" a rock about the size of a baseball landed nearly 2 feet in front of me then bounced into the water. I told the mountain gods that wasn't cool and that they shouldn't do that anymore. They complied.

Here's up close and personal with me and waterfall number one. When we were actually in front of this one, my sister in law Kim called so we could finalize a couple of things about when they'll be in Shanghai when I visit them. So she had the pleasure of hearing this one. Right after I got off the phone with her, it started to rain. And when it rains here, the temperature drops. And I had nothing to put on. Awesome.

This didn't become a real problem until lunch, which was after the second waterfall. I'm not including a picture of it because it wasn't really anything special to look at. Plus, most of the pictures I have of it are blurry because the lighting wasn't too great. But all the walking and stairs kept my body temperature up, so despite the fact that I was in a short sleeve shirt, I didn't feel very cold. When we finally reached the place to eat lunch, it was pouring rain and starting to get windy. So I was quite chilled while we ate.

The area, as you saw from the pervious post, is quite well stocked with bamboo. The local people have gotten quite creative with how to eat it or use it when cooking. I have to say the bamboo soup was very interesting because they actually just cut stalks of bamboo and you ate the whole thing. Another noteworthy use was when they used the shell of the bamboo to steam rice inside it. Made it a tad tricky to get the rice out, but it was quite tasty.

After lunch, Helen and I went on a mission to find us rain ponchos. In total, we asked maybe 15 stands of people selling things and they were all sold out. Luckily, all the walking warmed me up again so it wasn't too much of a problem. We did make one navigational error though. There were two paths. One pointed right and had a couple of names on the sign. The other went left and had tons of people walking towards us on it. Helen had trouble translating the sign and the only thing she translated to me was "cliffs", so we thought it was a different path to see some cliffs in a different part of the park. Turns out one of the waterfalls has cliff in its name, so we actually entered the back part of the park on the exit path, missing the 3 rd waterfall in its entirety and walked what felt like 2 miles to reach the 4th.

So here is the 4th waterfall in all its glory. Very beautiful area and when we reached it, not many other people were there. All of the other parks this entire trip were immensely crowded because the May holiday is the holiday for travel. So it was nice to just observe the waterfall without having to deal with a crowd. When it started to rain a lot of people rushed through the park, so they could leave and get warm. When we first got there, it was hard to walk because of the amount of people.

Because we had gotten to the 4th waterfall by the exit path, we decided to get back to the 3rd by the entrance path. Now one cool thing that I noticed is that the exit path has little to no things to look at. I think the park designers did it this way because when you've seen the 4 th waterfall, all you want to do is leave. You don't want to have to carry your camera out and stop for pictures. The path up to the waterfall was very scenic and right along the river. We also bumped into pretty much our entire group as they were making their way to the waterfall, and we told them approximately how far they still had to go. We had left early from lunch to find rain ponchos and everyone was a good 10-15 minutes behind us.

Here's me and Helen with the 3rd waterfall, once we actually found it. Apparently in the water there are stones shaped like a frog and a snake chasing the frog. We could only find the frog. Anyway, a very beautiful park all around. By far one of the longest walks I've had in a while - something close to 10km both ways. It just would have been nice without the rain.

When we finally got out of the park, Helen and I decided to do a little shopping. Now, I became aware that there were no large ethnic groups in the area, so there weren't many interesting things to pick from. Mostly they had wood products. Not to mention, it appears that the area doesn't appeal to foreign tourists - so there weren't many "touristy" items to buy. The area itself is rather hard to get to, and during the entire trip I only saw two other foreigners, an older couple. Helen actually told me that she got fairly annoyed because everyone kept asking her about me - my name, my age, why I'm here, what country I'm from, and so on. She said something like "the first and second time, it's okay. But the 8 th, 9th, 10th, and so on, it really gets to you!" Which I thought was funny because that's almost exactly how I described it to my parents a couple weeks ago.

We got back to the bus and waited for the group to return. Turns out that after lunch, 6 of the people in the big family decided it was too cold and returned to the bus. I could understand because little Xin Ba had only worn shorts, so his mother was concerned he'd get sick. So we all sat on the bus and chatted. But this time, the 3 kids were fairly used to me and sometimes would ask me questions in English. Later on that night Xin Ba actually told me the story of Cinderella in English, which was adorable. Once everyone returned, we headed out on the road. We had close to 4 hours before dinner, so we settled in for a long ride. Most people slept, but I just watched the countryside and tried very hard to take pictures of people planting rice, which I'll get more into later.

One stop along the way we made was Mei Jiu He - which literally means beautiful alcohol river. This was an overpass that looked down on a very beautiful area of a river near China's alcohol town (where they brew a lot of the mao-tai). There was also a natural spring with a not so natural anymore opening. The grandpa basically insisted that I take a picture with it.

One funny thing was that people kept telling me to take pictures of the characters carved into stones near the scenic spots. I had to explain to them that I could only read part of it and no one in my family can read Chinese, so why take the picture? After this explanation, they understood.

We ate dinner together, which wasn't enough to fill me, then headed back on the road again. Along the way, Uncle asked the tour guide when we'd stop at a mao-tai place. The other bus wasn't interested, so we pulled off into mao-tai town and stopped at a local distillery. Mao-tai in these kinds of places are brewed in giant clay jugs. We went from jug to jug in the sales room and were able to taste each level of mao-tai they made. They all tasted the same to me, so I bought a water bottle filled of the lowest grade.

Then everything got incredibly amusing. The fact that I had bought a bottle made grandpa incredibly happy. He kept giving me the thumbs up and repeating over and over that it was good to see that a foreigner could handle Chinese liquor. I then happened to look through a barred gate down some stairs and asked what was down there. This apparently meant that I wanted to see down there and despite the fact that they don't normally allow guests down there, I was a foreign guest, so they unlocked the gate and let us go down. This about made grandpa's day. He was laughing and grinning and running around, no exaggeration. I caught part of this on video. Well, if it made him happy, then it made me happy.

So here's the basement where they brew the mao-tai. Actually, it's not 100% mao-tai, apparently mao-tai is made of two parts. The parts in these clay pots and that we bought, actually make up 90% of the ingredients in mao-tai. The other 10% is something else which I can't remember right now. It was also in this basement that I encountered the largest spider I have ever seen outside of a zoo. Legs all spread out it was about as big as my hand. Now, I've never liked insects. If they're in my home, they're as good as dead. But after living in China, my squeamish level has gone down a bit. However, my spider fear rate has increased. Maybe its because they're bigger? I don't know, but I basically ran up the stairs while they killed it. Thank god for Michigan frost.

We finally got to the hotel which apparently had a hot spring. Helen and I got to our room, gathered up our things and headed to where we could soak in the hot water. By this point I was walking like a cowboy because my calves hurt so much from climbing the mountains - I wasn't alone in this, almost everyone in the group was aching. Well, we got there and it was more like an oversized hot tub with 15 people in it, some of them literally taking a bath. To get a towel cost money. To use their sandals cost money. I let Helen enjoy and went back to the room to relax that way.

In the morning, we ate breakfast then headed out together again. It was warmer and clearer, so I was able to get some decent shots of the countryside from the bus. So here's my little explanation on the planting of rice.

The rice is in the foreground. I would have to say that growing rice is by far one of the most labor intensive crops I have ever had described to me. The water they are grown in has to be kept at a certain level and apparently, it has to always be moving. First, the rice is grown like this. Close together in patches near roads or houses so they can be carefully looked after. These shoots, once they're big enough, are grouped together and taken to the bigger fields. These bigger fields are plowed and fertilized several times beforehand. In lines, the farmer plants these shoots in little clumps, we're talking 3-4 in each bundle all the way down the field. There are no machines that can do this for them, so they have to stand bent over all day in the field. During the growing process they have to make sure the water keeps moving and that the stalks don't fall over. I am not too familiar with the harvesting process, but even the planting and growing is intense. Think about it the next time you eat some rice.

So that's about it from this trip. We arrived back to Guiyang and after exchanging information with some of the people, I treated myself to a cab back to the school and limped around for the rest of the day because my legs were so sore it hurt to move.

Until next time!

Chi Shui, Part 1

Sun, 06 May 2007 18:34:11 GMT

When classes ended Monday afternoon, Betty told me a bunch of the teachers were getting together for dinner and games and invited me along. So I made sure everything was packed, brought my suitcase along, and into town we went. Bringing a suitcase on public transportation is horribly inconvenient. It was the beginning of a vacation, so everyone and their grandma was going somewhere and many people had luggage as well. We finally arrived to the area where the restaurant was only to walk up and down the street several times to find the actual place. Sidewalks here aren't very level, so my arm was quite sore by the time we actually arrived.

We had 9 people in our party - 4 for mahjong and 4 for a card game. I don't know how to play the card game (I've watched them several times and still have absolutely no clue how to play), and the 4 people for mahjong sat down right away, so I was the odd one out and had some time to kill. I did end up sitting in on some mahjong games, but the afternoon was fairly uneventful for me. But I was still very grateful for being included. Dinner was excellent, even though the service wasn't top notch.

After dinner I went to Helen's home to spend the night. Our bus would be leaving at 7 the next morning, so it was just much more convenient for me to stay in town with her. We went and bought a lot of food for the 10 hour bus ride that awaited us the next day, I played with her dog Money, met her mother, and we went to bed with an alarm set for 6.

Once we were up and ready, we went to the place where the bus would pick us up. This was actually where buses were picking up several different tour groups, so it took us a while to find ours and once we got on, there were no seats that were next to each other left. We set off and as the day went on, I got a good feel for the group we were with. There was a family of 9 - grandma, grandpa, two of their sons, their wives, and three children. A group of 4 - two college students, their aunt, and one of their little brothers. Me and Helen. An older couple who I came to call Auntie and Uncle by the end of the trip. And then another couple which I later discovered actually live in California, but were born in China. On the bus, there were 5 people who were fluent in English. Me, Helen, the California couple, and one of the women in the big family is an English teacher at a university. Her son was adorable, a boy version of Sunshine, and his name is "xin ba" which sounds very much like Symba, from the "Lion King."

People had warned me that the road to Chi Shui was not the best. The road itself (for the vast majority) was paved and smooth, it was the route that made it rather treacherous. It curved up and down mountains like a roller coaster. Near the beginning we actually saw a huge truck that had driven itself off the road into a mountain. It didn't ease my nerves, that's for sure. With about 2 hours of driving left and dinner soon, the bus started to make strange noises. Yep. My bus broke. We were stuck on the side of a road in the middle of the mountains waiting for someone to come repair it, and when they got there, he discovered it couldn't be fixed. We had to wait for one of the other buses in our group to come back and get us. But that took 2 hours. It gave us a chance to get to know each other as a group and we got to see a beautiful sunset, but I would have preferred to do that at dinner. Actually, while the car was broke down I was offered a job! No joke, one of the women in the large family came up to me and said for next year they were still short a foreign teacher and would I be willing to fill the position. I was flattered, but I declined.

Here's the group with our broken down bus. The guy in the orange shirt was a nice Samaritan who stopped to see if he could help.

Anyway, we finally reached the restaurant to eat where a new bus was waiting for us. But it only had 17 seats. If you do your math, you'll realize we had 19 people in our group. Because we hadn't rushed, me and Helen were left without seats. We had to be squeezed onto another bus - I had to sit on a seat that someone had spilled water on. Not a happy camper at this point. We had been planning to see some attractions that evening, but they got pushed back to the following day.

We got up bright and early the following morning. Helen and I scarfed down our breakfasts and were the first people on the new bus, so we got good seats. As this day went on, it got more and more unbearably hot. Chi Shui is in the northern part of Guizhou province, very near to Si Chuan. In fact, our hotel was in Si Chuan province, not Guizhou. If I had made this connection earlier, I would have packed lighter clothes and not bothered to bring my coat.

Here's the first waterfall of the day. The picture I chose doesn't really demonstrate how tall this guy was - it was taken when we were halfway up the mountain. It felt even taller when the path took us up the mountain to it, then behind the actual waterfall, up to the top to overlook it, and around to go back down the mountain. Gah. I was exhausted and it was only the first park.

This park was actually called something like "Swallow Rock State Forest" or something along those lines. So there were hundreds of little birds flying around. Thank goodness I wasn't left a present on my person, but it was really a beautiful park. The river leading up to the waterfall was pretty awesome too because there were hundreds of boulders everywhere. Made me nervous about how much climbing the other places would entail, but I took lots of great pictures.

One thing that we realized at the first park was how much faster we were than everyone else. The 5 year old Xin Ba really slowed the family down. So we went ahead of the group only to arrive back at the bus first and to wait around for nearly 45 minutes for everyone to get there. I told Helen we needed to pick someone to travel with so it would slow us down a little bit. We chose Auntie and Uncle. They apparently climb Qian Ling Mountain (the mountain in town) every morning, so they were quick, but kept our pace a little slower for the remaining three locations.

At the next park there was an absolutely gorgeous waterfall in the parking lot. Possibly the tallest waterfall I've ever seen, but the water flow was a bit low so no one paid any attention to it. We walked quite a distance to get to the entrance only to have to wait in line for a shuttle to take us to the path we needed to take to the waterfall. Thank goodness for the shuttle, it cut about 2 miles both ways out of the walk. We then proceeded to walk down one of the scariest sets of stairs I've ever used to get down to the river. I think it was this part in the day when I started humming the theme to Jurassic Park and waited for a dinosaur to jump out at me.

We finally reached the waterfall only to discover that the wind was strong and so was the mist. While we were actually down in front of it, I kept standing with my back to it to make sure my camera didn't get too wet. My prize was that the backside of me was completely soaked. You can see how drenched Helen and I got by this picture which was of course when we found a nice semi-dry platform to take a picture with the waterfall behind us. Now, this time the tour guide didn't even come in the park. So although I am fairly sure, I am not 100% positive this is the waterfall featured in the movie. I'd have to watch it again to be sure.

When we were leaving the park, a young girl came up to me and started to ask me my name, where I was from and if I'd take a picture with her. She was very sweet so despite the fact that I was starting to look like hell, I agreed. We had lunch after this then went on to our next destination. This place I know for SURE was featured in the movie. The Bamboo Sea. Literally, bamboo as far as the eye can see. It was quite extraordinary to see, and apparently the park takes up to 3 days to fully explore. We only saw the one bit.

Here's a nice artsy shot. Helen started to call me the one hand camera person because most shots I take only using one hand. I taught her how to take this kind.

On the way to the 4th park, one of the buses decided they didn't want to go. So we had this huge stop on the side of the road and waited for everything to get organized before going on. Seriously, I paid for it, I may be exhausted and already sore, but I'm going. Luckily everyone on my bus agreed.

The last stop of the evening is literally called something like "China's Jurassic Park". No joke. Absolutely gorgeous, but the lighting was bad so a lot of my pictures came out blurry or if I used the flash too dark. Lot's of water, rocks, foliage. Helen decided they needed to make little non meat eating dinosaurs to roam around the area going "roar," which I thought was incredibly amusing.

Now I thought the path at one of the other places was scary, this one was downright frightening. I almost fell three or four times because of lack of handrail or because moss had taken over the steps. Or there were no steps. Really, it was quite the challenge especially with how tired my legs were from all the climbing earlier. I know this shot has handrails, but it really gives you a good idea of how overgrown the area was.

We actually got to a point in the path where I refused to go on. Helen tried to talk me into it and I told her if she wanted to continue, I would wait for her but there was no motivation in the world worth climbing the "stairway of moss and death." One of the couples in the group came back and told us it wasn't worth it, so we turned around and I convinced the grandma and grandpa to do the same.

A second shot from the last park of the day. This is where the pictures started to get blurry. But someone actually dubbed this one post card worthy. A very beautiful park, all around.

After waiting around for everyone to emerge from the park, we got on the bus and headed back to town for dinner. The group that had quit early on us actually had to wait for us to return to eat. Once we had stuffed ourselves, me, Helen, Auntie, and Uncle walked back to the hotel which turned out to be a couple of miles. Oops. Oh well, we washed and crashed for the night.

Field Day

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 02:42:39 GMT

So I was able to sit down one more time before my trip to write a rather quick journal entry. Mostly because I have take some pretty fun pictures of the students.

Classes were a lot of fun this weekend because I was/am doing a lesson on western weddings and basically what happens on the day of the wedding, as well as talking about wedding showers, rehearsals, and the honeymoon. I left out the whole bachelor party thing mainly because I didn't know how to describe it easily and I didn't want to answer what kinds of games people play that night. ANYWAY, part of this lesson was acting out an actual wedding. Now, some of these kids are still at the stage of "boys have cooties", etc. And those that are dating are too shy about it to act it out in front of the class. (Class J3C1 has two couples and another one on the way, but that's besides the point). So when it came to picking a minister, it was easy. The bride and groom were hard. No one, even if it was just pretend, wanted to be paired up with someone of the opposite sex. I ended up having to pair boy-boy and girl-girl, and run through the "ceremony" twice. The guys in J3C1 got a little bit more into it by linking arms and the groom (Yang Tao) called the bride (Xu Hongyu) "sweetie" which turned out to be hilarious.

Still a little weird having classes Friday night and Saturday, but there you have it. I'm not in charge. I did get to go into town Saturday afternoon to look at the layouts for the book of pictures I had taken the other weekend. Some of those pages are really beautiful. It'll be ready for pick up on May 20 th, so I'll have the CD of pictures then to share them with you all.

Sunday I was all prepared to teach when Ms. Zhang stepped into my classroom and said "Katie, today they have a competition, so no afternoon classes." We headed down to the playground and watched a series of competitions between classes. J3C1 against J3C2 and J2C1 against J2C2. Now, both class 2's are not as good as class 1's academically, but man, physically they kicked butt.

There were two main parts to the competition. The girls from each class played each other in volleyball where the guys from the two classes played each other in basketball. When both grades were done with this, there were relay races with 20 students from each class. Some of those kids are amazingly fast. Finally, there was a "squat" race. I have no idea what to call this. 20 kids from each class squatted down and made a chain, they had to walk like that and cross the finish line as a team - reminded me of those commercials for the cereal in a bag where you have walk "down here" to get a good deal. Absolutely hilarious to watch.

Here are the girls from J2C2 (front) and J2C1 (other side of net) in their volleyball competition.

The guys from J3C1 and J3C2 taking each other on in basketball.

The relay race. From closest to farthest: J3C2, J3C1, J2C1, J2C2.

Getting ready for the squat race thing. I absolutely love the video that I took from this because once they got started they were all screaming "left, right, left, right." In front, J2C2, then J2C1, J3C1, and J3C2.

The only problem with the competition was that I couldn't cheer anyone on - not without making some of the students upset. Most of the teachers have one class that they teach so there's no question as to where their support was. I teach all 4 groups of kids. So when people tried to get me to cheer for their class I cheered for the entire grade. I knew that if I cheered for one class over another, I would get complaints from the other class. I wandered from group to group of students to show my all around support. One funny comment came from a boy from J3C2 whose English isn't too great. "Katie, we win basketball!" "I saw. Good job." "It's easy." "More easy than English?" "YEAH!"

The overall stats? For the Junior 2 competition, Class 2 won every single competition: volleyball, basketball, relay race, AND squat race. Class 1 (who happen to be the favorites of the teachers) were feeling rather down after all that. For the Junior 3 competition, Class 2 won all but the squat race.

Ms. Dai promised to take J3C1 out to eat and because J2C1 was so down, a bunch of teachers said they'd take them out. I literally became a tug-o-war toy for two girls from J2C1 and three girls from J3C1 of who I was to go to dinner with. J3C1 ended up winning and off I went to Ergezhai to eat hot pot with them. A very fun outing all around.

But now, I have to get ready for my trip that starts tomorrow! Take care until next time!

Day Trip with J3C1

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 02:34:11 GMT

Hello everyone! Once again, thank you for coming back to the journal. I really appreciate those of you who return week after week to catch up with what is new with me! I love that I am able to share with everyone my experiences here.

I left off last time talking about getting my pictures taken and the PE couple's wedding. I made a comment in there that Dr. Li said that most Guiyang people are lazy. I just wanted to say that the overall atmosphere in Guiyang is VERY laid back, sometimes to the point of if there isn't someone to keep reminding people to do something, it would probably never get done. To quote one website: "The life pace of Guiyang people is rather laid back compared to that of other cities. Guiyang people have a habit of going to bed late and getting up late. So it is common to see local people strolling, chatting, and playing the chess in the street. You will find that life here is altogether quite easy going!" It was not my intent to insult anyone. The people here often joke about the fact that they're lazy. In fact, when Dr. Li made the comment Ms. Xiao was with us - she laughed and agreed.

The morning after the wedding I was fairly exhausted, but I had to get some grocery shopping done. So into Ergezhai I went to the big supermarket there. Yay for food! Anyway, because I had eaten a late lunch I hadn't eaten dinner when Ms. Zhang called me to invite me out. I almost declined simply because Sunday is usually the day I recuperate for the week. I met up with her, her son Jerry, and Ms. Zhao (the new bride) for dinner at a restaurant right near the school. It was at dinner that I learned it was in fact Ms. Zhang's birthday. Ms. Zhao insisted that at 9:50 (when classes got out that evening) I come up to her room. When I got up there the PE couple had bought a birthday cake and once Ms. Zhang came up, we sang her "happy birthday" and then proceeded to eat practically the whole thing.

Here's Ms. Zhang with her cake. While we ate, we looked at all the pictures I took at the wedding the previous day.

Both Monday and Tuesday night we (me, Ms. Xiao, the PE couple, and Ms. Zhang) ended up eating dinner in the PE couple's room. They had bought so much food to serve Saturday morning/afternoon that they had a lot left over. I also had the Chinese version of French toast. They slice the steamed buns into thin slivers, coat them with eggs, and fry them. If only I had had syrup. A very nice treat, nonetheless. Fun dinners, both nights.

Tuesday during the day, one of the students from J3C1 was waiting for me at my classroom door and said "Katie, I have a secret." Now, here's me thinking she's going to tell me something about her boyfriend or something about her classmates. I invited her in and it turns out the following day their class was making a trip and they wanted me to come along. Didn't take me long to decide to go with them. After a few inquiries, I found out the plan was to leave at 9 the next morning. Turns out the secret part was not telling teachers who were part of the administration because they might stop the trip from happening because all the J3's have huge exams in June.

So the next morning at 8 I get a call from the same student asking me where I am, but then she ended the conversation with "see you at 9." I got up and did some things around the room before someone came knocking at my door at 8:15. Two of the girls came to see if I was ready. Insert me running around my room getting changed and grabbing something I could eat for breakfast. Everyone gathered and boarded the school's bus, then after a brief stop at the local supermarket, we were on our way.

I don't know why this was the moment I decided to ask where we were going and what kind of place it was, but there you go. The park we were going to was Qing Ren Gu, which was about an hour or so drive from the school. It was also on the way there that I found out that although I had been told we were staying for lunch then coming back, it was then decided we would stay at the park until around 3:30. This caused a problem because I had afternoon classes. Ms. Xiao called another teacher to cover the lesson I would for sure miss.

We arrived at our destination and after purchasing entry tickets, we went to explore the park. This place was nestled right between two mountains with a river running through it. Very beautiful park, but a little small. The students kind of went crazy - running here and there. I wish they had more chances like this to really just be young kids and have fun. The first distraction was seeing whether or not the river had fish or better yet, crab.

Here's Mr. Liu, Mrs. Huang, and a bunch of students checking the water. I think I took this right before Mr. Liu found the first crab. By the end of the trip, him and the students had caught about 10 of all different sizes. Their enthusiasm to find and play with them reminded me of times up north when I was younger and all the cousins searched for crayfish and minnows. Mr. Liu brought back 8 to the school - 4 for the pond in front of the teachers dorm, and 4 to give his wife. (By the way, seeing Ms. Zhao play with them was absolutely adorable.)

After searching for crabs for a while, the students found a path up one of the mountains they wanted to climb. So up we went. It had rained the night before and because of lack of information (partially my own fault) I had not wore tennis shoes. Thus, the climb was an extra challenge. Luckily, there was tons of tree and other plants for me to grab onto for balance when the time came. We got to the top only to find that it was actually someone's house and not something we could explore. Oops. So back down we went. Now going down was more tricky than up. I actually fell once (luckily no one saw), but I know that next time someone invites me on some kind of outing to wear tennis shoes unless told otherwise.

There were a number bridges and actually two different paths - one on each side of the river. The one I ended up choosing had a cave. Now, I've been in my fair share of caves. However, there were lights in the other one's. Once you got far enough in this one it was pitch black. You couldn't see a thing. Luckily I was holding one student's hand or I would have had no idea where she was. At this point, some people got their cell phones out to try and see where the walls were. Really, it was kind of creepy. But luckily, it was a short passage and we were out quickly.

I ended up being with the slower group, not only because of my shoes but also because Ms. Xiao couldn't go that fast because she's starting to get tired really easily with being pregnant. When we finally reached the end of the path, some of the other students started to head back. There was a very small waterfall and the water level was so low that we could walk down among the rocks and explore.

One funny part was that there were tons of stones shaped like water buffaloes. Here are probably my two favorite girls from J3C1 - Fang Yuli (Tess - one of your pen pals) and Li Ye (the first girl I went home with) sitting on one of them. You can see Mr. Liu exploring in the background.

Because of all the exploring, there were a couple of students who slipped into the water. Luckily the level wasn't too high, so the student who got the most went only fell in up to her knees. These kids were really adventurous - climbing over barriers, scaling huge boulders. We had one student cut her finger, but considering all the climbing and so on, we were lucky that was the only casualty.

We headed back to the main area where some of the students went with Mr. Liu to catch some crabs, whereas other stuck behind by the restaurant where we would eventually eat. Near the restaurant was a swing and a seesaw. The seesaw turned into a competition - to see who would end up being the heaviest. Then it turned into a team effort. And finally, it became a battle of the sexes. The guys ended up winning, not only because they're heavier to begin with, but because they outnumber the girls.

Here's a picture of when the girls were actually winning, but right after this two more guys jumped on. Really, it's a good thing it was made of metal, otherwise I'm sure they would have broken it.

After playing around for a while, we all sat down to lunch. We ate "shao kao", which is where you are given plates of different foods and a grill. You use oil and a dipping sauce to cook the meat and vegetables - basically like a barbeque but with chopsticks. It's not one of my favorite meal choices, but it was easiest when it came to feeding 22 students and 5 teachers. What happened was because of the big group, the restaurant tried to overcharge us. The boss made the mistake of talking about this in front of the students. So during the meal, they kept telling each other that they had to eat everything because it was so expensive or "you dropped that! That was 1 kuai! What a waste you are!" In the end, the boss lowered the price back down, but it was still kind of funny to hear them shouting at each other.

When lunch was over, some of the students and I played mahjong while other went off to play. They were absolutely floored that I knew how to play. I'm thinking I should make a t-shirt: "Yes, I can use chopsticks, speak Chinese, and play mahjong." Anyway, around 3:30 we gathered for group pictures.

Here's a group shot of me and Ms. Xiao with J3C1. Now this is more so a test for me (and for the 1 person who reads this who was their previous teacher), but I'm going to name all the students from left to right. Back row: Me, Han Xue, Huang Wenjun, Fang Yuli, Wang Lin, Li Ye, Xie Dandan, Guo Shuang, Wang Sisi, Ms. Xiao. Middle row: Pu Liang, Yang Tao, Xu Hongyu, Liu Boting, Fang Zhu, Zhang Wanfu. Front row: Yang Mao, Huang Chenshen, Yue Peng, Liu Guibin, Bai Zhongjin, Tao Pengchen, Fang Weiwen, and Ma Shendi. Go me!

Once we finished with pictures, we headed back to the school. Almost everyone fell asleep on the trip back. The students had wanted to eat dinner outside the school at Ergezhai, but when we passed through it, it was only 4:30 and we had finished lunch around 2. So despite many protests, Ms. Dai said it would be better to go back to the school. We arrived 10 minutes before my class started, but I was so drained that I knew I couldn't handle a classroom of 27 kids, even if they were one of my favorite classes. So me and Ms. Xiao went directly to their main classroom and told them there would be no class. Apparently they had had a rough day - some of the girls hugged me to thank me.

After eating dinner in the cafeteria, I was approached by some of the girls in J3C2. They were upset I missed their lesson and they said to make it up to them, I could show them the pictures I took. By the way, I love the fact that they all now expect me to bring my camera no matter where I go. They all know/assume I have it on me. I showed them all the pictures along with a selection of pictures from the PE couple's wedding. Then I asked if they were going to have an outing too, but they said Ms. Wang (their class mother) won't let them. So now they want me to talk with her. THAT should be interesting.

Now next week there aren't any classes, so to make up for this the school actually has classes all weekend. In my mind, this kind of cancels out the vacation, but I'm not in charge. So Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday morning we have class. Luckily for me, because the way they scheduled it, I have 1 class 3 out of the 4 days. Then Monday night I'll be heading to Helen's home because we're going to go on a trip together.

For any of you who have watched the movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," somewhere in there (can't remember if it's the middle or end) there's a part with a bamboo forest and a really beautiful waterfall. I found out a couple of weeks ago that these are actually in Guizhou province, in the northern part. It's quite a trek, so it wasn't on my the top of my list to visit. However, because next week is a national holiday, everyone has off so everyone is traveling. Thus, ticket prices are up (in some cases REALLY up) for my top choices, so when Helen suggested Chi Shui and we found out it was affordable, that was our choice.

So I guess I'm encouraging you to watch the movie because you'll be able to see pictures of it soon on my journal. And apparently I'm also going to be visiting a mao-tai factory.

Until next time!

A Very Happy Weekend

Sun, 22 Apr 2007 17:28:54 GMT

I left off Tuesday night. Really, the rest of the week was fairly uneventful. I was just so super excited for the weekend. Thursday night I prepared a bag of clothes in case the clothes at the wedding studio didn't fit me. The studio Dr. Li is involved with is not only the first wedding picture studio on Guiyang, but also the largest. There are 3 floors in the building dedicated to this business which is a really booming business in China. Pretty much every couple that gets married comes to get their pictures taken. You can also get a personal album done, which is what I did.

Dr. Li picked me and Ms. Xiao up from Fuxing around noon and we all had lunch together. Then Dr. Li introduced us to the manager of the store, English name Peter. Peter is actually from Taiwan, which Dr. Li called a good business move because "most people from Guiyang are lazy." It became apparent that Peter was quite the "take charge" kind of guy because once Dr. Li left, Peter made sure I was matched with the best photographers and makeup people they had. The first outfit I chose was a very traditional Chinese outfit, something I believe that is Tang Dynasty - because it looks similar to a kimono. The kimono is actually based on Tang Dynasty Chinese clothing. The first photographer was possibly the fastest talker in the world - I had so much trouble understanding anything he said. And you can kind of tell in the pictures he took because in my eyes you can see I'm getting a little frustrated because I had no idea what he wanted me to do. We took pictures for this one in front of screens against a wall. A little hard for me to work with. Oh well. The picture me and Ms. Xiao snuck turned out great, so I'm happy.

Yes, most of that is fake hair. It was really, really heavy, too. But the overall effect is really cool.

The second outfit was mine - a red top and corduroy skirt. We actually went down to the main lobby for that one where they have lots of floral arrangements. Turned into quite the spectacle when they had me posing with things in the front window of the store. Actually, the pictures from this one turned out the best because not only was I able to sit and lean against things, but the guy's mandarin was really good and he was a lot more mellow. The third outfit was a blue dress and we went to the rooftop of the building where they have a makeshift garden. Same photographer, so these turned out pretty good, too. The last outfit was a red dress, possibly the tightest in the world. I would have preferred to do another batch in my own clothes but I think I became their foreign dress up doll. They practically insisted I wear another dress and then the makeup/hair woman insisted I wear a tiara. I flat out refused when the encouraged me to pick a wedding gown. I got the same photographer as the first batch and by this point I was fairly exhausted, so these pictures didn't turn out as good.

All in all, a great experience, but one I don't want to repeat any time soon. Makes you really appreciate how hard it must be to be a model. Changing clothes, changing hair, waiting for a photographer, posing, staying still, etc. It's just so incredibly draining. The whole process took about 5 hours. And that was just with 4 outfits and not going off-site like so many couples do. When Ms. Xiao got hers done she started at 10 in the morning and didn't finish till 6pm. Gah. I'm thankful for my 5 hours.

I got back to the school very tired and ready to crash, but I had to find out for sure what time the festivities would start in the morning for the PE couple's wedding. Once I got back I saw how many lights were on in the teacher's dorm. Now, on a typical weekend its me, Ms. Zhang, her son Jerry, and the PE couple. Turns out because of how early the next day would start about half the teaching staff was staying the night at the school so they could participate. Once Ms. Zhang realized I was back, her and Ms. Zhao ran down to my room to invite me upstairs to play. After a shower (the amount of hairspray in my hair and mascara on my eyelashes was nearly offensive), I went up to join them. But once Ms. Zhang confirmed the 6:30 am start time, I excused myself to go to bed.

Bright and early the next morning I got up and went upstairs. It's a good thing I can get ready fast, because the guys were apparently a lot quicker than the girls. So I was ready before all but 3 people. We were rushed around and shut into Ms. Zhao's room. We actually hid her in Ms. Liang's room without telling anyone. So Mr. Liu came to meet his bride at the wrong room without knowing it. So we were yelling things through the door and he kept sliding us red envelopes. Ms. Wang kind of took charge in all of this, so I got to sit back and watch everything.

Ms. Wang and Ms. Yang listening at the door. Pretty much everyone else was outside.

Eventually the male teachers (Mr. Bao and Mr. Shen) helped Mr. Liu force the door open. When Mr. Liu saw that Ms. Zhao wasn't in the room he say something to the effect of "what is going on???" So Ms. Wang told him if he really cared about his wife, he'd know where she is. The only thing she'd tell him was that she was on the 4 th floor. This ended up turning into a huge hunt - he kept asking the different teachers for their keys and opening different doors. When he asked Ms. Liang for her key, she wouldn't give them to him. So he ran up to the door telling his wife to tell them to let him in. Eventually he got Ms. Liang to give him the key and we all went in.

After that he had to kneel down and ask her to be his wife, to which she answered "there might be a problem." She then went on to say that at night her feet always hurt, to which he responded "I'll wash them and massage them every night!" She then said she didn't like to cook, to which he said "That's okay, I'll cook for you." This exchange went on for a while until she agreed to be his wife.

Now, because none of their family attended and since both of their "homes" are in the same place, I think the teachers improvised here a little bit. Usually there's a procession taking the couple to meet both sets of parents, but the bride can't walk - she needs to be carried first by a family member to be given to the groom, then by the groom to wherever else. We had Jerry carry her down to the 2 nd floor where Mr. Liu took over. Poor man, Ms. Wang made him walk through the school, down the main stairs, and up the dorm stairs back to their room on the 5th floor. He kept telling them how beautiful and wonderful they were so they'd let him put Ms. Zhao down earlier. Didn't work.

He set her down on the bed and they sat next to each other. Ms. Zhang prepared them a special breakfast (still don't know what) and we all watched them eat it. Then everyone went and ate breakfast. One more interesting thing from the morning's activities was that Ms. Dai brought her adorable little boy - 1 year, 8 months. Chubbiest little face. Anyway, they made him get on the bed and roll back and forth across it, I assume to ensure fertility? The kid was so confused.

Here's me with the couple, Mr. Liu and Ms. Zhao.

I was pleasantly surprised when most of the teachers went back to their rooms to sleep. I jumped on the bandwagon and hurried downstairs before they changed their minds, promising to come back up for lunch at noon. Lunch was fairly simple and after a little while longer, the school's driver came to pick us up and take us to the restaurant where the reception was being held. Ms. Zhao went to get her hair and make up done, while the remaining people (myself included) played mahjong.

Dr. Li came and picked me and Ms. Xiao up again so we could pick out the pictures to put in my album. We got there and had to wait a little while for a computer, but once we got one I was absolutely floored with how good some of them turned out. I had thought my graduation pictures from high school were nice. The majority of these made those look plane. I have to wait a while for the actual book though - about a month, and at that time I'll get a disc with all the pictures on it. So I'll be able to share them with all of you then. It'll be so cool to see them all together.

We got back to the reception where after sitting down for a little bit, I was told to get to my post as candy girl.

So I got stuck at my post before they even had a tray for me to hold. Mr. Bao is holding the tray of cigarettes, Ms. Yang is the other woman with candy, and then the couple: Ms. Zhao and Mr. Liu.

It was really a lot of fun to stand there with them. Most people didn't notice me because Ms. Zhao was looking so beautiful - kind of refreshing. I got to greet almost everyone who came and Ms. Yang and I got into a little competition to see who could get people to take more candy from us. I won, but that's because I kept asking the kids. (Muhahahaha!!!!) As each guest came they would either give a red envelope to Ms. Zhao or to Mr. Liu. If they smoked, they'd take a cigarette and Ms. Zhao would light it for them. For a while, Mr. Liu would actually feed candy to guests that wanted him to, which turned out to be hilarious sometimes. When Betty, Jack, and Sunshine arrived - it was like something from a movie. Sunshine started running towards us at full speed, Ms. Zhao crouched down, and Sunshine ran into her arms yelling how beautiful she looked. After the hug, she looked at Mr. Liu and said "you look good, too!"

Around 7pm the "ceremony" started. A host introduced the bride and groom, made them thank the crowd for coming by bowing, and made them do things like hug and kiss. Public affection still is very rare - especially in Guiyang. This was actually the first time I've ever seen the PE couple kiss. Ever. And I've been here since September. I've also never seen them hold hands. Either way, this was really funny because Ms. Zhao was absolutely embarrassed. Mr. Wu (the school's headmaster) made a short speech and then after a little while the couple left the main room to eat and so Ms. Zhao could change.

Dinner turned out to be a lot of fun. Because this was their second reception, it was only people from Guiyang. Mostly people they know through the school, so I actually knew about 90% of the guests - including some students. I was able to go from table to table and chat with people. Mr. Huang, mao-tai drinker expert, came to drink with me twice. My table didn't actually drink, which was an advantage because that means only people who I traveled to and traveled to me drank with me. A lot of people got fairly toasted, Ms. Feng and Jack among them.

As usual, the bride and groom went around to toast each table and thank them for coming. This is also the time when everyone at the table would wish them the best of luck and happiness in their marriage. It was so cute because they were beaming. Plus, it helped that it was a rather small reception, so they only had to go to 8 tables.

After the dinner was over, a bunch of us headed back to the school. Now when I say a bunch of us, I need to explain better. The school has a little van that Mr. Zhang drives. This van can comfortably fit about 11 people. We had 20 people in that van. I actually lost feeling in one of my feet on the way. Not to mention we also had the 2 hamsters Jerry for some reason or another felt the need to buy earlier that day. We had more people that wanted to come back to the school with us, but upon seeing the car they opted for a taxi.

We got back to Fuxing and someone said we should play the national anthem over the PA system. It was about 10 at night. We lowered the flag, and raised it again - the little boys screaming the words to the national anthem. Betty told Mr. Liu he had to give 10 reasons why he deserved to be Ms. Zhao's husband. These included "I will do all the housework for her," "I will wash her feet every night," "any mistake is my mistake, never hers." When he was all done Betty said that her and Jack needed to talk when they got home.

After that we played some songs for the couple to dance to before the caretaker handed Betty a bowl and a spoon. Mr. Liu beat the bowl as we followed him around campus. He yelled out that now he had a wife, a beautiful wife, an intelligent wife, and so on. We then made him carry Ms. Zhao up to the 5 th floor where the games continued. Now, because I had unofficially become the wedding photographer, I had to run to my room for a little while to download my camera. When I got upstairs they were still deciding what games they should make the bride and groom play, so I didn't miss much.

A number of games were played over the course of the evening. One where Mr. Liu had to pretend one of the stuffed animals they had gotten from a student was their baby and he had to introduce it to everyone in the room, making nicknames for everyone. Another was where numbers were attached to their bodies so when we called out a number, they had to touch the numbers together. Since he had mentioned washing her feet every night twice, we decided tonight was the perfect time to start so he washed her feet.

I taught them how to do this game where they pass a card back and forth between each other only using their mouths and breath. Took them a while to get used to it and people kept rushing forward to pull the card out. The last game we really had them play was where we tied a pear to a string and dangled it between them where they both have to eat it, but the person holding the string could lift it at any moment.

All in all, a lot of fun. There's no other way to say it, they're just so damn cute and they really care about each other. We sat around talking for a while longer, but the younger kids were starting to get tired so the majority of people left in the school car to go back to the city. I helped them clean the room and took all the flowers and pins out of Ms. Zhao's hair. Finally, around midnight, I went downstairs to crash.

Below I'm including my latest batch of video updates, many of which are from the wedding itself. Just click on the link and enjoy!

Jiaozi and a Day at Ms. Xiao's

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 05:36:12 GMT

The rest of Easter week was pretty much the same as any other week. Classes were classes. Monday night me and Ms. Xiao went out for noodles, Tuesday night we all made dinner together - they actually let me help this time. And they were surprised I knew how to cut vegetables. I don't think it's rocket science and being 23 I've handled chopping veggies from time to time, so I guess I don't understand why it was so shocking. But they all stood around watching me then talked about it afterwards like I had accomplished some amazing feat. Oh well, I don't think I'll volunteer again anytime soon.

My internet phone has been acting strange for about the past month now. It's been restricted for some reason I still don't understand so I've had to call to have them allow me to make calls again on 4 different occasions. Then, I went to make a call to see how my parents were doing and a message came up saying like "thank you for becoming one of our newest members! As a gift to you, we're giving you 10 free minutes!" Completely confused, I started digging on the website and they managed to cancel my account and sign me up for something completely different that doesn't include the phone. My parents tried to call me on the phone and said it wouldn't even let them leave a voicemail. SO for anyone who has ever called or considered calling the 248-430- number, delete it. Oh, and also don't sign up for Net Zero Voice. Not only are they unreliable and awful, but they messed with my account so many times, that it's just not worth the pain of trying to get it back.

There was one rather neat event of the week happened Thursday afternoon. I've always been interested in weather, be it thunder storms or tornados. The day started out with clear blue skies, but as the afternoon came more clouds filled the sky and the air felt heavy, so I knew it was only a matter of time before it started to rain. As I was walking the pathway to the main building, I happened to look over at the mountains near the school to see that it was raining over there. When I got down to where we have the flagpole, I stood out there simply watching. Ms. Xiao came out, looked where I was looking, and asked what I was staring at. I pointed to the clouds and taught her how to see where it was raining with the vertical lines then said "In 10 minutes, its going to rain. But it'll be a short storm. Maybe 15 minutes or so." She looked at me like I was crazy, but sure enough 10 minutes later it started to pour. About 15 minutes after that, it stopped. Now Ms. Xiao asks me if it'll rain or not.

Friday I made plans to spend time with Summer's mother. Usually we get together on Saturday's, but I already had made plans with some of the teachers and I hadn't seen her since January right before I left. She picked me up from the school at 10 and we headed to Summer's uncle's restaurant to undertake a project: making dumplings. When I was involved with the China Club at OU, we always managed to organize a dumpling making party during finals which was always such a great time.

Here's me, Dede (Summer's mom), and the "Dumpling making expert" from the restaurant. The girl taught me another way to wrap the dumplings which is so much easier than I was originally taught.

Here's two trays of dumplings (or "Jiao zi") that we made. We made 5 trays in total. So, so yummy and delicious.

One of the things that made this trip very nice was the fact that because it was a weekday, the little girl who usually hung around was in class. I am not very good with kids under a certain age unless they're super cute like Sunshine. It was just a lot more pleasant without her running around. After we finished lunch we headed to a university where Summer's mom is in a band. She plays the piano and during their 2 hour rehearsal, me and Summer's dad walked around the campus and chatted with a friend of theirs and her 11 year old daughter. The girl, like almost every student in China, studies English and was actually quite good. The campus was very pretty with a garden and pond, so it was nice and relaxing.

Summer's mom and their band.

Once the rehearsal was over, we headed back to the restaurant for dinner. I swear, their roasted fish is amazing. Probably the best fish I get to eat here in Guiyang and I should ask them how to do it because I want to try and recreate it when I get home. At dinner we were joined by one of Summer's cousins who gave herself a new English name: Nine. Why? Because she's the 9 th cousin in her family. Anyway, she's fun to spend time with so after dinner she invited me to her home to see some pictures and some of her drawings. When looking at pictures she didn't refer to her cousins by names, but by numbers, which got a little confusing. Around 9 that evening we headed back to the school only to be caught in a traffic jam for about half an hour.

The next morning I slept in and then prepared for the trip to Ms. Xiao's house for the day. She had invited all the teachers over to her place for lunch, mahjong, dinner, and whatever else we wanted to do. Originally, I was going to travel there with the PE couple, but with their Guiyang wedding reception on the 21 st, they were a little busy getting things prepared. So I had to make the journey by myself. First I waited for the bus for about 20 minutes. Once we reached the city, the back door broke and wouldn't close, so the driver had to pull over and actually kicked the door back into place. We finally get to the train station for me to switch buses, where I had to wait for 15 minutes for mine to show up. 2 hours from when I originally left my room, I arrived. I'm going to be grateful for a car when I get home.

I got there in time for lunch which was mostly prepared by Ms. Xiao's mother. The food was good and the company fun, but after lunch the mahjong set was brought out. I don't know if I'm alone in this, but I can only play for so long and still be entertained. These women can play for hours and hours straight. After I had my fill, I sat on the couch to watch TV and (thank goodness I had the foresight to bring it) did my Chinese homework. Right before dinner, Betty showed up with Sunshine and Dudu. Animals amaze me sometimes. That dog not only has grown a lot since I've last seen her, but came right up to me, tried to jump into my lap, and after I put her there she just sat.

One funny incident is the fact that they brought Dudu in the rabbit's old cage. I jokingly went up to the cage and pet it, saying "poor Xiaobai" to which Jack, Betty's husband, responded with "what do you mean?" I kind of froze, not knowing how to respond to something I thought he already knew the answer to. Then he asked "do you know where Xiaobai is?" Then Ms. Xiao called out "in someone's stomach!" Apparently, Betty hadn't told Jack about the true fate of the rabbit because he had liked it so much. She had simply told him she had given the rabbit to someone. Oops. Sorry, Betty!!

Here's Dudu sitting on my lap and the two girls, Alice and Sunshine trying to encourage her to look at the camera. I think I was having a bad hair moment or something.

After another delicious meal, we sat around and chatted for a while. In the midst of all this Sunshine must have been a little too rough with the puppy (she is only 6 after all) and Dudu bit her pretty hard, enough to draw blood. Now, Dudu hasn't gotten her shots yet for rabies so Sunshine, being 6, started freaking out - crying, wailing, screaming that she didn't want to go mad. Dudu came running to me and I held her. She knew she was in trouble because she wasn't squirming or shifting. That basically brought the evening to an end. Ms. Zhang and I headed back to the school and everyone else went home.

Sunday I did a little shopping, cleaned, and added more decorations to my classroom. A nice relaxing day as usual. Monday was uneventful except the usual outing to get noodles with Ms. Xiao. While we were in the market buying some pineapple on sticks for me, Dr. Li called to tell me he had made my picture taking appointment for Friday and that he'd pick me up around lunch time. So excited! Tuesday night a bunch of teachers all went out for dinner together where there was a lot of talk about the PE couple's wedding reception. Now, they're actually legally married - have the certificate and have already had a reception in Shandong in northern China where Mr. Liu's family is from. Because of the distance, his family isn't attending this reception and it sounds like most of her family attended the other one and aren't coming to this one. So they have to give out duties to their friends to act as relatives. Most Chinese weddings are held at hotels with large banquet halls - so to welcome the guests, the bride and groom stand in the lobby where they accept red envelopes and someone in their family hands out candy. I am the candy person. So for the entire time, I get to stand there holding a tray encouraging people to take candy and give red envelopes to the couple. Everyone thinks this is going to be hilarious because I'll do this in Chinese, which will for sure shock some of their friends that don't know me. I'm looking forward to this, but I hope it doesn't draw any attention away from the PE couple. Lot's of pictures to come!!

Okay, one great thing about living in a fairly tropical area is the fruit. Spring brought pineapples. On sticks. People walk around with these on the streets and you can buy them everywhere. So, so yummy.

Happy Easter!

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 01:58:56 GMT

As I left off on my last entry, the nice weather took a turn for damp and cold once again and has basically remained for the past week. Not too appreciated after such a beautiful week, but there's nothing much I can personally do about that. I just have to keep reminding myself that the longer it's cold, the longer it is until the creepy crawlies come out in full force.

I started to get sick again Sunday night/Monday morning and was glad that I had been planning to show a movie in class that week to give myself a mental break from teaching. I swear, when I show those kids a movie it's sometimes more entertaining for me just to watch them react - gasping, yelling, and saying "aiyooo!" The choice this time around was "The Fantastic Four". Not the best movie in the world, but it's entertaining enough for the boys and has enough "lovey" stuff for the girls. Some of the parts might have been a little too scary for Junior 2, but I love how the classroom turns into a movie theater where they start yelling at the characters or yelling out questions to each other. So I was able to sit and recover from another round of illness while they sat completely unaware of it.

Another thing I had to get done on the student side was I got their pen pal letters from students in my cousin Jenny school in Florida. At first I was going to give them two weeks to write back before sending them out together. Then, I came to a realization. Most of my pen pals over the years have given me their school addresses because they actually don't know their home addresses. So the students in Junior 3 who were graduating in June had no idea what their next address was going to be because they hadn't taken/passed their entrance exams. So I kind of made them rush to get the letters done so I could send them out as soon as possible so the students on the other end could write a response before they graduated. By then they could either 1. find out their home address or 2. wait till they knew what high school they'd be in before writing back. I was able to collect all the letters by Friday and sent them out on Saturday afternoon.

On Valentine's Day I had spent some time with a volunteer organization. Through that organization, I met a girl named Luo Hong who pretty much couldn't speak English, but wanted to spend time with me. She's been sending me messages on my cell phone all the time and I told her that Friday afternoon I was free if she wanted to meet up and have dinner together. Once Friday rolled around, I waited and took the school bus back into town to meet up with her at one of the more well known intersections: Pen Shui Chi. The bus didn't exactly go there, but after a short walk I made it, met up with Luo Hong, and then we actually ended up walking back to the place where I had gotten off from the bus: Normal University (Shi Da). We met up with one of her friends Yang Yan and they took me to the mountain on campus.

We climbed up to the top, chatting along the way. We reached the top and although it was fairly foggy, the view of the city was nice and there was a good breeze. While we sat down to catch our breath, this old man came out of nowhere. Now, most people who see me talk to the people I'm with, asking what country I'm from, why I'm here, if I can speak Chinese, etc. He came right up to me and asked if I could speak Chinese. I told him that I could and he just launched into this huge story about how he used to be a professor at the university and telling me all these places I should visit in the area and asking all these questions about my family, my life, and what I had studied in college. Then he started to tell me that back in the day there had been an American professor at the university who he had been friends with who used to climb the mountain every morning carrying a jug of water in each hand. Once he was done talking, he walked away and started singing. Really, a bizarre, but memorable encounter - at the top of a mountain no less.

Here's Yang Yan, Luo Hong, and me.

The three of us ended up eating dinner at the school cafeteria which was fairly similar to the one at Fu Xing, but much tastier. Turns out it was Yang Yan's birthday, so we had a cake, went back to her dorm room, and sang "happy birthday" to her. I wish I would have taken more pictures of the dorm room to give everyone an idea of what it's like, but I'll try to be as descriptive as possible. Space is a luxury in China. Thus, there are usually 6-8 roommates in a typical college dorm room. So two sets of bunk beds line the two walls, there's one computer everyone must share, and one desk. The floor is concrete. Each of the girls had a shelf over their bed along the wall where they could keep all their school things and personal items. The bathroom was basically a sink and the toilet and they have a balcony where they can hang dry their clothes. That's it. No frills, no extras. Makes my dorm experience seem like a palace.

After spending a little bit more time with them, I headed over to Ms. Xiao's home for the evening. We had plans for Saturday and since they don't have a car, we figured it would be easier to just have me stay the night. We ended up watching her wedding video - since I was home when she got married. It was a bit long, but it followed the whole day starting from about 5 or 6 in the morning when her husband had to come pick her up. But he had to get through the door first - which was guarded by her closest friends who quizzed him about Ms. Xiao among other things. Every question he got wrong, he had to slide a red envelope with money to them. Once he got through the main door, he then had to repeat the process with the bedroom door. After he FINALLY got in, he had to ask Ms. Xiao if she'd marry him. From there they had to first pay respects to her parents, then go to another home to pay respects to his parents. Then it went on to show the evening reception. We ended up watching a couple of movies before going to bed.

We woke up to a very dreary day. It was sprinkling, so the kite flying plan was shot down. So once her friend picked us up in his car, we went to Huaxi to first pick strawberries (can't complain there) then eat lunch. Picking strawberries this time was a bit more challenging because of the rain - the trenches between the mounds were filled with water, so we had to walk between the plants. I don't have the best balance in the world, so I almost fell a couple of times. We then went to eat lunch and once that was taken care of, they took me to the post office. First I had to get special envelopes and fill out some forms. The woman behind the counter I don't think was too sure of what she was doing because she wasn't weighing anything. Makes me a little nervous for the letters going to Michigan, but with much I paid to send the majority of letters to Florida, they better already be there. Once that was finally taken care of, they took me back to the school because the weather really didn't permit anything other than sitting around inside.

Sunday is becoming known as my "hermit day". I try to reserve that day for doing as little as possible and things that requires a lot of effort. I cleaned, I did laundry, I fixed my phone for the 4th time, did homework, prepared classes, and watched some movies. This is my recovery day, the day I "escape" from China. If I didn't take this day, I don't think I'd make it through the rest of the week. So it turned out to be a very nice and relaxing Easter.

Now, I wasn't able to really prepare an "Easter egg hunt" at all. I had lots of great suggestions of what to hide, but didn't find anything in stores that would work. And I guess that's okay because the weather was just awful on Monday. Luckily, I had a mini back up plan for the younger students. In a package I had gotten from April, she had sent me an Easter egg dying kit. Now, I've done this loads of times over the course of my life, but knew none of my students had. So I had to make a choice of which students to do it with. So I invited both J2C1 and J2C2 to come to my room at 6:30 to dye eggs. Only 5 or 6 people expressed interest from J2C2, but the ENTIRE class for J2C1 said they wanted to. That meant I had to buy more eggs than I had intended to. So after lunch I went out and bought 24 then had to boil them all - add this to the other 6 I already had prepared. This took forever because I only have 1 suitable pot and it could only fit 6-7 eggs each time.

So 6:15 rolls around and I'm all set up, wondering if all the students will forget and I'll have to eat 20 hard boiled eggs. But the students started showing up and they really got into it. Luckily the kit April sent me wasn't the old fashion kind where you have to make the dyes yourself with vinegar, etc. So I showed the first group how to put the eggs into the bags and drip the dye onto them, and they in turn showed the next group, and so on. They were floored when I told them it was still safe to eat them and they could take them with them. Yeah, like I want all 30.

Mostly it was the girls who came, but some of the boys showed up, too.

I knew that I'd run out of dye, so I brought non-toxic markers along too hoping some of them would be more interested in drawing than dying. That plan worked even though I did end up running out of dye.

Here's Wang Guowei and Yi Yushan from J2C2 showing off their finished eggs.

There were only two accidents - Li Huan dropped her egg before she even got started and Zhou Jiajia's slipped out of her hand while she was drawing on it. I did end up running out of eggs and some students who came later were sad that they couldn't participate, but I told them I'd try to do other activities like it before the end of the semester. Then some students came in who just wanted to eat the eggs - so they got the broken ones! Either way, a very, very fun activity.

Until next time!!

Dudu and Huang Li

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 03:00:01 GMT

Saturday I had to make the trip into town to Walmart to get cereal. I don't know why it was such a huge need, but it happens sometimes. Alas, all they had was Coco Frosties, so desperate times call for desperate measures. Since I was in town I decided to go and visit the American run coffee shop to buy myself a desert. I am now slowly coming the realization that there are more and more foreigners in Guiyang. There had to be about 20 foreigners there and while holding my slice of strawberry pie, I debated going over and introducing myself to a group of girls who looked about my age. But then I kind of realized, I didn't come to China to make friends I could just have easily met in the States. I went to an empty table, ate my delicious pie, and left. While it's been annoying to be isolated from time to time, in a way it has prevented me from spending time with foreigners all the time - which I think I would end up doing if I were in Beijing, Shanghai, or any other big city. Then, because of that, I wouldn't have had the chance to do all the things that I have. I am grateful for the foreigners I've met so far, but I've made so many wonderful Chinese friends. It's going to be hard enough keeping in touch with everyone as it is.

Sunday ended up being fairly uneventful. I did chores, prepared classes, and relaxed. It was Monday afternoon that Ms. Xiao and I asked if Betty could bring Dudu for me to play with. 2 month old puppy + me = happiness. She said she would bring the puppy Thursday because I had no class that day - what?? Turns out it was an examination week, so I had no classes to teach on Thursday. So I had to do some adjusting in the lesson plans, but that was okay. Betty ended up bringing Dudu on Wednesday instead, so I was able to play with her all day - except while I was in class.

She's a very cute little puppy. All the students thought she was mine, so the next day they kept asking where my dog was.

Anyway, I promised Betty that I would exhaust her puppy for her - and I sure did. Dudu couldn't handle all the excitement from being introduced to her first ball, to all the students wanting to hold her, to having issues with stairs on campus. Betty brought a bag for me to carry her around in because her little legs are just too small to handle more than two stairs in a row. She occasionally passed out, which was funny to watch.

Starting Wednesday night, the students began to have exams. After the exam period is over, they all run to where the answers are posted to see what they got right or wrong. Here's Li Huan and Liu Yuxin cringing at the correct answers for their Chinese test Thursday morning.

The weather here has made a turn for spring/summer. The skies have been clear, the breeze warm, and the sun out. So more flowers!! It's interesting with all the sunshine that I am once again reminded of a huge difference between the concept of beauty in China vs. the USA. In the States, most people feel that if you look tan, you look more healthy/beautiful/etc. In China, pale skin is in. There are all sorts of creams and lotions to make your skin more creamy. Along all the things people comment about my appearance ("tall nose", "beautiful eyes", etc.), "good skin" is always up there. Now, I don't think I have great skin, but everyone here thinks I do. So whenever it's been sunny they all rush to get me in the shade so I don't get tan. I know I have to be careful because I'm closer to the Equator than I am in Michigan, but sometimes its hard to explain to everyone that I actually enjoy the sunshine.

Now every teacher has their favorites. One of my favorite students happens to be Huang Li. Last semester she and her mother had invited me to their home many different times, but after going home with Glory (Chen Xiongshiyi) and freezing my behind off half the weekend, I kept politely declining. So during the week as she was leaving the classroom she chided me for never visiting her home, to which I responded "I'm free this weekend."

Huang Li is in Junior 3, class 2 and I have to say, her English is by far one of the best in the entire school. And she has no trouble showing her sense of humor in English, which many of the students trouble with. She's an all around goofy kid, and she's a lot of fun. She's actually in the picture that made the front page of the Eccentric - and she asked me to pay her for that. Either way, she wanted to take a better picture with me - and this is the result.

Friday after exams were over, she had some extra work to finish up so we ended up missing the school bus back to the city. The weather was gorgeous, but still fearing the cold I packed a bit heavy. We ended up waiting about 30 minutes for the public bus and once we got to the train station, Huang Li wasn't paying too close attention and we ended up getting on the wrong bus. So we then had to walk quite a distance to catch the bus which would take us to her home - when we finally got there, it was almost exactly 3 hours after we had originally set out from the school.

Her home is located in a suburb similar to that around the school - rather poor. However, because there is no more room in the actual city to build apartments, smack dab in the middle of this poorer neighborhood are these really nice, brand new apartments. Over the course of the weekend I learned a lot about her family - her father's parents were divorced (really rare in China back then), and then his step-mother apparently wasn't the kindest of souls - so he cut himself off from his family and literally is a self-made man who now owns and runs a factory. When her parents first got married, they ran a number of different businesses - which in turn caused her mother to fall ill often, so much so that she can't work now. And Huang Li is a second child. Her older brother attends a local university. A very interesting and welcoming family. I have to admit, her parents made me feel so comfortable while I was staying with them. They rarely fussed, which I appreciate more than I think they realize.

One funny thing about arriving to their home Friday was that Huang Li was all excited her mother would cook a number of delicious dishes for me to eat. Turns out I think her mom was worried I wouldn't like her cooking, so she actually went to a local restaurant and had them make the dishes for her. When we came home, Huang Li bounded over to the table to look and then she looked at me and said "My mother didn't cook these. She cheated!"

The game plan of the weekend was one thing: shopping. Huang Li had to get a number of things for her PE examination, so Saturday morning after getting a ride into town and eating breakfast together with her parents, Huang Li and I went shopping pretty much the whole day. This would have been much more fun if it hadn't been so hot and practically none of the buildings had air conditioning. And it turns out her shopping list was a lot more challenging than either of us had originally predicted - part of that due to how picky she is, part of it due to lack of choices. I finally know what size I am here, so I was able to get a couple of shirts as well as some other things. Lunch was interesting because we got a local snack called "liang mian" which means cold noodles - however, we both forgot to mention to the person making my bowl to go easy on the pepper. Along with my bowl of noodles, I was able to finish a bottle of water. During our outing I also managed to take her to the American coffee house so she could try some American deserts and a smoothie. A very nice, but a little tiring of a day.

That night we did homework (yes, I have Chinese homework) and I asked her about all the student gossip. It just reminded me of middle and high school get togethers. Really, I had a great time just hanging out with her in a non teacher/student situation. She's a bright kid.

Sunday afternoon I was to be dropped off near Betty's house so I could accompany her, Jack, Sunshine, along with a bunch of her other students to a picnic at a park. Now this day was not only hot, it was humid to the point where being in the shade didn't help at all. The picnic itself was fun. Betty organized a bunch of games for the kids - including me teaching them how to play hopscotch. The kids had just studied different foods in class and when it was time to eat, they had to ask for what they wanted in English. So for things they couldn't remember they came running to find me, Betty, or Jack. Really cute.

Here's the kids playing hopscotch.

A group shot of me, Betty, Jack, and all the students who came.

After the actual picnic was over and done with, Betty said we were going to pick some strawberries. Jack told me how last year when they went picking both he and Sunshine got stung by bees - not the best advertisement in the world. Not to mention that I was fairly exhausted and could have done without, but Sunshine was so excited I just kept my mouth shut. We drove a little ways and then pulled off to the side of the road at one of the vendors along the street. We took baskets and were taken by the farmer to the fields and allowed to pick as many as we wanted.

Here's where we got to pick our strawberries. They are delicious, but were a little too ripe so most of them have already gone bad. I should have picked a little less, but that's the way it is.

After we finished picking, they drove me back to the school and dreaded the weather change that I knew was coming.

The Language and a Visit to Miaomiao

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 19:03:19 GMT

I took a little break from writing entries. Mostly because this past weekend was my friend Jenny's birthday (the person who has been posting for me), and part of my birthday present to her was not making her post all weekend. Hah!

I would like start by making a disclaimer about my last entry. Some people were completely freaked out by the whole rabbit story. I just want to clarify that this is not the norm. When people here get pets, they don't think one day "you know, let's eat Fluffy." Pets are pets and most animals that are eaten are raised to be eaten. When someone gets a pet in the States, they're almost like another child in the household. In China, they're still (for the most part) just animals. There are no laws in Guiyang that prevent a person who, when they get sick of owning a pet, they can just push it out on the street to fend for themselves - and if there are laws, no one follows them. That's why there are hundreds of stray dogs in the city. Add to that that there is no Chinese version of Bob Barker reminding everyone to "spay or neuter your pet to help control the pet population," so most dogs here aren't fixed. Betty had only a few options: 1. She could have deserted the rabbit on the street. 2. Given him away (but no one she knew would take him and I would have if I didn't know two months down the road I'd run into the same problem). Or 3. The option she ended up going with. And also, when she asked if I wanted rabbit meat, she was totally joking. She couldn't eat it either.

That being said, I would now like to direct your attention to this link:

http://www4.oakland.edu/view_news.aspx?sid=34&id=3770
When the article was written about me in the Eccentric, Ted Montgomery from Oakland University got a hold of me and wanted to do a story for the university website. It's so weird having all these stories written about me! I hope you enjoy it.

During last week I had called Dr. Li and he invited me to spend Friday with him. But before he picked me up, I kind of did a mini-project I've always wanted to do to really demonstrate to everyone who reads this how drastic the difference in dialects are here. Not like the Chinese language isn't difficult enough as it is, but with all the mountains in the country different populations were isolated and in turn they created their own form of speech. Luckily, back in the day (we're talking when China first was united under the guy who had the Terra Cotta Soldiers built for his grave), the writing system is unified. Thank god, too, otherwise I'd be completely screwed.

However, when I was in middle and high school I studied traditional characters (on the left). These are used on Taiwan - and the last time I checked, that was about 23 million people. At OU I studied simplified characters (on the right), which is used on the mainland - close to 1.3 billion people. Some of these changes were very small (like the first), medium (like the second), or large enough to make me want to cry (the last). For those who are curious, the first is "yu" which means language, the second is "che" which means car, and the last is "ting" which means listen. Please pardon my awful writing. I am not used to doing that on the computer.

Anyway, back to the whole project thing. I went around to bunch of teachers and asked what different dialects they could speak, chose a phrase - "I don't know", and made a video of them saying it in the different dialects. These three videos are the result of what I have so far:

This is Betty. First I instruct her to use Mandarin, what I study, as the base. She then says the exact same sentence, but in the Guiyang dialect. (You can hear another teacher laughing in the background which in turn made me start to laugh) And then, finally, she says the same sentence in a version of Hunan dialect, where she grew up. To quote my friend Rachel: "Holy wow, they don't even sound remotely the same." Welcome to my nightmare.

Here's Ms. Xiao saying the exact same thing in a different version of Hunan dialect.

Lastly, we have Mr. Liu (who was so incredibly nervous we had to do it twice) saying it in Shandong dialect (in the north), and then Ms. Zhao saying it in Sichuan dialect. She first asked me if one was enough. The Sichuan dialect and Guiyang dialect are actually very close for the sentence I chose.

Basically I wanted to demonstrate for anyone who was curious as to how significant the difference is between all the dialects. To get even more confused, you can look at this website:

http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-chinese-dialects. It actually lists all the different dialects. Just scrolling down gives me a headache. I still have a couple more teachers I want to film, but even these three demonstrate the point well enough.

After I finished with that gem, Dr. Li picked me up and took me into town for lunch. We caught up a bit. He's been really busy with all his business interests and with the research project he's conducting while he's here. He then offered to take me to visit Robert (his son)'s school. Robert is attending Miaomiao Elementary School while he's here. I actually visited the main branch of the school while I was in Guiyang in 1998. It's where I was able to see a number of performances of minority dancing and music. A really cool experience. Either way, it was quite the drive to get to the branch where Robert is attending.

We arrived during nap time and we sat down to speak with the school principal. She even said she remembered our group coming through in 1998 - we were, after all, the first American school "delegation" to the area. Once the kids were up and classes were back in session, they asked if I wanted to "sit in" on Robert's class. "Sit in" to me means sit in the back, smile and nod occasionally. "Sit in" in China, apparently means take over the class. I was so incredibly unprepared for this because the children were so young and I had absolutely no idea how good their English was. When I taught Betty's class I was given a week to brainstorm and knew exactly what the kids knew. So, I have to admit, I kind of froze. Luckily Dr. Li was there to help - but as he told me later, he's used to university students so he felt out of his element, too.

What ended up happening is they gave me a chair and I sat in front of the classroom. The kids would then approach me and ask me questions. At first, this was only the students who had better English. Then, everyone kind of rushed forward and they even brought another group of students into the classroom to ask questions. I was asked yes or no questions for the most part like "do you like China?" "do you like ice cream?" "do you like swimming?" "do you like milk?" and so on. Many of these were repeated 5-10 times by different students. There were also the occasional "what is your favorite (insert something here)?" or "what do you like about China?" And, in the midst of all this, suddenly a photographer appeared! So I'm being completely surrounded by children, the teachers are all laughing thinking this is the best thing ever, and now someone is taking my picture.

When the class period was over and everyone had to return to their seats, one student came up to me with a pen and a piece of paper and asked me to sign it. Upon seeing this, the entire class of about 30 thought this was an awesome idea and I was rushed with pieces of paper and pens. The teachers had to organize people into a line. Some students got in line twice. By the time I was able to leave the room, I was completely bewildered by what had just happened.

Here's before they gave me a chair. Yeah, you can somewhat tell by my face that I had no idea what to do.

After the chair. I love how you can barely see me anymore.

We left the school and Dr. Li wanted to show me the university he has been conducting his research at. When we got there most of the students had gone home for the weekend and his building was fairly deserted. This was when Robert started to complain that he wasn't feeling too good. Poor Robert has gotten sick more in these past few months than I have the entire time I've been here. After Dr. Li printed some things off his computer in his office and I remarked on how creepy the lobby was with it's 20-30 piano's in boxes, we headed out to stop and get some medicine for his son. We dropped Robert off at his uncle's so that me and Dr. Li could go to a dinner.

Through Wang Chaoling, Dr. Li is now involved in the same volunteer organization I had done a day trip with in February. He did a lecture for them on Sunday about learning English and to show their appreciation, many of the upper people in the organization treated him to dinner. I actually knew one of the people there. The atmosphere was good, the people were friendly, and there was no smoking. I had a really good and relaxing time. However, this was also my first banquet setting since recovering from the cold I had - thus, I was encouraged to drink. I had to cheat a little bit to prevent myself from drinking as much as everyone else because my tolerance was so incredibly low, but that's okay.

During the dinner, Dr. Li got a call from his brother saying that Robert was very sick, so after dinner we went to pick him up and take him to the hospital. When we got to the hospital, parking was scarce so Dr. Li actually said "the foreigner is sick. We won't be here for long." In a way, it wasn't a lie because Robert IS American, but I was sitting in the front seat and the parking attendant assumed it was me. So we were allowed to park. Robert had quite a temperature, so after sitting around for a while they decided to give him an IV. After they set this up, Dr. Li drove me back to Fuxing.

More to come about my weekend and the following week in the next entry. Take care till then!

Pictures Galore

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 15:11:48 GMT

Sunday the 18th, I had planned to eat all those extra leftovers from the dinner out with Ms. Xiao. Something came up where she couldn't eat with me, so I made myself some noodles and decided to have our feast another night that week.

We ended up preparing our feast Monday night and spent the evening together. I made her her very first cup of hot chocolate and I made another convert. It was just a very refreshing evening because as convenient as the school cafeteria is, they often make 1 or 2 side dishes that are either too spicy or I just don't like. So an hour or two later, I find myself hungry again. To anticipate this hunger, my room is well stocked with a variety of snacks - mostly fruit, sunflower seeds, peanuts, and whatever else catches my interest when I'm in the store. A personal favorite currently are these baby mangos you can buy - they're super sweet and I was shown a really cool and easy way to eat them. Anyway, upon seeing my kitchen Ms. Xiao exclaimed "wow, you are so rich!" meaning how much food I had. It made me laugh.

Speaking of laughing, Betty told me a very funny story. They decided on Saturday to get a little white dog for Sunshine. This makes me super excited because I really don't get to play with animals too often, so now they had a dog and a rabbit. Immediately after that thought, I realized that Betty had never actually liked the rabbit. So I had to ask what they were planning to do with Xiaobai. She looked at me and said "well, maybe tomorrow I will go home and kill it. Want some rabbit meat?" As horrified as I was, this also managed to be hilarious. After I got over the fact that she was going to kill the bunny, I had to ask what Sunshine thought about this. Betty said she gave her a choice: you can keep your bunny or you can keep the dog and that she could not keep both. So Sunshine opted for the dog and that it was okay to "get rid of" Xiaobai and she would be okay eating him. Betty was also okay with eating him, but her husband Jack, was not. It became the running joke of a couple of days to ask Betty when she was going to kill and eat her rabbit, and her answer always was "well, maybe tomorrow." So then we'd always say "poor Xiaobai!" What actually ended up happening was that Betty couldn't do it, so she gave it to Sunshine's grandmother to kill and distribute the meat.

And I must admit, the icing on the cake was when I asked Betty what Sunshine named her puppy. Dudu. I made her repeat this a couple times to make sure I heard correctly. This is pronounced "doodoo", so I proceeded to crack up. Curious as to why I was laughing, I had to explain to Betty that doodoo was another way to say going poop. Then she said "oh…well, I guess I'll never forget that then."

Tuesday morning, around 4 or 5 am, the power went out. This happens from time to time when the power will go off for a day. Sometimes we get a warning, sometimes it just happens. Since we didn't get a warning for this one, we were all concerned the power wouldn't come back on in the evening. Ms. Yang was hoping it would come on at 7:40 - meaning that she wouldn't have to teach her evening class. She was denied, however, when the power came back at 5.

That night a bunch of the teachers went out to eat together. There's a couple of flowering trees at the school gate, so I brought along my camera. Betty had insisted we take pictures after lunch Monday, so there are two groups - one with her camera, and one with mine. It ended up being a lot of fun, and we took a ton of pictures. Some of them, I will share here:

This one was actually taken Monday afternoon. I love how Ms. Zhang and Ms. Xiao are posing with the tree. Then there's me and Ms. Yang.

Another flowering tree that I thought was really pretty.

Okay, so I realize not many people are featured in the pictures I'm selecting, but everything is so pretty right now! You can see pictures of me later.

So after our photo taking frenzy, we went to have dinner. It ended up being really good, even though they had to get me a bowl of soup so I could dip the food in to get all the spicy-ness off of it. It was just a little bit over my threshold. It was a different kind of hot pot. Whenever Ms. Feng comes out to dinner with us she INSISTS on everyone drinking. Ms. Wu put up a protest because she had to teach, but the strong personality of Ms. Feng won out. Either way, dinner was a blast. We ended up taking a couple more pictures of flowering trees around campus and Ms. Xiao informed me there are peach trees that in May we should be able to eat the fruit from. I've actually noticed that there are many trees on campus with fruits of some kind. Some will be ready to eat in a couple of months, others in the fall. Either way, whoever planned that deserves a hearty pat on the back. I appreciate it a lot!

This was also the day that the students finally found out about Ms. Xiao being pregnant. Some girls from Junior 3 kept asking questions of her and she finally admitted that they were right. Later, Chen Xiongshiyi (from J2C1) heard something, and came to ask me if it was true. After we got back from dinner a bunch of girls were crowding around Ms. Xiao and asking her tons of questions. I'm glad I no longer have to lie about the blanket I'm making - I kept telling students it was a scarf.

Anyway, once we got back to the offices I was informed that on Friday Ms. Zhao and Mr. Liu had officially gone to get their wedding pictures taken. So Ms. Xiao and I went to take a look. From what I've seen so far, they weren't as good as others that I've seen, but it was so cool to see the two of them all dressed up. They put way too much makeup on Ms. Zhao so much so that it managed to not really look like her - and it didn't help that they're not the most photogenic people in the world, but that's the way it is. It's a tradition to have these pictures taken when a couple gets married - not like engagement pictures because they don't have the belief that it's bad luck to see the bride in her wedding dress before the ceremony. These studios are everywhere - and I'm still super excited that I'm going to be able to make a personal album similiar to something like this. I just wear my own clothes and they take care of the rest. So now I'm going to share a couple of their pictures as well as some of Ms. Xiao's. Enjoy!

Here's Ms. Xiao and her now husband. I've only really met him twice - once at a wedding and once when he came to visit Ms. Xiao at the school. She pretty much stays on campus all week and goes home on the weekends. I asked her why and she said because otherwise she'd have to get up really early every morning to catch the bus, and she'd rather sleep in.

So I've noticed a bit of a trend with these pictures. There is usually one outfit where they go to an outside location and then the rest are shot in a studio like this one. I honestly think that Ms. Xiao's turned out really good.

Turns out they actually can't stand this one, but it has them smiling like they naturally do. Most of the other pictures they look stiff and their smiles aren't real at all. They went a bit overboard with Ms. Zhao's makeup, but that's the way it is. I just think the two of them are so damn cute!

Here they are again in their outdoor setting. Very nice, methinks. It was funny when I asked Mr. Liu for these pictures - he looked at me and said "all of them?" So I said "yes..all of them." "Ahh! Some of them are so terrible!" But I won.

Until next time!

An Abundance of Videos

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 15:07:47 GMT

Hey everyone! I just wanted to bring you all up to date with the videos I've been taking. Most of the ones in this entry are shots I took from cars, busses, or trains during my travels, so they give you a good idea of the lay of the land. There are a couple of students, some monkeys, and the Stone Forest. Also, for anyone viewing this post on facebook - sorry, but for some reason the note feature won't let the videos show up. But if you click on the little thing that says "view the original post" (or something like that), you can go directly to livejournal and see the videos there. And, as usual, I'm putting them under a cut. Enjoy!

Another week in Guiyang

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 02:43:50 GMT

I had a pleasant surprise this past week. One day in the office the teachers all had their bank account books out and were talking about how much they had in their account. I didn't ask right away, but waited till I was alone with Ms. Xiao. Turns out the teachers have been paid! (Insert angels singing and horns sounding here) They weren't paid the full amount they were owed, but maybe 75% which I think is pretty awesome considering how long they've waited for it. I'm pretty sure that Dr. Li had a hand in dealing with that. The day he came to campus he had been in a meeting with Headmaster Wu and I'm sure it was about the money situation and the future of the school.

Classes were normal enough this past week. Kids were well behaved - shockingly enough. I swear, sometimes I don't understand how one day they can be bouncing off the walls and the next they'll all just sit in their seats and nod at the right moments.

I sat down with Ms. Xiao on Monday afternoon and expressed to her that I wanted to be more serious this term about my Chinese lessons with her. She nodded and agreed, then said it was a good thing I said so because she had a bunch of lessons already prepared and that night we got down to business. It became apparent that I needed to get another new book. The problem with most texts I've purchased is they're either too easy or they go over my head without any grammar explanations. So we decided that we would get me some tapes to listen to, see if there were any DVDs, and possibly get a new book on Friday. So Friday we went to the foreign language book store in town and I was able to find by far the most suitable book I've ever found for my learning Chinese. This book specifically states in the introduction that it is for foreigners living in China wanting to learn more conversational and practical Chinese and that they should have a base of at least 1,000 characters before picking the book up. I flipped through the first lesson and it outlined each grammar point in ENGLISH. And I could follow the dialogue and text. Glorious. I bought it along with a DVD set featuring Da Shan - probably the most famous foreigner in China for learning Chinese. This man's Mandarin is amazing - born and raised in Canada. Everyone talks about him and tells me I should strive to have Chinese like him. But I digress.

Tuesday morning we were going to get my visa straightened out once and for all. When I had gone a couple of weeks ago, I had only gotten a travel visa until when all the paperwork could be straightened out for me to get my working/residence visa that makes it okay for me to work here. For some reason or another, a package a friend had sent to me couldn't be delivered directly to the school so I had to go to the post office to pick it up. I had gotten a package the day before from my parents, so I had a great idea to put together a package in the same box to send home because I knew it would take 3 months by surface and I already had to go to the post office in the first place. Mr. Zhang picked me up from the school and we went straight to the post office. Picking up the package wasn't hard at all - I just had to sign something and they gave me the box. Sending the other package, however, was not so easy.

I didn't tape the box up because I knew they were going to have to look through it to be able to send it to the States. Basically I packed books and a couple of winter things (scarves, gloves, a sweater, etc.) as fillers so the books wouldn't slide around. I also packed the tea set I had bought in Yunnan. The first problem was that they weren't sure whether or not I could send the tea by mail. So we had to wait for this one woman to look through a handbook to see if it was okay. This part I completely understand because the things you can and cannot send internationally is really complicated. She couldn't find anything about tea being forbidden, so we continued on. They actually took everything out of the box, flipped through pages in the books to make sure they were books, and then just shoved everything back in the box. Now, I originally packed that box with the skills of a seasoned Tetris player, so when they threw everything back in - shock - it wouldn't fit. The woman helping the man proclaimed that it wouldn't fit so I couldn't send it. I told them I could repack it correctly and did so in a matter of a few seconds.

The next problem was the fact that I had used a box that had already been through the mail. What I had done was written the new addresses (ship to and return) on pieces of paper and taped them over the one's my parents had written on the box to send to me. There we also stamps on the box and the sticker for postage to China. They ripped that one off but then debated the stamps on the bottom of the box. Also when looking at the bottom of the box, they noticed part of it was wet. Apparently in my repacking I had accidentally set it down in a little bit of water. So the woman wasn't sure we could still use the box. She had to call. So she calls a number and no one answers. At this point, I was telling Mr. Zhang we should forget it and just leave. I could take it with me or give the things to my brother when he came in May. OR go to a post office that knew what they were doing. She called a second number and the person on the line probably said something along the lines of "of course it's okay - why wouldn't it be okay?" because after that we had absolutely no trouble. They taped up the box as if I were sending porcelain cups with no padding (or maybe bombs?) and then had me fill out the paper work and pay. The entire process of sending the package took 30 minutes. I am never sending a package out of that office ever again.

This was all before going to pick up a Ms. Zhang from the administration so we could get my visa FINALLY taken care of. We arrived at the police station to do this only to find out that now they are requiring those applying for residence visas to have a proof of specialty, in my case teaching. So we had to go and get that instead. By the time that was taken care of, it was time to go back to the school. Now I have to make another trip next week to actually get the visa taken care of.

That night Betty was staying at the school (like she does normally on Tuesdays), but this time she declared that she would be preparing a meal for the teachers. This ended up turning into a huge production, but they wouldn't allow me to help cook or prepare anything. I got to sit around and continue to knit the baby blanket.

Here's Betty preparing a bunch of the vegetables for the meal.

Me joking around and taking a picture of Ms. Xiao's belly - she's barely showing at all, but we were all teasing her about how she'll have twins.

They ended up not letting Ms. Zhao help either, so she went to work on what is actually the 4th sweater she's made this winter. I call her the knit-master because she's so fast at it. And she never makes a mistake. It's really crazy to just sit and watch her go. Another funny thing about this picture was that I took it in the middle of her calling out "eh?" because someone had asked her a question from the other room.

Such a wonderful dinner prepared mostly by Betty and Ms. Zhang. Completely delicious, although they chided me afterwards for eating too little. I stop when I'm full, I swear!

Other than the dinner and the incident at the post off, the school week was fairly uneventful. During the week, Betty informed me that Ms. Zhang had invited me to her home. Now to clarify, this is a different Ms. Zhang from the one I went home with to the other side of the province and to Yunnan. This Ms. Zhang is part of the administration at the school. She said her husband would be out of town so it would just be me, her, and her son who is 9.

After the trip to the bookstore Ms. Xiao took me to Ms. Zhang's home. This is the first person I've stayed with in Guiyang that has an elevator in the building. Thank goodness, too, because she lived on the 19th floor. Her home was very nice - much like Li Ye's (the first girl I went home with), but a bit smaller. Awesome view from up there, too. Ms. Zhang's son was absolutely petrified to speak English with me, but was more than willing to speak in Chinese with me. I've actually met him before at weddings and other gatherings. After Ms. Xiao left, Ms. Zhang took me to the local supermarket to stock up on food for me for the weekend. She went a little overboard, but I've seen that happen so many times so I kept my mouth shut.

Now, Ms. Zhang doesn't speak English. It really forced me to speak Chinese the entire weekend, which was good practice. Her Mandarin is very standard and clear, so it was easy for me to understand her. I feel like giving myself a gold star because I only had to use my dictionary once the entire time. Once we got back from the supermarket, her son wanted to watch a movie with me, but this turned out to be more complicated than it needed to be. Some setting on their stereo system was off and only the background sounds would work. Or it wouldn't have Mandarin for him to understand, only Cantonese. So we ended up watching "Babe" without any sound except the music and English subtitles because I couldn't convince Ms. Zhang that I'd seen it before so it was okay if I didn't follow the dialogue. Oh well.

For dinner, her son wanted to go to Dico's, which is a fast food restaurant combination of McDonald's and KFC. Usually, I try to shy away from western food while I'm here because it usually does a number on my digestive track. However, I had been craving French fries for some reason or another, so I was super excited. At the restaurant we met up with one of Ms. Zhang's sisters, her daughter, and her daughter's friend. The girls had class at 8:00 that night that went to 11:00, so after dropping them off we went to eat again. The two women didn't really eat much at the fast food place, so they were still hungry. The place we ended up was something I had tried before. It's pretty much a series of metal units connected together and you boil various foods (cabbage to eggs to pork) on sticks on them. In hindsight, I should have taken a picture of it, but I'm sure I'll have it again so you'll just have to wait for it.

We then returned to the apartment where they put on another movie for me. Every movie we ran into some technical kind of problem, so for most of them we settled with English subtitles and Chinese talking. I should officially call this the weekend of movies because the next day, because the weather was a bit cold and I still had a cough, they refused to take me to pick strawberries - which had been the original plan. (I had been super excited for this so Betty told me she would try to take me and Sunshine one weekend) Since they really had no idea what to do with me, I got to sit on the couch all day and watch movies. So in addition to "Babe", I was able to see "The Transporter", part of "The Transporter 2", part of "Eight Below", "The Chronicles of Narnia", and "The Curse of the Golden Flower." I am officially movied out for a while.

I was taken out to eat dinner at a really nice restaurant where their specialty is Beijing style roast duck - and I won't lie, I love the stuff. When ordering, I think they forgot that even though there were 6 people, 3 of them were under the age of 12. So they went completely nuts and we, of course, were not able to finish it all. The benefit of this was that I got to take a bunch of the dishes in a to-go pack to eat the next week.

Here's a picture of me and Ms. Zhang. She's really a sweetheart and I'm glad I went home with her for a couple of days.

On Sunday after eating breakfast, I was taken back to the school. Ms. Zhang said she had something come up that she had to take care of, so Sunday I was able to do some reading, prepare classes for the week, and catch up with everyone.

In other news, in case some of you haven't heard, but in May Chris and Kim are going to be making a trip to Beijing and Shanghai for their master's program. So, if everything works out, I'll be visiting them while they're in Shanghai for a weekend. Then a couple of weeks later, my parents are coming! They'll get here June 9 th in the evening, we'll spend a week in Guiyang together, then fly to Beijing for about 8 days. After being hardcore tourists, we'll head back to the U.S.A. together. Super, super excited for both visits.

Until next time!

The Return to Fu Xing

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 01:21:23 GMT

Okay, let's recap for a moment. I came back to China on January 30th and was in Beijing for about one week. I then flew to Chengdu and stayed there for a5-6 days. I came back to Guiyang and after the Spring Festival, I went to stay with Ms. Zhang for a week and for two of those days we traveled to Yunnan. Finally, on Sunday February 25 th, I returned to the school in Guiyang and have been teaching (or attempting to) for two weeks. *phew* What a crazy month and a half. I actually took a map from the internet to somewhat illustrate exactly how many places in China that is.

This didn't shrink so well, but that's okay. On the far right I also added in where my closest American friend is - Mike went to middle school and high school with me and he's teaching at a high school in Zhejiang. A much more typical school setting than mine, from what he's shared with me. He has a much larger class load and a longer semester than I do - not because his school is in session longer, but because he's used for the entire time school is open.

When I got back to the school, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the tree directly in front of my door had flowered. It was so beautiful that I had to take a picture:

I'm glad I took this when I did because less than 24 hours later it was starting to lose it's petals. There were a couple of really windy days and many of them managed to sneak under the little gap between my door and the floor. I came back from class once to find my floor covered in flower petals. Sounds really pretty, and I thought so too at first, but man were they a pain to clean up because they kept sticking to the ground. You try sweeping up hundreds of dime sized petals off of a marble floor. It's not easy because they keep crumpling and the moisture in them makes them stick to the floor. In a way, I was happy when the tree was done shedding.

The greeting from the teachers and students was a bit lukewarm. They were just so happy to see each other that I was somewhat ignored until classes started for the students or until the second day for the teachers. One of the teachers, Ms. Xiao, had gotten married while I had gone home. She had really wanted me to be here for her wedding, but it would have meant a lot more money and less time in Michigan, so it just didn't happen. Much to my surprise, she's already pregnant and, at first she wasn't too happy about it. The idea is now growing on her. The students still don't know, so the teachers keep talking in code about it. (It was hard enough to understand them when they were being direct.) I told her I'm going to make her a baby blanket, which turned out to be a fairly foreign idea to them all. Took forever to really explain what it was for! Oh well, it'll give me practice for when I have to make them for my brothers when they have kids.

The first day of class for each class I had them take pieces of construction paper and make personal boards filling out their name, their age, their birthday, and whatever else they wanted to put about themselves so long as it was in English. It was funny how the lower level classes literally put the bare minimum on there and told me they were done, so I had to encourage them to do more - like decorate it. And then the higher level classes actually stayed late to finish - some of them even stayed an extra half hour. It made the room a complete mess, but now if someone misbehaves in class they have to come later to sweep and wash the floor. Comes in handy for those particularly naughty kids.

From left to right, there's J2C1, J2C2, J3C1, and then J3C2. As you can see, the J3's went crazy whereas the J2's were unaware there were scissors.

The first week of classes were fairly uneventful. When I asked how their break from school was, most of them said it was boring. I thought that was funny because whenever I had a break from school, I relished in the fact that it was boring. They all asked me what I did when I went home and I told them about spending time with friends, family, helping with the book store, and relaxing - they all thought that was very uninteresting. It just made me laugh. I don't know what they had expected me to do, but they made me feel like I let them down or something.

One very nice welcome back present was the fact that the school asked a number of the problem students to transfer to another school. So in addition to those students who were asked to leave, 3 more transferred to different schools and we got 1 new girl. So now I have a grand total of 99 students instead of last semester's 104. Then one of them went and sprained their ankle the second day of class, so he didn't come to class for a week. When he finally came back, he was limping around. I can't imagine all the stairs make it easy for him.

For the first weekend at Fu Xing I tried to be as low key as possible. I cleaned up my room, organized all my things, and relaxed. During the week of nice weather, I had actually managed to finally recover from my cold. On Friday afternoon Dr. Li stopped by to see me and to visit the school. However, later that night I had a tickle in my throat. Saturday while I went to buy yarn to make the baby blanket, it transformed into a cough. Sunday night a new cold was back and I was sick again.

This semester is actually a couple of weeks shorter than last. At first I didn't understand how this could be because the students in J3 have big exams in June for entrance to high schools. So they actually now have class on Sundays, too. J2 still comes late Sunday night and will continue classes for about 4 weeks after J3 gets done to take the exams. So now, half of the kids come back on Sunday morning. One bonus from this is that the school cafeteria now operates on Sundays, so now I don't have to cook anything anymore if I don't want to. Although one weird thing that happened is that the Monday morning assembly stopped - not like I understood any of the speeches, but it was habit. And I was going to video it. Oh well. Pretty much what would happen every morning was the students would all line up, they would put the flag up the flag pole, sing their national anthem, then a student would have a speech prepared which would then be followed by Ms. Zhang talking. So as far as I know, this is over with.

During the second week of classes, the weather changed to cold and wet again. With being sick again and certain things going wrong, I was in a fairly downer mood. Classes got out of control and I lost my temper with one of the groups of kids. Either way, it was a fairly rough week and I was very grateful when Friday arrived so I could just take it easy again and relax in my room as much as possible.

Saturday afternoon I met with Helen in town. I haven't seen her for a while, so we had a little catching up to do. First we went to her favorite milk tea place and sat down to chat. She gave me a present she had bought in Guangzhou - salt and pepper shakers. Afterwards, we went to have lunch. I wasn't feeling top notch, so I really didn't eat too much. For some reason, these colds have really been destroying my appetite. I lost a lot of weight, but without a scale, I have absolutely no way to tell exactly how much. (A couple of students have actually commented on how thin I look - which means once I recover, I really need to gain some of that back so my clothes fit again.) Once lunch was done, we decided to take it easy and went to see a movie together, "The Devil Wears Prada." It was in Chinese, so it was hard for me to follow. Then she helped me get some dictionaries for the classroom before I got on the bus to come back to Fu Xing where I ended up spending the night sleeping and praying for my cold to go away.

On Sunday I felt a lot better, so thank goodness. I ventured out to get some shopping done - mostly candy for the students - and then was able to enjoy dinner with Mr. Liu, Ms. Zhao, and Jerry. I then prepared for another week of teaching.

That's it for now.

As for anyone who is reading this journal without getting my email updates, I would like to bring to your attention that I can actually no longer access this site. I have to write these entries off-line and have my friend Jenny copy and paste them onto the journal for me. So if you write a comment, I will not be able to answer you directly until I can access the site again. Also, if you do write a comment and you don't have a livejournal ID, please include some way for me to contact you. Thanks so much!

The Stone Forest

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 02:11:38 GMT

The next morning Ms. Zhang knocked on my door at 7:15. Up and ready I got and by 7:40 we were all heading towards the bus station. We got there at 10 minutes to when our bus should have been leaving to find it MIA. At 8:15 Ms. Zhang went to ask where it could be and they told her it was stuck in traffic. I looked up at the sky and wondered if it was even worth it. 8:30 rolled around and still no bus, so Ms. Zhang befriends a gentleman going to the same location we are and they decide to go in on a taxi together. This man we got to drive us actually took us all the way to the Stone Park and said he'd wait for us, then drive us back for 300 yuan. So me, Jerry, Ms. Zhang, this stranger who needed to be dropped off at the train station, and the driver head out. Ms. Zhang turns to the driver and says "safety is number one" so he drove really slow the entire way, thus it took us two hours to even get to the Stone Forest.

I was actually surprised at how many tourists were there considering the Spring Festival is a time when you're supposed to be with your family, but there you have it. By far, one of the more crowded attractions I've been to this time around. And what I thought was really cool was the fact that a minority group which I hadn't had the chance to really be exposed to lived right near the Stone Forest, and many of them set up shops with handiworks and crafts to be sold. Ms. Zhang insisted on getting a tour guide and to my surprise, he could speak English. He asked me to call him "Ah-hi-ge" which pretty much means handsome older brother. He told me that he was actually from the Sani people, a division of the Yi Minority. I had enough trouble remembering that there were 55 ethnic minorities in China, let alone there are smaller divisions within each minority. Either way, he was very pleasant and informative.

From what he told me, the Stone Forest actually used to be under ocean and over time, as the land changed, it got pushed up. There was even one part where you could see a fossil of coral on the side of one of the stones. There are a number of different places along the main path where you can see stones that are supposed to look like people or different animals. Ahige and I were fast walkers and if we didn't pay close enough attention, we sometimes lost Jerry and Ms. Zhang.

Yeah, me being a huge dork. Some time ago there was an earthquake and a lot of the stones broke. This one is right over the main pathway so it is said that if you pass under it, you are a good heart, but if it falls on you - not only are you dead - you were also a bad person.

This picture gives you a good idea of the landscape. We had to climb quite the scary path to get up there. Absolutely no rails and from so many people touching and walking along the way that many of the stones were slick. I thought it was scary going up, but going down was much worse. There was one part where I literally had to get down on my hands and knees and ease my way across this huge boulder, chanting in my head that I didn't want to die in China. Whoever made this "path" was obviously a little off their rocker. Up, down, some steps had 3 foot drops in between. My knees were a bit shaky when we finally got back on the main path, but I have to admit the view from the top had been worth it.

As I mentioned before, there are a bunch of places all over the park where the stone resemble an animal or some other object. I don't know, but I liked this one the most. He was just so cute!

There were also places around the park where if you rubbed the stone it would mean you would have good luck with travel (I should have stayed there for a couple of minutes to cover myself for the rest of my traveling here). Another stone was hallow and if you hit it, it sounded like a bell. One of the more interesting passages was the Neck Stone - where there was a point where two rocks came fairly close together. If you could fit your neck through, it was supposed to make you more beautiful. I watched several people struggle through before I realized there was a trick to getting through, so I was able to slide through no problem. People actually clapped - which made me laugh.

There was also a pond where you could feed the fish. I took about 6 pictures to finally get this one, so I feel the need to share it.

The scenery was very nice so it was a worthwhile place to visit, but all the complications with getting there still make my head spin a little.

After we finished walking around the park itself, Ahige asked if we would like to try some local teas. So he took us to the tea house located right there where we had a tea sampling of 4 different teas. Then, of course, you had the chance to buy them if you were so inclined. The containers of the individual teas were rather high priced, and there was a set of all 4 - but the containers were a little smaller. I asked how much it would be and they said right now there was a sale for the Spring Festival (right, a sale), and it turned out to only be 120 yuan! I was shocked, so I got it. I don't know how I'll get it home, but I'll worry about that another day.

Now one thing that happens at these kinds of touristy places is that there are some people who are allowed to set up booths inside the actual park. These are not good places to actually shop because the prices are so much lower outside the park, but it gives you a good idea of what you can get if you are interested. Of course, you can't show you're interested otherwise they'll follow you. Really, shopping is an art form in China. On one of my sweeping glances I noticed that they had these small hand-woven (what I thought were blankets) table clothes that were really unique. After the tea house, I mentioned to Ahige that I was interested in getting one and asked what he thought was a good price. He laughed and asked if I wanted one by hand or machine and that if I just pointed he would take care of buying it for me because he was a local and would be able to get a better price for me.

While we sat down for lunch, he actually went out and found one of these table clothes for a very reasonable price. Very nice of him, indeed. After we finished eating we had a bit of a scare thinking that our driver had driven off without us because he had turned his cell phone off. As we climbed the hill to the parking lot, his car wasn't where he left it. Fortunately, he had just moved it into the shade. We climbed in and settled for the trip back - but 20 minutes into the drive Ms. Zhang suddenly realized we could have taken a train directly from Shi Lin instead of driving all the way back to where we were going. However, she wasn't sure. The driver wasn't having it and neither was I. I told her that we had already missed the train back to her home no matter what we did and that we could just take a bus. She was absolutely floored that I was willing to take a bus back, so she settled back and while she and Jerry took naps, I took in the scenery.

We finally got back to the city, bought our bus tickets to get back to Hong Guo - where Jerry's father would meet us with a friend to drive us back to Pan Xian. We got some snacks at the supermarket, then got on our bus and off we went. It was amazing how the road changed dramatically between Yunnan and Guizhou. In Yunnan it was all even and wide, and suddenly it was narrow, some sections unpaved, and it wound around the mountains. The girl in the seat directly in front of me got sick.

When we arrived in Hong Guo we climbed into a van and off we went. Now, this was actually a little scary. Most of the road was unpaved, it was dark, and we were in the mountains. The driver must have thought we were timing him because when he could, he floored it. I actually held on and then had to roll the window down a little bit so I could get some fresh air. Once my feet were back on the ground at their home, I felt much better. Even Ms. Zhang said she thought it was one of the more bumpy rides she's ever had.

The original plan had been that the following day we would take a train from a city near Pan Xian all the way back to Guiyang. It would have been close to an 8 hour train ride, but it would have been in the sleeping car where we'd leave late at night and arrive in the morning. However, the tickets sold out faster than Ms. Zhang had predicted. So, instead, we had to get ourselves back to Liu Pan Shui and from there we could take a bus back to Guiyang. So the following day we packed, got things ready, ate an early dinner, and boarded the train around 5:45 to get back to Liu Pan Shui. Jerry's father came with us, which really helped with carrying everything. I was worried that we would have to stand for 4 hours, but as chance would have it we were able to all get seats. The ride back was blessedly uneventful and the farther it got, the less crowded it got. When we got back to Liu Pan Shui we took a cab to Ms. Zhang's sisters home and we spent the night there.

I was actually able to meet another one of Jerry's cousins - a girl about a year older than him. She was one of those rare gems who is just not afraid to speak English to you. She was very refreshing after all that I had been through lately.

The next afternoon we boarded a bus back to Guiyang and the same Jackie Chan movie later, we were back in familiar territory. One of the school's drivers picked us up and I was back at Fu Xing, exhausted, wondering why I ever thought it would be a good idea to travel for 4 weeks straight.

Travels with Ms. Zhang

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 01:24:03 GMT

My next adventure began after Yvonne had helped me get onto the right bus to my next destination: Liu Pan Shui, a city still in the same province as Guiyang, but much closer to the southern border. Unlike I had been told the day before, the bus did not leave every 90 minutes but whenever there was a full load. I had thought I was well prepared getting there at about 9 so I could get a seat on the 9:30 bus only to have to sit there until about 10:15 and then make the 3 ½ hour bus ride to Liu Pan Shui. Thank god, they stopped once so we could all use the restroom. I would have exploded otherwise. The DVD player in the bus must have been broken because we watched the same 45 minutes of a Jackie Chan movie over and over and over again.

I arrived in Liu Pan Shui to a very happy Ms. Zhang, but then found out that Liu Pan Shui was actually not their hometown and we still had some distance to cover the next day. I had run out of the medication I had gotten at the hospital, so we tried to find a suitable replacement at a local pharmacy and then spent the evening in Ms. Zhang's sister's home. I knew we were going to be taking the train to wherever it was that we were going, so I asked Ms. Zhang exactly what time in the morning that would be. "The train leaves here at 6:30, so I think we should get up at 5:30, okay?" Gah. As most of you know me, I do not sleep very well when I know I have to get up that early the next morning, so I got one awful night's sleep.

By the time we get to the train station and buy our tickets, we had to wait a little while before we boarded. Ms. Zhang failed to mention that there were assigned seats, so I was worried that we were going to have to stand for hours. So here's me rushing around and Ms. Zhang and Jerry taking their time. There were hundreds of people waiting to board this train and I actually thought it was pretty crowded, but Ms. Zhang informed me it would get even more crazy as the end of the holiday approached. As I mentioned in my last post, the Chinese New Year is the largest migration of people in the world - and it happens every year. I read somewhere that there were 2 BILLION trips made last year - by train, bus, plane, car, you name it. While train is by far the most economical, I would have to say that bus might be my favorite way to travel so that I can enjoy the scenery. (An added bonus being that most buses don't allow smoking whereas trains do.)

Either way, the train ride would have probably been more appreciated if I was healthy and well rested. I'm always fairly irritable that early, so when people started to stop and stare at me as they walked past, I actually pulled the hood up on my sweatshirt so I could hide better. There are sales people in the train and this one guy (selling socks of all things) came into our car with a microphone and he trying his best to sell his socks when he came to me and said "hello!" then in Chinese, "I can't speak English" right into the microphone. The entire car started laughing. Definitely not one of my favorite memories.

A 4 hour train ride later, we ended up in Jerry and Ms. Zhang's hometown of Pan Xie. This is a fairly small coal mining community in the mountains. I was able to meet many of Jerry's cousins (one little girl was absolutely fascinated by me) aunts, uncles, and finally his father for the first time. Everyone was very nice and after a home cooked lunch, Ms. Zhang wanted us all to lay down to rest. I pretty much laid there and stared at the ceiling. After dinner later that night they wanted to show me around town. There honestly isn't that much there except a town square which at night fills up with people dancing and playing different kinds of games. After a while they took me to a building that Jerry's godmother owns, pretty much it was a recreation hall with ping pong, badminton, and billiards. Unfortunately, someone had run off with the sticks for billiards, so ping pong it was for me because my body wasn't ready for badminton yet. We stayed there for a little while, then we went back to Ms. Zhang's home where I was able to talk with my mother on the phone for a while before crashing.

Here's me with 3 of Jerry's cousins and Jerry. Check out the pasty look I'm sporting! I've met the older girl cousin before, and the little girl on her lap was the one who kept watching me from behind couches, around doorframes, or family members.
The next day was fairly laid back. We got up late (thank god - they're right next to the train tracks so you could hear every single one) and then just took it easy. Around 3 or so a bunch of Jerry's aunts came over to take us to the square because there would be a performance. I assumed it would have something to do with the Spring Festival and I was right. It was actually kind of cool to watch all the dancers and almost everyone in town gathered in the square and around it. It was really warm that day and they were all so concerned about my health that Ms. Zhang actually secured a seat on stage for me - but once I found out where it was I explained to her that I would like to avoid drawing attention to myself while I was there. She laughed and said "no one will notice you." Hah!

Here is one of two performances we saw. This one was primarily drums and cymbals. They really had a cool rhythm going which makes me wish I had taken some video, but alas, I did not.

This was the second performance. This one I do have video of - basically they walked in patterns for 15 minutes waving the fans or the cloth. And yes, you do see people dressed in horse costumes.

Now this day was the 5th day of the New Year, a day traditionally for cleaning the house and making and eating dumplings. So for dinner we had some very delicious dumplings. One thing that I always manage to forget is that there is usually one or two coins that people put into the dumplings and if you get one with the coin, your year will be lucky - if you haven't cracked a tooth on it. Jerry's father got one fairly early, which served as my reminder to be extra careful. It was at this dinner that Ms. Zhang announced that the next day we would be traveling to Yunnan (the bordering province) to visit the Stone Forest. The train would be around 10:30, so it wasn't too early and after another night of ping pong, we all turned in.

The next morning after breakfast, we headed down to the train station to wait for the train. Because of all the travel during the Spring Festival, we were going to wait and see how crowded it was. If it was crazy, we were going to take a bus. At this point I stressed to Ms. Zhang that we in no way had to go to Yunnan, but she wanted to show me a good time so when the train rolled up and it was fairly "empty" we boarded and 4 hours and hundreds of people crammed on later, we arrived in our destination.

Okay, this was officially the highlight of the day. Jerry just completely passed out on the train. I debated for about half an hour whether or not to take a picture, then caved and he literally woke up a minute later. Score.

Now before I begin this section, let me first say that in hindsight this is all fairly comical, but at the time I was getting more and more livid because of what was happening. Plus, the woman we met has got to be the most exhausting, exasperating woman I have ever met in my entire life, but I do realize she had the best intentions.

That being said, we got off the train and by some chance one of the people on the train had been an old work colleague of Ms. Zhang's. She insisted that her husband pick us up from the station and that they take us out to lunch. Sounds fairly simple, but because of the Spring Festival about 90% of the restaurants were closed. It was like a ghost town. I, at this point, thought we were still going to be going to the Stone Forest later in the day, told Ms. Zhang that anywhere was fine - it didn't have to be anything special. This, however, is not the Chinese hospitable way. They had to find a nice restaurant and order us more dishes than we could eat - the entire process of locating, sitting down, ordering, and eating took about 2 and a half hours. So now it's almost 4 and I'm starting to wonder exactly how we're going to visit the Stone Forest AND get back to Pan Xie.

The woman's husband drops us off and she comes along with us. Ms. Zhang informs me that we're going to find tickets for the morning and then find a hotel. WHAT? I was completely dumbfounded. She had forgotten to mention that we would be staying the night so I had absolutely nothing with me - no change of clothes, nothing to sleep in, no toiletries, NOTHING. We finally find a bus station that is open and buy tickets for 8 the next morning. Then, the woman wants to help us find a hotel. We go into one and she asks a couple of questions before decided we should walk to the other one. Fine. We get to the other one and we get rooms, but first she wants to inspect them to make sure they are okay. Great. Oh, the rooms here aren't good enough. Maybe we should go back to the first one? You've got to be kidding. At this point I mention to Ms. Zhang that I need something to sleep in - it doesn't have to be fancy, it can just be a t-shirt or something. Apparently shopping is one word this woman understands in English so even before we get a hotel room, she whisked us off downtown to try and find something. In the midst of walking down the street she motioned to all the closed stores and asked me if I knew what the Spring Festival was. I actually looked at Ms. Zhang and she shrugged. I explained that yes, I knew what the Spring Festival was. "Oh, well, that's interesting because I don't see how you could understand it." ...what?

At this point we had been walking for a while and despite the fact that I saw some things in passing shops that would have done the trick, they were "unsuitable" or "too expensive" for the woman to let me buy them. So her and Ms. Zhang are having a good natured argument over what I should and shouldn't wear, while I go over an apologize to Jerry. The woman then has a bright idea! She knows where she can take us. So off we go and in the midst of the walk, I get a text message from Yvonne. I pull out my phone to read it and this woman starts pounding on my arm repeatedly and yells that I need to put the phone away before someone steals it. Okay, deep breaths. She's only trying to help.

We get the store and I actually found something I liked and was affordable - but alas, it did not meet the standards of this stranger lady. We spent about 30-45 minutes in that store because if I liked it, she didn't like it, and if she liked it, it was something I wouldn't be caught dead in. Then Ms. Zhang said she wouldn't let me buy whatever we chose. So then I started to fight that one and I don't know if it was how she said it or the whole ridiculousness of the situation was starting to sink in, but she said "let me buy it for you. For memories?" I finally caved and let them buy me a set with a pattern that I could handle. Whoever knew shopping for one thing could be so difficult?

Since it was fast approaching dinner time, this woman insisted on having us over to her home. At this point, I had no idea what else the night could hold for me and knew if I had an opinion, it would be lost somewhere. So I shut my mouth and followed. Dinner actually turned out to be fairly pleasant. Her husband cooked (which other than Mr. Huang, was a first) and they didn't go too overboard. After dinner they insisted on taking us to a hotel - which ended up being the first one we had gone to earlier.

We got our rooms and they came upstairs with us. Now with most hotels in China, the key your given is also what turns on the electricity in the room. There's a little slot by the door that you slide it into and, like magic, you can turn on the lights. The staff accidentally gave us the key to the wrong rooms, but once that was all straightened out the woman took the time to explain the electricity thing to me, she showed me how to lock a door, made sure my toilet could flush, AND even told me that on the faucet - blue means cold, and red means hot. Yeah. When they were leaving I thanked them for all their help, gently closed the door, and resisted the urge to slam my head against the wall before getting ready and collapsing into bed.