October 2007 Journal
Halloween in China - Sunday October 28th, 2007Halloween in China - sounds like a perfect time for more pictures.
Today I had lasagna for dinner! I took a trip to Nanjing for the day. I met up with Maia, we went to Hunan Lu for some shopping and walking around, I bought a book as a gift for Nancy, then we met up with Scott and Katie. We all four went to dinner at an Italian restaurant called Jack's. The food was fake Western food prepared Chinese style, but it was still good. I had a tuna salad, a big plate of lasagna (which had no tomatoes whatsoever in the recipe - go figure!), and a light Chinese beer. I enjoyed the meal very much!
Then I hopped a taxi to the train to Zhenjiang and caught the bus home. The train from Nanjing to Zhenjiang is faster than the bus from the train station to my University campus. (Sad.)
Yesterday, we had a big Halloween party at Olivia's apartment. Most of the foreigners at the University went and we all had some great costumes. Nancy went as my date and we both wore togas. Kellen was a coked-out business guy, Justin was a soldier, Evan was a mummy, Christy was a cat lady, George wore a mask, Olivia was a cat, ... just normal ol' costumes on everybody. We'll be having a Halloween party on Wednesday night and I'm inviting my students to participate. The rules are that 1 - you must wear a costume, and 2 - you must email me for a personal invitation. (That will weed out 98% of my students.) For some reason, Chinese people don't want to dress in any kind of costume. Getting Nancy out in public in that toga was NOT easy!
I have a crush on that girl.
Anyway, after Olivia's party, we all walked down to the Lava bar for their big costume contest. The owner Michael was dressed in drag and was trying to trick us all into thinking he was a girl. A lot of Chinese people at the bar had full costumes on, and of course the foreigners did too, so it was a great time! Nancy and I spent the night in our togas cha-cha-ing to any songs that came on... everything from Chinese techno to Eminem.
Teaching is treating me well. Well, sort of. This week, I taught at an elementary school at a potentially new second job. The kids were cute, but I did NOT want to teach them. I don't fully understand why, but getting in front of those children was 100 times worse than standing in front of my postgraduate students. I have anxiety around children. I don't know why. I didn't take the job after teaching there for a week... I called my would-be supervisor on Thursday evening and told her, "NO WAY." It didn't help matters that she is a typical Chinese supervisor: she promises me one thing, then does another. She waits until the last minute to make decisions. She's about 4 degrees removed from the school, but for some reason she's my contact with the school in place of someone who actually WORKS there. Efficiency and managerial logic are lost on the Chinese. (Is it ok for me to make gross stereotypes based on about 4 personal experiences with Chinese supervisors? Or should I wait to make that statement until I've been here longer?) :)
Aubrey from home wants to come visit me. I hope she does! Chad is trying to work it out, too. I hope he can! Those would be two great people to show China to.
I have more stories! But I'm exhausted from my long day traveling. I'll update more soon, maybe tomorrow!
First, I want to end with a little display of my Photoshop skill... look how rockin this picture that I made is of Nancy and her roses:
My First Chinese Illness - Saturday October 20th, 2007
My last 24 hours were pretty miserable. Last night, something hit me ... some ridiculous bug. My temperature was really high (around 104 according to my little thermometer?) and my whole body ached really bad. I was laying under my blankets sweating, but as soon as I tried to come out from underneath, I got really bad chills. I didn't sleep much at all last night but then I slept like a baby all day today. Nancy came over last night and cooked me dinner. She came back this morning with breakfast and some crazy Chinese medicine. I took the medicine and about 30 minutes later, I zonked out sleeping. I woke up for lunch and fell immediately back asleep. I woke up again around 4:30 and I've just been wandering around my apartment like a zombie since then.
My two other Chinese friends, Sky and Elaine, came over and found Nancy here. There was a little girl drama! It was really funny to me - they were being really polite to each other and speaking nicely, but they were asking Nancy if she was my girlfriend, what she was doing here, etc. Finally, Nancy pretended like she was leaving so that Sky and Elaine left, but then she came back. Strange indeed! A foreigner gets sick and the girls fight over who gets to take care of him. :)
When I woke up at 4:30, Nancy had curled up on my bed and fallen asleep next to me. So adorable! Here we are at the park the other day:
Anyway, what else have I been doing the last two weeks?? On Friday, I celebrated 15 weeks in China. On Thursday, I lost at poker night. Justin should have won, but he had way too much to drink, so he practically forfeited at the end. I bought real imported cheese and made some grilled cheese sandwiches. I also made some pancakes with the help of some baking powder that Evan found for me in Nanjing.
Teaching is going well. My students all seem to really like me, and I really enjoy my job. This week, I'll start a new job in the afternoons teaching at a primary school. I have the first graders - little tiny kids! They're paying me a lot, so I'll probably save all the cash so I can have some good ol' fashioned expensive fun over my winter holiday.
Speaking of winter holiday, my friend Aubrey wants to come! I'm excited - she sounds like she means it. Unfortunately, when my Mom, Chad, or John say they'll come, I don't think they really will. They're just being polite... but Aubrey's already planning dates and looking at airfare. That'll be great to have someone from home visit me. I'll come up with a big list of American products I need.
My Chinese friend Jonathan went with me to a cool fruit smoothie bar down by the night market. Kellen, Justin and I found it one night on accident, but we couldn't order anything very easily because of the Chinese menu. Jonathan's really cool - he understands my American accent well because he watches a lot of American TV and movies.
Nancy watched Dumb and Dumber with me and she thought it was hilarious! I bought it here and it has Chinese subtitles, so she could easily understand what was going on. It's interesting for me to see the parts that make her laugh - she laughs at all the things I don't laugh at. Here's a great photo of her laughing at Harry having diarrhea:
Well, not much else is going on... at least not much that I remember wanting to write about. I'll have to make sure I write more often so that I don't forget to record some great stories.
A Nice Week-Long Holiday - Sunday October 7th, 2007
New pictures, of course.
Today is my last day of the National Holiday. Tomorrow, I'll be back in my classroom slaving for a full 2 hours a day teaching my postgrads how to debate. But I definitely had a good week off.
Yesterday, I made homemade gnocchi. If you haven't had it, I suggest you try it at your local authentic Italian restaurant. (Wish I had a local authentic Italian place!) Boiled potatoes, add an egg, enough flour to make a dough, shape those little guys, boil them, eat them. They turned out really well, so tonight Nancy is coming over for homemade gnocchi.
I spent a lot of time with Nancy over the holiday. On Friday, we went to Jiao Shan park and Jin Shan park. They're beautiful, old, and have a lot of history. Here are some pictures from my adventurous day. First, me rowing a boat! We took a rowboat to the middle of a big lake!
Next, me in a cool little garden:
And finally, the carved stone wall depicting the legend of White Snake and some guy she fell in love with:
To see the rest of the pictures, just go to my Picasa album via that link above.
In the morning, we bused down to Jin Shan park. We climbed the big pagoda, we chased pigeons, we burned incense and made wishes (aww, Nancy's wish was that I could stay in China forever... I didn't have the heart to tell her I wished for a billion dollars), there were some cool caves, beautiful parks, and people as far as the eye could see. Apparently it's true what they say: avoid traveling on Chinese holidays... unless you like being crotch-to-butt crammed with sweaty strangers.
Then we headed over to Jiao Shan park. After entering the gate, you have to take a big ferry to an island in the middle of the Yangtze. This park had fewer tourists, more paths, more overgrowth - it was basically gorgeous! Bamboo forests, little cobblestone paths... I felt like I was in an old kung fu movie and that a ninja could drop out of the bamboo at any moment. (You know the scene! Guy in a bamboo forest, ninja shows up, guy doesn't realize he just got cut in half until he notices the bamboo behind him falling to the ground. I like that movie.) We climbed to the top of the mountain, we meandered around bamboo forest paths, and we looked at Chinese encampments and cannons used to repel the British way back during some war.
Nancy came very prepared for a day with me: sunscreen, 3 water bottles, bread snacks, eggrolls, anything I could need! She even had a small purse full of change so that I could throw it into a dragon's mouth for good luck. We're not even dating and she's taking better care of me than any girl I ever dated in the States. I love how Chinese people seem to be watching out so much for my well-being. Just little things - the fruit lady, the meat stick lady, the cafeteria lady - they all have this motherly air around them that makes me feel welcome and safe here, and I really dig it. Hmmm, this paragraph sounds funny - let me just say it's an aspect of Chinese hospitality that is both hard to describe and fun to enjoy!
I have tan lines on my toes from my sandals.
My air conditioner was broken for a few days - it was warm in here. In Chinese, air conditioner is "kong tiao," but the night before the repairman came, I was speaking to Nancy about dinosaurs - "kong long." I accidentally told the repairman that my kong long was broken - "Please come in, my dinosaur is broken!" Oops! Well, he knew exactly what to fix, so it was fine.
One of my students was online yesterday telling me that Chinese food is a lot healthier than Western food... don't believe this when you hear it, because I eat about a gallon of vegetable oil every week. Meat is usually attached to a piece of fat twice as big as the meat, and when they say they eat a lot of vegetables, they mean they eat vegetables soaked in oil and cooked with MSG. I can definitely tell that I'm not eating as healthy as I did back home. It's ok, though, because the food is delicious... and I go running about 5 times a week to stay in shape. But don't come to China thinking you'll be eating salads and fresh fruit for every meal... because you'll be eating chicken feet, fish heads, pork skin, frogs, duck tongues, and who knows what else I've had!
Well, it's raining again. I did my laundry a few days ago, put it out to dry, and it got rained on. Brought it in, washed it again, back on the line... and now it's getting rained on again! I just need to dry my clothes... stop raining! Man, I'm going to just dry it the bachelor way - with a hot iron.
I spent a lot of time this week preparing my lesson plans for the semester. I like planning my lessons now. Up in Huai'an, it was really hard. But when my students are postgraduate level and when I'm only expected to teach Oral English, it's easy. For example, tomorrow my students will all deliver a short 2 minute speech that they had to prepare about any topic they chose. Then I will discuss debating, explain the format of a debate, talk about the pros and cons of 4 statements I prepared (things Chinese students will care about, like the Olympics), and then break everyone into teams to prepare for a real debate. I want to end class 5-10 minutes early everyday because my students are so curious about me, I like having some time for them to just ask me questions about the U.S. after the lesson.
Well, that's about all the news I can think of for the last few days. I'll just end with a picture of Nancy pouting because the pigeons didn't like her. Notice that huge purse full of snacks and water for me?? :)
My First Real Chinese Friend - Wednesday October 3rd, 2007
I found someone who I actually have a lot in common with. She speaks English really well, she's easygoing and happy, and she talks to me about a lot more than just "where are you come from?" and "do you like China?". (No offense to my students or other Chinese acquaintances, but unfortunately these are the two questions that plague my dreams at night because I hear them SO ridiculously often.)
Her English name is Nancy, but she admitted to me that before meeting me, she didn't have an English name. She only chose Nancy because it started with the same letters as my name so she thought I would like it. She's from the Guizhou province and is here as a postgraduate student in Engineering. She's not really my student (not registered for my class!) but she does attend my class now... I'm not sure that she needs the extra practice, but it's very entertaining for her to come watch me teach.
Everyone meet my first real Chinese friend, Nancy:
On Sunday evening, we went out to a nice Japanese restaurant for dinner. It was her first time being alone with a foreigner. She was really nervous! By now, I'm an old pro at being alone with Chinese people, so I was just nervous because she actually speaks English well enough that I could have a conversation with her.
Tonight, we went grocery shopping together and then came to my house to make dinner. She cooked cucumbers with garlic, sichuan eggplant, eggs and tomatoes, and we bought cold beef and huang zhu chicken from a small store. The food was delicious! Here she is hard at work:
And of course, the after-dinner coffee that I made her drink:
The temperature started to drop a little bit. This small fact makes my heart want to leap out of my chest and break into a chorus of halleluia! I saw the forecast for next week: solid 70's! Oh my god, it's finally a habitable climate for my Colorado-bred blood. I've been melting as I walk around town, leaving little puddles of my sanity wherever I happen to drip. Finally, those little pieces can coalesce back into chunks for me to collect again. The heat makes me crazy and I'm happily sane once again is the point I'm trying to get across. :) Winter can't come soon enough!
It was cool enough on Sunday that I wore one of my new fake cashmere Polo sweaters out to dinner. I'm looking rather dapper if I do say so myself! (And I do.) Check it out:
I'm trying to use more pictures in my blog because a photo is worth a thousand words, right? Hopefully they're interesting to people who are not me.
Up to what else have I been? (Besides not ending sentences with prepositions.) Today I exchanged money at the Bank of China. I'm going to save $300 U.S. money each month from my paycheck so that when I return home, I will have an extra $3,000 to help me not be a bum living on my parents' couch. Most people say that if you want to earn good money teaching abroad, go to Korea (or the Middle East if you feel like having your head cut off), but you can scrape up a little money working in China... just not very much! :)
I'll probably be irresponsible and go blow all the cash I save on a trip through Europe on my way home. How often do you have the chance to blow your savings on a long trip through Europe by yourself?
Tomorrow, I'm playing ping pong. Soon, one of my students is playing badminton with me. So many strange sports, so little time!
New Pictures and a Big Holiday - Monday October 1st, 2007
My new pictures include:
TeachingThe first album is pictures of my classroom and some of my postgraduate students. They range in age from 22 - 35, and they're pretty awesome. Here's a big group photo of some of my students:
National Day
We also went on a big tour around historic areas of Zhenjiang yesterday afternoon. The city paid for our big tour and then a formal banquet in our honor. I met the mayor of Zhenjiang and the local leader of the Communist party. We enjoyed a huge buffet dinner after we spent the whole day touring both the newest and the oldest parts of town.
