Meghan's In China

The intricate dance of sitting on the bus

2009-05-19T19:30:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been so long since I've written, but China has blocked access to Blogger so I must go through a proxy server to do this.

Anyhoo, I was riding the bus the other day and I never fail to be amused by the dance Chinese people do when there aren't enough seats on the bus. Let me explain. So a person is sitting down on the bus where there are no longer any seats. One of her friends gets on and she notices. She waves her friend over and stands up, motioning the friend to sit down. The friend laughs and pushes the person to try and get her to sit back down, to which the person responds by laughing and also trying to push the friend into the seat. This goes on for several minutes until the friend finally agrees to sit down. Once she's in the seat, it is now her responsibility to hold all purses and bags of the person standing. It's really quite amusing. The dance gets especially fierce when there is no obvious seniority issue because each person wants to honor the other person. Oh Chinese and their funny traditions.

A few weeks ago I went to Pingyao and Datong for a long weekend. Pingyao is this ancient city SW of The Shizz. It was originally going to be turned into an industrial town, but all of the industry left, leaving Pingyao virtually untouched. The way I did this trip was I took an overnight train from Chengde to the Shizz, thinking I could get a D-train to Pingyao. Unfortunately all of the seats on the D-train were full, so I wound up staying the night in the Shizz and taking the early morning (5:30 am) train standing room only to Pingyao. It was fun to stay in the Shizz with Paul and Sam again, but the 4 am wake up call was not fun. So I got on the train and I hijacked some boy's seat and we sat four abreast in a three person seat. Nobody wanted to kick me out. So I arrived in Pingyao without too much ado, and wound up meeting this really nice Chinese girl when I got off the train who helped me get into the old part of the city. It is truly beautiful there. When you think about old-school China, Pingyao is the place you think of, with all the old hutongs and temples. You halfway expect Lin Daiyu or Jia Baoyu to walk out of one of those buildings. Anyways, I spent two days there wandering around, looking at temples and buying crap I didn't need. I hung out with two English people, Ben and Charlotte, who weren't travelling together, they just hung out together. We wound up biking the 6K out to this temple that was outside the city, kind of cool.

From Pingyao I went to Datong to see the hanging temples and the grottoes. The only problem was that I got into Datong at 4 in the morning, long before anything opens and I wasn't planning on staying the night, so no hoste/hotel to sit in. Luckily, some policemen took pity on me and let me sit in their office until the CITS tour office opened. Once CITS opened, I found out the only tour they had that did both the grottoes and the hanging temples ended at 6, and my train left (I thought) at 4. So I wound up renting a taxi for the day for 200 kuai. First we went to McDonalds to get breakfast cuz I was super hungry. Then we went to the Hanging Temples, and got there around 8:30, which was great because none of the tour groups had showed up yet. So I got tons of pictures with NO PEOPLE in them. It was awesome. At 9 all the tours started showing up so it got uber crowded and I decided to leave. Then we went to the grottoes, about a 2 hour drive. The grottoes were really cool as well. Basically some people decided to carve buddhas in these sandstone caves. There are thousands of carvings spread over about 40 caves. They range anywhere from inches tall to 30 meters in the largest of the caves. It's really pretty cool. Much to the amusement of other people, I was taking pictures of myself. So I'd set my camera down and run to where I wanted to have my picture taken. A lot of Chinese people got a good laugh over that.

So I finished seeing the grottoes and headed back to Datong city to catch my 4:00 train. Unfortunately, the lady at the train station booked me on the 2:00 train! I remember checking my ticket in the morning and seeing the "4" from 14:00, but in never struck me that it meant 2:00 for some reason. So I missed my train. And the most frustrating part was that I was actually back in time to take the train, I just didn't know it. So yeah, tons of headache getting back to Beijing to go home. All of the seats were full, I was going to have to take a 6 hour hard seat train to Beijing that arrived at West Station at 5 am. Then I would have to spend a lot of money to take a cab from West station to Central station when I was already running out of money. Many phone calls to Cecilia and tears of frustration later, I wound up paying a hundred yuan to take a four hour mini van ride back to Beijing. Then I got in so late that the subways were shutting down. I was supposed to stay with Zach at Red Lantern House, but it was so much farther to there than to Sanlitun that I just went to Sanlitun instead. Plus it was twice as expensive. So the last few hours kind of put a damper on my trip, but altogether it was fun.

Oh yeah, and I went to an English speaking Easter service in Beijing that was really nice. I met up with the Shizz kids in Beijing and then Paul and I went to the Easter service at this hotel somewhere. It kind of reminded me of one of those megachurches you see in the US. The hotel auditorium was filled to capacity with only foreigners (Chinese people are not allowed inside due to government regulations, you must have a foreign passport to get in), all waving their arms and singing. It was kind of fun and made me feel good. I felt very at home in this Easter service surrounded by foreigners. It's a difficult feeling to explain the feeling of familiarity I had.

And next week my parents arrive for their tour around China, and then two weeks after that Michelle arrives so we can start our big tour. Yay!

Meghan is going to vet school!

2009-03-22T10:19:00.000-07:00

As most of you know, I'm just finished my second round of applying to vet school. I applied last year to U of M and ISU, and didn't get into either. I'm ok with this because I was planning on deferring enrollment for a year anyways so I could go to China. This year I expanded my school search: I applied to U of M, U of I, ISU, and KSU. I was interviewed for U of M, ISU, and KSU. Who knows what was up U of I's butt, but they said I didn't meet their academic requirements. Whatever that means, because I was within all of their academic limits... Anyhoo, I was placed on the out of state wait lists for ISU and KSU. Which was ok, because the school I really wanted to go to was U of M. I was supposed to hear back from U of M at the beginning of March. Unfortunately, my parents decided to go on vacation on the 5th of March and stop their mail. Yeah, they won't be back until the end of March! Way to go on that one, Mom and Dad...

Anyhoo, so I decided to email the U of M because I didn't want to wait until the end of March to find out. A few days after I sent the email, I got back this response: Meghan, I am pleased to inform you that you have been offered admission to the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine..." Yay! I tried calling everyone in my family, but the only people who answered were my parents! Why does nobody answer their phones when it's really important? I resorted to calling Zach at 8:30 in the morning. Zach was not a happy camper when his phone went off, but he was able to muster up some exictement when I told him the news.

So yay! I'm in! No more worrying about what I'm going to do for the next year when I get home. All I have to do is find a place to live and that won't be too hard. I'm so excited! I get to be a vet and study things I'm actually interested in! I'll eventually be able to have my horses on my own property and do all the things I want to do! I can't tell you how pumped I am! Now I can sit back, relax, and enjoy the rest of my time in China. w00t.

Eerie

2009-03-19T09:54:00.000-07:00

So all of you remember that huge tsunami that hit SE Asia back in 2004? Well Zach had two couch surfers from Korea staying with him about a week ago that witnessed the aftermath of that tsunami firsthand. It was kind of eerie, hearing what they had to say about it.

Apparently, they had been travelling in Thailand when the tsunami hit. They were actually on a train headed down the peninsula to southern Thailand at the exact timing. They couldn't figure out what had happened because there was hardly anyone on the train headed south. When they got to their destination somewhere on the mainland, all they could figure out was that there had been an earthquake, but nothing more. Nobody in the hotel could really tell them what had happened. Finally, they got on a bus headed to the coast and found out that a tsunami had hit most of southern Thailand, wiping out some of the major islands. On the bus was a Canadian guy who was on his way to try to find his girlfriend, who was staying on Koh Phi Phi. Sadly, the couch surfers realized he probably didn't find her since the waves washed over Koh Phi Phi, completely submerging it. The only other people on the bus were a family of four, who were headed down there to see what they could do.

When they got to their final destination on the beach, the couch surfers realized the extent of the damage. Most of the hotels were inundated with refugees who had survied the tsunami but had no belongings. They ran into a man from India, who, when the waves hit, had linked arms with his two friends around a light pole. He watched as his two friends were swept away with the water. I don't think he found them.

It took several days before the couch surfers were able to call home and let their parents know they were safe. By the time they did, the female couch surfer's mother was so relieved that she couldn't even talk on the phone. Apparently they had called the American embassies in the States, Korea, and Thailand, trying to find out what had happened to their daughter. I can't even imagine what that would have been like. To hear about how this huge tsunami had taken place right where your child was supposed to be, and you had no idea if they were dead or alive. How horrible!

The part that had astonished them the most while they were there was how friendly and hospitable the Thai were, despite this horrible devastation that had occured. I don't know how they could manage when they were facing such heartbreak, but they still treated foreigners with kindness.

DMZ Tour

2009-02-26T05:12:00.000-08:00

So I took a tour today in Hue of the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ), and it was a lot harder than I was expecting it to be. I'm not a person that normally takes offence to things, but I was kind of surprised by how offended I got on the DMZ tour. I mean, maybe it was because I was taking the tour in northern Vietnam, and maybe all of the museums in southern Vietnam are different, I don't know.

So the DMZ tour involved going to a bunch of old sites where Vietnamese troops were based during the American War (we would call it the Vietnam War), and some old monuments. We went to a few museums, and a few bases, and even one of the old tunnel networks. I guess the thing that was the hardest for me to look at were the captions of pictures, and some of the pictures themselves. There was one picture that showed a bunch of Vietnamese soldiers all lined up and smiling for a picture, and underneath the caption it read "Corageous Vietnamese troops after killing some American soldiers." There was a bronze casting on a wall of a museum that showed helicopters dropping huge bombs with "USA" emblazoned on them on innocent Vietnamese villagers. A picture of a crashed US helicopter with two Americans face down in the dirt, burned beyond recognition. Pictures of Vietnamese troops standing proudly with their American POW. A picture of two women with an artillery gun with a caption that read "Vietnamese militia women loading a gun to shoot at American ships." Even the tour guides, without meaning to sound that way at all, sounded a little gleeful when they talked about how the Vietnamese outsmarted the American troops, or forced them to retreat in panic. It all made me a little sick.

I think I was the only American on that tour. I guess I just couldn't believe how Americans were portrayed on this tour. Is this how all of the world thinks of America? That we are the "bad guys?" Most of America didn't even want to be in Vietnam! I kind of wanted to go through and change all of the captions. I did get a few photos of the captions, so I could post them to my blog. I'll do that when I get home.

Am I wrong to be disgusted by what I saw? I guess in northern Vietnam, the Americans were the enemy, but do they still need to be portrayed as the enemy 40 years later? Is that necessary? Do they need to be portrayed as "weak" and "obsessive?"

Or is this just me being imperialistic and egotistical?

Sometimes you meet the most interesting people...

2009-02-24T22:49:00.000-08:00

Good morning, Vietnam! I've been in Hoi An for about two days now, and I'm about to head out and back to Hue for the remainder of my time in Vietnam before I go back to China. Let me tell you, I've loved (almost) every minute of my trip to Hoi An so far.

First off, I met SO MANY cool people! There were Sam and Elliott from England, who I shared a room with, Ash and Dan from Australia, two Norwegian girls (Julie and I can't remember the other girl's name), an Indian (I'm going to butcher his name if I try to spell it), and two Brazilian guys (Raphael and I never caught the second guy's name). Two Canadians and an English guy later joined us. The awesome thing was, we all met on the bus on the way from Hanoi to Hoi An and when we got to Hoi An, we just kept running into each other! It was like a little mini community because it was such a small town. So even though I was travelling alone, I always had someone to hang out with. I love travelling!

So here in Hoi An I havn't done much. I went to the My Son ruins and took a tour, wandered around Hoi An old town and took some pictures, got a suit made, and went to the beach. Unfortunately, I only got to spend an hour at the beach because my bus left at 2 o'clock and my suit fitting was at 10. Now that I'm in Hue, I kind of miss everyone! And the beach was so beautiful in Hoi An, almost as beautiful as Phuket and Ko Chang.

The only bad part about the trip to Hoi An was that the first night we were there, someone broke into Ash, Dan, and Elliott's room and made off with 3.5 million dong (about 200 bucks), two cameras, a cell phone, and a few other miscellaneous items. We know it was the hotel staff because we had only left for about a half hour to go swimming, and when we came back, the boys noticed there was an extra little door into their room and all of their stuff had been rifled through. When they tried to report it to the hotel, the man tried to say that they all left their stuff on the bus and that they should leave because they weren't the type of people they wanted at the hotel. And the police were entirely unhelpful. Needless to say, we left that night and went to stay in another hotel. It's just heartbreaking to know that all of your photos were lost. Elliott had a month's worth of photos on his camera, and I know Ash probably had a similar situation. Luckily, they didn't find Dan's camera. It just makes me sick that someone would want to do that. Why would you want to ruin someone's trip, no matter what your reasons are? Ugh.

I also get really sad when I think about all of the awesome people I meet on these trips, and the fact that I'm probably never going to see them again. They are all such cool people! Hopefully I'll be able to stay in contact with a few of them through Facebook.

Strange Horns in Vietnam

2009-02-21T23:46:00.000-08:00

Good morning, Vietnam! If you havn't heard by now, I'm in Vietnam for a few days. I havn't finished blogging about Thailand yet, but I wanted to punch this blog out before I forgot.

I've been in Hanoi, Vietnam for two days now, and there is an endless amount of funny horns on the cars here. Now, in Asia, drivers LOVE to use their vehicle horns. It's like they have a third hand that is permanently attached to their horn that presses it whenever it seems most convenient, which is ALL THE TIME. They honk if they're passing, if you're passing, if you're crossing the street in front of them, if they're coming up behind you, if you do something wrong, if you look at them funny... Yeah, you get the point.

Anyhoo, Vietnam is no exception. However, the difference is that in Vietnam, they don't just have the simple "meep meep" horn. No. I've heard anything from a train whistle, to a horn that sounds like it has the doppler effect built in, to something that sounds like tu-ku-tu-ku-tu-ku, with a decrescendo throughout. It gives me endless amusement to hear all of these new car horns. I'm pretty sure the Vietnamese people wonder who the crazy white girl is that is giggling all the way down the street. My favorite horn I've heard so far is a horn that has two tones and goes deet-deet-deet, deet-deet-deet, deet-deet-deet, deet-deet-deet. It never fails to make me giggle. Hehehehehehe...

Also, I've decided that I need to buy a sewing machine and start up a western show clothes business over here in Asia. I've been buying all kinds of Asian silks from China, Thailand, and Vietnam. I have enough now to make two showmanship outfits and four horsemanship shirts. But when am I going to use them? I won't get back until 2/3 of the way through the 2009 show season.... I just love picking out the silks, and I know that nobody in the US is going to have the beautiful patterns and colors that I picked out, not to mention the textures. I figure maybe if I start a business buying silk and making them into shirts, it's one way to earn a bunch more money while I'm here. I just don't know if I can bear to part with the silk that I've bought. Mostly because I know it will look stellar with Rodney...

In which I almost die

2009-02-05T05:05:00.001-08:00

Bankok, Thailand 2/2

Megan and I discovered a western grocery store above Central World Shopping Mall and stopped to have a look. Needless to say, being stuck in Asia for the last five months and then suddenly being surrounded by all the comforts of home, we went a little crazy. We wound up planning dinner around what we found at the store. So dinner was turning into soup and grilled cheese, with oatmeal cookies for dessert.

We had been staying at this apartment in Bangkok which has a stove. The stove had been working perfectly well for us for boiling water, so we assumed it would be ok to do what we wanted for dinner. I went to borrow a cookie sheet from the landlord, who when he found out what we were doing, warned us that he had never used the stove and didn't know if it worked. We should have heeded his advice.

Megan cooked her minestrone soup with no problem, and since she makes her grilled cheese with a mixture of the toaster and a microwave, she had no problem. But I like to use the stove to make my grilled cheese. The stove has four burners, so I figured it would be ok to use two of them, one for my soup and one for my sandwhich. I also turned on the oven to preheat. Everything seemed to be going well. My grilled cheese was cooking beautifully, and the tomato soup was just starting to steam. I was busy off to the side preparing the cookies and I noticed that my grilled cheese was done, so I reached over to turn off the burner. Click. BOOM!!!!!!!! The stove exploded! Sending a ball of flames in every direction. Think: small mushroom cloud of flame. The force was enough to blow the top of the stove off kilter (and I mean the ENTIRE top, not just the burner), blow the knobs off the stove, blow the oven door open, and disconnect the water pipes in the sink. Megan and I just stood there in shock for a few seconds. Did that seriously just happen? I hurriedly turned off everything I could before something else happend and went and got the landlord. He really didn't know what to do except clean up the mess I had made and offer to bake the cookies in his oven. I don't think I've ever felt so bad in my entire life. I think our little stove explosion was the landlord's last straw in a series of bad events. I went to tell him about the sink (we didn't find out about the sink disconnection until we started to wash dishes and water came pouring out the cupboard), and I found him with his head in his hands at the kitchen table. I didn't have the heart to tell him. He sent his boyfriend over to bring us the cookies and we told the boyfriend, who was able to reconnect the sink and turn off the gas. There was no way we wanted the gas on while we were still in the apartment.

A little later I happened to look down at my arm. There were blackened bits of something sitting on it. When I looked a little closer, I noticed it was my arm hair! The explosion took my arm hair off! I now look like a shaved poodle. Thank goodness I wasn't wearing a long sleeved t-shirt or something because I don't think I could have taken starting on fire along with the explosion.

The lesson I learned? Don't use gas stoves. They explode when you're least expecting it.

Cabana boys are definitely all they're cracked up to be

2009-02-05T04:51:00.000-08:00

Patong Beach, Phuket, Thailand 1/30

Yesterday Megan and I decided to head out to Patong, the busiest and most touristy beach on Phuket. All of the beaches on Phuket have three rows of deck chairs up and down the beach, covering each square inch of sand. Heaven forbid the tourists don't have any place to sit. It's 100 Bhat to rent a deck chair and a beach umbrella.

Patong was by far the most crowded beach we had been to, but we found two beach chairs right up in front and sat down. I was pretty sunburned by this time, so I wanted to stay completely in the shade. We really picked the perfect place to sit, because the people who worked our little section of beach didn't even make us get out of our chair to move our umbrella. At exactly perfect intervals, when the sun had creeped up the deck chair about a foot, the cabana boy would be there, readjusting the umbrella so we'd stay in the shade. Talk about pampering the tourists.

So today, I was really too sunburned to go outside. Megan decided to go off on a tour since she didn't want to sit around with the sunburned gimp. I decided to go back to Patong and back to the same deck chairs because I liked that they moved the umbrellas for me. We had also finally figured out the bus schedule and I didn't want to risk paying 500 Bhat for a taxi back to Phuket town. So I got to Patong and went in search of my little deck chair spot. When I got near, the Cabana boy spotted me and jogged down to offer me a deck chair right up in front. The kid, I'm not going to lie, was damn cute. He noticed that Megan wasn't with me this time and asked me where she was. I told him that she had left me to go on a tour, so I was by myself today. He flashed me a dazzling smile and said "It's Ok, I'll take care of you while your friend is gone." When I pulled out my towel to set it on the chair, the kid took it from me and spread it out perfectly so I wouldn't have to do it. We sat and chatted for a few minutes before he headed back to work. He told me next time I came to Thailand I would have to stay on Patong so I didn't have to go back to Phuket Town so early (the last bus to Phuket Town left at 5). If only...

I was sad I didn't get to see him before I left the beach. He must have been off doing something else. If only I could go back to Phuket right now... just to see the Cabana boy. Damn.

Sporadic Thailand posts, not in any particular order

2009-02-05T04:33:00.000-08:00

I havn't been writing in my journal, but I want to get some of my experiences down, so I'll write them in journal entries as I think of them. So they aren't in chronological order like they normally are. So:

Bang Bao, Ko Chang, Thailand 2/5

Megan and I are sitting in an internet cafe in Bang Bao, a fishing village on the southern end of Ko Chang. Ko Chang is a small island in the Bay of Thailand on the eastern side. It's a lesser developed island than Phuket, which means there are less tourist traps. It's really nice. We wanted to come here for a good amount of R&R, a blessed relief after visiting Bankok, Chiang Mai, and Phuket, all really big tourist areas and really expensive.

We're staying in a little bungalow on a lagoon farther up the western coast. The lagoon empties out onto one of those beautiful beaches that you think to only see in pictures. You don't actually believe they exist. Or if they do, you don't know where. I read in one of the Lonely Planet guidebooks that though Thailand is small, it manages to snag most of the world's beautiful picturesque beaches. Our bungalow is kind of cute. It's one small bedroom with a fan and an attached, open-air bathroom. The real high point is that the porch is directly over the water of the lagoon, and you can see the cerulean blue ocean while sitting in the hammock that's strung between two of the deck posts. Megan and I have really just enjoyed sitting on the porch and reading.

Today I went out onto the beach and did a little suntanning, against my better judgement. The sunburns that I got on Phuket (I don't think I've been that badly burned since I was in Acapulco in Mexico my Jr. year of HS) have finally faded into a tan, but unfortunately have started to peel. Kind of disgusting, I know. I don't know if the tanning did any good though. I think I'm just a darker shade of pale.

I always thought I would never really like living on the ocean. All of the oceans I've been to seem dark and cold, and smell like fish. I have a really sensitive nose. But sitting on the beach here on Ko Chang makes me wish I could have a little villa overlooking this sea, with the mountainous jungle at your back. Think Swiss Family Robinson. The ocean is so beautiful, the sun is bright, the ocean is calming, and I could sit on the beach for hours with a good book and never feel like leaving. So long as there weren't 8 zillion tourists wandering around destroying my view.

We just got done eating at a little seafood restaurant out on the water in Bang Bao. Megan and I both ordered crab, but neither of us has much experience eating it. It was a rather...messy...experience. Luckily I had the bright idea to bring along wet wipes, which I was really thankful for. Unfortunately, it seems like no matter where we are on Ko Chang, the sun is always setting behind a piece of land. I think we just need to go out on the furthest island to watch the sun set. However, we watched the sun set when we were on Phuket, but it really wasn't as spectacular as I was hoping. Anyways, we watched the sun set over the mountainous island while we had our fingers buried in a small crab. Bang Bao is nestled in a small harbor, so there were no waves, creating a quiet, lazy atmosphere, and quiet music wafted across the bay to where we could hear it. There is something about this island that just seems so peaceful.

If I ever come back to Thailand, this will be the first place I go. I'm hoping that tourism doesn't take hold here for a few more years, so the national park that is protected on this island stays exactly the same.

Edge

2009-01-29T10:06:00.001-08:00

So my good friend, Edge came to vist right at the end of the semester. Yay!

I really had a lot of fun while he was here. I showed him all of my favorite places in Chengde and Beijing, and I even took him to campus to meet my students. He got the real Chinese experience because he was able to capitalize on my four months' experience.

I took him to Donkey restaraunt, Hot Pot, Korean BBQ, New Red Lantern, and Summer Mountain resort here in Chengde. He also got a taste of the BCD and KTV. He met Winter, Arwen, Vince, Ted, and Michael, along with all of my students. Oh, and Mr. Lei and his son. Edge is an incredibly social person (I wish I could be as social as he is), and he had no trouble getting along with everyone he met.

In Beijing, he got to see the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, The Great Wall, an Acrobatics show, and some other cool stuff. We also got to hang out with Paul, Sarah, and Amit, whom I hadn't seen in a really long time. And we even made a day trip to Tianjin, where we saw a Chinese history museum and went roller blading.

All in all, I'm really glad he came. It's nice to have such a good friend come and visit so you can show them all that you've been experiencing. If you really want his true experience, I know he made a video of his adventures, and it's probably rather entertaining, so you should ask him for it.

Christmas

2009-01-29T09:53:00.000-08:00

Another late post.

Christmas wasn't that bad this year, despite it being the first time I have ever missed being at home.

On Christmas Eve, five of us went to the Korean BBQ to get good food and french toast like we said we would. It was AWESOME as usual. I naturally wasn't drinking cuz I was on antibiotics and didn't want to screw anything up with the intestinal inflammation finally dying down. But we all had a good time. And I was able to talk to the 'rents and everyone else who was home on Skype, so it didn't seem like I was that far away.

Christmas Day I quick packed up all of the stuff for making the roast (which Rosie's husband, Ming helped me buy), grabbed the oven and headed off to Shijuan and Megan's apartment to start the cooking. Me, Megan, and two of Megan's students spent all day cooking, and I must say we turned out one heck of a Christmas dinner. We had the roast, mashed potatoes, honeyed carrots, green beans and mushrooms, fried pumpkin, rolls, and a few other miscellaneous items that everyone enjoyed immensely. Oh, and a HECK of a lot of beer. There wound up being ten of us at dinner, but only 9 ate since one had eaten earlier. After dinner, we all sat around drinking beer (minus me, antibiotics) until the students had to leave at 10 for curfew.

After the students left, there were five of us that participated in a gift exchange. It was basically a white elephant gift thing that you couldn't spend more than 20 qui on. I bought this hideous pillow with a giant face on it that was really soft. Hideous, but functional. Chris loved it immensely. I wound up getting this awesome pair of slippers with a giant pink pig on it. Yay pink!

Of course, getting home was a problem. The busses stop running to Shijuan at 7 pm, and we didn't leave until 1 am. Bad idea. There weren't even any taxis waiting outside the school gates. We (Me, Zach, and Matt) had to walk 3 miles in the freezing, biting cold carrying a guitar and an oven to even find us a taxi to take us the rest of the way back into town.

The next morning I was able to chat with the family again on Skype and watch them all open gifts, including the ones that I sent home for everyone.

All in all, it was a pretty memorable Christmas.

Chinese Hospitals really aren't that scary

2009-01-29T09:34:00.000-08:00

This was supposed to be posted at the end of December, sorry about that.

Chinese hospitals really aren't as scary as they sound. But let me start from the beginning.

I woke up Sunday morning (the Sunday before Christmas) with a horrible stomach ache. I was pretty nautious and my stomach was sore. It was painful just sitting there. Because I have an overactive imagination, I started thinking it was probably appendicitis. So I called my trusty family doctor...i.e...my sister Erin. I told her why I was calling and she did some quick diagnostics over the phone. Basically when I jumped up and down it made the pain worse, and when I pushed on my stomach and let go really fast, it really hurt. So even though the pain was on the wrong side for appendicitis, I decided it was probably a good idea to go to the hospital. Yikes! Chinese hospitals! *bites fingernails* Nobody hears anything good about Chinese hospitals! Or was it Chinese prisons?

The first person I called was Zach, because I figured he would want to be in on this and it would be nice to have there with me. Of course, it's 8 am at this time, and Zach had been out most of the night before. I'm pretty sure his thought process when he picked up the phone for my call was "what the F*** are you calling me at this hour for?" Of course, once I told him what was going on and what I was planning, he was in my apartment in less than five minutes. Yay Zach!

Then I called up my good friend, Mr. Lei. I figured he would be the best person to go with me to the hospital since a) he is the most well-connected person I've ever met and b) he's experienced with medical terminology having studied in Australia for 7 years and writing a book about English-Chinese medical terms. Mr. Lei was naturally worried when I told him what I though the problem was and he told me he was going to make a few phone calls because it was Sunday. A few minutes later, Mr. Lei calls me and tells me that he has called the VP of the hospital, and is on his way to pick me up. He then shows up in a taxi because he doesn't want me to walk the two blocks to the Affiliated Hospital of CDMC.

So we get to the hospital, and despite the fact that there is a bunch of construction going on (and not behind closed curtains, I might add), the hospital is actually quite clean. It looks pretty much like a hospital in the states would except with a bunch of Chinese people running around and no carpet. Oh, and no waiting rooms, and everything is called the something something ward.

For the next few hours, I proceeded to be poked and prodded by at least four different doctors. And there is no privacy, so no matter where I was, people were doing double takes past whatever room I was in and then would walk very slowly so they could point and stare. I had an ultrasound done, to which I pointed out to my sister that if anything showed up on an ultrasound, it would be another baby Jesus. I had to take a piss test (just to be sure there was no baby Jesus), had some blood samples run which showed high on the WBC and a few other things, and ran a CT scan, just to be sure. They then called in the head of surgury to come look at my CT scans on his day off. We also took the staff elevator, so we didn't have to take the crowded public elevator.

All in all, they ruled it "intestinal inflammation," and sent me home with a round of antibiotics. The total cost was just over 500 CNY, which translates to about 80 USD. And that includes the antibiotics and maximum strength painkillers. Oh, and Mr. Lei got my bloodwork done for free because he knew the nurse working and the blook counter.

So my ruling on Chinese hospitals is this: they aren't scary if you go to the good ones, and you have Mr. Lei to accompany you. And hey, you might just get the royal treatment.

November 9th 2008

2008-11-11T10:53:00.000-08:00

Not much has been going on here. It's been super busy, but not really exciting. Zach and I got our schedules changed around for the zillionth time, but at least now we only teach English Nursing students who actually want to learn English and for the most part, speak it reasonably well. Our schedules haven't changed, they just made some of our classes smaller, which is nice.

I guess one exciting thing has happened in the last few weeks. A bunch of us dressed up on Halloween and went to the OK Bar for some drinks looking pretty rediculous (me as a cheerleader, Zach as English Man, Matt as Fidel Castro, Megan as a cat, Chris as Justin Timberlake, and Jimmy and Lotus as basketball stars). We had already been there for a while when suddenly two foreign guys walked into the bar! We stared at them and they stared at us for a few seconds before Zach and I looked at each other and said "foreigners!" and went over to talk to them. It turns out that Adam and Ramtin were on a humanitarian mission here in Chengde for a few days repairing cleft palates at Chengde North Hospital. They were really cool guys who hung out with us for the rest of the night, including the 3 AM pitt stop at McPerkins. And the poor guys had to be up by 5:30 to go to the hospital! We wound up hanging out with them the rest of the week, going with Ram to Mountain Resort, having drinks with Ram and Adam, hanging out with the other doctors on the mission, going to multiple KTVs, and spending a lot of time at the OK Bar (they really love us there). We gave all the doctors their first taste of Baijou, which they thought was...interesting. I wish we would have had more time to hang out with them. They were a fun group. Mostly from California, where a Rotary club raised the money for them to go. Adam and the anesthesiologist, Allen, and three from Canada were the only people not from Cali. Adam was from Philly, Allen was from Phoenix, and as mentioned before, the others were from Canada.

Funny story about Adam and Ram: the night of Halloween, the guys hadn't been in Chengde for very long, so they didn't know the city very well. We passed their hotel on the way to McDonalds, but it was almost four when they headed back. They apparently couldn't remember how to get back to their hotel, so they hailed a cab. They got in and showed the driver the card for Chengde Binguan. The cabby laughed and literally drove them around the corner to their hotel! They were two blocks from home! We had a good laugh about that one. Luckily, I think they got the one honest cabby in the city who only charged them 2 qui for the ride instead of the normal rate of 5 qui or the American rate of 10 qui.

Zach and I have started coming up with a "You know you've been in China too long when..." list. It starts off with "...when you stop and stare at foreigners as much as the Chinese do." It's funny how being foreign is reason enough to strike up a conversation with someone in the supermarket, which is how we met Dave from the Rotoplast mission, who we later found out was Ram and Adam on the same trip, and who has some...interesting...stories. You'll have to ask if you want to know.

Anyhoo, I'm going to hope my internet comes on soon so I can post. It hasn't been working for the last four days and I'm going CRAZY!

This is a video of Zach showing off his Kung Fu skills one drunken night at the KTV with the comfort girls looking on...

October 18th, 2008

2008-11-11T10:34:00.000-08:00

Grrr! I'm really confused about this election. I've watched all the debates, and now I feel more confused than ever. Do I vote for the Republican whom I don't agree with on the subject of the economy but agree on Foreign Policy and hate the VP (who scares me, actually), or do I go with the Democrat, whose FP scares me but whose economic plan seems more palatable. At least I like the choice of VP. Grrr!

But enough of that. it's been an exciting past few weeks. Mr. Lei took us to Hammer Hill and Frog Rock last weekend, which was gorgeous! The fall colors were starting to emerge and it was sunny with temps in the mid-seventies. It makes me glad I'm in Chengde.

Kirk came to visit us this week and that was a lot of fun. We went to a banquet for lunch (we had no idea it was a banquet, we thought it was just a lunch), and then took Kirk to the school where he sat in on one of our classes. We wanted to introduce him to Mr. Lei, but he left before we got out of clas. We then went out to dinner at Serena's BBQ (AMAZING!) and then got dessert at the western restaraunt before heading to the KTV for some karaoke! So much fun! I can't wait for people to come visit.

We decided to go to OK Bar for Jimmy's birthday last weekend and we met some really cool people there. There was an American visiting from Pennsylvania and was travelling with his Chinese friend from Beijing. Mike Li (the Chinese guy) spoke very good English, as he apparently has relatives in Alabama. We sat and drank with them for a while, and the next time we go to Beijing we will call him to show us a good time. Exciting!

Beijing Days 7&8

2008-11-11T10:29:00.000-08:00

We were supposed to go to the Great Wall, but I really wasn't feeling up to climbing around on a bunch of stairs when I had a horrible head cold with a splitting headache and barely being able to breathe. I decided to stay in the room while Zach went and ran errands. He was totally a good friend and got me soup and watched movies with me.

That evening, after napping and recovering, we ventured over to Wangfujing for some Outback Steakhouse. It was EXPENSIVE (230 qui per person). But it was worth it for the blooming onion, potato soup, and steak and mashed potatoes. We also made another stop at the pirated DVD shop for some more movies. When we got back, we went out for tea with our Spanish friend, Barbara, and sat and talked for three hours. It was so much fun!

Day 8

5:30 wake up call for the 6:30 train back to Chengde. Ass crack of dawn if you ask me.

Beijing Day 6

2008-11-11T10:16:00.000-08:00

Bright and early the next morning (10 am), we met the four Shizz kids at Tian'an Men square because we were going to try to see Chairman Mao in his Mausoleum. Unfortunately, we discovered the Mausoleum is closed during National Holiday. BOO. I guess they don't want too many people traipsing past Mao's embalmed boy. Amusingly, while we were waiting for the Shizz kids, Zach and I were bombarded by people wanting their pictures taken with foreigners. We need to start charging a fee. Twenty qui to have your picture taken with us. Even the adults were doing it.

After Tian'an Men, we all got on the bus and headed off to Olympic Green to see the olympic venues. We got there only to find out it was 50 qui to get onto the grounds! No way were we going to pay that much just to walk around. So we took a few pictures from behind the fence and took a cab to the Shizz kids' hostel and went to Hooters for lunch. It's just like the Hooters everywhere else (amazing, I know). Overpriced food that is OK. I wound up getting Chili fries and wings, and I was STUFFED. I hate to say it, but the poor Hooters girls only had 'skeeter bites with a lot of padding...

Zach and I left the Shizz kids at their hostel to take a nap while we went to the silk market. Silk market is truly an overwhelming place. Seven floors of booths where people try to sell you things. And they do ANYTHING to make the sale. Yell, grab, block, insult, redirect, and just about any other method possible. I made out ok, only spending about 600 qui on a winter North Face jacket, two belts, two shirts, and some silk. Zach was not so lucky and wound up buying a bunch of knockoff coach bags for his mom and sister, setting him back about 2000 qui. Silk market is definitely not the place to be when you are sick, so after Zach bought the purses, we decided it was best we leave. I would like to go back the next time we are in Beijing and get a knockoff Diesel bag I saw and some knockoff Abercrombie clothes.

We were supposed to meet up with the Shizz kids again for drinks, but I was really feeling to sick to do anything else, so Zach and I went home.

Beijing Day 5

2008-11-11T10:01:00.000-08:00

National Holiday. Zach and I decided to go to Summer Palace for the day to check out what it was like. We should have stayed home. Not that it wasn't beautiful and we didn't enjoy the scenery, temples, and buildings, it was just waaaaaaaaaay too crowded. National Holiday is not the day to go to a national tourist spot. Everybody and their aunt was there. Out of the 100 or so pictures I took, two did not have a mass of people in them. And I thought the Forbidden City was crowded! And to top it off, when we got tired and decided to leave, the exit gate does not tell you how to get back to where your bus drops you off! So Zach and I wandered around for a half hour trying to find the front gate. When we got there, there was a HUGE line for the bus. The best part was that when a bus would come, all the people in the front would shove their way onto the bus, and all the people from the back would run to the front to try and get on. We were stuck in the middle. When we tried going to the front, we were told to get back in line. And to make it better, I was starting to come down with a really bad head cold. I was not in a good mood.

To console ourselves after we got back, we decided to go to Papa John's for dinner. Papa John's! It was awesome pizza for being in China, and it even had garlic sauce. Zach and I joked that we got Cheese Pizza and Cheesy Bread, which is cheese pizza without sauce. Way to have a variety... We also had this little drink that was Sprite with a scoop of strawberry ice cream on top. It was pretty good.

After dinner, we met up with some of the people from Shijiajuang (also known as The Shizz). We met Willie, Kara, Billie, and Alyssa at Suzy Q's on bar street in Beijing. We didn't actually go in because they don't allow flip-flops and two of the girls were wearing them. We decided to go to a random bar and have a drink. Once inside, we were excited to find they had a hookah! So we ordered a hookah and sat around shooting the breeze for an hour or so while we smoked it. Once it was finished, we decided to get some beers at a market. Lo and behold, the market was a western one and had all western food in it! And everything was in English, too! They had cheese, cereal, avocados, mexican food, chips, cream cheese, mac and cheese, alcohol, coke, gummy bears, and a host of other things. Of course it was all MONDO expensive. A box of cereal was 60 qui (10 USD). I satisfied myself with a cheap Chinese beer and a box of mac and cheese. After we drank our beer, we headed over to teh area by the Shizz kids' hostel and tried to find another bar to go to. We kind of lost interest though, and I was really starting to feel sick by this time. Kara had already left because she wasn't feeling well, and we decided to part ways after making plans for the next day.

Beijing Day 4

2008-11-11T09:38:00.000-08:00

Zach and I (after lazing about the hotel all morning) decided to head to the Forbidden City again for a second try. But first, before doing anything else, we ran down to the train station to get trian tickets for the return journey. Luckily, we happend to get behind this girl and her mother, and the girl was an American Journalist who had been in China for two years and spoke fluent Chinese! She was extremely nice and helped us get our train tickets. Unfortunately, she and her mother were unable to get tickets because the train they wanted was full. I wish we could get together with her, but I didn't have my phone and she hasn't emailed us.

Once back, we made a quick stop at Gate Tower, which had a wonderful little museum about the Beijing Wall and Five Archways street. As for our trip to The Forbidden City, this time we decided to visit a few more of the museums. It is truly awe-inspiring to be in rooms with thins that are that old. We visited The Museum of Precious China, which held truly beautiful craftsmanship, saw museums dedicated to the guards, the emperors, the concubines, and many others. Unfortunately we didn't get to see the Hall of the Clocks because they were closing the city. Once again, we didn't have enough time to get through what we wanted to at the Forbidden City. We still need to see the Imperial Gardens.

We did have our first run-in with the Chinese Police (and Paul thought he would be the first, ha). There were a few policemen fooling around with their hats off and having fun, so Zach and I tried to sneak some pictures. Well the guards noticed, and so they sent an english-speaking policeman to come find us and erase the pictures of the guards from our cameras. Boo.

On our way out, apparently the security guards decided to exhert their control again by not letting us exit through the front gate. Instead, we got rerouted a half-hour out of our way around the outer walls of the Forbidden City and putting us on Wangfujing Dajie (the place where the Pizza Hut is). On the way, we stumbled across thre awesome things: 1) a little shop that sells cheap, pirated DVDs that look real (I bought 2), 2) Subway, where we stopped for dinner, and 3) the barbeque street where you can get odd things to eat like Starfish, centipede, scorpion, dog, and just about anything else. It was pretty exciting. We've now deemed Wangfujing Dajie "Western Street" because it's where you find all of the Western stores; Armani, Cartier's, Pizza Hut, Haagen Daas, Outback Steakhouse... We almost ate Starfish, but I was too full to eat anything and Zach was repulsed by the smell. Maybe next time... We decided to head home and watch some of our new movies.

Later that night, we had a craving for McDonalds, so we decided to head over. We were on our way out the door to the hotel when we noticed two women arguing with the girl at the front desk. The older one turned to us and asked us if we spoke English and asked if we could help hem. It turned out that they had just arrived from Guilin and their key wasn't working. They got the misunderstanding cleared up soon after we stopped to help, but these poor women were having the trip from hell! I don't remember everything, but what I do remember is that they were supposed to fly from Guilin to Xi'an, but their flight was inexplicably cancelled. So they wound up taking the 27 hour train ride from Guilin to Beijing hard-seat, standing room only. They sat in the dining car the whole time, but had to pay 30-50 qui every few hours to stay in there. No wonder they were frantic! We were supposed to go with them to the Summer Palace the next day, but on the way to the bank, the mother tripped and fell and hurt her hip! They wound up taking a rickshaw tour of the hutongs. Poor women!

Beijing Day 3

2008-11-11T09:22:00.000-08:00

We were pretty tired from the previous two days, so we decided to be lazy and hang around the hotel. We didn't actually get up and moving until late in the afternoon.

Zach and I tried finding some hutongs on foot because we didn't want to take a rickshaw. Not only were we too cheap to do that, but we were really getting sick of the rickshaw drivers yelling "hello!" at us and following us around trying to get us to rent them. It happens about every block in Beijing. I think we did find a hutong, but it wasn't much to look at. We'll have to break down and take a rickshaw next time. On our way back, we wound up taking a sidestreet that lead off of Five Archways Street. We discovered the oldest silk market in Beijing, where I bought two yards of silk, and Zach spent 900 qui on having a silk jacket made for him. Then we stumbled upon a tea shop where a worker sat us down to sample some fine teas. Of course, even the cheap ones were expensive! I wonder what the 2000 qui tea tastes like... It must be like drinking liquid gold. I bought a cute tea set, three really good teas, and some realy good snacks to go with it. It's now my special occasion tea.

That night, we decided to try and find Pizza Hut, which we had been craving for some time. We headed down towards The Forbidden City, and randomly chose a direction to head in. We passed the Grand Hotel Beijing (affectionately deemed the Michael Phelps Hotel because we like to pretend thats where he stayed in Beijing), and Zach had the idea that we should go in and pretend to be patrons asking for directions. The concierge went above and beyond getting the directions for us. He drew us a map and called the Pizza Hut to make sure he was sending us to the right place. We easily found the Pizza Hut (with a quick stop at a DVD shop) and had scrumptious stuffed crust meat lovers (unfortunately for Zach, who had to break Kosher) pizza with drinks. The Pizza Hut happened to be located on the most western street in Beijing (Wangfujing), having a foreign language bookstore, Cartier's, Coach, Outback Steakhouse, and a bunch of other Western Shops. We stopped for some sorbet on the way home (16 qui for one tiny scoop!) and headed home.

Beijing Day 2

2008-11-11T09:08:00.000-08:00

Zach and I grabbed our bags and checked out of our hotel by 9:30 am. We tried to get a cab to take us to our new hotel, but we'd made the mistake of not writing down the name of the hotel we were going to stay at. We wound up hoofing it the 1.5 miles to Tian'an Men and the hotel because whenever we tried to tell a cab we wanted to go to Tian'an Men, the thought we wanted a tour.

After checking into our hotel (which we found out that they were showing us a more expensive room, but Zach got them down to the price we thought they were asking), we decided to venture out. We explored Tian'an Men for a while, looking at the sculptures of the Olympic Mascots, then decided to head to the Forbidden City. We discovered, to our surprise, our ISIC's got us into the Forbidden City for 20 qui, as opposed ot the 60 qui it normally takes. That card paid for itself in Beijing alone.

The Forbidden City is, in one word, AMAZING. We spent two days in there and didn't even make it through half of the city. The first day we stopped and saw the Hall of Art and Calligraphy, which was incredibly awe inspiring. I can't imagine making art like that. Such detail, and some of the scrolls only showed about 8 feet of their full length. There was a poem on dark wood panels that was carved in Jade. You'll just have to look at my pictures to get the full effect of the Forbidden City. The awesome thing? The Chinese have no compunctions about letting you take pictures or video. Snap away! (As long as there are no police in the picture).

For dinner, we decided that because we were so tired, we would just walk to McDonalds for dinner and call it an early night.

Beijing Day 1

2008-11-11T08:51:00.001-08:00

So it's about time I sat down and wrote about our trip to Beijing, so here it goes. It's a really long entry, so there will be an individual entry for each day.

Zach and I set out for Beijing on the 1:30 train, arriving in Beijing around 6:30. We made the unfortunate mistake of not making hotel/hostel reservations before we got there. We wound up wandering around Beijing for 2 hours with our heavy backpacks looking for a place to stay. Realizing we weren't going to find anything cheap the later we went, we decidied to drop our bags at a hotel that had an opening and go on from there. We were both really tired, and about a hairsbreath away from saying screw it, we're going back to Chengde. We stayed at some 3 Star hotel that was 600 qui per night (100USD). Once we dropped our bags, we decided to explore a bit and maybe get a bite to eat. We found a Dairy Queen and got ice cream, then randomly stumbled across Tian'an Men square! Yay for random finds! We had trouble finding the actual square because it was roped off and hidden behind Mao's Mausoleum (we didn't know that was what it was until a few days later). So we wandered around, losing ourselves in the underpasses for a while, explaring places we later discovered were Gate Tower and Arrow Tower, some of the last remnents of the Beijing Wall. We also discovered Five Archways street (we discovered the name when we went on a tour of the guard tower). It's this awesome little collection of empty shops that are eventually going to be a replica of the old Five Archways Street, a street of master-craftsman workers during the Ming Dynasty. there is a side street that we found later that is full of replicated shops, but we'll talk about that later.

Once we'd had our fill of Tian'an Men and Five archways, we headed back. Along the way we discovered a small hotel with quaint rooms for 300 qui a night, and we promised to return the next day to book. We stopped at a McDonalds on the way home to kick off our week of Western Only food. Sleep came easily that night.

October 13th, 2008

2008-10-17T10:32:00.000-07:00

It's funny how a tragedy makes us realize all the mistakes we've made, and all we could have done better.

I found out today that a guy I knew in high school was killed in a motorcycle accident when he lost control of his bike out in California. The hardest part was finding out that he wasn't killed instantly. He was awake and alert when the emergency team got there, but blacked out and stopped breathing while they were examining him. He died less than four hours later. Michael Kaske was in the Navy, working on the USS Higgins based out of San Diego. He was a part of a team that did search and seizure on land and other ships. He was in the military, he wasn't supposed to die in a motorcycle accident.

I knew Mike in High School. We used to be in band together and he used to take piano lessons from my mom. My junior year, we were in study hall together. I found out near the end of that year that he had a crush on me and that was the reason he was taking lessons from my mom. I tried dating him that summer, but I really wasn't into him as much as he was into me. I was in high school, I didn't know how to politely refuse someone, and I let him down pretty hard. Now I really feel like an asshole.

I saw him once a few years ago when I was home on Spring Break. It was for Tara's 20th birthday my sophomore year, and Abby had invited him along to the Byrd downtown, which is where we were celebrating. It would have been right after he finished boot camp. I remember dancing with him and how he seemed to be really into Abby, and how I felt like an asshole even then. I wish now I could go back to high school and make ammends. But I know I can't. In the words of Rascall Flatts, it's "what hurts the most."

So Michael, here's a prayer for you:

I'm sorry for the way I acted towards you in high school, and I wish things could have been different. Now that you're gone, I want you to know that you will be sorely missed, and may God shelter you in the palm of His hand.

September 23rd, 2008

2008-10-17T08:53:00.001-07:00

Whoops! Sorry it's been a long time since I last updated. Here's the gist of what I'm going to talk about: Smoking is bad for the furniture, Chinese guys are fun to drink with, Mountain Resort is beautiful, my freshman classes, discrimination, and my new tattoo.

So we were sitting at the OK bar the other night, when Matt and Jimmy lit up cigarettes. To our amusement, Lotus (Jimmy's girlfriend) pipes up and says No smoking! Smoking is bad for the furniture! Funniest. Quote. Ever. Lotus is really cool, even inviting us all over on Autumn Festival for her friends to make dumplings for us. While there, we got Matt to write down some of our favorite dishes in PinYin so we could at least try to order something we like instead of it always being a guessing game...

A few nights ago, Zach and I tried our hand at a different barbeque with Matt's little cheat sheet. While we were there, Megan and Chris stumbled upon us and we invited them to sit for drinks (BTW, this barbeque is just a tent on the sidewalk just behind my apartment). Soon, the grill-guy comes and sits with us. He tries to say the few words he knows in English, so Megan hands him her phrasebook, I grab mine, and we have our conversation through our phrasebooks.

The next night, Zach and I were on our way to meet the Normal people at their hotel for dinner. On the way there, we have to walk through the BBQ from the night before. The grill guy stops us, sits us down, and pops open beers for us. Well there went our night. We called the Normal people to come join us. Soon, grill guy (I can't remember his name) brings us lamb skewers. Then he brings us more skewers. And then more! We are then invited to sit with some friends of his, who happen to be dining at the BBQ that night. Just as we are sitting down, lo and behold, Matt walks by! He decides to sit with us, and we now have a translator, and one of the guys happens to know a little English. Oh, and Matt and these guys are good friends. So before we know it, we've all been poured glasses of beer, and we Ganbei them. And then we Ganbei again. And again. And again. Well, you can guess what happened. I found out that the guy who spoke English was a tattoo artist, and I started talking to him about the tattoo I wanted. He's drawing me a picture. More on that later. I tried many interesting things that night. Most noteable was silkworm cocoons and snails. Yeah, definitely won't get them again. Vei Yun, one of the guys, got really drunk, and the only words he knew in English were USA, I love you, and friend. He then proceeded to kiss everyone at the table, and even chased Zach around trying to kiss him. That night, once again, ended at McPerkins.

The funny thing was that we went out with Serena the following night for dinner and bowling. We were telling her the story when she suddenly realized she knew Vei Yun! She then called him and a very sober and abashed ei Yun joined us at teh bowling alley for a game of pool. Oh, and the pool girls like to sit and watch everyone play pool. It's a little unnerving at first...

Anyhoo, about my tattoo. It's a picture of two dragons (I love dragons) that are intertwined. One is Chinese, the other is western, and both are 3D. It will be on the back of my shoulder. I'm going to see the finished drawing tomorrow. w00t. Don't worry Erin, I waited the three years grace period.

So freshman classes: HUGE! And definitely didn't have enough copies of the worksheet for everyone. I had 50 copies for 137 students! And they had no idea what sharing was. I tried to explain, but everyone in the front still took one, and everyone in teh back sat there and didn't know what to do. I had to go take papers away from people to distribute. And I swear, if I have one more person tell me to slow down, I'm going to tell them to sit down and shut up! Seriously, if I talk any slower, it will be like this. And that is completely unproductive. Nor do I speak Chinese, so I will not be teaching them how to speak English by speaking Chinese to them. Frustration! I hope the next freshman class goes better.

As for discrimination, it happens, but I've never been on the recieving end until now, and I really don't like it. I mean, yeah, there is that whole feminist thing where it feels like as a woman you are looked down upon and don't get the same opportunities, but here, we get discriminated against because we are white. We had to shove our passes in the face of the guy at the gate to Mountain Resort before he would stop pointing us to the ticket counter. Out of all the people walking through the gate to get to campus, we are the only ones that get stopped to have IDs checked. In the library, we weren't allowed to have our backpacks with us. They had to stay with the librarian even though the only thing to steal were books in Chinese and the door had a book alarm. Because we are clearly going to steal books written in all Chinese. The librarian was about to tell us we couldn't be in there and that we should go to the English section until we explained that the English section was closed. I guess they aren't trying to do it, it just gets cumbersome after a while. And annoying. It's hard going from a country where white skin gets you everything to a country where they are suspicious of anyone who doesn't have black hair, brown eyes, and yellow skin. Damn white supremacy.

One thing I've noticed here is the weird thing the brain does when faced with a language barrier. My brain knows they can't understand me in English, so it switches to the next language I know, which is Spanish, before it switches over to Chinese. So when I'm trying to translate something, it comes to me in Spanish first and then I have to try to translate it into Chinese. Weird, huh?

We met the professor of the Overseas Nursing program yesterday and went to talk to him today. He is AWESOME! Despite being in the medical field, he speaks very fluent English. His name is Lei Hui (Mr. Lei). He offered to take me and Zach to Hammer Hill after holiday. We are totally taking him up on that. And he also wants us to come play ping pong with him, which I am totally going to take him up on. And he introduced himself by saying Jeremy and Michelle were his friends. A lot of people say that. If nothing else, they were well liked and paved the way for me and Zach (Jeremy and Michelle were the previous foreign teachers).

Another person I've met is Cecilia. She's a translator who studied English in Beijing and is now working at a nice all in Chengde. She wants to hang out with me sometime, which I'm totally up for. I met her through Matt at the tattoo shop and she took me to get a chicken sandwich while Matt was getting his tattoo. I really like her. And I can talk at a normal speed with her and she completely understands me. We also visited a little pet sop and I was pleasantly surprised to find she likes animals. Perhaps we will take her with us to purchase train tickets for Guilin.

We are planning on going to Guilin for national holiday next week. It's a 27 hour train ride, but we can't afford anything else. And it looks like beautiful country. Mountains, hills, valleys. I was told by Mike to take the Li River Cruise to Yangshue and see the light show. I can't wait to go to Guilin.

Oh, and Mountain Resort is gorgeous! We still havn't seen much of it because of my VMCAS essays, but what we've seen has been phenomenal. And it's been there for 300 years. While we were there the last time, it started to rain (it does that a lot here). So we took refuge in one of the pavillions. There happened to be a man there playing a version of the wooden flute, the kind you hear in Chinese music. he was amazing. I could have sat there for hours listening to him play coupled with the rain and the scenery. I tried to ask him the name of the instrument, but he thought I was asking his name and wouldn't give it to me. I really want one of the flutes he played. Esp. one of the ones with deeper, richer tones. He had about 6 flutes with him, and he played all of them. I have a video of it. I also want one of the tooled wooden swords they sell outside mountain resort, and one of the tea sets they sell in the grocery store.

Whelp. Bedtime. More later.

Sept. 14th, 2008

2008-10-17T07:19:00.000-07:00

Yay for random fun nights in China!

So yesterday, Zach and I decided to try our new passes for Mountain Resort. It was gorgeous! We only spent 1.5 hours there, and we maybe saw 1% of all there was to see. We'll definitely be going back. But that wasn't the beginning of the randomness. The beginning came when we were on our way to meet the Normal people. Zach and I saw this mini carnival thing on the other side of the street, and on the off chance that there might be something interesting going on, we decided to stop. Lo and behold, we discovered a roller skating rink behind some hedges! So randomly, Zach and I rented roller skates for 10 qui a piece and went roller skating! We wound up calling the Normal people, which showed up 1/2 hour later, and we convinced Megan to skate with us. Chris and Travis went exploring because on the grounds with the skating rink, Zach and I noticed a trampoline, inflatable jumpy thing for kids, dancing, mini car rental, a playground, and pool! We'll definitely be coming back (BTW, Zach and I found a Tai Chi group in Mtn Resort and we're thinking about trying to join by just showing up every week). Unfortunately we had to leave because it was getting late and we hadn't eaten yet.

Tonigh, we went to dinner and the bar with Matt, a previous Drake student who has been in Chengde for three years. We went to this little barbeque joint that nobody in America would dream of walking into in the US, it was that sketchy. But the food was AMAZING! We got etamame, these spicy green peppers, perfectly spiced chicken wings on a stick (ji chuan er), and mutton on a stick (yang rou chuan er). I could have eaten all 30 of the mutton sticks by myself, they were so good. From there, Zach, Matt, Jimy, and Fu Long (Lotus) met up with the Normal people and went to "Bar Street." The drinks are about 2x more expensive than in the states, but it's a bar, not a KTV, with vodka, JD, and American beers. I wound up playing pool (the pool sticks are abnormally thin) with some Chinese guys who bought me some drinks. It's funny how there is an internation pool language... I think the Chinese guy was purposely losing to make the game more interesting. We wound up sitting and talking with them for a while after pool, our group and the Chinese guys. They were really cool. We were helping them with English and they were helping us with Chinese.

After the bar, we went to McDonalds, which is open 24-7, and we determined it's the new Perkins/IHOP/Paul Reveres. We now call it McPerkins. Yay for late-night drunk eating! Too bad there wasn't a drive through or it would have been just like McDonalds walk-through at Drake!

September 11, 2008

2008-09-23T21:46:00.000-07:00

I had my first day of class two days ago. I don't think I've ever been so nervous in my life. I was especially worried about not having enough material, and the material I did have seemed boring, especially after hearing what Zach had planned. I just had introduction activities and the syllabus. Zach had all sorts of games, vocab, and gave them an assignment. Plus he's got the next few weeks of assignments planned out. I feel very behind.

Anyways, Zach and I left for school at 8am because I wanted to make copies at school and I wasn't sure how easy it would be. So we stopped by the Foreign Affairs office to find out what to do. We were worried we would get stopped by the guard on the way in, but we weren't. We were stopped by some lady standing at the door to the Admin Building. Luckily, some party members walked by, said something to her, and she let us pass.

So we got up to the Foreign Affairs office to find out it was a good thing we stopped because Maggie had sent us both texts that we should stop by that neither of us got. So we got our ID cards from Maggie, and gave her money to get passes to Mountain Resort. I easily made my copies at the computer in the office. We were way too early. So we sat around for 45 minutes looking at the Chinese version of Vogue before we headed off to class. Luckily, Maggie came with because Zach was about to go to the wrong room.

My first class was to be English Nursing for Sophomores. I got set up in the room which, BTW, had a real slate chalkboard! Real Slate! Not that crappy stuff that's hard to write on. I havn't seen that stuff for years. Of course, I'm used to white boards now, and had to be wary of chalk dust.

My class showed up about 5 minutes late. Apparently they have a class before mine. I'm debating whether I should set my foot down and make them be on time. It seemed like a lot of them were on time, they just came and left.

When I started talking, all of the students got intense looks of concentration on their faces. Good, they were paying attention. When I went over the syllabus, I got a few laughts at how they weren't supposed to speak Chinese and a few gasps when I went over my attendence policy. Apparently they thought it was really strict, but Laura said it was just fine, they just didn't like it coming from a foreign teacher.

So the first game, they had a hard time understanding, and I had a hard time getting people to volunteer. I had them all write down questions, and then somebody pretended they were me. Even though they had the questions right in front of them, they didn't want to ask them. It was like pulling teeth. It took 15 minutes to get through two people. Finally I gave in and just told them about myself. And class here is very formal, they all stand when they speak.

So the next game we played, I tossed a ball to people who then were supposed to answer questions. The problem I had with that was nobody would catch the ball! And instead of telling one fact, they told me a bunch. So we never got through all of them. :(

I did hand out a questionnaire during class, and I had them suggest a Chinese name for me. I got a few good suggestions:

Mengya-elegant and beautiful
KeXin-
Liu Ya Xuan- Liu is a family name, Ya is graceful, and Xuan is used in names of studies
Ya Jing-demure and beautiful

I then had them journal and I dismissed them.

After class, one girl named Tara (I had them pick out English names as well, the most interesting of which was Torocat) came up and asked me questions about the GRE. Luckily I had taken it, and was able to give her information on it. I might like to have my GRE study guide sent over to let people look at. I also had a student ask for my phone number, but I didn't want to give it out. Oh there were 40 students in my class.

Zach and I then went to lunch with Laura and Maggie, where we got lunch cards and sat and talked for a while. Then Zach and I headed back to our apartments.

An interesting thing I did last weekend was go to a Chinese barbeque with the rest of the Drake crowd in Chengde and a girl named Serena and her mother, who we met at the KTV (a karaoke place that has private rooms instead of a bar, and you pay by the hour. There are no bars in Chengde that we've seen). That was probably the best meal we've had in China yet. They had fried bread that we dubbed French Toast with a sort of sugary glop you put on it, and we decided to go have it on Christmas morning. And it had wonderfully marinaded meats that you cookd yourself on a hot plate in the middle of the table, and these amazing rice dishes that I couldn't get enough of. I swear I ate enough for three people, and Serena kept ordering more food! After the meal, Serena bought us all lotus seeds, where were good, and then we played the Chinese version of hackey sack in the public square, where we were joined by various Chinese wanting to show off their skills to the Americans. Probably the most amusing part of the night was when Serena gave Chris the Chinese name "Shui Ge," which means handsome boy. It seemed fitting, since he'd already had a marriage proposal.

I had the workmen come today to replace the heating pipes in my apartment. I've never been so appaled in my life. My reasonably clean apartment was reduced to shambles as the furniture had been moved to get to the walls, and any bits that fell were just left where they happened to fall. There was no cleaning up afterwards like they would in the US. My apartment was completely covered with cement, tile, brick, brick dust, mud, stones, metal piping, plastic pipes, and even a tool that they forgot. I have spent all night cleanin the apartment. Oh, and they dug a 3"x3"x3' trench across my kitchen, and then left without filling it in. I had to call Maggie, who had to call the campus repairmen, who had to call someone to come cement over the hole. I was furious. And neither Zach nor I have working washing machines, so neither of us can do laundry. Pooh. Something needs to be done soon because I'm running out of T-Shirts.

Tom

2008-09-23T21:37:00.000-07:00

I would like everyone to meet Tom. Say hello, Tom! Tom lives by himself in the apartment across from me and likes to observe the goings on in my apartment. I often catch him at his window, staring over towards my apartment. We swear he knows what is happening before I do. I suppose that is good, if anything were to go wrong, Tom would be there and know what to do.

I did catch Tom once watching me intently as I cleand my apartment. Of course, part of the problem was probably because I was cleaning in my swimming suit, not wanting to get my clothes full of bleach.

Oh, Tom has two neighbors, Dick and Harry, who take showers together. These are the things you notice when you have big picture windows overlooking the apartment on the other side.

Sept. 3rd, 2008

2008-09-07T00:43:00.000-07:00

Three exciting things happened today: 1. We went to campus today, 2. I got my bathroom fixed, and 3. We found an awesome little restaraunt that we will be frequenting.

First, Zach and I got up and met Maggie somewhere around 8:45 am. We took the bus downtown where we stopped and waited forever to get my cell phone SIM card from China Mobile. Apparently numbers with lots of 6's and 8's and especially ending with them or even ending with two of them makes them really expensive. Unlike ending with 4, which are really cheap because 4 is considered an unlucky number because the chinese word for death and the number four sound very similar, it's just a matter of tone (sĭ vs. sì).

So the #10 bus with the green label takes us to campus after about an hour's bus ride. But you do get to see the outlying temples of Summer Resort on the way. Bus six takes you to the two remaining open temples.

Chengde Medical Campus is new and quite large, having been built in 2006. Once at campus, we met Laura, our other Waiban, who took us to another building to meet the other English teacher, who is Chinese. We got our schedules (incidentally in Chinese) and talked about what we would be teaching. Most of our students have been taking English for 10+ years, and they read and write it very well. Our job is to improve their listening comprehension and verbal skills. How I'm supposed to do that in classes of over 100 students I have yet to figure out.

Once we finished talking to the Chinese English teacher (who was, BTW, very animated), Maggie and Laura showed us some of the rooms we would be teaching in, which I must say, were a little worrisome. Mostly because they had trash all over them, and I'm so used to a clean atmosphere. I had a teacher tell me once that a messy stage makes for messy acting. I have a feeling that is what is going to happen here: messy room makes for messy teaching/learning. Zach and I got a bit of a shocker when we found out we would have some classes with 100+ students. For Oral English! How is that supposed to work? I guess I'll figure it out.

Laura asked me a few questions that I enjoyed answering. Some of the signs on the buildings had English on them as well as the Chinese character, and she asked me if the English was correct. I had to explain to her the difference between pre-medical and pre-clinical classes, and that the building labelled "Experiment Building" shoud actually be named "Laboratory Building."

The campus (new campus) has five major buildings that I could tell. There was the Admin builing, the Life Sciences, Lecture, and Experiment buildings, plus the library. Ther might have been one or two others, but I can't remember what they are. They have plans to put in a playground (? I guess no school is complete without a playground) and swimming ool, and new Teacher apartments are being constructed on a hill overlooking the campus. Too bad we were to early for those! The campus even hasa little village we would call "collegetown." The buildings are all grey and red with white and silver trimming, and there are a heck of a lot of stairs. And th classrooms seem a little old fashioned, despite being only two years old. I think it's due to the effect of wooden doors that have cracked and peeling paint (and sometimes holes), and no custodial staff. I'm used to fireproof doors, plastic desks, and constantly cleaning staff to make buildings look spick and span. Maybe I could give extra credit to people who clean up the room before class starts...? (j/k)

Anyhoo, the campus visit only lasted until 11:30, so Zach and I went back to our apartments. I took a nap, and right on time, the repair guy showed up. He replaced the showerhead so it no longer leaks, and he fixed the toilet and replaced the button on the flusher so it mercifully stopped running. Yay! Of course, no three hours after he left, Chris broke the string that turns on te light to my bathroom, so now I just have to leave the bathroom light on. Oh well, at least that is silent.

And the last exciting thing? The five of us stumbled upon a little restaraunt that has really good food and a waitress that speaks English and was exited to practice on us. w00t. We got to try a meat that was "like horse, but not a horse." We came to the conclusion it was donkey. That was he best dish we've had so far in China. Well, besides the spicy chicken and peanut dish.We also got "Pig's Fingers," which I think was pigs feet boiled with potatoes. Oh, and the donkey dish had AMAZING potatoes and it had almost a gravy, which I liberally applied. There was also this noodle and mushroom soup that wasn't too bad. That restaraunt is now my No. 1 favorite. It's located on the street that has some sort of road construction going on, and becomes a cluster F*** of cars during rush hour. Oh, and we got to eat in a private dining room with a Lazy Susan. It was a nice dining experience. We're still wondering what the green sacks that were hanging from the picture were. I guess we'll never know. I can't wait to eat at that restaraunt again.

Oh, and we went to McDonalds today, which is pretty much like McDonalds in the US. I guess I'll be eating there when I feel homesick. It's cheape than in the States, too. Zach and Chris bought some happy meal toys and plan on incorporating it into their lesson plan by having students pick random items (like the Darth Vader toy) and market and sell it to the class. I remember doing that in Mrs. Menne's speech class in the 11th grad, and I think I might steal the idea.

August 29th, 2008

2008-09-01T02:28:00.001-07:00

I didn't get to write when we touched down in Beijing because my journal was in my backpack, which was in the overhead compartment. And I've been too tired to write the past two nights.

After we landed, we walked through the gynourmous Beijing airport to customs, which was really easy and uneventful. We didn't even have to claim anything. Both of my checked bags arrived safe and sound. I changed money, and after a little searching, Zach and I found our Waiban, Maggie, who was there with somebody else from the school. Maggie speaks English very well, but the other person doesn't speak a word of English. Zach says he keeps expecting him to turn around and say "Surprise! I can speak English and I've been understanding you all along!"

From Beijing, we went straight to Shijiajuang in Hebei Province, where Maggie told us we would get our work permits and complete our medical examinations.

Shijiajuang is very polluted, one of the most polluted cities in the world. In Beijing, you could see that it was polluted about a mile in front of you. In Shijiajuang (The Shizz), it is so polluted, you can see the haze starting fifty feet in front of you. We are two hours outsied of the city right now on the way to Chengde, and there is still a haze that could almost be fog, but it's not. Zach and I determined that Shijiajuang would be a good city for weekend visits, but not for living in. We're glad we're living in Chengde.

Yesterday morning, Zach and I were obliged to skip breakfast in lieu of the impending blood test. On the way to the medical exam, the driver started taking the back streets. They were so narrow we almost couldn't get the car through. On either side of th street, we passed countless shops and houses, often with broken windows and rusty metal screens. Faded pictures from too much lights (I can't say sun expures because it's permanantly grey from pollution) adorn the windows of shops. Most are pictures of hair models in salon windows. I'm sure what was once a vibrant, in-style picture seems a little old and outdated, but maybe that's just the effect of the fading.

Zach and I were worried that our exam would be on one of these back streets, in which case Zach woud have refused to go in. Luckily, we came out onto a main street where there was a nice clean building labelled "Foreign Affairs Examinations." The only scary thing was when the Flombotomist (blood draw person) took his gloves off to put the needle in because he couldn't feel the vein. It took two practitioners to draw my blood because the first couldn't find my vein. I got poked in both arms and now I have a beautiful purple bruise where they drew blood. Amusingly, the hospital had labelled rooms like "Surgery" and "Internal Medicine," but were just a standard hospital room circa 1920with a few updates. There was a room called "Facial Features," which I thought might be facial mapping, but it was just an eye test.

Maggie, Zach, and I wen't shopping for cell phones. It was really hard to find a good cell phone that didn't take all or half of my cash. I found one eventually, a legal one I can take to a service center in Chengde, should I need. After this, Maggie left us to fend for ourselves in the shopping center while she went to pick up our medical exam results. We now wonder if we might not have gotten a better deal on cell phones if we hadn't taken Maggie with us because then she wouldn't have been threto tell us all the features of a phone and why it was so expensive. Zach alo says the stand owners think we are rich enough to hire a translator, so they won't lower the price. Once Maggie left, Zach and I wandered the shopping center in search of appliances. We got around using my phrasebook and asking "Duoxiao qian?" in which the worker would answer with a number (in Chinese) which we would have to translate, or pull out a calculator. We would then haggle down the dealer by offering half,who would then come back with another offer and so on. The cool thing about the shopping center was that it was arranged by product, and everything in that store was electronic. First floor was cameras, MP3 Players, and large electronics. 5th floor was cell phones, 4th was printers and burnable CDs, 3rd was computer stuff. I don't remember what 2nd was. Most of the things we got were less than half of what we would have bought it for in America. I found and AWESOME Nikon D40 for 6300 Yuan (930 USD) and maybe if I save enough from my paychecks and I can haggle enough, I can buy it near the end of my stay.

Chinese food in China is nothing like what it is in the USA. You order it because you think it is one way, but it tastes completely different. Chinese cuisine is mostly a guess and check game. Guess what it is and try to check. We did go to a Pizza Hut last night, which was very similar to Pizza Hut in the US, it just had different types of pizzas.

Zach and I almost became the proud owners of a new puppy (we were for about 45 minutes), but we decided there were too many unknowns, so we gave it away. It couldn't have been any more than two weeks old. Sad thing is, I was probably it's best chance of surviving that young. Maybe we'll get a dog in Chengde.

People in the Shizz seem to just bunk down for the night wherever they can. On a deserted door step, in front of a hotel. We passed one man who was sleeping on the marble railing that led down to one of the street underpasses. I don't know how he could sleep with all the honking and people passing by. I'd be scared someone would do something to me in passing. But I guess when you do it enough, you become accustomed.

By the way, drivers in the Shizz use their horns ALL THE TIME. Talk about desensitization. They honk when they pass, they honke when they come to an intersection, they honk when they want you to get out of their way. A bus nearly blew my ears out when he honked right next to me because we didn't get out of the way fast enough. It gets really annoying after a while because it seems so futile. I hope it isn't like this in Chengde.

MSP Airport, 5:00 am

2008-09-01T02:20:00.000-07:00

Here I sit in MSP airport, waiting to get on the plane. We got here at 4:00 am, but the ticket counters weren't even open. When we finally got to check in, the lady thought my visa said I had zero days to be in country. At least she figured it out, otherwise I would have been in deep trouble.

Zach and I are watching the news and I just heard some interesting news: Obama named Joe Biden as his running mate. Paul Larson is going to be very happy. Zach says he already is. Apparently Paul changed his facebook status almost right away.

I think it finally hit me that I'm going to China when I checked into my flight this morning. After I scanned my passport, it asked me if I was going to Beijing, China and I had to click "Yes." Wow, I'm going to China. For a year. No going home, no changing my mind. I'm going to be stuck in a foreign country with nothing familiar around me for eleven months.

I'm going to need sleep soon. I feel like I'm getting sick, but I don't know if it's from my allergies combined with lack of sleep, or if I'm really getting sick. I just hope it goes away once I get some decent sleep.

I think this is all I'm going to write right now because I want to read the packet Dr. Arroyo gave me on journaling before I journal too much. I'll write again when we are about to touch down in Beijing.