Hi guys.
We felt the earthquake - I wanted to dive under a desk like we always practiced in drills at Eastwood - but it wasn't very strong here and we're all fine.
<3,
Joanna
Monday, May 12, 2008
Sunday, April 6, 2008
A Selection of Pictures from our Spring Festival Vacation
We had about a month off for Spring Festival, so we used the time to travel. Katrina's cousin Chance, flew out to visit us, and the three of us spent a couple weeks in Beijing, Qingdao, Tai Shan, and Fenyang.
Chatotoro in front of St. Somebody's Cathedral on Wangfujing, a shopping street in Beijing.
Hey! We're in a city!
Katrina doing her photographer thing at an aquarium in Beijing.
She's got a thing for tentacles (see her blog for pictures of the dizzying array of things-on-sticks that we could have eaten (I had lamb)).
Look! China!
We picked up Katrina's cousin, Chance, at the airport and the three of us took a bus to Qingdao (home of Tsingtao beer), known as the Bavaria of China. Our bus left Beijing at 5:30 pm, so we thought that maybe it would arrive around 6:00 am and we would have the whole day to explore the city. Instead, we arrived in Qingdao at around 2:30 am and were it not for a very nice young man sitting next to Chance on the bus, we probably would have found ourselves stuck in the cold and the dark for a few hours before we managed to find our hostel.
Katrina and Chance in the revolving viewing station at the top of a hill.
Katrina on top of the hill practicing the xun, a black clay egg-shaped flutey instrument.
Chance is contemplating the city.
Now Chance is contemplating the fish. The Qingdao aquarium was much more impressive than the one we saw in Beijing.
Sunset on the Qingdao beach. We spent a while walking on the sand collecting shells and worn pieces of glass and leaky old batteries.
The view of the city from behind our hostel. The hostel was almost impossible to find; it was on top of observatory hill (it is the site of the first observatory in China), and even with a map, our taxi drivers usually ended up dropping us off at the bottom of the hill because they didn't know how to drive up. The views were excellent, though.
Katrina at the beginning of our trek up Tai Shan, one of the most famous mountains in China.
The view from part way up. It was a foggy, hazy day, so about halfway up we lost sight of the ground. We did eventually get up above the fog, though, and the top of the mountain was pretty clear.
Strong like ox.
Frozen waterfall and carven poetry.
There aren't many pictures of Chance on the mountain. He had all that youthful energy and he kept running up ahead a few hundred steps.
Whoo! Top of the mountain.
After a few days in Fenyang for Spring Festival, we headed back to Beijing to take Chance to the airport. We briefly visited the Great Wall, but it was freezing and windy and packed with people, so we didn't stay long this time.
Katrina says, "I'm so hot in that picture!" She likes her big hair. (the cousins in Tiananmen Square)
The gate of heavenly peace, glowing.
I'm there, too!
Sunshine! Blue sky! Everything in Beijing was much cleaner than anything we had seen in a million years.
Before the gate.
In the Forbidden City. It looks like a photo of architecture, but really it's all about the pigeons.
We never actually knew what we were looking at; this is the gate to something, and plenty of other tourists were taking their pictures there, so we figured it was a good idea.
Pretty.
Oh noes! Eternal loss of beauty!
Although the self-heating meal seemed like an irresistibly good idea before be bought it, in the end it turned out to be gross. Really, really gross.
I'm warming my hands on the steam from the meal.
The back of the Forbidden City.
Candied pineapple on a stick!
Delicious!
We visited a temple where a Spring Festival carnival was winding down. We bought some slightly oversized coins to throw at...
a bell in the center of a much bigger coin. If we rang the bell, we'd get a wish. I never managed to, but Katrina did once (she's since forgotten what she wished for, so I'm going to assume that it came true).
Chatotoro in front of St. Somebody's Cathedral on Wangfujing, a shopping street in Beijing.
Hey! We're in a city!
Katrina doing her photographer thing at an aquarium in Beijing.
She's got a thing for tentacles (see her blog for pictures of the dizzying array of things-on-sticks that we could have eaten (I had lamb)).
Look! China!
We picked up Katrina's cousin, Chance, at the airport and the three of us took a bus to Qingdao (home of Tsingtao beer), known as the Bavaria of China. Our bus left Beijing at 5:30 pm, so we thought that maybe it would arrive around 6:00 am and we would have the whole day to explore the city. Instead, we arrived in Qingdao at around 2:30 am and were it not for a very nice young man sitting next to Chance on the bus, we probably would have found ourselves stuck in the cold and the dark for a few hours before we managed to find our hostel.
Katrina and Chance in the revolving viewing station at the top of a hill.
Katrina on top of the hill practicing the xun, a black clay egg-shaped flutey instrument.
Chance is contemplating the city.
Now Chance is contemplating the fish. The Qingdao aquarium was much more impressive than the one we saw in Beijing.
Sunset on the Qingdao beach. We spent a while walking on the sand collecting shells and worn pieces of glass and leaky old batteries.
The view of the city from behind our hostel. The hostel was almost impossible to find; it was on top of observatory hill (it is the site of the first observatory in China), and even with a map, our taxi drivers usually ended up dropping us off at the bottom of the hill because they didn't know how to drive up. The views were excellent, though.
Katrina at the beginning of our trek up Tai Shan, one of the most famous mountains in China.
The view from part way up. It was a foggy, hazy day, so about halfway up we lost sight of the ground. We did eventually get up above the fog, though, and the top of the mountain was pretty clear.
Strong like ox.
Frozen waterfall and carven poetry.
There aren't many pictures of Chance on the mountain. He had all that youthful energy and he kept running up ahead a few hundred steps.
Whoo! Top of the mountain.
After a few days in Fenyang for Spring Festival, we headed back to Beijing to take Chance to the airport. We briefly visited the Great Wall, but it was freezing and windy and packed with people, so we didn't stay long this time.
Katrina says, "I'm so hot in that picture!" She likes her big hair. (the cousins in Tiananmen Square)
The gate of heavenly peace, glowing.
I'm there, too!
Sunshine! Blue sky! Everything in Beijing was much cleaner than anything we had seen in a million years.
Before the gate.
In the Forbidden City. It looks like a photo of architecture, but really it's all about the pigeons.
We never actually knew what we were looking at; this is the gate to something, and plenty of other tourists were taking their pictures there, so we figured it was a good idea.
Pretty.
Oh noes! Eternal loss of beauty!
Although the self-heating meal seemed like an irresistibly good idea before be bought it, in the end it turned out to be gross. Really, really gross.
I'm warming my hands on the steam from the meal.
The back of the Forbidden City.
Candied pineapple on a stick!
Delicious!
We visited a temple where a Spring Festival carnival was winding down. We bought some slightly oversized coins to throw at...
a bell in the center of a much bigger coin. If we rang the bell, we'd get a wish. I never managed to, but Katrina did once (she's since forgotten what she wished for, so I'm going to assume that it came true).
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Thanksgiving and its preparation
Woosh. So. Thanksgiving. We put it off for a week to give ourselves more time to prepare (we're in China; no one noticed). We invited scads of English teachers and also Mr. Ren and Gao-laoshi and Mr. Wang the tai chi instructor. We (where by "we" I mostly mean Katrina and Julie) spent most of the day in the kitchen making wild rice chicken casserole (the only turkeys available were a two-hour bus ride away, cost three hundred kuai, weighed twelve pounds, and probably wouldn't've fit in our oven anyway), broccoli, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, clover-leaf rolls, fruit salad, pumpkin pie, little cupcake-sized apple pies, and stuffing (the pumpkin pie was actually made a couple days earlier). I went out and bought a whole bunch of forks 'cause we only had three or four (we also had to buy about a dozen new plates); when I got to the grocery store that sold forks (kept in a special glass case with the Western-style spoons and the pliers), I couldn't remember how to say "fork" and ended up asking if they had those American things that weren't chopsticks (they didn't quite understand what I meant (I can't imagine why) until I drew a picture). We used every serving dish and every serving utensil and every plate and every fork that we own.
The meal itself was good. The slightly scary teacher who's the head of the English department came and smiled a lot and was completely non-scary (also, Katrina just miraculously made friends with the second year teachers and managed to get Mr. Ren convinced that it would be a good idea to teach them something other than Gao Kao articles, and I am ecstatic). Everyone smiled a lot, and most of them seemed to like the food. Mr. Ren and Gao-laoshi both described it as being very special, which we've decided was probably meant positively. And… yeah. I don't know. It was a nice night. Not quite just like home, but still pretty nice.
More Generosity
So, more generosity.
Often when we're eating at restaurants, other diners talk about us. At Er You Fan Dian, one of the places we go pretty often, there was a guy who came in for dinner when we were eating. He was there with another man - they were business people, and the first man took a phone call before coming back to sit down. He asked the waitress if we could speak Chinese, and then he asked us how much we would charge to help teach English for his company. We said we couldn't (it's in our contract), and he said something about how ah, we must be helping China to improve her language abilities. We sort of shrugged (we didn't really understand exactly what he was talking about) and he went back to eating. Periodically as he ate, though, he would talk to us - he said that if we ever had any trouble, we should call him - he gave us his phone number and email address and QQ number (QQ is a mostly-Chinese instant messaging service). He said he had a company in Guangzhou (I think; I could be completely wrong). He finished eating and paid the waitress. Then he paid the waitress for our dinner, too. Then he gave each of us a mobile phone card worth 100 kuai. We were… speechless, we were overwhelmed, we were unable to effectively decline (we don't even know how to use the cards). We didn't know how to respond, except to fall in love with everything in China for a while.
Generosity and wushu update
Soooo when last I wrote, I think I mentioned that I had talked to the nice folks at the sporting goods store, and they were going to help me find a place to learn wushu. So. They did! It was the first in a series of interactions with people where they were so, so generous and welcoming that I sort of fell in love with all of China for a while.
I went back to the store the next day, and Lei Xiao Ming tried to take me to meet the instructor at the school, but unfortunately, he turned out to be in Taiyuan that day. We did visit the school, though - it's not what I was expecting; it's a real school. A primary school, I think, and they study math and English and Chinese and all those subjects, but also wushu and tae kwon do and tai chi. Anyway, he asked where we've been around Fenyang, and I said we've gone to Pingyao and Taiyuan, but also to Lao Ye Shan. He asked if we'd been to Wen Feng Ta, and when I said we hadn't, he offered to take us right then. I was excited and happy and a little bit dumb, and I accepted without remembering that probably we had to teach one more middle school kid that afternoon (but Julie is awfully nice and she covered for me), and he took Katrina and me to Wen Feng Ta, the tallest pagoda in... well, in the area, at least. Mr. Ren said once that it was the tallest in China, but we are skeptical. It was... I dunno. It was excellent. It was fun. It was a really good experience, but I don't think I can really narrate it interestingly. The tower was dark dark dark (no electricity) and on every floor, he used his cell phone to take a photo of us standing next to a statue of a zodiac animal/god.
The next night, we did make it to the actual school. We were... mmm, when we read other Carleton
people's descriptions of coming to Fenyang, they talked about feeling like movie stars, and we've kind of felt some of that, but not to the extent that other people have described. At the Yu Ying Xue Xiao, we felt that. The students stood in crowds on the balconies to look at us, and we could hear people everywhere whispering, "waiguoren!" Song Bing,
I really love being able to go to the tai chi school. I like our tai chi instructor here, but he doesn't do a lot of instructing in the classes (he doesn't correct our forms or explain what we're doing) so it's nice to have someone who can take time to show us what we really should be doing. The class at the other school is more satisfying and also... it's something outside of FenZhong. It's maybe a chance to become part of a community. The teachers we meet are friendly - I don't even just mean welcoming and smiling this time, I mean they seem like they want to be our friends. They're closer to our age (at least some of them are) than many of the teachers at FenZhong, and at least some of them don't have babies. So… I'm hopeful. I know that probably we'll still be outsiders for a long time, but maybe not entirely.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
list
Sooo there's a whole list of things I've been meaning to post about.
1. letters to Eastwood:
A couple weeks ago, the unit the sixth-graders were working on was about sending letters to penpals, so we had them write letters that (someday when I've stopped being irresponsible) I'll send home and they'll go to some kids at Eastwood, who will hopefully sometime have time to write some responses. Some letter-writers were more successful than others, but there were some pretty cute ones, and sometime soon maybe I'll post some highlights.
2. weather:
I'm not actually sure what I really wanted to say about the weather. It's been pretty nice lately, though smoggy like crazy. Some days, we can stare straight at the sun (* cough * not that we ever would, of course, but we could) and it's just a reddish circle in the clouds - it feels less bright that staring at the lightbulbs in our apartment. It's been getting colder lately, too. A couple days ago it was probably actually freezing, which was unfortunate because that was the day of
3. 7 hour power outage:
Not my favorite event, and the fact that it was so cold that day made it worse, since heat is maybe dependent on electricity? Running water certainly is, at least, as we noticed that afternoon when we could no longer wash our hands (on the bright side, though, the lack of running water meant that the leak in the bathroom stopped and the floor was dry for a while). Also, we have no non-electric means of heating food, so we went out for lunch. Luckily, lunch is often cooked on makeshift gas stoves on the street, and the fact that there was no electricity wasn't really a problem.
4. Japanese pigs:
This week, classes were all weird 'cause the students had a huge test (apparently a huge disheartening test; everyone I've talked with says it was really bad this time). The only classes we had to teach at the high school this week were a couple days of third-year writing, so we team taught it and played a game with collaborative story-writing. We gave them half of a first sentence and told them to finish it, then had them pass their stories on so the next person could write the next sentence (and so on). Many stories were pretty good, and most of the kids seemed to be having some fun, but one story got stamped with a great big "REJECTED!" It went something like this: "I love English. I hate Japanese. They are pigs." which was probably the first really unfriendly unabashedly racist sentiment we've encountered so far.
5. Man on bicycle with grandson:
An old man was riding his bicycle down one of the muddy, narrow back streets in our neighborhood. It was pretty busy, so he had to weave around pedestrians and other bikers. He, like many people, was carrying a passenger on his bicycle. Unlike most people, his passenger was about two years old, sitting on top of an old, well-loved soccer ball in a basket attached to the back of the bicycle.
6. Oh! Bicycles!
Speaking of, Mr. Mi, the first person from Fenyang we met in China, took us out this morning to buy bicycles, and now we are the proud owners of some lovely bikes. It was kind of funny - we were maybe a little self-conscious since none of us really know much about how to choose a good bicycle, but then it seemed like the only criterion we were really expected to be using was whether or not we liked the color. We remembered our experiences pushing bikes up a mountain, though, and we bemused them all by picking up just about every bicycle in the store to find the relatively lightweight ones (we made sure they're all pretty attractive colors, too).
7. Wushu!
Basically since we got here, I've been interested in trying to go to some sort of wushu (martial arts) class. We have taiji classes during the week, and those are great, but I really loved Tang Soo Do in high school and aikido at Carleton, and I want to try to find the same sort of community and camaraderie that existed in those groups. Also, I want to have the chance to get to know people outside of the context of Miss Lee the foreign teacher. Anyway, this is something I'd mentioned to Mr. Ren a little bit once, but sort of let fizzle afterwards. For the last couple weeks, I've been eyeing the sporting goods store we've gone to a few times, gathering my courage to ask them if they know a place I can go. I like the store a lot - we went there for badminton rackets and birdies, a soccer ball, and a basketball, and the people there are friendly, which is nice, but even more refreshingly, they speak slowly and smile and use easy words. Tonight, Katrina and I went in looking for little five pound dumbbells (which you apparently buy by the pound here). Afterwards, I (finally) asked if there was someplace I could study wushu, and the guy said he knows a very good teacher and tomorrow if I go back, he'll show me the school and introduce me to him. I am super excited! Also super proud! Yessssssss, successful communication!
8. Cat, and visiting the doctor in China
Actually, this story's not really mine to tell. Rabies vaccine in China is super-cheap (under $25 for the whole series), and visiting the doctor can be done with no paperwork whatsoever (or arranging for the doctor to come visit you)
Sooooo now I'll just post this, and maybe sometime later I'll post some pictures.
1. letters to Eastwood:
A couple weeks ago, the unit the sixth-graders were working on was about sending letters to penpals, so we had them write letters that (someday when I've stopped being irresponsible) I'll send home and they'll go to some kids at Eastwood, who will hopefully sometime have time to write some responses. Some letter-writers were more successful than others, but there were some pretty cute ones, and sometime soon maybe I'll post some highlights.
2. weather:
I'm not actually sure what I really wanted to say about the weather. It's been pretty nice lately, though smoggy like crazy. Some days, we can stare straight at the sun (* cough * not that we ever would, of course, but we could) and it's just a reddish circle in the clouds - it feels less bright that staring at the lightbulbs in our apartment. It's been getting colder lately, too. A couple days ago it was probably actually freezing, which was unfortunate because that was the day of
3. 7 hour power outage:
Not my favorite event, and the fact that it was so cold that day made it worse, since heat is maybe dependent on electricity? Running water certainly is, at least, as we noticed that afternoon when we could no longer wash our hands (on the bright side, though, the lack of running water meant that the leak in the bathroom stopped and the floor was dry for a while). Also, we have no non-electric means of heating food, so we went out for lunch. Luckily, lunch is often cooked on makeshift gas stoves on the street, and the fact that there was no electricity wasn't really a problem.
4. Japanese pigs:
This week, classes were all weird 'cause the students had a huge test (apparently a huge disheartening test; everyone I've talked with says it was really bad this time). The only classes we had to teach at the high school this week were a couple days of third-year writing, so we team taught it and played a game with collaborative story-writing. We gave them half of a first sentence and told them to finish it, then had them pass their stories on so the next person could write the next sentence (and so on). Many stories were pretty good, and most of the kids seemed to be having some fun, but one story got stamped with a great big "REJECTED!" It went something like this: "I love English. I hate Japanese. They are pigs." which was probably the first really unfriendly unabashedly racist sentiment we've encountered so far.
5. Man on bicycle with grandson:
An old man was riding his bicycle down one of the muddy, narrow back streets in our neighborhood. It was pretty busy, so he had to weave around pedestrians and other bikers. He, like many people, was carrying a passenger on his bicycle. Unlike most people, his passenger was about two years old, sitting on top of an old, well-loved soccer ball in a basket attached to the back of the bicycle.
6. Oh! Bicycles!
Speaking of, Mr. Mi, the first person from Fenyang we met in China, took us out this morning to buy bicycles, and now we are the proud owners of some lovely bikes. It was kind of funny - we were maybe a little self-conscious since none of us really know much about how to choose a good bicycle, but then it seemed like the only criterion we were really expected to be using was whether or not we liked the color. We remembered our experiences pushing bikes up a mountain, though, and we bemused them all by picking up just about every bicycle in the store to find the relatively lightweight ones (we made sure they're all pretty attractive colors, too).
7. Wushu!
Basically since we got here, I've been interested in trying to go to some sort of wushu (martial arts) class. We have taiji classes during the week, and those are great, but I really loved Tang Soo Do in high school and aikido at Carleton, and I want to try to find the same sort of community and camaraderie that existed in those groups. Also, I want to have the chance to get to know people outside of the context of Miss Lee the foreign teacher. Anyway, this is something I'd mentioned to Mr. Ren a little bit once, but sort of let fizzle afterwards. For the last couple weeks, I've been eyeing the sporting goods store we've gone to a few times, gathering my courage to ask them if they know a place I can go. I like the store a lot - we went there for badminton rackets and birdies, a soccer ball, and a basketball, and the people there are friendly, which is nice, but even more refreshingly, they speak slowly and smile and use easy words. Tonight, Katrina and I went in looking for little five pound dumbbells (which you apparently buy by the pound here). Afterwards, I (finally) asked if there was someplace I could study wushu, and the guy said he knows a very good teacher and tomorrow if I go back, he'll show me the school and introduce me to him. I am super excited! Also super proud! Yessssssss, successful communication!
8. Cat, and visiting the doctor in China
Actually, this story's not really mine to tell. Rabies vaccine in China is super-cheap (under $25 for the whole series), and visiting the doctor can be done with no paperwork whatsoever (or arranging for the doctor to come visit you)
Sooooo now I'll just post this, and maybe sometime later I'll post some pictures.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Explosions!
How do you say "exploding radiator" in Chinese? OH! That's 
right, you say "my classroom on Sunday."
(There were no children sitting next to the radiator in question, so no one was hurt at all and no one even got wet except maybe their shoes when they were trying to climb out of the rapidly flooding room, so it was just funny and startling and y'all shouldn't be worried)
"Exploding" is too much, really; it didn't exactly explode. There was a pop and a bang and something came flying off and water came rushing out and we evacuated the room to finish class sitting on the steps in front of the school (this was Sunday middle school class, not regular high school). Coming back 20 minutes later to look at the room, steam was pouring out the windows and water was pouring out the door. It was misty and warm and really was like a sauna; we couldn't see more than a few feet.
Sunday classes are somewhat divided by ability and somewhat by age - the Book 11 kids are mostly sixth graders, and the middle school kids are mostly middle schoolers, but there are some younger kids in both those classes. Bart is in the middle school class, and it took a while before I realized how young he actually is. He's just barely tall enough to reach the blackboard. I think he comes up to my elbow. All the kids think he's adorable (or at least it seems that way), and it turns out he's only six or seven. His English is pretty much excellent, but he's definitely not a teenager (or even a preteen) in the way some of the others are. A couple weeks ago, he ran up to my desk, gave me a corn-flavored candy (it really did taste just like corn), and ran away to hide. This week during break, he kept writing "CLASS" on the board, erasing the C, giggling, erasing the L, giggling, and starting over again.
Birthdays in China are celebrated with fireworks at noon, something we noticed earlier when our 4th period classes were always interrupted at the end by the sound of firecrackers. Weddings are
also celebrated with explosions. There's a car that drives through town sometimes with large rockets on its back end (they're probably each about four feet long and maybe six inches across or something). When the rockets go off, there is flame shooting out the end and the sound is like thunder when the storm has maybe gotten a little too close and really you ought to go back inside now, only much more terrifying because it is unexpected and accompanied by fire and explosion. We've never managed to get a picture of this car because whenever it's around we tend to want to drop to the ground and cover our heads (or at least dash into the closest store to hide), but I'm including a picture I found on the internet that is kind of similar.
(really the car is much smaller and not military-looking, and although the rockets are probably about the same size as in that picture, they just shoot flames and are terrifying; the rockets don't actually go anywhere)
right, you say "my classroom on Sunday."(There were no children sitting next to the radiator in question, so no one was hurt at all and no one even got wet except maybe their shoes when they were trying to climb out of the rapidly flooding room, so it was just funny and startling and y'all shouldn't be worried)
"Exploding" is too much, really; it didn't exactly explode. There was a pop and a bang and something came flying off and water came rushing out and we evacuated the room to finish class sitting on the steps in front of the school (this was Sunday middle school class, not regular high school). Coming back 20 minutes later to look at the room, steam was pouring out the windows and water was pouring out the door. It was misty and warm and really was like a sauna; we couldn't see more than a few feet.
Sunday classes are somewhat divided by ability and somewhat by age - the Book 11 kids are mostly sixth graders, and the middle school kids are mostly middle schoolers, but there are some younger kids in both those classes. Bart is in the middle school class, and it took a while before I realized how young he actually is. He's just barely tall enough to reach the blackboard. I think he comes up to my elbow. All the kids think he's adorable (or at least it seems that way), and it turns out he's only six or seven. His English is pretty much excellent, but he's definitely not a teenager (or even a preteen) in the way some of the others are. A couple weeks ago, he ran up to my desk, gave me a corn-flavored candy (it really did taste just like corn), and ran away to hide. This week during break, he kept writing "CLASS" on the board, erasing the C, giggling, erasing the L, giggling, and starting over again.
Birthdays in China are celebrated with fireworks at noon, something we noticed earlier when our 4th period classes were always interrupted at the end by the sound of firecrackers. Weddings are
also celebrated with explosions. There's a car that drives through town sometimes with large rockets on its back end (they're probably each about four feet long and maybe six inches across or something). When the rockets go off, there is flame shooting out the end and the sound is like thunder when the storm has maybe gotten a little too close and really you ought to go back inside now, only much more terrifying because it is unexpected and accompanied by fire and explosion. We've never managed to get a picture of this car because whenever it's around we tend to want to drop to the ground and cover our heads (or at least dash into the closest store to hide), but I'm including a picture I found on the internet that is kind of similar.(really the car is much smaller and not military-looking, and although the rockets are probably about the same size as in that picture, they just shoot flames and are terrifying; the rockets don't actually go anywhere)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)