Weekend

Oops! I didn’t write anything for two days now. I’ll just quickly go through the highlights so that it doesn’t get too long.

On Saturday, the three of us new teachers went with Hannah to our school to meet the people there. On the way there we went out for lunch at a restaurant that serves jaiozi, which are dumplings filled with veggies or meat. Unfortunately after a day of not using chopsticks, I seemed to have lost any shred of skill that I had. I almost couldn’t pick up the jaiozi and when I finally did get one, I dropped it in my dish of sauce from about a foot in the air. I didn’t get splashed but the person next to me got a bit and the table was mess. At the school office, we met the secretaries and Oliver who is more or less our boss. The most exciting fact I learned from the meeting is that I’ll most likely be teaching 5th grade, not 1st like I had originally (feared) been told.

At night we went out for pizza at Hutong Pizza which is the best pizza in China according to the returning teachers. It’s located in (not surprisingly) in one of the hutong areas of Beijing. The hutongs are a super interesting place. Technically, a hutong is a narrow, winding alley not built for cars to drive on but the term is usually applied to the whole area. My guide book says that there used to be thousands of them in Beijing but now almost all but the most famous, historical ones are being destroyed because they don’t fit with modern Beijing. (To be fair, most don’t have indoor plumbing or electricity.) They look so different from the rest of the city because it’s all one or two storied buildings connected to each other. After supper, we walked down by a canal that had lots of vendors and bars and cafes on the other side. It was really cool. I’d like to go back during the day sometime so that I can take more pictures.

On the way back, I successfully conversed with a Chinese person in Chinese. I didn’t know that I needed to pull my ticket back out of a machine on the subway to get out. But I did know how to say that I didn’t have a ticket. Wo mei you piao. It was worth the 3 kaui that it cost me to buy the second ticket.

Sunday afternoon, three of us newbies decided to venture off on our own to see Tiananmen Square. None of the returners really wanted to go because they had already been there so many times so we decided to brave the Beijing subway by ourselves. We had all taken it before so we had some idea of what we were doing. We needed to transfer subway lines twice and figure out which direction to go in. After a few broken attempts to communicate in Chinese, we successfully made it to the Tiananmen East stop without any problems. We were quite sure where to go and what to do when we were there. (It was a last minute decision to go, so no time to research.) We didn’t do much there because we were too late to get into the Forbidden City. Instead we just wandered around, took pictures, got chased by vendors…

Photos

Amsterdam!



Plant moving in Beijing

Hanging Out in Beijing

Yesterday was finally a nice relaxing day. In the morning I helped the boys rearrange their apartment. I can’t wait till I have my own apartment and can do the same. I’m really looking forward to decorating and making it mine and Hannah’s. Every place I’ve lived in during the last four years, I either couldn’t decorate/rearrange or didn’t live there long enough to make it worth the effort. For lunch we went to a place that had free wireless and American food. Thanks to everyone who sent me e-mails! It’s so much more fun to find e-mails from friends and family than junk mail. After lunch, Sarah, Hannah and I went grocery shopping. On the way there, we pasted a bunch of vendors on the street selling puppies. They were sooo cute! But Hannah keeps telling me that I can’t buy one for our apartment. She also said no pet crickets either. They sell those on the street here too. I might just have to settle for a fish. I love going to foreign grocery stores because you just never know what you’ll find there. Favorite finds but not necessarily purchases: dried seaweed, grapes that were green but had purple ends (for when you can’t decide if you want green or purple), kiwi-aloe yogurt (yum!), cantaloupe gum and coffee flavored gum. And that was all just from a quick trip! More to come later. I spent the rest of the afternoon reading in the air-conditioned dorm. In the evening we went to play games at the apartment of the head of the foreign language department at one of the schools we teach at. It sounds kind of like a scary title but they were very nice people (and from the States) and it was lots of fun. I was dead tired when we got back to the apartment at 11pm but I finally slept in till 9 this morning! Yeah for a full night of sleep! Maybe I’m finally over this jetlag thing.

Day 2 in Beijing

My second day in China was long but fun and interesting. I got to explore more of the city and try some new foods. Jetlag is definitely messing up my sleep. It’s not very often that I wake up by 6am two mornings in a row without an alarm clock. But then by 9:30 at night, I’m so tired I can barely keep my eyes open.

Eating here is always an adventure. Even something as simple as a container of yogurt becomes a story: The lid peeled off into two parts and trying to puncture the second seal, I splashed yogurt all over my face. Oops. For breakfast I had a soup with egg, tomato chunks and lots of rice noodles. It was almost impossible to eat with the utensils I was given. The noodles were about two feet long so eating them with a spoon (which is not like the spoons we have in the States) was out of the question and there is no easy or neat way to eat noodles with chopsticks. I picked at the bowl for probably half an hour and had barely eaten a quarter of it. Plus I had splashed of the broth all over my shirt. Lunch was much simpler to eat. We (almost all of the teachers) went to a Yunnan (a province in southern China) restaurant. We sat down and they handed us menus written entirely in Chinese characters. Some of the returning teachers knew what was good and available at the restaurant. Between Hannah and Mike, they were able to come up with the right Chinese names for the food. The way food is served at a Chinese restaurant is quite different from in the States. Instead of everyone ordering a plate for themselves, a bunch of food is ordered and everyone just eats out of all the plates which are placed in the middle of the table. It doesn’t seem very sanitary (grabbing food with chopsticks, eating it off the chopsticks and then putting those same chopsticks that were in your mouth back in a common dish) but it’s fun and I get to try more food. My favorites were the really spicy tofu (which we were told wasn’t going to be too spicy) and the pineapple rice (sweetened rice with bits of pineapple mixed in and served in a pineapple). For supper, we were really tired and just decided to get something simple so we went to a restaurant that served a variety of porridges. A lot of them sounded really good and I decided to try the rose with jasmine tea flavored one. It wasn’t as good as the name sounded. It was pretty bland (I would have put some cinnamon or vanilla in it) and the rose part of it was actual rose buds mixed in it. I ate one rose but that was enough. Maybe if I had been more awake, I would have been more adventurous.

Crazy story of the day: Mike decided that he wanted to move his plants (which had spent the summer on the Joshes’ porch, five blocks away) back to his apartment. He rented a three wheeled bike with a flat area on the back to load the plants on to. An important detail to know is that Mike does have just two or three small plants. It’s more like enough to start an entire green house including one the size of a small tree. Chinese people stare at us normally because we’re foreigners. Walking a bike down the street completely loaded full with plants made them laugh which was ok because I was laughing too. It must have looked hilarious. I’ll try to post the picture.

I am now one step closer to successfully living in China: I have a bike! Mike took three of us newbies bike shopping yesterday. He said he knew this great place with tons of bike shops to choose from. When we got there, there were only two shops left. All the rest had been torn down and a wall was being built in front of where they had been. After buying our bikes, we tried going to a different market that sold household items but there was nothing left of it except piles of broken cement and bricks. Clearly these two areas didn’t make the cut for the new and improved Beijing when they host the Olympics in 2008. I picked out a really cute pink and silver bike with some small yellow flower decorations. It came with a basket, a bell (to be used more like a horn) and two locks. I paid 260 kuai for it which is about $32. Riding it has a totally different feel then my bike back home. Instead of leaning over to reach the handle bars, I sit straight up, kind of like an old fashioned bike. Now the trick will be to get it to last the whole year and not have it stolen, broken or otherwise…

Amsterdam Excursion and First Day in Beijing

It’s funny to think that my first trip to Europe was more or less an accident, stroke of luck and a total surprise. Yes, since Monday I have been on three continents. Amsterdam was awesome! It was so cool to get to go there and it was a great break in between our two loooong flights. It was noon in Amsterdam when we got there or about 5am in Wisconsin. First stop was picking up our boarding passes for Beijing and trying to figure out how the lockers worked so that we could store our carry-ons. Then we got our passports stamped and bought train tickets to the Central Station in historic Amsterdam. The architecture there was so interesting. I would love to go back again for more than 4 hours. We thought about renting bikes but decided to walk and spent most of the afternoon wandering around taking pictures of the canals and houses. It’s a very pretty peaceful and quiet city. We ate lunch at a small café. I tried tradition Dutch food (or so said our waitress): vegetable croquettes. They were shaped like mozzarella sticks but filled with a very smooth cheesy potato blend and pieces of veggies. They didn’t look like much but were very filling. The only actual tourist site we tried to go to was the Anne Frank House. Unfortunately, we went too late to take a tour and to make our train back to the airport to make our flight on time but I saw the outside of it.

My flight from Amsterdam left at 8pm and arrived in China around noon. I think it’s about a 6 hour difference. It was another long flight. I got some sleep but not nearly enough. Flying over what might have been Mongolia or northern China was beautiful. The landscape was very rugged, dry, desolate mountains. Yeah for window seats.

When we finally arrived in Beijing, I was surprised at how hot and muggy it was. We all crowded onto a bus that took us from the plane to the airport. There was a sign in it apologizing for any inconvenience caused by the lack of air conditioning. Going through customs was no problem. The returners decided that it would be easier and cheaper to take shuttles from the airport instead of taxis. Oddly, the bus accidentally got in an exit lane and decided to back out of it and back on to the freeway. Even the locals seemed surprised about that. Sarah and I (the two newbies) took our suitcases, ect to the nearest apartment since we still weren’t sure who was living where. To save money, we decided to walk the “five minutes”. That estimate was made not considering carrying 150lbs of luggage, jetlag and hot muggy weather. We made but stopped to rest many times. We took our luggage up to the apartment (via elevator, thankfully) only to realize that no one was there and we didn’t have a key. Luckily Mike knew the neighbors, sort of, and spoke the same languages as them, sort of. They kindly let us leave our huge pile of suitcases in their apartment. Then we walked over to the other apartments and dorm to find someone with a key. I can safely say I have never been so gross and sweaty in my whole life especially considering it was Wednesday afternoon and I was still wearing the same clothes I had put on on Monday. Yuck!!! Eventually, we made it back to the apartment in a taxi with a key and got to shower. It was amazing…

We went out to eat for supper at a nice restaurant and had traditional Beijing food. All of it was delicious. Spicy green beans, hot celery and lily bulbs, eggplant something or another with garlic, candied apple slices and of course rice and tea (chrysanthemum with flowers floating in the pot). Eating with chopsticks wasn’t too hard. I’ll be a pro by July.

So far I haven’t seen much of Beijing but it seems like pretty much any other really big city except that there is lots of writing in Chinese, lots of Chinese people on bikes and Chinese restaurants on every block. Not that I’m too surprised. I will be living in an apartment with Hannah. We get to decorate and paint it. Fun! Unfortunately the lease doesn’t start until September 1st. Until then I’m staying at a different apartment and Hannah is in the dorm living room. At least I have a bed… first time I get to sleep in one for two nights…

Just kidding!

Oops! So the trip to China was delayed a little bit. 6 of us got bumped off our original flight and rerouted on a later flight. Instead of flying to Tokyo and getting to Beijing at night, we'll be flying overnight to Amsterdam and have a 8 hour layover there (I've always wanted to go to Europe!) and then fly overnight to Beijing and get there late in the morning on Wednesday. Basically, we're just flying the other way around the world. Oh and I might have gotten a traveler voucher good for approximately one international flight! :) More updates when I actually get to China...

PS The people I'm traveling with are great! I think we spent the whole time waiting for the details of our bump laughing.

Good bye blue sky!

Yeah!!! I leave for China in just over five hours! So exciting!!!

This past weekend I spent with my parents and my grandma who came up to the Twin Cities for the FOC picnic and to say good bye to me and take my car home. We had a great time hanging out, shopping, eating pizza and drinking margaritas by the pool and what not.

My suitcases are 99% packed. Thank goodness for the increase in weight limit. 70lbs instead of only 50lbs is probably some of the best news I got all weekend. More chocolate chips and muffin mixes!

No kissing chickens and try not to let one sneeze on you either…

Only one day left of training for teaching in China and I’m sure that’s the best advice I’ve received in the past two weeks. Well, not really, it has been a lot better than that. So to back up a few weeks to my last entry, since then, I’ve said good bye to Madison and all my friends there, packed up my apartment and moved out. That was a Sunday night. I spent a couple crazy days at home getting ready for China and unpacking and repacking my stuff from Madison. On Wednesday evening, I left Neenah for training in the Twin Cities. Thursday morning I met the other new teachers. There are 13 newbies: 3 others going to Beijing with me, 4 going to Wuhan, 5 to the Ningxia province. Overall, there will be 28 of us in China with FOC.

That weekend after class on Saturday, some of us went to the Mall of America. We girls did some shopping for teacher clothes while enjoying no sales tax on clothes in MN! The guys, well, they were good shoppers too. The next day I went to Chinese church. It good to get a taste of what it’s going to be like in China: everyone speaking Chinese! They were all very friendly. Sarah and I got some Mandarin lessons after the service, too.

The first week of training we focused mostly on teaching English as a foreign language. We learned about the phonetics and linguistics and grammar of English. It was similar to my Spanish class this past semester except in and about English! Much of it was a review for me but brand new for the other teachers. But they knew a lot more about the teaching side since most of them are actual teachers (as opposed to Spanish and zoology majors). On Thursday, we went to one of the teacher’s host family’s home for a get together that included a swimming pool, hot tub, air hockey table and lots of good food. It was great to have social time with the other teachers and really get to talk to them. We spend all day together in class but have very few chances to get to know each other.

Last weekend I went home to say good bye to all my relatives and actually, sort of, semi-pack for China. And I did more shopping. On the insistence of my parents, I now have “teacher shoes,” ie the kind that cost more than $10 a pair. On Saturday, I saw my mom’s side of the family at a reunion and on Sunday my dad’s family stopped by. Sunday afternoon, I finished shoving clothes and other random miscellaneous items in my suitcases (which will have to be repacked again this weekend, I can’t wait to actually stay put in one place for ten whole months!). Then I said good bye to my dogs and my house and my parents (but I’ll see them this weekend). It’s hard to believe that I won’t be back until July.

This past week in training we worked on learning key Mandarin phases and the basics of the (spoken) language. We also talked about culture and culture shock and living in a foreign country. I think we’ve talked enough and just all want to go there and see and experience China for ourselves. Tomorrow is the last day of training, Saturday is a picnic for the teachers and our families and on Monday, I finally get to leave!