us and the world - Peace Corps and China

End of Service, Continuation in the US

2009-09-18T03:11:00.002+08:00

Dear friends!

Thank you for following this blog over the past 3 years. It will continue to exist, though it will no longer be updated. I hope that it can be of use to current Peace Corps applicants, or anyone traveling or living in China.

If you wish to continue following the lives of Nick and Alison, you are welcome to view our new blog by clicking here.

You are also welcome to view our old and new photos at the following links:
Site 1: June 2007 - January 2009
Site 2: January 2009 - present

See you around!

Twilight in China

2009-07-06T09:49:00.001+08:00

Our extraction from China is in full swing -- we never thought we'd make it this far, but it has arrived! We came to China a little over 2 years ago, wanting to see the world, to help people (broad definition), and to learn a little more about ourselves. I can see now that we have fully accomplished all of those goals.

We've seen so many parts of China, from west to east, north to south. We've traveled by bus, train, plane, 3-wheeled moto-pedicab, boat, bicycle, waveboard, rickshaw, and innertube. China's a big place. We've seen ethnic majorities and minorities, the privileged and the oppressed, the drunk and the sober, the young and the old. We've seen ancient craftsmanship and modern atrocity, and vice versa. We've seen the US and the Western world through Chinese eyes.

We've helped people. We've taught English to about 500 Chinese students. We've made friends with many, and given them all a few smiles to remember (our efforts and their own worthiness). We've carried bags for people, and given them gifts. We've addressed each person as best we can, telling them that they are special, even in a country of over a billion. We've tried to break up violence and encourage critical thinking. We've told our students that we believe in their success.

We've also learned much about ourselves. How we can live inside a culture that seems to choke us and free us at the same time. How 'friendship' can be redefined (and 'marriage' for that matter). We have learned that helping others doesn't mean losing yourself, or even changing the other. We have learned that we can make it through, even when failure seems imminent. I may have even learned how to keep a blog (sporadic though it is).

We leave our teaching site on July 14th to head down to the Peace Corps office in Chengdu to outprocess. Then we go to a wedding and have dinner with a friend. After that, it's on to Italy, France, and then back to the US, where we will of course experience a world of reverse culture shock. We'll have to sift through the layers of China that have accumulated to feel at home again, in our home. And then eventually all the layers will mesh together, and we'll feel at home not just in the US or China, but in the world, in our own skins.

Thank you to all of those who have made contact with us over these 2 years; we have not taken it for granted, and we will not forget it! Thank you to all those who have sent materials for our library; the students see it as a community place, and they will continue to take ownership of it. Thank you for all the phone calls, greeting cards, visits, letters, e-mails, and other messages. They have sustained us!

We will surely blog again from the US, about the next chapter of our lives: finding employment, places to live, friends, family, and our future, whatever it might be.

At this point, I have way too many pictures to post here. Please follow the links below to our photos. Au revoir!

Site 1: June 2007 - January 2009
Site 2: January 2009 - present

Back in Business

2009-05-02T20:14:00.002+08:00

Well, we are still here. We were blocked by the Great Firewall for awhile, then blocked by our own travels, and then blocked by busy-ness. But we are back, and ready for an update.

The last few months have been filled with great adventures and successes in teaching. Our recent travels have included places like Emei Mountain (Sichuan Province), Yangshuo (Guangxi Province), Beijing, Chengdu (multiple times), Jiuzhaigou Nature Reserve, and Xi'an, our favorite weekend retreat. Neither of us was bitten by a monkey like our friend, we got to see the big city lights of Beijing, and more family members came to visit: Robb, Pat, David, and Callie! We saw the Great Wall at last. There is a saying in Chinese, attributed to Mao Zedong himself: “不到长城非好汉" It roughly translates as "He who has not visited the Great Wall is not a true man." It literally translates as "He who hasn't been to the Great wall is not a true Han." So, I guess since we have all visited it, we are true Han people now. I'm guessing Mao didn't have us crazy foreigners in mind when he wrote this ...

Our semester began mid-March, and we are counting down -- we have only about 76 days left of our service. We feel very comfortable in class, and hopefully our students are getting the most out of us at this point. We talk most about travel and such, but our lives do mostly focus on our students and their activities. We just feel as though it's old news, so we don't describe much in detail.

Last week we went to our close-of-service conference in Chengdu to get a good start on paperwork before leaving Peace Corps. It is hard to believe that we have been here nearly two years, and that we will have to start again in the US. Well, not really start again, but re-adjust to the life we once knew. Initially, we will have to do things like drive to the store, wonder why people aren't staring at us, realize that everyone speaks English, and that we can form a line somewhere and not be pushed back. It will be truly strange.

Anyone have any hints on how we can re-acclimate to American culture? Please post below! I am eager to hear ideas!

Also, we now have two websites where you can find our photos:
Site 1: June 2007 - January 2009
Site 2: January 2009 - present

Holiday Time

2008-12-03T09:03:00.004+08:00

We haven't been able to post for awhile due to internet restrictions. So what's been going on?

Well, we're deep into our third semester here, with final exams on the horizon for the end of the month. After that, we're headed to our annual conference, and then a very long holiday break. The end of the break should be particularly interesting, with our families coming!

To quick things I wanted to mention:
A friend of ours has recently put on a production of the Odyssey at her school. Click here to see the photos. We thought it was amazing!

Second, the new president-elect has said that he wants to double the size of the Peace Corps. We're all for that, but we think that China should be a unique entity within that :) Read about it here.

Hope you all are well! Our pictures page and videos page have been updated.
pictures
videos

Year 2: Ready, Steady, Go

2008-10-07T17:12:00.004+08:00

This school year has started off with a buzz of activity, and then a nice week-long holiday. Our library is open for business, and we have a a new snazzy system for actually keeping track of the books checked out. A big thank-you to all who have donated materials. We will have various publicity events this term to get more students into the library.

We spent our holiday week by traveling pretty far away along the old Silk Road of China over to Xinjiang Autonomous Region (province). Think desert, camels, mountains, Islam, Arabic script, mutton, and people with lighter hair and eyes. We took a train to Urumqi, but only stayed one night before heading out to the city of Turpan, an ancient capital with a very large and well-preserved city of ruins. From C-14 dating, the ruins are said to have 1600 years of history. And because they are in an arid climate where erosion happens only because of wind, many of the walls are still standing, and archaeologists have put together an excellent idea of the buildings, the areas, the way of life, etc. These are the Jiaohe (jau-huh) Ruins. Turpan is a small city, so we rented bikes and rode the 10 km out to the ruins, passing wonderful courtyard homes, herds of goats and sheep, countless donkey cards which Nick pulled up next to and said hello in his newly acquired Uighur tongue, and fields of cotton and grapes.

This picture is the way that little stuffed breads are cooked - stuck to the side of a metal cylindrical stove with the heating element at the bottom. The breads are stuffed with mutton, onions, and spices.

After another night back in Urumqi, we headed to Tianchi Lake (or Heavenly Peak Lake). We hiked around it after a crappy morning spent puttering around on a tourist bus, and stayed the night in a serene Kazak yurt. The next morning we hiked around the lake, dodged cows, and inhaled the fresh air. While hiking down, Nick and I had the idea to make a "Flat Sarah." There is a popular school project called "Flat Stanley" where a traveler will take a drawing of a character (Stanley) in his suitcase and take pictures of Stanley with various landmarks or exciting things behind him. Stanley travels the world, then reports back to the student, who can learn about those places. So, we were thinking that with Sarah Palin needing to beef up her travel experience, we could make a "Flat Sarah" and take pictures of her wherever we went, thereby bestowing a plethora of new travel experience (we might even call it "foreign policy experience"). What do you think?

This is a stuffed camel, begging for some affection, at the base of the mountain. Check out the rest of our pictures at this link. Happy Halloween!

August, our bittersweet summer's end

2008-09-17T11:47:00.000+08:00

Our last trip of the summer was to welcome my sister Jill and her friend Joey to China. We hit 4 cities in 13 days in a wild ride around China. Here are some of the highlights (and lowlights). I'm sorry for the length; feel free to take it in chunks or scan. The pictures are not included in the blog, but can be found on a joint picture site here:

August 12th
Nick and I had a great train ride to Shanghai, where we immediately got on the snazzy subway and walked the 10 minutes to the hostel. It was about 95 degrees outside.

August 13th
The next day we walked down to the art district, and then got on the bus to the international airport. It took about an hour because of traffic, but when we got there, we were still 45 minutes ahead of the arrival of Jill and Joey. We put up our sign early, which got a smile from an airline hostess, and plenty of business men checking to see if it said their names (except it couldn't possibly have, because it was a big color poster - business men get lame black on white name cards). Then, finally, we saw them at the baggage claim and flagged them down and showed them the sign, even before they came out of the arrivals chute. It was great to see Jill again! It had been at least a year, and she had just gotten a short haircut.

We took the mag-lev train (that's "magnetic levitation" train) from the Pudong International Airport into Shanghai, which took a mere 7 minutes. The g-forces involved in getting up to 435 km/hr are not negligible, in my experience. Also, when were on the bus, we saw the mag-lev track up above the road - it looked incomplete. It looked like a flat slab of concrete with some metal rails on the sides -- something that had been prepared for a track, not the track itself. But it was ...

That night we walked around the city and had a nice Sichuan food dinner at a restaurant behind the pedestrian mecca that is Nanjing Street ("Bag? Watch? DVD? What do you need?" [flip brochure magically opens in front of your eyes with quality {fake} bags, watches, wallets, and clothes]). Last stop of the night: Watsons, to buy earplugs for our hostel room of preposterous snoring levels.

August 14th
We got up and walked south toward the Old City and Yuyuan Gardens. The gardens were a beautiful and intricate smattering of stones, ponds, plants, trees, passageways, and buildings. The Old City was cool, and we had lunch at a famous restaurant in the middle of it: Lu Bo Lang Restaurant. The big sweet-and-sour fish was perfectly done. After that we walked toward the French Concession area, stopping about every 10 minutes to wait for the pouring rain to pass. We found the antique market, where Jill saw a blue jade elephant that we couldn't bargain down much, so we left it for another buyer. We saw lots of old suitcases, cameras, statues, dishes, shoes, paintings, etc. I couldn't help but think it was like a tribute to anything of artistic value that had made it through the Cultural Revolution. (For an interesting read about this, try this book). We finally made it to the French Concession area, with some expensive restaurants and French architecture. Strange to see rounded apartment building facades and wrought-iron balconies in China. It was an early night for tired legs.

August 15th
This day we went to see the Jade Buddha Temple, located on the west side of the city. The Jade Buddha was very pretty, and housed in a nice 2nd-story room of red carpets and mahogany walls, but the real treasure of this trip was the rest of the temple. We happened to go on either the 1st or 15th of a lunar month, which is a sort of holy day for Buddhists here. They come to the temple with small stools, and then buy some large paper bags, as well as small origami-type papers. Then they spend a good part of the day sitting in the shade of trees folding the smaller paper into uniform shapes and putting them in the larger paper bag. Once they had 3-4 large bags for each person, they stood in line to put the bags on/in the large censers in the courtyard, or the special censer barrels that had been brought out for the special day. So many people were burning these offerings that the entire courtyard was about 10 degrees hotter than the surrounding areas, and had wavering ash floating all over the place. From my standpoint, the burning of the offerings did not seem like a religious act (as there was very little prayer), but rather sitting down with family and friends to prepare these offerings seemed like the more 'religious' experience. When we left, we went down to an American sports bar place and watched some gymnastics on TV.

That afternoon, we attempted to find a dock for boats making tours of the Huang Pu River, but as we had decided to try the east side of the river, there weren't many. I think that we would have had to walk much further south in the hazy, suffocating heat of Shanghai, so we found a fancy supermarket, bought some snacks, and went back to the hostel to rest. By the way, the supermarket we found seemed to be all imported items from the US, with many sections represented in full, such as tea, cereal, cheese, GRAPE JELLY!, deli meats, dinner mixes, etc. I saw some people who looked like they bought all the main foods of their diets here, and it really shook me. How can people live in China and ignore the rich local market culture (and cheap prices) of the food markets? I'm not saying everyone should buy the pork hanging in fatty strips, but the vegetables here are really great, and if you buy them, the money goes directly to the farmer, in whose hand you put the money. I walked away from the supermarket pretty upset, and sort of dazed at the prospect of expatriates, especially Americans, coming to China and thinking that Shanghai is any indication of what "China" is. It is helping me to realize just how different East and West China are, in terms of accessibility, opportunity, and pure wealth.

August 16th
Last day in Shanghai. We walked the 30 minutes down to the Shanghai museum, only to find the line for free tickets far too long. Before we found it, however, we stumbled upon a strange group of people all sitting and wandering around the lotus pond in the People's Park. At first I thought it was a social club for the elderly, but then I saw that most people had signs posted in front of them, on clothes lines, or even just held up in front of them ... with their personal statistics: height, weight, occupation, place of residence, age, etc. It was a dating market. Some people were looking for companions for themselves, and others clearly had the advertisements for their children. Nick stopped to talk to a few people, at which point he was asked if he wanted a Chinese wife - thankfully he pointed over toward us and said he already had a wife!

We wandered back to the hostel, had lunch, and went to the domestic airport for our flight to our next destination: Datong. We arrived there at about 8 PM and went directly to a hotel and checked in. Then we went out to find an internet bar (smoky) and buy some snacks (oreos!).

August 17th
At about 9 AM we went over to the China International Tour Service (CITS) office near the train station. Having never been to a tourism office in China, I was a little suspect. I didn't know how helpful they would be if we weren't going to sign right up for a tour. However, the man was exceedingly helpful and not only signed us up for a tour for the following day, but also told us that train tickets out were extremely hard to get, as most trains just came through from Inner Mongolia, with very few seats reserved for Datong. So, we ended up checking the train station ourselves, then booking 4 tickets on an overnight bus from Datong to Xi'an.

We went down the street to take the number 8 bus, which supposedly would drop us off nearby the remnants of the Great Wall in Datong, the reason this place made it onto the itinerary in the first place. Because of rain and/or construction, the buses were not running. However, there was an older man outside who got out his phone and started making calls. We waited around just to see what he was doing, and eventually he handed us his phone. There was a nice woman named April on the other end, who agreed to take all 4 of us the 45 km up to the Great Wall for only Y80. After we got in her taxi, she explained at length that we could go straight ahead to one place on the Wall (which was "better" for an unknown reason), or turn left (while insistently indicating “right” with her hand) and go to the other place. After exchanging some blank stares, we chose straight. We pulled up through the wall to a place where some of the old watchtowers were near. We got out and wandered a little, taking some photos, when April suddenly said "Go! Climb up it!" We saw the watchtower mounds, and thought surely, she could not be telling us to just go and climb up (and possibly erode/destroy) this relic. But she was. We looked around and saw some locals climbing them. So, we went around the nearest tower and found the footholds on the back, and up we went. The view from up there was great. The watchtowers were only a few hundred yards apart, and stretched to either horizon. The Wall itself was just dirt piled in either direction to the horizon, but you can imagine what it was once like. Now it is just a local feature of that village, a place to be traversed when the sheep need pasturing.

That afternoon we got back and started to see more of the full effect of Datong. Datong is not a tourist town. It has one nice street, but most people go there to see all of the sites outside of the city. That being said, most of the coal mined in China comes from that area, and it is a center of industry, which means migrant work. Nick and I can gauge the type of city it is from how many people do the following things: stare, talk about us, point, giggle, and say "hello" in the goofiest tone you can imagine. Jill and Joey got to hear and see it all. Welcome to Northern China.

August 18th
The day of our tour arrived, and we showed up at 9, only to wait until 9:45 to actually pull out on a bus of about 25 people, 5 Chinese and 20 international people (Australians, Kiwis, Spaniards, French, British, Americans). Our first stop was the Hanging Monastery, a place built about 100 meters up on the side of a cliff. It was built there to house the Buddha to which people prayed for the river below to stop flooding out all of the homes there - so of course the Buddha couldn't be flooded out, and had to be built up high. Now it is the home of 3 religions: Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. By the end of 2 years in China, I should be able to tell the differences between their idols; right now I'm still confused. Also, in the pictures, there appear to be spindly little dowels holding up the temple; those are mostly for show, as it is supported by beams drilled laterally up to 2/3 of their length into the mountain.

After that, we stopped off at the Smiley Restaurant or some such thing, which was basically a tourist spot to stop and eat lunch. In the afternoon, the bus pulled into the lot for the Yungang Caves, and off we went with our guide. She talked for about half an hour about all of the caves, why they were built, and how. The main caves with the biggest Buddhas and most ornate grottoes were built by an emperor for his mother, his uncle, etc. They were built by first making a cave close to the top of the cliff starting work on the head, and then working down. Before electricity, they had to use natural light, so they couldn't just start from the bottom and work upward. This led to one of the Buddhas having unfinished feet below the level of the ground outside, as the original architect had misjudged the amount of room needed when they began work on his head and torso.

The most interesting story to me was one in which a specific Buddha was commissioned to make up for, well, genocide. At some point in history, the emperor outlawed Buddhism. He had many monks and nuns put to death, as they were undermining his authority and the supposed advancement of the culture. After a few years, he realized his mistake and commissioned a very large Buddha who wears a sash with hundreds of little Buddhas perched on it, to represent those who were killed. It was said that the emperor "regretted" what he did, and the hand position and demeanor of the Buddha represent that. This, in my experience, has been the only memorial in China to those wrongly killed in a political or cultural movement. Maybe I haven't been looking hard enough, or haven't traveled enough. If anyone knows of other such memorials, let me know.

August 19th
This day we had originally planned to go the 75 km down to see the Wooden Pagoda, supposedly the oldest building standing (and it doesn't even have any metal). However, that's pretty far after the 4 hours of bus travel the previous day, so we decided just to walk around Datong for a few hours before getting on our bus at about 4 PM. The bus ride started out fine, and the sunset was nice. In the middle of the night however (after hours and hours of a terrible transvestite-hosted variety show), the driver couldn't keep himself awake. I noticed he was slapping himself and singing to keep from falling asleep. I made the mistake of mentioning this to Jill, who was then frozen with fear at the prospect of a bus wreck at 80+ miles per hour from the top bunk. Jill stayed up for the next hour or two, watching the driver sing, slap himself simultaneously on the legs and face, and smoke multiple cigarettes at a time, all the while going faster. He pulled over when he knew it was hopeless, and another driver took over, which allowed Jill a few hours of sleep before we pulled into the train station of Xi'an at 5 AM. We went to McDonald's, which is very nearby, to recover from the bus, watch the Olympic gymnastics events from the previous night, and wait for the public buses to begin to run.

August 20th
We checked into the hostel early, got a discount, and fell asleep for a few hours. After that we headed off to the Bell Tower, the Drum tower, the Muslim Quarter, and Starbucks. At the bell tower we watched a great musical performance that involved various traditional bell-based instruments as well as strings and woodwinds, and all for free after we were inside.

August 21st
This day we woke up and were headed out for the Terracotta Army when suddenly there were computers free at the hostel, so we spent about an hour of frantically checking e-mail, reading news feeds, getting hurricane (threatening our families) and typhoon (threatening our itinerary) updates, checking various online communities, and booking more plane tickets. There's nothing like computer time to measure your dependence on modern information technology. We eventually got out, and took 2 buses over about an hour and half to get out to the site of the Terracotta Army, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It's a big compound with a park, a little tourist town (supported by the real town next to it), restaurants, and hawkers and guides galore. Nick and I stayed outside this time, since we visited back in January. We wandered around the tourist stalls, I found a pomegranate to eat, and we bargained (sometimes to a ridiculous degree) for various souvenirs, including paperweights, small bone figurines of the most popular warriors, and a red book of the sayings of Chairman Mao. When Jill and Joey emerged 2 hours later, we were relaxing and people watching, with a bag of already purchased souvenirs.

Another volunteer told me about a silk factory with a large sales floor nearby, so we grabbed a cab for the 10-minute ride. When we debarked, we walked into the factory, at which point we were met by a man speaking English, saying he was the guide. So, after confirming that there was no entrance fee, we were off on a tour. This is ironic because he emphasized about 3 times that it was not a museum, but rather a shop. After seeing traditional robes from a few dynasties (beautifully colored yellow, black, and red), we were taken through the area with a machine of unknown name that took cocoons, un-spooled them, and then re-spooled them onto rolls. When fabric is made, it is made first by taking the silk thread by that method. There's no spinning involved. If, however, the cocoons are to be used for duvets, the cocoons are soaked and stretched over large frames to dry. Then people stretch them out to literally the size of a double bed (it's like a big cobweb) and layer them up. There are various densities available for purchase. We wandered around the shop for about half an hour, with Nick trying on various kungfu shirts, but we left with no purchases this time.

The afternoon was spent at the Small Goose Pagoda park. We wandered around, saw a sort of cool museum, and then made it back around to the pagoda before closing, only to find that it had already closed. So, we went back and found dinner. The nights in Xi'an were spent watching the U.S. mens basketball team whoop up on various other competitors.

August 22nd
This morning was beautifully sunny, so we headed up on top of the city wall to ride bicycles before our late afternoon flight to Guilin. We rented these really heavy bikes and set off. The stones on top of the wall weren't even, but you could comfortably pedal and look at the towers and the cityscape from 40 feet up. We stopped at the first corner for pictures and the ramps that led up to it. After that the air in the tires of the bikes decided that we were having too easy a time of it. The stones also became more uneven, so it was like pedaling uphill on cobblestones. About halfway around, Nick changed out his bike with a flat tire for a better one, and I bought an orange popsicle to power me over the jarring stones. We got around in a little less than 2 hours, sunburned and tired, but having seen some great parts of Xi'an and enjoying the weather immensely.

We arrived in Guilin in the dark, and got in a cab for 80 yuan from the airport to our hotel. Immediately the cab driver started asking us what attractions we were interested in, where we planned to go, where we were from, etc. Our Chinese gave her enough information to get her daughter on the phone to translate our more detailed questions and give answers. Nick must have passed the phone back and forth 6 times without gleaning much information. At one point we thought she was keeping us in the cab longer than usual just to get the sale on some river cruise tickets. At my insistence, she took us right to our hotel. I still don't know if we took a detour or not. At the desk was a lady whom I had spoken with earlier about the river cruise. We booked semi-expensive tickets for a cruise leaving the next morning at 8 AM; it even had an English-speaking guide. It was at least 10 degrees hotter in Guilin than Xi'an, so we were all eager to get to our rooms, turn on the air conditioners and mosquito repellent things, and get some sleep.

That didn't mean that we got to do that. Nick and I said goodnight, and then proceeded to attempt to walk to the train station and buy tickets to get back to Tianshui. This was nearly 10 PM on a very hot night. We made it to the train station, only to see that most trains originated from Nanning, the provincial capital, 5 hours south by bus. Tickets could only be purchased 5 days in advance, and all trains were sold out except for standing room only 5 days later. We didn't buy them because we didn't want to stay 5 days, and we certainly didn't want standing room only on a 30+ hour train ride. We walked over to an office near the station to try to get the agent to help us. We basically sat there while he puttered around, then eventually told us to give him Y1000 and he would "go check." Riiiiiiiight. I knew that at most, the tickets would have been something like Y700, so I thought he might just take our money and go home for the night. Then, these other obnoxious guys (the agent's friends?) barreled into the storefront and started heckling us in English ('Hel-LO?! Speakah ENG-lish?!'), and that sent me over the edge. We wandered to a hostel across the street, at which point the desk clerk told us go back to a travel agent nearby. I couldn't even speak at this point, being totally exhausted, the butt of English heckling, the possible victim of shady business practices, and having no way home. Nick was chivalrous enough to go in and talk to another, nicer, far more helpful lady for 20 minutes while I watched a spider rappel down an ancient magazine rack. We found out that it would be pretty efficient to get a train from Guilin to Zhengzhou, then on to Xi'an or Tianshui. After hauling it back over to the train station, we found that all tickets to Zhengzhou were also sold out. So, we gave up and trudged back to the hotel after midnight.

August 23rd
The minivan came to get us at 8 AM as promised, with a cheery guy who helped us with our bags. The moment we got in the car, he started with some American movie lines and idioms, such as “I’ll be back,” don’t kill all your baskets with one egg, "Hasta La Vista, Baby," and various others I can't remember. We were in the van not one full minute when the onslaught of idioms and movie quotes began. For everything we said, he had one ready. Then Nick caught right up with him, and it turned into a contest of idioms between them while Jill, Joey, and I laughed hysterically. A Chinese family got in at the next hotel, and the guy kept up the barrage, which was somewhat lost on them. When we got to the bigger bus which would take us to the boat dock, we were just waiting to see if he would run out. He was still talking when his voice faded as we got on the other bus. Imagine our deep disappointment that he was not our REAL four-hour-tour tour guide.

After about 20 more international visitors boarded the bus, we were off. We hadn't had a chance to see much of Guilin up until this point except the airport and the train station, so the karst stone structures that appeared just outside the city were amazing. Our English guide did a great job, gave us all little Panda stickers, and explained everything in both languages. Anyway, the karst structures have a really unique shape. I can describe them best by comparing them to those toys you see at Spencer's in the mall. They have hundreds of small metal pins on guides, and one side is clear plastic. When you push your hand underneath, you see the shape of your hand, sort of pixellated, under the plastic. The karst structures is like someone has put huge fingers under the ground and pushed them up into the air. They are mostly domed, all stone with a thin soil layer, and disconnected from each other. We could really understand why people say it’s a world-famous place (Side note, all students in China learn a single phrase about Guilin, 桂林山水甲天下 Gui4 Lin2 shan1 shui3 jia3 tian1 xia4, which means that the landscape of Guilin is the finest under heaven).

We got settled on the boat at a table with a nice couple from Sweden/Germany/Italy. We sat for a few minutes and had tea, then headed up to the top viewing deck to get the full effect of the karst structures and Li River. The river was filled with a few sites: local fishermen on bamboo (or bamboo-shaped PVC pipe) rafts and water buffalo down for some romping in the water. The day was just a tad hazy, but the river, wildlife, and stones were amazing. Joey kept commenting that he'd take too many pictures because it was beautiful, but they wouldn't look as good later. Really, we just stared out at the slowly passing scenery and breathed the air. The river was really stunning to me because it wasn't light brown colored (as all rivers are in northwest China), and it was actually filled with water (and presumably fish!). A few of the fisherman pulled up and moored to our boat and sold the kitchen staff some local fish, and passengers random souvenirs. After a couple of hours we were called down to lunch, which was a decent number of dishes and rice, with fresh bananas to finish it off. During lunch, we got the announcement that we were passing the scenery that was used to draw the picture for the back of the Y20 bill. I rushed up to the roof and took some pictures with the bill held up in front of the hills – almost a perfect match! It was great to see a place so inspirational.

We arrived to Yangshuo in the early afternoon and walked 10 minutes up the pedestrian street to retrieve our bags. Back toward the dock at our hostel, Monkey Jane's Guesthouse, we stumbled into a group of scantily-clad Europeans with black river tubes. We asked them where they were headed, and then we saw a short Chinese chick by the counter, looking like she was in charge. "Jane's taking us," said a blonde guy in board shorts. So, the young woman was Monkey Jane. One of the others asked if we wanted to go, at which point we looked at each other for 2 seconds and decided that would be the best plan. Jane told us we had 10 minutes to get back down in bathing suits, and one of the others looked at us and joked, "We'll give you six." We ran upstairs, changed, paid the desk for the boat ride back, grabbed tubes, and set off to the dock. Our tubing-mates turned out to be from Scotland, Sweden, and Holland (by way of Canada). When we got to the dock, Jill realized that her tube had a significant leak, and would not make it down the river. Jane borrowed a stall vendor's phone and got a new one. Jill felt bad for holding us up so she apologized, to which Jane said, "Shit happens! Don't be sorry." We were about to get in when some sort of police patrolled by the dock, and we had to move down to another part of the dock, past where the tourist ferries (like ours) moor.

Right after getting in, I didn't push far enough out and my tube was promptly sucked under a bamboo raft (think very large bamboo). I had enough sense to jump out and grab my shoes, but my sunglasses were donated to the river bottom. We floated down the river for about 2 hours, dodging tour boats, slowing or stopping so some could jump off the bridge, have a smoke, paddle toward water buffalo that pooped in the water to deter us, paddle over to the beach, stare at the sky and stone, hold on to rocks in the middle of the river, and generally have a good time. It was the perfect relief on a hot day after a nice boat ride. We had Western food (i.e. non-Chinese) food for dinner at one of the many super-touristy expensive restaurants, walked around the shopping stalls some, and went to bed.

August 24th
The plan for this day was to rent some bicycles and ride out to Moon Hill, a specially shaped karst stone structure with a large cutout in the shape of a half moon. However, it was pouring when we woke up, and we didn't feel like riding out in the rain. We asked Jane about hiking as well as tried to get around the hill just behind our hostel, but it was closed due to the hazardous slippery conditions. Soaked stone steps and mud do not make for safe hiking there. So, we walked up into the center of town and over to another hill which was smaller and open. I was a little sick, so I wasn't feeling up to much. That afternoon we decided it wasn't worth it to ride bikes in the rain, and we'd try it again the next day. Instead, Jill and I went for foot massages while Nick and Joey spent some time at the internet bar.

August 25th
We knew we had to make an afternoon bus back to Guilin for Jill and Joey's 8 PM flight back to Shanghai, so Moon Hill had to be in the morning. We put our bags in Monkey Jane's luggage room, i.e. the lobby, under some tables, and caught a mini-bus from the center of town for Y2.5 each. We got there in 15 minutes and paid a small fee to get into what looked like a (thankfully) under-developed tourist site. All it had was a small restaurant inside the gate, and then it was steps and benches to the top. Oh, and the refreshments ladies who were friendly enough at the beginning, and strangely didn't try to sell us anything. We started up the hill on all-stone stairs slightly damp from the previous night's rain. We really had to watch our steps as not to crack a knee, and the climb was good. Those ladies started to follow us, giving helpful advice about which way to turn and where to stop for good views. After about 15 minutes, we realized that they were going to follow us the whole way. Somewhat winded from my cold, I was walking slower than the others, and even these middle-aged ladies in soft shoes passed me. When they were keeping up with Jill, it got to her a little that they seemed to just be listening for snatches of English words they could recognize, and offering a little too much guidance and advice. We did know how to hike and walk, for goodness sake. When we got to the top, I had to tell them that we could both walk up and look for ourselves, which seemed to give us a little more space. After walking under the "moon" part of Moon Hill, we saw another small path, but stayed around the main viewing area for awhile. Some German tourists told us that it was a 10-minute climb up and over the top of the stone arch, and if we had done any climbing, it would be a breeze. So, in order to get the full eco-tourism experience (and to get away from those damn ladies), we started off on the muddy and steep path. We ended up using our hands, roots, and each other to navigate all of the challenging sections. It was the slickest mud I have ever walked on, and the wet stones were unforgiving. We made it to the top slightly muddied and happy to be up in the mists, so it was cooler. I held onto the climbing pole and rock outcropping for dear life while the others took pictures and looked around. We saw an inordinate number of butterflies and continued to soak in insect repellent to make sure nobody got malaria or Japanese Encephalitis. Jill and Joey were taking pictures on their phones at that point since our battery had died, and their cameras were not with us. Taking a self-portrait of 4 people using the button on the touch screen of an iPhone is a little tricky, considering there is no depth to the button, and you have to just guess where it is on the face of the phone when it is facing away from you. After about 5 attempts, we got a picture with all of our smiling faces.

We hiked down pretty quickly, not wanting to be rushed to get the bus back to Guilin. Lunch was dishes in a local restaurant, where the wait staff was visibly uncomfortable at us going back and forth between the English and Chinese menus. "They're not the same," she had whispered when we asked for the Chinese menu, only to find at least a 20% price increase for the items on the translated menu. Those translators must make a killing :) Also, I thought that I had swallowed a bone fragment which was stuck in the side of my throat, so I gagged and tried to pull it out until I was convinced that I had just scraped my throat, that there were no bone fragments stuck.

The bus back to Guilin was uneventful, and we found a small noodle place to decompress, eat, and prepare for the goodbyes to come. Around 5:30 we went out to attempt to get a cab. We found one after 5 minutes, but bargaining was nearly impossible, and she was in a rush to move since we flagged her at an illegal spot. She stayed once she realized that Jill and Joey had to get multiple bags into the trunk and say goodbye. Our goodbye was rushed, and there was no way to express how much it meant to me to have someone come and visit, especially my favorite sister and her friend. After they were off, we walked slowly back to the hotel in Guilin, at which point I showered and found a place on the bed so that I could stare at the ceiling. The next day was to start the journey back to our school, back to planning, back to our real life. I just wanted to get Jill back and hang out more, since being with her made me feel like everything would be okay. We hadn't spent more than a few days together since the summer of 2001 (I think), and when she was here I was taken back to that place in my psyche where someone knew me better than anyone else, and we could just relax. We had some good conversations, and I wished that it didn't have to end.

August 26th
The next day we spent some time at an internet bar, and then headed to the airport. At which time, unbeknownst to us, the adventure was just beginning.
__________________________________________

Nick and I got home on the 27th much later than planned, but all in one piece. After getting back to Xi'an we hopped on a bus to Tianshui that was supposed to leave at 7:30 PM and get in around 1 AM (a worse sleeper than the one we took together, and this time we had the back row on the bottom). When we were crawling along for an hour, I got annoyed, and then by 3 AM the bus had completely stopped, turned off all the lights and the engine. Which is when it got ridiculously hot. Nick and I thought the road was closed. At 3:30 AM Nick went out to see what was up and walked about 1 km ahead of the bus to see 2 trucks that had some of their wheels in a ditch on this narrow mountain road, which was a complete holdup. There was another wreck the other way, and zero vehicles were working together to get anything moving, so there we sat until 5 AM, at which point we moved some. We crawled until 9 AM, and then were able to move. We both finally fell asleep. Then at 10 AM on a downhill, a little van didn't see us put on the brakes, so it slammed into the back of the bus, and another truck pulled around to the left (into oncoming traffic) to avoid hitting the van. It hit the window next to Nick's head instead, but luckily nothing on the bus broke, just the truck's fender and headlight. It was a very light hit, but enough to wake us up and make Nick jump out of the bunk. After half an hour of us (me and Nick, eventually with help from the bus driver) directing traffic around us (we actually cared about the other vehicles after our 9 hour delay), another bus picked us up and we finally got home.

Here's Nick's timeline of our trip home:
day 1:
1300 cab to airport shuttle pickup (Guilin)
1330 airport shuttle to airport
1600 flight to xi'an
1800 airport shuttle to melody hotel (Xi'an)
1900 cab to bus station
1920 buy tickets
1930 board bus to tianshui, eta 0100.
2030 stop for dinner. meet an english student. eat delicious noodles. feel pretty good about having a nice restful journey that still puts is in our own bed by 0200.

day 2:
0200 wake to find that we're completely stopped on a dark mountain road.
0300 go outside for fresh air. find a plan in the offing to move some vehicles around to open up a lane around the truck that semi-jack-knifed its way into a ditch.
0400 get soaked by rain "helping" the chinese guys alert all the drivers to the plan in a rainstorm.
0500 return to bus in the rain to make sure alison doesn't freak when the bus tries to leave without me.
0530 bus moves 200 meters. stops.
0900 bus finally gets around the accident.
1000 a pickup truck rear ends us. a big flatbed tries to swerve around us, doesn't quite make it, hits the pick up and the window next to my head. no injuries, more bark than bite, but scary as all get out. i'm out of my bunk before i know what's going on, then i get back in my bunk and find myself face to face with the truck's passenger, 2 panes of glass and about 3 inches between us. scary as all get out.
1005 start directing traffic, construction worker style. halt one line, let the other go, and switch. someone doesn't appreciate where i halt the line, gets out, tries to shove me out of the way. calls me lots of inappropriate words in chinese. our bus employees/passengers come to my defense, there's lots of conversation, more pushing the foreigner around, i stood my ground, everyone got through the other direction, we reopened the jackass' lane, and the whole thing cost him 5 minutes. the people behind us had likely been in the same line as us behind that wreck; that had already cost them 6-8 hours. oh well.
1015 we're on another bus, paying another 20 kuai, and 2 hours from tianshui.
1230 cab to the school.
1245 or so, we're home. home adequate home.
1800 alison wakes me up yelling for help. turns out the water turned off mid shower, and she needed me to grab the spare water from the kitchen.

That was our trip! Happy adventuring through it!

July 2008 - Where have we been?

2008-08-09T16:50:00.008+08:00

Our summer started with a bang, and now more than a month later we have found some down time to catch our breath. So, here's the short version of what we've been up to for the last month:

The first week of July we said goodbye to one our favorite Western city-mates, a young female teacher from Britain. She was here for a year with Pro ject Trust, spending her gap year teaching English at a high school, and she was great. She was always with students and had an enthusiasm unmatched. (Also I consider her to be sort of famous since her parents were Olympic athletes in the 70s/80s and her Dad is on the British Olympic Committee). Well, we met her and her boyfriend at a beer garden for a night of hanging out before they left. Both were headed back to the UK to earn some summer money. Then, even though the gap year is supposed to be one year, she decided to defer again from university to teach English for another year ... in Palestine! Hats off to them. The reason I write this is the amazing story of her boyfriend's health. He was teaching a small town just north of Urumqi, a large city in the Chinese Province of Xinjiang, where there have been some recent problems with terrorism. In any case, he got sick about 4 months before we spoke it him. He had an unknown stomach ailment, which he didn't take too seriously. After it became much worse, he started to see doctors at the bigger hospitals in town, and was run through the gamut of treatments. Antibiotics, other drips, pills, etc. He even had a consult with the best doctor in Urumqi. He said his Uighur friends blamed the Han Chinese food, and the Han people blamed the Uighur food. Everyone blamed it on his drinking lukewarm or cold water (which is bad for your health in China). He finally, after 4 months, hopped on a train to Beijing and was seen at a Western hospital. After various tests and treatments, it was reported to him that he had contracted 6 different parasites, had some internal bleeding, and was basically sedate for a few days while he was treated with more antibiotics, antiparasites, etc. And considering we saw him a few weeks later in high spirits, he was doing pretty good. Luckily, neither Nick or I have had any serious stomach problems (thought I did recently get food poisoning again, see below).

On July 7th, Nick and I walked the 5 minutes to the teaching building to turn in our grades. Then that night at 9:30, our train to Chengdu pulled out. We were on our way there so that I could give a session to the new Peace Corps China Trainees (PCTs). The first session I did was in the afternoon at Sichuan Normal University, and my expectations were met, in that I got more questions at the end than I could possibly answer. My session was called "Introduction to Model School and Developing a Syllabus for Model School." That's a fancy way to say I had to tell them what to focus on and how to start planning lessons for their 3-weeks of model teaching. By the end they had about 50 questions like "Will we be pair teaching? How many students will we have? What level will they be?" And this, of course, was still being decided, as the lovely volunteers students were still being recruited. But they performed wonderfully at my general planning activity, and many of them are experienced teachers, so they really surprised me with their great ideas. Actually, in this group of 38, 19 are over 50, and 14 are transfers from other countries. The average experience level of this new group just blows our group away, as some of us were just out of college.

Anyway, the next day we went over to Chengdu University to do the same session, and got pretty much the same results. Nick and I had dinner with our host family one evening as well, which was really great. We talked as much as we could, about the Olympics, Nick's dramatic weight loss, and their cute little dog. Since last year, our host sister got married! She was introduced through a friend to an army guy who works up near Urumqi, and they were married. They will wait until next summer to have to ceremonies: one in Chengdu and one in Urumqi. I am hoping to attend the latter, as it is more exotic, I have never been, and it could more easily be incorporated into post-service traveling.

After Chengdu we went to Leshan to see our friends doing their summer teaching project. After we had made plans, we found out that all 38 trainees as well as some Peace Corps staff were heading down there as well. One other volunteer said that we could stay at a vacant apartment next door to his, so we thought that would be a great plan. I was starting to develop a sore throat, so I needed some rest. However, about half way through the excruciatingly hot night, the air conditioner broke. The small bed in the stifling room became like a jail cell, and I stopped being able to sleep at all. I opened the windows in hopes of relief, but only managed to let in swarms of mosquitoes. In my tired and sick stupor, I had forgotten that I did pack bug spray. So, I just got up and sat on the couch in the living room waiting for dawn. At about 8 AM, I called the Peace Corps doctor because I thought that I might actually pass out from the pain. I stumbled out with Nick to get some antibiotics and eat a pineapple ice pop that numbed my throat a little. That day I rested, and in the afternoon took a walk. Nick and I were able to hang out with our friends, and go to see the Big Buddha. Nick was the first customer of a new coffeeshop. We took the bus back to Chengdu, hung out at Starbucks, and then got on the long, un-airconditioned train back to Tianshui.

We had about 3 days at home before taking a bus up to our Summer Project. I think I spent all the time at home doing laundry.

We arrived at the bus station here at 5:30 AM in hopes of buying 6 AM tickets to a city northeast of us called Xifeng. Sold out. After whipping out the Lonely Planet to consult how we could get to this mandatory and meticulously planned teaching project, we bought tickets to Pingliang, about 2/3 of the way there. Then we proceeded north on the most unfriendly road I have ever seen. We went through mountains, tunnels filled with smog that seemed endless, and then we hit the dirt road. It took 7 hours to get to Pingliang. We ran off, bought tickets to Xifeng, and got a short lunch of beef noodles. Then back on the bus - the ride was nicer, but seemingly interminable. Four hours later we arrived, and by this time riding on short buses through the countryside had gone from quaint and picturesque to boring, hot, and claustrophobic. At least our suitcase made it there on the top of the bus. Luckily, one of my students was on our bus, so she was able to give us the key information that the 3rd bus which we had to take did not depart from the East bus station, but from the North bus station. Getting on the final bus was a blur, but we pulled into our final destination (a town called Qincheng) at about 7 PM. After a mere 13 hours of bus travel, we were done. Before our ride could arrive, a wild storm surprised us with driving rain, high winds, and confusion. Our driver for the 2 weeks showed up, and took us to the hotel.

Our teaching project lasted for 10 days. We taught English lessons in the mornings and teaching methods in the afternoons. The morning classes were about 30 students, separated by the levels that they taught. The afternoon sessions were done in a stuffy large hall with no way to block out the light, so powerpoint was a bust unless it was 80-point black font on a white background. No joke. You could get about 6 words on each slide. After the project, we went to Xi'an to enjoy the culture, good food, and sleep. Overall it was a great trip, but it had some big ups and downs. Here is Nick's summary:

some of the high/lowlights of the trip so far might include: learning to play a couple of new drinking games, alison puking on the sidewalk from food poisoning, taking our first sleeper bus (you really can sleep on them, but it's just about the least comfortable thing ever), alison getting to skype with her dad a couple of days before deployment, finding dennis p- on facebook, having a guy find my wallet on a bus and run to give it to me, drinking espresso in TWO CITIES, being criticized on our official evaluations for my "stomach and moustach," getting to play with some of the cutest babies in china, seeing reruns of growing pains rebroadcast with chinese dubbing, KTVing "hip hop" by dead prez at our summer project talent night (complete with sagging pants and blue bandana on my head, aunt jemima/tupac style), and hearing a student say "oh, michael jackson, isn't he a nigger?"

I did actually puke on the ground outside a restaurant. Then, after 2 days of rest and eating only bananas and crackers, I was good to go. But I still couldn't eat the lamb's blood soup served to us at lunch one day.

Right now we're back in Tianshui, relaxing and planning for the next big trip: Shanghai, Datong, Xi'an, and Guilin. With my sister!! She and a friend arrive in 4 days, where we will meet them at the airport with a craftily made sign waving.

I'm sure you all know, but the Olympics have begun with a bang. We didn't really know what to expect going into the opening ceremony, but it was truly spectacular. Lights galore, culture to excess, good music, and fireworks of all kinds. We had a British friend over to watch it with us, and she was somewhat funny in admitting that she doesn't know how London will pull off anything like that for the 2012 Olympics. She mentioned that it seemed like this 2008 Opening ceremony was so serious and sort of sober - British people could never take themselves that seriously. She ran through a few things that might show up, but none of us could think of more than some traditional instruments, some traditional dances (think "Lord of the Dance"), and some standup comedians. My hope is that the opening ceremonies in 2012 will really showcase the multicultural nature of the Western world.

In a recent report put out by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center (which is great - check it out), they give some statistics comparing the US and China. The number of Chinese-Americans numbers in the millions, and the number of US citizens that have sought Chinese citizenship is ... "N/A." I don't think foreigners can even become citizens here. And I wonder how many other countries this is true of.

So, look forward next time to hearing of the trials and hilarious moments with family in China -

Happy Anniversary

2008-07-01T15:16:00.005+08:00

It was about one year ago this week that we arrived in China. We were carrying more than 80 pounds each, and barely able to open our eyes look out the bus windows after 24 hours of travel. We had no idea what we were in for.

Today, we are well settled. We're comfortable going through our lives here - we're no longer nervous getting to class, talking to other teachers, going shopping, eating out, doing laundry, etc. We surely do live here. I don't have any very nostalgic reflections right now, but I will say that the past year has been almost insufferably hard and incredibly rewarding. There's nothing to drive you crazy like the inability to just drive to the store at any hour to buy lightbulbs, or buying cereal for an easy breakfast. Conversely, there is nothing like students' enthusiasm after a women's health lecture, or the unexpected year-end gift of a notebook signed by all the students of a class (with an inscription including the comment "we like your beard").

The coffee, the students, and the great fiction we've been able to get our hands on has kept us going, and we will continue to increase in knowledge of ourselves and China next year. One other volunteer raised a question during a recent meeting: What will teaching in a post-Olympics China look like? I would say "the same," but after thinking, I'm not so sure. This year has been described by many (both Chinese and others) as pivotal, a tipping point, an inflexion point. In the first months it was described as disastrous and troubled, but the past 2 months have proved otherwise. Better weather, fewer disasters, and a brilliant setup for the Olympic Games. The earthquake disaster relief that reached the smaller areas in Sichuan Province is a larger example of what is happening all over the west of China. Dealing with the influence of progressive cities and modern technology is both arduous and inspirational. To me, the Beijing Olympics represents an era where every part of China is saying "things will never be the same again." The effect on us is minimal, but the effect on our students is great. They continue to learn slowly about the West, or even their neighbors in the East. Should they become teachers, they will bring with them ten times the English skill and techniques of their own secondary-level teachers. I want to come back in about 10 years, to this very town, to this very school, just to see if the ten-fold increase is still happening. My guess is it will be.

On that note, we're off to Chengdu. I'm psyched to meet the new Trainees, one of whom will likely join us at this school due to other school closings and provincial issues. After that we will do a teaching project for 2 weeks in the boonies, giving local teachers some continuing education in both English and Western teaching methods. In the beginning of August, we'll catch our breath before heading down to the city lights of Shanghai to meet up with Jill.

I'm easy to please.

2008-06-15T21:59:00.003+08:00

For the one or two who don't know, I'm extremely ticklish. Not just under the arms, the ribs, the knees; I mean I give myself the chuckles shaving. I laugh when I put on a hat. I'm that ticklish. And today, this mixed curse saved me 200 yuan and an mp3 player.

There's lots of frustrating things about pickpockets, but at least I got a giggle out of it before I caught him. Why did he look sheepish, instead of worried or guilty, as he slid his footlong tweezers back up his sleeve and slipped into the crowd? Was he embarrassed to be flouting his Olympic obligation to welcome, not rob, his "foreign friends?" Or did my overfavorable reaction to his playing pocket billiards on my table trigger some latent homophobia?

We'll never know, because he was gone before I could ask him, and my Chinese probably wasn't up to it anyway. So I did what I do when Chinese alienation sets in: I went and visited our friend Ron Jeremy. English student by day, beergarden boss by night, RJ never fails to cheer us. Two pipes of Black Cavendish and 20 minutes of friendly Chinglish later, China was back in my good graces.

I guess you could say I'm pretty easy to please.

Earthquake: One week later

2008-05-19T11:16:00.000+08:00

Oh, what a week. We have felt various aftershocks, and other times when we weren't sure what was doing the shaking: our inner ears, our hearts, or the earth. I think most of the students feel that way as well, but it's different from our feelings. We have found ways to return to normalcy. We read the news and are confident that huge earthquakes don't hit that often. So, how is it different for the students? Well, we are in China.

The Eastern vs. Western thinking has come out in full force following this disaster. To over-simplify, Eastern thinking is group-oriented while Western thinking is more individual. Because we are from the West, we do what we know: read what scientists say, take recommended precautions, and then watch some TV and go to bed. Call our parents sometimes. Our students have approached it in this way: listen to the news, worry about the wild speculation of imminent large earthquakes, text message all friends and family, then stay up all night outside holding hands with friends, miss class, and generally feel miserable. I'm not saying that what we do is correct, or what they do isn't. However, there are healthier choices that need to be combined from the two. My scientific thinking should sometimes yield to the fact that this is a scary time. Acknowledge fear and worry. The students here should make the leap that the barreling train of feelings, thoughts, and actions can be slowed, and even re-directed. Their legitimate fears can be talked about and precautions taken without causing them to not sleep for a week and continue to intentionally miss class.

So, I'm a little frustrated. It's been almost exactly a week since the big earthquake, and our whole town is outside sleeping in tents, frantic because of local rumors and text messages they received predicting another big earthquake. I guess we just wait, and continue to encourage the classes to take positive actions: find a way to relax, and don't spread the rumors. I do wonder how long it will last, though.

The rumor mill grinds to a halt here: we are fine.

地震 - earthquake

2008-05-13T09:37:00.002+08:00

Here is Nick's account:

Yeah, we felt it. It was a 7.8 a few hundred kilometers south of here. When it hit Alison's class, it made her dizzy enough to reach out and grab a desk. She looked up and the lights were swinging. I thought my language tutor was messing around, shaking the couch I was sitting on. Cabinets and windows rattled, and he said, “Crap it's an earthquake, let's go!" Thought about shoes, went in socks. Ground was still wobbly when we got out away from the building. After 15 minutes or so, ran back up to put on shoes, grab Harry's stuff, lock and close the door this time. Was on my way to check on Alison when she walked up. She'd left all her stuff, students' exams and all, in the classroom. A couple of kids came 10 minutes later; they'd packed her stuff and brought it to her.

50 year old teachers never felt anything like it. We heard about "The Big One," the Tangshan quake of 76, another 7.8, at least 4 times as we wandered around. There was nothing to do but wander, since we couldn't go inside. Waded through the 10,000 students turned out of classes and dorms. Cultural note: the crowds at the corner stores aren't on beer runs; they're scared college kids calling mom.

Sat down at a sidewalk beer spot, talked to some students about the quake, America, the Olympics. Pretended not to understand when they asked us about T1bet (political bullet dodged!). Went to Ron's place because we heard he was trying to get up an earthquake party. Turned out he wasn't, but we got invited to a nice noodle dinner at a Hui restaurant, microwave popcorn for dessert.

A few hundred kids out on the soccer field tonight. Lots of them mean to stay. We're gonna stick to the apartment. The little tremor at 8 didn't make us feel any better, but I'm pretty sure we'll live. Our prayers are with those who won't.

We haven't tried to contact our host family... that's a good idea. The people we DID try to contact in Chengdu apparently don't have cell service. But the news is saying Chengdu itself wasn't badly hit, just surrounding areas.

Don't have too many more details yet that you couldn't get from CNN. Aside from showing videos from universities while talking about middle schools a hundred miles away, their coverage is supposed to be more or less okay.

You could also check shanghaiist.com. They have updates every 10-30 minutes, with credible links to Chinese and overseas sources. They're saying the death toll is almost certainly over 10,000, but shaky communications are preventing contact with the worst hit areas. They're calling it a 7.9 now. The one we had at 4:30 this morning was pretty freaky. The one at 4:50 was reported to be a 4.8 centered just south of here on the provincial border.

The impact on the school itself is pretty negligible, all things considered. A few of the teachers evacuated our building at 4:30, but we didn't bother. A lot of students slept out, and there's a pretty wide range of opinions on that. First student I talked to said that he didn't feel safe in tall buildings, so he was going to sleep in the field. He reacted with shock when we told him we had no such intention. Second student said he figured the majority of the students on the soccer field (many hundreds, maybe low thousands, if you count the kids on the volleyball and basketball courts) weren't scared, just looking to have some fun. The drinking we saw looked pretty controlled. A third student told me she wasn't allowed in the dorm, so she was sleeping out, though her 3 male friends agreed more with the second student's 'party' theory. A fourth group of students on the volleyball courts seemed nervous about the whole thing, but mostly interested in playing cards.

We did hear an as yet unconfirmed report of a high school collapsing in the nearby countryside. So far nothing like that anywhere near us.

Roller skating with Chinese characteristics

2008-05-11T15:26:00.003+08:00

This spring, we have discovered the true beauty of the town where we live. The trees are alive, and the students are much happier! Check out our pictures website for more details.

Today, we went roller skating for the first time, with one of Nick's most enthusiastic students: Fliegel. We started out from the school, and he asked us how long we thought we'd skate. He said he usually stays, oh, about 8 hours. Our eyes widened, and we told him we'd likely stay only an hour or two, as our feet weren't used to skating.

Ten minutes later, we showed up at the rink. There was a small foyer to rent skates and store your shoes. I wondered briefly if the skates were disinfected, but tried to put it out of my mind. We got the right sizes and started to put them on, when we were each handed two thin blue plastic bags by Fliegel. He said, "put these on your feet." I asked him why, and he said, "It is the rule." So, to prevent foot infection, we put plastic bags over our feet before putting them into the skates. Then, we were laced up and ready to go into the rink area, which was dimly lit, and had Chinese pop-remix disco going.

We stepped in, and noticed first that there weren't too many people, but they seemed disorganized. There were lots standing around the edges of the rink, and some benches along one side of the rink ... inside. We slowly realized how much we were accustomed to the rinks in the U.S. where you have to keep moving. Then we realized just how different it was.

There were some very skilled skaters there who could go backward and spin and everything. Yet, the backwards skaters were skating in the opposite direction of the forward skaters. So, everyone was facing the same direction, but some were going backward (clockwise) while we went forward (counter-clockwise). This was terrifying at first. Then, we saw some guys throw cigarette butts directly on the rink floor, as well as spill some water (which kills any traction you might have had). We eventually pulled our jaws back up, and had to make a choice: dive in and go for it (our student had brought us, and we had already paid), or freak out and go home. We chose the former, and it worked out pretty well. We stayed for about an hour and a half, all the while becoming more comfortable with lighting-speed cigarette-smoking guys weaving around us from the wrong direction, and avoiding the water spots. I think both of us fell into the groove of the place. We were sad to go, but already developing blisters. It only took a few minutes for our feet to dry out after the plastic bag ovens were removed. Hey, we might even go back again soon.

Happy Mothers' Day!

The Votes Are In

2008-04-18T21:37:00.003+08:00

This week in writing class (mixed with current events), we talked about voting and the U.S. presidential election. First, I gave a very brief overview of voting, and the students talked in groups about the information required to vote. I asked for examples of information NOT asked for on the forms (passed around the class), and then talked about U.S. voting throughout history. It hasn't always been the case that economic status, education, gender, etc. played no part in voting registration. Who knew?

Next I defined the political parties in general terms, and introduced the current candidates. Students then discussed the platforms given on www.nytimes.com, and (whoa!) had a class vote for who they think would be the best person for the job. Who wins?

I teach 7 writing classes. Congratulations to Obama who won 6 of 7 classes! Hillary won the other one. McCain didn't really stand a chance, with his views about Iraq and the Chinese disposition to never meddle in the internal affairs of other countries. He didn't even get any support when I mentioned that an American pullout in Iraq may allow for a civil war. In any case, my favorite two things from this week were as follows:

1) Overhearing a female student say of Sen. Clinton's healthcare aims "Providing healthcare to everyone? That's impossible."

2) Seeing a student vote with his eyes closed: one hand was raised so I could count, and the other held the full-page portrait of Hillary Clinton from our Newsweek (Asia Edition). He looked like not only was he voting, he was all in. Next week maybe he'll be in election warpaint holding a homemade poster that says "You go girl!" Then again, maybe not.

It was a good week!

An Inspiring Song - "The Rest of the Story"

2008-04-17T14:16:00.002+08:00

One of our fellow Peace Corps volunteers has been the inspiration for a song! Below is a link to the information I got. Listen and enjoy! Pass along to you your friends! Be inspired!

Anna Huckabee Tull's Song of the Month, inspired by Volunteer Katie

Student Writing Samples: Connections to the Environment

2008-04-11T08:30:00.002+08:00

In honor of Earth Day and the general state of the Earth, the students in my writing classes wrote a short essay entitled "My Connections to my Environment." Below are two good samples (small errors have been corrected):

1. As a part of the ecosystem, human beings have a close relation to their environment, including anything around them. As for me, I have my own connections to my environment, too.

To be frank, the environment provides me with what I want, both substances and spirit. The various foods I enjoy every day come from plants, while the plants must receive energy from the sun. I can gain plenty of nutrients to keep my body healthy. There are many materials used to make clothes, such as the furs of animals, the silk from silkworms, the fibres from plants, cottons and so on. During holidays, my families and I may have a trip and appreciate beautiful landscapes to get fully relaxed and lear some historical civilization. It not only gives me physical health, but also mental development.

On the other hand, apart from the natural environment, I also have the second one, the human environment. In other words, it is called society. I should get along well with my classmates and friends. A tree doesn't make a forest. I should join in others and cooperate with them. I will be very proud if I cam praised due to doing good deeds. However, when I come across difficulty, I will ask somebody for help. As a youth, I should keep enthusiastic all the time. Thus, I ought to take responsibility to make my environment more beautiful.

2. The environment has an inseparable relationship from human beings. It offers humans all things we need. Without it, we can't live.

Every day we need to eat food, vegetables, fruits, meat, and all of these should be kept balanced. It we just ate rice and noodles but had no vegetables and fruits, meat, we would die quickly. So all the food that supports us to live was provided by the environment.

Sometimes if we feel tired from a long time of work, we should relax ourselves, and enjoying the scenery is the best choice. Also if you stayed at home alone, you would feel lonely. A pet may help you to avoid the loneliness.

Other things like flowers and plants are also very important to us. We breathe oxygen and discharge carbon dioxide. But the plants are just opposite to us. So they help us a lot. Also other things such as the desk, bed, and house that we need in our daily life are all made from wood.

Any other relationships the environment affect us is that different areas have different habits. For example, in most northwest places in China, there are many mountains and the people who grow up in these places always like to eat noodles, but in south China, there are few mountains and always too much rain. So people in these areas always like to eat rice and seafood. Also in different areas, the climates are different so people's appearances are different.

As human beings, everything around us is very important to our lives. So we should try our best to protect our environment. Don't just think about our needs and destroy the environment or we will pay huge expenses is the future.

I liked these essays because they show the level of my students, as well as some of the cultural attitudes, such as taking individual praise, but relying on the group in difficulty. Also, I'm not sure what to make of the notion that people's appearances are different due to the climate. Maybe the population of the US is so mobile that we all look similar, whereas the people here are still largely regional.

"In the spring time, the only pretty ring time, When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding; Sweet lovers love the spring."

2008-04-03T10:53:00.005+08:00

The school semester has been flying by. We recently have had some interesting cultural exchanges and things. Here goes:Our Chinese language learning has hits and misses. Sometimes we never remember what's in our book, and sometimes we remember a single esoteric word or something from the local dialect. Our first language partner told us about a certain haircut that girls have when they arrive at college. Soon thereafter, they realize it's "uncool," and promptly get a new haircut. The name of the former? 妹妹头发 Mei mei tou fa, or "little sister hair." We sat on this gem of a cultural artifact until the other day.

Nick had gotten his lunch quickly, while I was waiting for mine across the cafeteria. A student of his was sharing the table. After I got my food, I went over and sat with them. Nick and the student were communicating, best done in a mix of Chinese, English, and Chinglish (a pidgin unto itself). Nick saw a girl with a particularly noticeable mullet and told his student: "That girl's hair is what we call a 'mullet.' Short in the front and long in the back." Then lightning struck, and we asked the student for the names of other hairstyles in Chinese:

刷刷 Shua shua - ponytail, lit. "brush"

烫发 Tang fa - permed hair

光头 Guang tou - bald, lit. "naked head"

平头 Ping tou - tight buzz, lit. "flat head"

帽存？Mao cun tou - hat hair! (what Nick was sporting at the time)

爆炸头发 Bao zha tou fa - afro, lit. "exploded hair"

Also yesterday we went to watch a movie on campus, in an effort to diversify our language learning. We went expecting subtitles so that we could put the few spoken words we understand together with the few characters that we know, and hopefully learn something. Well, no subtitles. However, we stayed for the whole 2-and-a-half hour movie, which turned out to be sort of classic of Chinese realism from the "4th generation" filmmaker Wu Tian Ming.

It details the life of a man from the Shaanxi Province countryside who, though he has a nice girlfriend, goes off to Nanjing to work as a reporter. At the end, his hesitation and guanxi issues ("connections" within society) cause him to lose his job at the same time his girlfriend is forced to marry another man. It's sad, but part of a generation of realistic films that show the hardships of modern Chinese life. That was in the 1980s, so the definition of "modern Chinese life" has changed irrevocably, but some of the aspects of tradition vs. modernity still apply. The film was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign language film.

I just wish I could have understood more. You can watch it here, if you like.

And, we are now posting from our very own laptop! My Dad's previous Macintosh laptop has been graciously bestowed upon us, and we also should receive the laptop that previously died in the mail very soon (hopefully with hard drive memory preserved!). 3 months without proper technology is agony!

The picture is a stack of NEW books for the English library. So excited! We are going shopping today for new curtains and furniture covers, as well as a DVD rack. The dean told me yesterday that he plans to call the TV station when we're done with the renovations, to show us off.

Easter and the start of spring semester 2008

2008-04-03T10:50:00.000+08:00

Welcome back to the working world of higher education in China. After three long months of travel, watching TV, and planning lessons, we finally started teaching on Monday, March 17th. The first week went very smoothly: Nick implemented procedures in Oral English for student presentations, pronunciation work, and targeted vocabulary increase and use. I got the students used to the new syllabus for Writing II, and then we took a walk outside in preparation of the students' first writing assignment of the term: My Connections to My Environment.

Lots of people in the modern world are slowly losing touch with the way that we get things like clothing and food. There are people who make things for people they never meet.

We all buy things made by people we have never seen. As I reflected upon last year in a class at the Christian Study Center, this is very de-valuing of work. If we can at least be cognizant of the origins our our stuff, we'll make better decisions about what we buy, and where we buy it.

This coming week in writing class we'll do a review of all the English verb forms in 2 hours. At first it seemed like too much material, but I've broken it down into "verb stations" where students will read about a particular verb tense, its most common usage, and common errors. Then they'll write an example sentence using a verb given to them from the Mad Libs card game pack.

Easter here was nothing too special. I brought it up in class last week under the heading of "current events" so that the students were aware of it. Nick and I have almost eaten our weight in wonderful Easter candy sent over by our parents. And then, I tried to dye Easter eggs.

There is food coloring in China; this I know by the beautiful cakes that can be ordered. However, it isn't sold in the people's grocery stores or on the street (haha). How, then, to dye eggs? Natural ingredients. After reading some blog posts about natural Easter egg dyes, I set off in search of 1) white eggs, and 2) natural dye ingredients (herbs, spices, etc).

The eggs were easily acquired from the egg lady at the end of the "vegetable and fruit street." She had brown eggs, white eggs, and the little speckled ones. She even gave me a deal. The natural dye ingredients were a little trickier, but here is what I found: grape juice and red cabbage (for red/purple), curry powder (yellow), broccoli and green tea (green), and blue mint candies (blue).

Saturday rolled around and I searched through all of the plastic containers that I had for ones that would hold about a cup of dye. I put the eggs on to boil. I put some of each dye ingredient into the cups and added a couple of rice vinegar. I had the brilliant plan to use the egg-boiling water to pour directly into the dye cups because warm water would be better. I poured some into the ceramic containers and the plastic one that previously held Gao-le-gao hot chocolate mix. Then I got to the peanut butter container. I thought surely a hard plastic like that would be able to stand high temperatures.

A second after pouring boiling water into it, the clear container with the mix of curry powder and vinegar began to flatten and melt on the counter, and gross yellow fluid was poised to stain the entire counter and floor. I picked up the edge of the container and flipped it into the pan, thus avoiding disaster. A ceramic cup worked much better the second time ...

The eggs turned out better than expected - now on to new adventures!

Chinese unrest: news as of March 18th

2008-03-18T15:00:00.002+08:00

Here in our semi-isolated city of Tianshui, we are outside of the sphere of influence of the recent unrest, but we're certainly intrigued. For a comprehensive update on what's happening in India, China, and the rest of the world, see this post by the Shanghaiist.

P.S. There has been some action in a city in our province (Xiahe in Gansu), but we're on the opposite side of the province, and safe as kittens.

The Rest of Winter Vacation 2008

2008-03-10T16:24:00.005+08:00

So, what have we been doing since we got back to our school? A combination of continuing to laze around and preparing for classes to begin. We don't start teaching until next Monday the 17th of March (Happy St. Patrick's Day!), so here are some observations before we are consumed with school again:

The other night Nick and I were watching an old episode of 'The X-Files,' when Agent Mulder made a preposterous claim (as he is prone to do). Agent Scully, the so-called reasonable one, replied "And if your sister is your aunt and your mother marries your uncle, you could be your own grandpa." We listened to it twice, then paused the DVD to try and figure out if this could be possible. After pencil and paper were drawn and various diagrams scribbled out, we didn't have much figured out. I thought that you'd need to add at least one level of branches, i.e. change it to something like "if your mother marries her uncle." If you want to have a go (or as we say in Chinglish "have a try"), then let me know what you come up with!

The many foreign languages in use over here boggles my mind. I do know that lots of Westerners have come through the country, but does that call for the following things?

1) Whenever we send a package to the U.S., we are handed a nice-looking receipt with the mass of the package and price, as well as tax added. This receipt comes from a small pad of similar receipts that are filled in by the computer printer. The only issue with all of this is that the whole receipt is in French. Do the clerks know it's not English? Do they care? Are these relics from a time when French was the only diplomatic language? Who knows?

2) I knew that baking soda existed here, I just didn't know what to look for. During the times when we have been at supermarkets looking over the packets of white powders trying to figure this out, we came across one package that immediately made us laugh: Saleratus. Perhaps Shakespeare has come around labeling foods here recently? A quick check of the all-knowing internet when we got home revealed that that particular packet was in fact baking soda. The company had used the oldest, most outdated term possible to label it. In case you don't want to look it up yourself, it comes from sal (=salt) aeratus (=dried, aerated).

So not only are we learning Chinese, but also French and Latin. Watch out, new volunteers! China is more advanced than we knew.

Also, another blog recently wrote a post about a wave of terrorist acts that he perceives to be the beginning of a long line leading up to the Olympics. I'm not sure I believe that, but the article is a good summary. Read it at the Shanghaiist.

Cheers!

P.S. The picture is a batik fabric that I bought in Dali to hang on our our wall.

a sad end

2008-02-29T13:09:00.000+08:00

Though our trip was wonder-filled and relaxing, it was marked by the passing of both Nick's grandfather Raymond Dunn and our dog, Rugen.

First, about the dog: I had gotten a few e-mails in the week preceding our return home about our dog Rugen, whom my parents were caring for during these two years. Apparently he had eaten something strange on a walk, which is nothing out of the ordinary. Then he got a little sick and stopped eating completely. So, he went to the vet, where it was found that his kidneys were shutting down. Okay, a little serious, but his system could be flushed and they might crank back up. He was walking around, not too down while at the vet. Three days later, however, he started to suffer and there was no improvement, so my parents had to make the decision to put him down. This was devastating to find out in the few hours we had to sit in freezing Xi'an between a 35-hour train ride and a 4-hour ride home to Tianshui. We were in the crappiest internet bar I've ever seen: about 11 computers in a storefront with curling gaming posters on the wall, cigarette ash all over the floor, and some plastic curtains for a door, which you see in supermarkets behind the meat counter. I couldn't believe I was in China, freezing, and we wouldn't have my sweet dog to greet us when we went back to the US.

So, here are a few quick stories about Rugen in commemoration:

I got Rugen for $80 at Petsmart on a Saturday with my friend Summer. He was pretty compliant, just walking around the store and sniffing stuff. I put him in the cart while we picked up food bowls, a leash and harness, and various hygiene items. When we got home, I wasn't sure what to do because it was my first dog, but I figured it out soon enough. He was a rescue dog with a single previous owner who gave him back because she "went out of town too much." I think he was healthy but neglected, as determined by his unwillingness to bark at all and his hesitance to get excited about anything. I spend the first 6 months encouraging him to get excited, and teaching him to sit, lay down, and bark. We would walk each day to a local elementary school where there was a field with tall grass. It was just over his head, but he loved the feeling of running as fast as he could around me in circles through the grass. This is the memory in which he is most alive, and most free.

In the next 2 years he became mine, and then also Nick's. We taught him to spin in a circle and sti back down, as well as roll over. We played too rough sometimes and his little back was somewhat injured. He quickly recovered, even through a couple of small attacks at the dog park that made his ears bleed. He slept on the couch in the living room, and loved to sleep on our legs in the easy chair. He loved bath time, but only the part about being toweled off and stealing the towel for his own. He loved sticks and would chew them into splinters - I even let him bring some in from walks and then I'd vacuum up the remains. He licked the carpet to no end. When we moved into Rustic Springs, we'd walk in the park every day, and he'd bound down the trails hoping to catch a bunny or squirrel unawares. His fur was so soft.

When we decided to join the Peace Corps, my parents agreed to take care of him for a couple of years. They loved him like their own dog, and he even got used to staying in the front yard with no leash, enticed back by the rustle of a bag of treats in my dad's pocket. He found a great companion in their dog Hamish, and he was so tired from playing the first week he was there that he just fell over onto his dog bed.

I still want him back, and his picture is still framed and sitting by our TV. I think I'll always want him back.

Now, Raymond Dunn. We were concerned when Nick's grandfather went into the hospital before Christmas, and then we got more concerned when he subsequently suffered a heart attack. His health was in a delicate state when he began dialysis. After suffering another heart attack, he decided that the medication to attempt to stabilize all of the problem areas would be too much.

We laughed and teared up, walking around China, Nick telling me stories of his grandfather and using his sayings to describe the things we were seeing around us. We have no picture of him right now, but I have put his obituary below, which will give you a wonderful picture in itself.

Raymond P. Dunn

1928 - 2008

Raymond P. Dunn , Chief Master Sergeant, USAF, Retired, slipped quietly to heaven surrounded by his loving family on Jan. 25th, 2008. He was born on July 15th, 1928, on the family farm in Evington, VA.

Ray rushed to the service of his country at the tender age of 16. When his mother wrote to the War Department asking that her son be sent home, he was honorably discharged from the Army on his 17th birthday. He was commended by the governor of Virginia for meritorious voluntary service during WWII in the Virginia State Guard ending Jun 30, 1946. After a short time working with his brothers, he enlisted in the Air Force and retired at Eglin AFB in 1976 after 30 years of service, 22 of which were spent as a Flight Engineer flying dignitaries, celebrities, and missions out of Bolling AFB, Washington, D.C. and Medivac missions in the U.S. and Europe. Ray’s love of aircraft and the Air Force life led him to a new Civil Service career at Eglin from which he retired in 1990.

Ray was a 32◦ Mason, past president of the FWB Shrine Club, chairman of the Shrine Crippled Children’s Program, and a member of Okaloosa Lodge 312, Scottish Rite Temple, York Rite Bodies and Knights of Columbus. In addition to his career, he and his wife, Lovy, were active supporters of the Shrine Crippled Children’s Program. His special interests were travel and restoring old vehicles and engines.

Ray was preceded in death by his loving wife of 42 years, Lovy Cyrus Dunn, and two grandchildren, Charles Richard Short and Lisa Marie Garmon and all six of his siblings. Ray and Lovy raised a loving close-knit family of five children: Rae Marie (Fred) Garmon, David (Linda) Dunn, Katherine Dunn, Theresa (Joey) Short, Beth (Lee) Campbell, who blessed them with six grandchildren and one great grandson. He leaves behind his special friend, Mary Ellen Riordan, who shared the last years of his life.

Visitation is from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, Jan 29th with Masonic Rites at 7:30 at Heritage Gardens Funeral Home, Niceville. A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Jan 30th, at First Baptist Church of Niceville, Bayshore Dr, with the Rev. Chuck Hartness officiating. Interment will follow at Sunset Cemetery, Valparaiso, FL.

The Dunn family wishes to thank the staff of Humana Hospital, FWB, especially Dr Weiner and the nurses in the PCU, for making his last days peaceful for their father and the entire family.If preferred, the family requests donations be made to Shriner’s Crippled Children’s Fund, P O Box 1, Ft Walton Beach, FL, 32549, in lieu of flowers. The family will receive guests at 310 Okaloosa Ave, Valparaiso.

Heritage Gardens Funeral Home is entrusted with the arrangements.

Spring Holiday Travel: installment 3

2008-02-17T13:26:00.015+08:00

Lijiang 丽江: 2008.02.01 - 2008.02.03

The next day we hopped a mini-bus over the mountains to Lijiang, where an old man couldn't hold down any food. When we got there, we debarked to see that he had missed the window a couple of times, too, and his jacket was half covered in vomit. What did he do? Sit down and have a smoke to get his bearings. Maybe he was pondering, like us, how the bicycle cart got on top of the bus. We had read in Lonely Planet that if we stayed at a hostel called "Mama Naxi's Guesthouse," she would come to pick us up from the bus station herself. No harm in asking. We called the guesthouse number and told whomever answered that we had arrived. She asked which of the four bus stations we had come into, but I never bothered to find out. I had to ask someone hanging around outside, and just repeat it phonetically because I had no idea what she had said. About 10 minutes later, a van pulled up with a woman talking on a cell phone; it looked like a taxi, but we got in. She handed us a laminated note saying that fuel prices had risen recently, and it would cost Y2 to get to Mama Naxi's, rather than being free. Hey, we were on our way.

When we arrived to the dirt lot located somewhere in the maze of cobbled streets known as Lijiang, we were met by a stoic girl who led us to the guesthouse. We later found out that there are three guesthouses owned by Mama Naxi, and this was the original. We were shown a room, and took it. Then the weirdness began, at least to me. A lady who had some wrinkles but clearly had energy urged us to sit down and eat some bread, then a banana. We were happy to sit for a few minutes after our trip through the mountains. I petted her cat, and we put our feet by the stove under the table. After about half an hour of sitting and chatting with the stoic girl (Nick got her to laugh), I wondered why she hadn't asked for any money, nor left us alone. I went upstairs to sort out the load of laundry I needed to do, and prepare for the shower I needed to take. I went back downstairs to assess what was going on; Nick had sensed that I wanted to do something else, so he told the stoic girl we wanted to look around the town, and she was prepared to show us the way. After some whispered conversation and glances from the Chinese hosts, we decided to express our preferences: pay for the room, take a shower, do laundry. It worked! We had heard that Mama Naxi cooks dinner at 6 PM, and it's a flat fee to eat around a big table with others (8-10 dishes of food!). We were shown over to "Number 3" where the dining room had big glass windows looking out onto the cobbled street. There we met Winslow, a nice guy who is from New York or Toronto, depending on his conversation partner's views on the US. Another guy was from Seattle/Vancouver. Winslow mentioned that if you want to take a trip to Tiger Leaping Gorge, you show up at 9 AM for breakfast, then when "Mama" comes around saying (yelling) "Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!" you raise your hand and she gets you there. Then she came out; the woman who welcomed us earlier in the day was in fact Mama. She ran checking in; she ran dinner; she ran side trips; she bought plane and bus tickets. She ran everything.

The name "Mama Naxi's" isn't only a reference to her, but the way that she runs it -- in the traditional matriarchal methods of the Naxi people. Mama was loud, fast, and happy. Her husband, aptly called "Baba," was the opposite: quiet, plodding, and content. Seeing them interact was fun. He got lots of things done if any guests needed anything, but he blended with the background. We thought about taking that side trip, but weren't convinced. After dinner we walked around the town and got lost like a good tourist should.

The next morning we got up and went to breakfast. A few minutes into the biggest banana pancake I've ever seen, five Peace Corps friends and their polish traveling friend Anna walked in. P* started talking to Nick about buses flipping over and ice, and pushing a bus. I thought all that had happened to them. After I established that they had not been on a bus that flipped, I went back to my pancake. About a month earlier, K* and M* planned an extensive 3-week hiking trip that went around various lakes, Tiger Leaping Gorge, and smaller towns in northern Yunnan province. They weren't supposed to be in Lijiang then. K* sat down and told me that they had arrived the previous night after a harrowing trip to Lugu lake:

They left on a bus to Lugu lake with the expectation of cold, but good weather. Over some of the mountain passes, it began to snow heavily. The bus slowed; the trip continued. The road iced over eventually and the bus slid a little. The bus slowed, but kept on, around switchbacks and turns with no guardrails with sheer drops. The bus slid again (not fishtailed, slid), and the passengers followed directions when they were asked to get out and walk. They didn't know it at the time, but this was the beginning of the storm that was to drop 8 inches of snow on them overnight and knock out power and travel for millions of Chinese across southern China. They stayed at Lugu lake for 3 days until a bus finally tried to get out. This bus, back to Lijiang, had to head back over some of the mountains that were iced over on the way in. So early in the trip this bus began to get stuck pretty often. So, paying passengers again had to get out and not only walk up icy mountain roads, but also help push the bus. K* is female, so she and all the males got off the bus so that it could actually get up the mountain. This pushing and walking (they helped other vehicles as well) went on for hours, and the trip took something like 12 hours as opposed to the 6 it should have. Talk about a nice hiking vacation. One online journal of one of the group is here.

They had basically ditched their plans to continue on the trip, and to go to Tiger Leaping Gorge for at least a little hiking before just going home. They were going that afternoon. We also met some great Germans who were studying Urban Design in Shanghai who were going to the gorge the following day. We spent the afternoon at a restaurant/coffee shop/movie spot reading, eating, and watching "Elizabethtown." And we decided to go to the gorge the following day as well.

Tiger Leaping Gorge 虎跳峡: 2008.02.03 - 2008.02.04
After two gigantic pancakes, we boarded the private Mama Naxi mafia taxi to Tiger Leaping Gorge with 6 other unsuspecting foreign travelers. Just kidding. It was the Germans from Shanghai, a Brit-cum-Australian named Paul and a couple from the UK. On the two hour ride we talked about various aspects of China including healthcare, education, and traveling. We found out that the couple from the UK (Helen and Jamie) were on a 10-month trip around the world (at least overland from England to China) because they were burned out from stuffy jobs and life in London. They had spent 4 months in Kyrgyzstan in the middle of their trip doing work with various non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including the Alpine Fund.

Upon arrival, we bought entrance tickets: Y50 for Nick, and Y25 for me because I am a "student," at least according to my University of Florida ID card. We then set off - some others were waiting, but we wanted to get on the trail. We had at least 6 hours of hiking starting at 12:30 PM, and needed to get to the guesthouse before dark. Our hiking partners ended up being Paul, Helen, and Jamie. Paul was a contracted programmer writing software for compiling tax information from companies in New South Wales. Helen is from southeast England; Jamie is from Scotland. On our six-hour hike, we got to know quite a bit about each other. I won't tell you everything I learned, as they haven't posted it on their own travel website. I will, however, say that they seem to have retained a spirit of innocent adventurism after seeing a good majority of the world and fighting for development work in Kyrgyzstan. Jamie has done a motley array of work in TV production (with hilarious stories galore), and Helen worked for an NGO back in London. About 15 minutes into the hike, the sun came out in full force. I kept my eyes to myself, but I think everyone but me just stripped down to get rid of long underwear. Helen was last, and barely made it before we were passed by a car coming up the hill ...

Two hours in, and after a snack of oranges, Snickers bars, and plenty of water, we hit the notorious "28 turns." It's a steep section of short cutbacks on top of a dried stream tramped down by horse hooves. We did it, but it was plagued by blinding sun (think L'etranger), frequent stops, and cramming our bodies against the rocks as to avoid being trampled by passing horses and the guys offering to take us to the top. At least they always kept the horses to the outside so they didn't get themselves or us pushed down a gravelly slope. When we finally reached the top of that particular mountain, the view was to die for, or at least to charge for. There was a small family outfit: wife sells drinks, man charges Y8 to allow pictures to be taken from a jutting path to the view. I didn't take pictures in an effort to rest and drink in the view, but Jamie's camera slung around his neck seems to have taken at least 5 pictures during that time, after which he claimed victory: "You can't charge for the fecking view."

After that, the hike was great: flat land, shade, waterfalls, gorge views. We got to the Half Way Guesthouse at about dusk, where we were supposed to meet some of the Peace Corps friends. We got dorm beds because of the private room waiting for us back in Lijiang, and found M* and K*, K* with two duvets and a bottle of rehydration salts next to her. She had overlooked some signs of illness before starting the hike, and then it hit full tilt on the 28 turns. She walked, vomited, walked, vomited, and eventually hired one of those horses to bring her the whole way to the guesthouse. We're glad she made it! We had dinner and met two other volunteers from Project Trust, who work in a town 3 hours from ours. Crazy, to meet at a guesthouse on the side of a gorge 2000 km from our school.

The next day we hiked a few hours down to the low road to catch a van back along the gorge. We were really tired from the previous day, so we didn't feel like staying around for a long time. We also wanted to stay with M* and K*, who wanted to hike out despite not eating much yet. We found out later that you could climb rope ladders down to the water - we'll do that next time. Along the way, we probed them for M*'s planned U.S. presidential bid in, I don't know, 2020? We told him the only problem with our giving our unconditional support was that another friend from Gainesville, Steve, had claimed us first. Maybe they'll run in different years. Also I asked K* about her role as First Lady - she said she'd do more than reading campaigns; rather she'll work on banning meat from the kitchen and solar panel installation (you have to get past those historical societies). We had to cross two more waterfalls (literally walk on rocks through them), and it was another beautiful day. The van we took back to the start of the hike had a nice rearview mirror ornament with red string and a tassle, and a glass picture of a young Chairman Mao, looking over all of us. We had lunch at Jane's Guesthouse, and then got another one of Mama Naxi's mafia taxis back to town.

Lijiang: 2008.02.04 - 2008.02.06

We spent two more nights in Lijiang and took the long day bus back to Kunming, where we could only hope to buy train tickets back north for the following day. We went to coffee shops with K* and M* (watched another movie, Phonebooth), and bargained for two beautiful loom-woven scarves (less than half of the asking price!!). We bargained by splitting up between two shops and yelling back and forth the prices we were told, playing the shops off each other. By the time Nick had gotten down to Y25 for my scarf, we decided to buy one for him as well. The shop girl was practically in tears because of our diligence. We showed off our scarves to Baba Naxi, where he assured us we had gotten them for cheap (high five, us). I thought about feeling bad, about pushing too hard, but the I remembered we were in a tourist mecca during the off-season. These people live well, and for all the other foreign tourist they've ripped off, I felt fine. Before we left Lijiang, we said goodbye to K* and M* and our other friends, as well as Paul, Jamie, and Helen.

Kunming: 2008.02.06 - 2008.02.07

The bus to Kunming was empty, literally. There were 2 other passengers and at least 3 bus employees. At least we could sleep in peace. We decided to stay at the Camellia hostel for a change of pace and sights, and it was the eve of the Lunar New Year (we'd also heard that they have a Y15 Western breakfast buffet). We were lured to the hotel restaurant that night with promises of 'games' and 'many foreigners.' Sounds like fun, yeah? They had a dumpling-making activity for the hotel guests, then served the dumplings for free. We realized that this was perfect because no Chinese would eat the dumplings; they were the ugliest and most varied ones we'd ever seen. After that we decided that we should do something for the first time in China: visit Wal-Mart. It was right around the corner.

Chinese Wal-Marts are just like the other big foreign stores: cereal and chocolate, vegetables and chicken feet. They did have some Equate brand hygeine items, though. On the second floor we saw some Americans (you learn to overhear with intention in China), and I asked one "Have you ever seen grape jelly in China?" She said no, and her husband walked over to join her. Nick pointed them to another section with more jams. I asked, like I do when I meet nice-looking foreigners, if they were teachers. The guy answered and said yes, but that they were also missionaries. Quite frank for a question like that. So I asked what their background tradition was, and lo and behold, it was Church of Christ. We ended up talking to them for at least half an hour about living in China. Then we started name-dropping, and found out that they knew many of the same people we did in Florida, and we had quite a bit in common. It even got to the point where Nick's great-grandmother could have been related to this guy's family up in Elizabethton, Tennessee. Finally, the lost cousins in China! If you had changed the surrounding Wal-Mart to, say, someone's house, I would have felt completely at home. I just nearly, very nearly, forgot I was in China. It was great for that moment.

The next day we found a restaurant and coffee spot before catching the train, the long train back home.

Spring Holiday Travel: installment 2

2008-02-13T11:37:00.011+08:00

This is the second in a 3-part series about our travels during Spring Holiday around China. Buckle your seatbelt, because they don't have them in most cars here.

Chengdu 成都 (Sichuan Province): 2008.01.21 - 2008.01.26
This big city was the site of our In-Service Training, where we attempted to get up early and attend sessions that will re-inspire us for another semester of teaching English. For the most part, it worked.

We arrived at about 1:30 AM after various flight delays. Our good friend T* was going to give us a room in the extra apartment she has access to, so we went over to the cab line, and I attempted to tell at least 2 drivers the name of her school, which is a 5-minute cab ride from the airport. The first 2 had no idea, so a seemingly helpful chick about my age discussed it with us, then with them, then with T* on the phone, and we exhaled. Then we were told Y40 as a price. What?! By the meter it should have been about Y10. In my textbook Chinese, I yelled, "Can you use the meter?!" and was told "No!" So, I called T* again because her Chinese is great, but neither of us could convince the cabbies to use the meter. This helpful chick worked for the cabbies and I'm not sure what her job was, besides stand on the curb and be stubborn. Nick got pretty angry because she stopped listening to us, and then she said she'd consider giving us a fare of Y30. We stood and huffed for another minute before agreeing and hopping in. We'd never been to the school before, so we didn't know which gate to go to. We were so tired at this point we just ignored the cabbie's questions and got out where he dropped us off - of course at the wrong gate. After yet another call to T*, we walked to a corner, turned left, and walked town a deserted street at 2 AM in Chengdu. At least it wasn't as cold as we'd thought it would be. Finally T* met us and took us back to the place; she had turned on a heating blanket in the bed, and I don't remember anything else except getting up around 10 the next day.

That day was Tuesday, and we had to get to the Peace Corps Office by 2:15 for vaccinations, then our language tests at 4 PM. We got to the hotel, and were able to check in. In the lobby were many other volunteers, checking in and smiling and laughing about our travels so far, and experiences teaching. This is one of my favorite things about Peace Corps.

Nick got vaccinated, then we went upstairs to the library (Peace Corps China has a great resource library of language learning materials, English teaching resources, and environmental education stuff). Nick went to his language assessment on time, but I missed mine because I misread the schedule (I'm still not sure how this happened). Luckily, I squeezed in and took up some time from another volunteer, but he graciously conceded to my mistake. The LPI, or language proficiency interview, is given by either the language coordinator at Peace Corps or a local English expert contracted for the day. Mine was given by a sweet lady who I had not met before at the Pre-Service Training, and we had a nice conversation about my travels thus far, meeting and marrying Nick, and what I did back in the States. I feel like I fumbled around for words, which she pointed out at the end. She told me I was clearly at the level of "Intermediate High," and that I had great pronunciation but need work on grammar and vocabulary. Nick's interview went well also, and his tester gave him the advice to practice narration in various timeframes. He got "Intermediate High" as well. If you're interested in the specific language functions needed to attain a level in Chinese, look at these guidelines.

The rest of the week we went to sessions with names like: Starting and Developing Women's Groups, Starting Resource Rooms, Green English, Traveling Outside China, Traveling Inside China, WID-GAD (Women in Development/Gender and Diversity), Religions, Cults, and Secret Societies and their Impact on the Chinese State, Medical Session, Chinese Calligraphy, Teaching Multi-level classes in a Creative Way, Chinese Cooking, Modern Chinese History, Chinese Idioms and Slang, Practical Hanzi Reading, Funding, Current Events, Music and Movement in the Classroom. So we learned quite a bit. Most of the sessions were concurrent, so we couldn't attend them all. I even snagged a grading rubric for the TEM-8 (Test for English Majors, Band 8), the highest national exam to pass in English (Reading, Writing, Grammar). I'm ecstatic that the first criterion for a high essay score is "well-organized," since that was our main focus last semester. Now the students will take what they learned for paragraphs and apply it to longer pieces such as essays. I think I'm going to ignore the word "composition" for now, since that word is phased out around 4th grade in the US, and replaced with "essay." They still use it in China, especially on these TEM exams, and I still don't know what it means.

Another facet of IST was the open mic night, hosted by 2 volunteers from Lanzhou, K* & T*. They started it off with a choreographed duet, and the other participants followed suit. There was much singing (one about getting rabies!), some guitar-playing, a story?, a poetry recitation by country director John Darrah, some forward flips, and a hilarious comedy skit by volunteer W*. I'm not going to re-hash it, but it involved commentary on Chinese culture, teaching, and making fun of Nick in front of all the volunteers and staff. He had a bit about reading e-mail that started "Admin officer ... delete; country director ... star; forward from ... dammit!" The profanity started because in planning a newsletter, someone had hit a 'reply all' with some boring recipe. Nick was bored that day, so he did a 'reply all' to the previous 'reply all' asking that those replying refrain from hitting 'reply all' so he doesn't have to read things that he'll read again in the newsletter. W* played it up like Nick's e-mail was an act of revenge, and said "And if you're going to do that again, next time, just sign it 'I'm a douchebag.'" Nick was, for the rest of the conference, referred to by everyone as "the douche." Maybe it will die down soon ...

One last event that took place at IST involved the sweet girl from Chongqing; she came to Chengdu with her boyfriend R* after all of the travel plans back to Chongqing fell through. The last night of IST, we all went to the Pan Am bar (with much discussion of its French origin, and how to pronounce the name: "'pan-am" vs. "pen-'ahm"). For an hour they have Y10 cocktails, which is unheard of in a big city. We (minus Nick, who didn't want to watch others drink) went over there at about 10 PM to find it dead, but the hour had begun. Volunteers took advantage and started in fast. This whole thing was interesting due to the people there - a Trini guy who worked for World Bank, other Americans, British people, and lots of Peace Corps volunteers. After one volunteer, A*, had a few drinks, he explained to me his favorite phrase in Chinese: dou keyi 都可以. It's the response to a question asking "Which one?" when you think that something is limited to a single item. But this phrase literally means "all/both you may," and indicates that you can have it all. Maybe a modern day translation would be "It's all good." Anyway, I agree with him. Later on in the night when I had decided to stop drinking, the sweet Chongqing girl brought me yet another drink, claiming "That guy bought us drinks, now he wants you to dance with him." I'm not sure if there was some deal that she made, or what, but all I knew is that I had to a) get rid of the drink, and b) brace myself for dancing with a large man whom I had never met. I endured it for a few minutes, then got the heck out of there and went back to the hotel. It was still a good night; I just don't like dancing with strangers.

The day after IST closed, we packed our stuff, and once again went to Starbucks (this time a freezing and small one attached to a posh office building) to wait before going to the train station.

Kunming 昆明 (Yunnan Province): 2008.01.27 - 2008.01.30
Twenty-something hours after leaving Chengdu, we arrived in Kunming. Our plan was to get off the train, go straight to the ticket window, and buy overnight train tickets to Dali, as it was almost Chinese New Year, and public transport would be jam-packed. We got up to the window in a mere 10 minutes, only to be told that there are no night train tickets (either no trains or no tickets; not sure), so we had to buy day train tickets for about 12 hours later than we wanted to leave.

We headed over to our hostel "Hump." Not really "The Hump," just "Hump." Hey, I wasn't there for the naming. It was a good hostel, though you really roll the dice getting a room that isn't directly impacted by either noise from the lobby/restaurant, or noise from the club nearby. We were lucky, though some friends D* and T* weren't. Their room came with complimentary earplugs, and they still couldn't sleep until 2 AM when the bass turned off.

It was here that I was bitten a dog, well, rather a puppy. A guy had a puppy in the lobby/restaurant that lots of people were playing with. I finally went over to pet it, where it instantly flipped over to show me it's stomach, and chomp down on my thumb as hard has it could with tiny needle teeth. It didn't bleed at first, but I squeezed it a little and it bled a tiny bit. We went to dinner anyway, and I didn't worry. At dinner I recalled to Nick that Dr. Joanne told us any suspicion of rabies exposure warrants a fast trip to Chengdu for the 2 remaining rabies shots (we received a pre-exposure vaccination upon arrival in China). I worried, and ate faster. When dinner was over I went straight back to the hostel in search of the owner, who had left. The girl at the desk told me that he was her friend, and that the dog had recently received 5 vaccinations. I exhaled, and was thankful that this little sucker was part of the 3% of the Chinese dog population vaccinated against rabies. We hung around Kunming for 3 days for no reason really, but it was nice. We saw the Yunnan Provincial Museum, a local market, the inside of a really fancy Haagen-Dazs, and the "snack street," a string of outdoor eateries and good smells.

The Yunnan Provincial Museum was quite interesting. The first floor was a temporary exhibition of local artists' calligraphy, which was quite good. The second floor was an exhibition of all the local artifacts unearthed, many within recent years: stone tools, awesome sculptures of fighting animals, and lots of crafted pots for holding the local currency, the cowry shell. Also, some interesting work was done documenting the religious practices of ethnic minorities, centering on bull sacrifices around a lake. Pictures showed about 100-200 people standing in a circle by a lake with a bull in the center. I assume some words are said and rites performed, then a few men just attack the neck of the bull with machete-type weapons until it has expired. I don't quite understand why. While we were looking at the exhibit, Nick told me that another volunteer was the guest at a similar ritual near her school. S* stood back, wondering what would happen to the bull when the men attacked it. I can see her wide eyes; after the bull was sacrificed she still stood back, understandably. It was dark out at this point, and before she knew what had hit her, someone ran up and smeared blood onto her forehead. I may ask her to recount this incident to me sometime.

The third floor of the museum had some treasures, like cool sculptures and some ivory tusks. It also had a short hall of the history of Buddhism in China, complete with Buddhas and other gods. Toward then end was a statue with Vishnu and a female god, uh, engaged. I didn't see it at first until Nick looked up under the statue (which looked like they were dancing). But there it was. And only a Y10 entrance fee to the museum.

The Haagen-Dazs shops in China are like posh dessert cafes, with coffee, desserts, and some sort of chocolate fondue special for Y205. We skipped that, but we did get coffees and some ice cream, as well as the complimentary water-in-a-wineglass with lemon. We spent too much, about Y80, and got a page-long receipt. It's the most "posh" we've been over here in the Chinese "posh corps." We probably won't do it again; it just wasn't worth it.

During our time in Kunming, we hung out with 2 other volunteers (the blog of one) who had stopped there to get visas to Vietnam. We hadn't really talked much before, as their schools are in another province, so we had a great time finding rice noodles together, then sitting together watching TV (rugby, gaming tournaments of CounterStrike) while he ruminated about how to resolve his stomach problems. Keep calling Peace Corps? Jump up and down again to test for appendicitis? Visit a local hospital? After we left, he ended up going to a local hospital, doing bloodwork to find no irregularities, then getting on the bus/train to Vietnam anyway.

Our plan was to buy tickets from Kunming back north before we left, but found out that during the holiday times, you can only buy train tickets 5 days in advance. So no firm plans to get home up to this point.

Dali Old Town 大理古城: 2008.01.30 - 2008.02.01
The train to Xiaguan (bigger town near Dali Old Town) was something new to us: a double-decker. It had lots of sleeper cars, but during the day they sell 4 "seats" to each bottom bunk. Ours didn't quite fill, so it wasn't so bad, until we realized that the heat was blasting, and only a few of the windows opened. When I ventured to the aisle to go to the bathroom, I found people huddled around the open windows for some cool air (it was only about 40F outside). The resilience of old Chinese ladies in wearing 4 layers in a sweltering train continues to amaze me. Near the end of the trip, a man started making small talk about teaching, the US, the flowers of Yunnan, and eventually the upcoming US elections. I didn't know what he was talking about for at least 2 minutes while he tried to explain what he was saying. My Chinese vocabulary thus far had not included the words president, government, vote, or election. It still doesn't contain most of those, but the guy eventually pointed to himself and said "Hu Jintao" and pointed to me, saying "Busa" (=Bush). I got it. He then said "O-ba-ma" and something else which could have been either "McCain" or "Clinton." We all laughed. He then asked this with gestures and words which I partly understood: "Isn't Obama half-black? Isn't he a mix from a higher race (indicated by a horizontal hand) and a lower race (same horizontal hand, placed much lower)?" More nervous laughing from me. How do you answer something like that? He is mixed race; most Americans are. To consider a mix of races, giving one the distinction of being higher or lower, is something I won't confirm.

Out of the train station, we hopped on a bus, got off in Dali Old Town, and headed over to the Number 3 Guesthouse. This is one of the points where I realized we were following the Lonely Planet a little too closely and not branching out to ask the questions we should have. I had made reservations because I was scared about space, but there was lots of space in Dali. When we were about to check in, we found out that there was no hot water at the hostel because "the weather is bad." What? Then I looked up, and we had a solar heated tank above the bathrooms and kitchen. Okay, the sun would probably come out tomorrow. We headed off to a restaurant and ordered all local Bai minority food - great chicken, home fry-ish potatoes, and some fried cheese. The cheese came out looking like some puffed pork rinds, but it tasted pretty good. When we had just started eating, a white guy banged on the window, and it took me a minute to recognize him as another volunteer. Then he and 4 other volunteers shuffled in as a pleasant surprise. They stuck around, and we agreed to meet later.

We all met up at the "Bad Monkey," an expat bar with Brits behind the counter. Upstairs in a loft were a few tables, one big one with all our friends and two other Americans they had met that day: a girl who had recently quit her job at an NGO in Chengdu to go back to grad school in the US (K*) , and her boyfriend who worked at the Panda Research Base in Chengdu. They had quite the hookah and some great conversation. One thing in particular was our shared frustration with another volunteer who put together a newsletter for all the volunteers in China, the "Rice Paper." Sounds like a clever idea to inspire, entertain, and keep volunteers in contact, right? Well it sort of was, until the editor failed to send any articles back to the authors for them to proofread. This included me, who wrote an article that was completely edited for content and the theme changed. I never approved the changes and was pretty embarrassed to have my name on it in the widely-distributed newsletter. So, we came up with an idea for a parody of the newsletter to be entitled the "Chao Fan," or "fried rice." It would include a column by an elderly volunteer who transferred from China where she continues to recount stories that end with "and then we escaped." We all had a laugh - if we still had our laptop with Adobe Illustrator, I would definitely be more serious about publishing it.

The next day in Dali was rainier still. The previous night, K* had told us that she and her boyfriend took a 3-hour guided horseback ride up the nearby mountain for only Y40, so that was our plan for about 10 AM. We met 2 other volunteers at 9 AM and went for banana pancakes and tea (real mint!). The rain never let up, and we didn't want to sit on horseback for 3 hours in the rain. We walked toward the lake instead, and at the east gate of the town were convinced to take a taxi to the shore. When we got there it was still raining, but windier. We started at the lake and walked out on a dock. Then we took some pictures where we pretended to have a great day, and walked back to town. It took about 30 minutes, but it was nice just to use our legs. The whole walk we were both rained on and whipped by the wind.

We spent the afternoon buying bus tickets out of there and hanging out at a coffee shop. Dali Old Town must be overrun with Western tourists in the summer time because there were Western restaurants (not chains though), coffee shops, and dessert shops everywhere. We chose one with a fireplace we could sit near, and spent about 4 hours there. Nick played cards and talked to a guy floating around China looking for English teaching jobs. I read fashion magazines from the US and People magazine, and tried not to inhale the clouds of smoke wafting over from a nearby table. An Indian-looking American girl and some Europeans had acquired a large blunt and were passing it around openly. When we left the coffee shop, an older Chinese lady with a shoulder bag stopped in the doorway and leaned toward Nick, offering him something. Let's just say that other vendors yell and bargain; this lady leaned in and offered. Is Yunnan's reputation for marijuana consumption justified? Check.

That afternoon I also went shopping for souvenirs and gifts. They have traditional colored fabric here, made in batik style. That means various sections of cloth are stitched up in patterns, then the cloth is dyed. Because the stitches bunch the cloth up tightly, those parts don't get dyed. It sounds like tie-dye, but it's much more of an art. I wanted a few of those for our apartment and as gifts. Another volunteer K* went with me, and she had shopped the day before, so she was prepared to bargain. Bargain is sort of an understatement: she got rock-bottom. We stopped at one batik shop where we picked out the ones we wanted. Our strategy was to pick them out, ask how much total, then bargain down the final price. Large, single-bed sized batiks started at 65, and table-cloth size started at 45. My before-bargaining total was 175, and K*'s was about 160. I started my desired price at Y140, and she went for Y120. I eventually got Y150 and was pleased. K* just stood there saying "120" and seeing if the guy would give in. He never did, so she just left her bag there on the stool and we walked away. He didn't come after us, so he didn't really want the sale. We stopped by another small alley batik shop with a single woman vendor. K* looked for a minute, asked how much (Y85 for a medium one!!), then walked out. By the time K* had walked back twice to look, and walked away twice, the lady was yelling "Y35!" down the street. K* wanted 4 of them, so she picked them out and then said "all together, Y120." The lady dismissed it and explained that Y35 apiece was her lowest and that she had made them herself. K*'s stone face never changed, and she wanted Y120. We waited, we pretended to leave, we went back, and then the vendor caved. Mission accomplished. She got 4 table-cloth sized, different colored batiks for $5 apiece in a tourist mecca. Maybe I'll call her next time I'm buying oranges.

That night we all (about 10?) went out for pizza. Having gone now 3 days without a shower (no hot water = no showers for us), the girls decided to go get our hair washed at a salon. In China people often get haircuts, and women often go to a salon just to get their hair washed and a head massage (Y10 in Dali, Y4-5 other places). So, on we went, unshowered but with very clean hair.

Look for matriarchal culture, a beautiful gorge, and Mao Zedong himself in the last installment.

Back home safe (almost)

2008-02-10T21:05:00.012+08:00

We arrived back in Tianshui recently, with our bags only slightly heavier than they were when we left. Our trip was marked by wonder, hilarity, frustration, eating, and sadness. Below are the stories of our first big trip around West/South China with only 2 bags each. They will appear in a few installments, with the beginning of the trip first:

Xi'an 西安 (Shaanxi Province): 2008.01.12 - 2008.01.14
We left snow in Tianshui, and arrived in more snow in Xi'an. When the train pulled in, we could see from the train window the incredible city walls. Xi'an has been the capital of many dynasties, so therefore has a variety of historical sites. We hopped a bus to the Shuyuan Hostel (highly recommended), and set out to find dinner. After that we walked up to the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower, both famous sites. We didn't go in, but they did look cool. Also, we heard neither bells nor drums, but I would assume they were used in the past. We also walked through the Muslim quarter, where the highlight was all the dried fruit for sale: bananas, kiwi, figs, apricots, etc. Some shops kept their wares out on tables on the sidewalk, even as the snow fell and covered them.

Our roommate at the hostel was particularly interesting: Roy, an English teacher from India. I had initially thought he was the son of a wealthy Indian businessman, as Roy had failed to disclose his profession at first, and was staying around Xi'an "for about a month." Turns out he was on holiday like us from a middle-school job some distance north. His classes are huge, up to 100 students, and at a level where there is a translator in the classroom with him. He says sometimes he can tell that the translator not only translates the words, but sometimes introduces his or her Chinese teaching methods back in. This frustrated Roy, who said he may or may not quit when he goes back after holiday. This seems to be the case with many foreign teachers who don't have any firm attachments to a school. Though the benefits are decent (a provided apartment, administrative support, etc), sometimes teachers just stay for a semester and then leave the school (middle school or college) scrambling to find someone for the 1000+ students with no English teacher. I'm not taking one side or the other (flighty foreigners vs. culture clash?), but I do daydream about committed teachers and dedicated schools.

The next day we decided to head for the Terracotta Army, about an hour northeast of the city. We went to the bus station and shoved our way onto a bus that said "Terracotta horses and soldiers 兵马俑" on the front. The price was less than the Lonely Planet informed, but we figured we had happened onto one of the local buses rather than the tourist bus. An hour later, we had this suspicion confirmed, as we hopped out in some town that was NOT the Terracotta Army. Why? Because the bus we boarded didn't go there. We were too dumbfounded to ask why the bus said it on the front, so we just asked how to get there. We waited a few minutes, boarded a rattly little minibus, and arrived 15 minutes later at a parking lot. Overall we ended up paying 5 mao less than we initially thought, so we saved enough to buy about one banana.

The site, which is now a UN World Heritage site, has been made ultra-tourist friendly (with the exception of the buses). Past the large parking lot were the loud trinket sellers, then the ticket office. We opted for the electronic guide in English for Y20 and reluctantly shelled out the Y50 each entrance fee. The real entrance to the site is a 10-minute walk through a nice garden, after which large ominous buildings greet you. Immediately inside to the right is the exhibition hall, where we started. It had a great selection of items from Pit 2 (there have been 3 pits discovered), that we later found out were there because Pit 2 was closed for renovation/excavation. The 5 soldiers we were able to see up close really exemplify how unique each soldier is: they have different clothing based on rank and type of soldier, from shoes to hats; different hairstyles; and different faces. There have been 20 or so "face types" identified, with nearly individual variation in each soldier's face - and there are thousands of soldiers. Each one is really terracotta, sculpted and baked. Another feature of Pit 2 were two small chariots, complete with drivers and horses. Some of the parts were made from metal or wood, so the chariots were reconstructed. They aren't life size like the rest of the soldiers and horses, but rather about 1/4 size, but still so intricate. So, why were the soldiers made in the first place? Well, some of them were made to protect the tomb of an emperor buried nearby. Over the years, the caverns (then just below ground) were crushed, burned, and flooded. They were first built in tunnels with pillars and roof beams covered by branches, but now only the mud walls between rows of soldiers remain, with the soldiers stood up in their approximate original locations. We first visited Pit 3, which has only a couple hundred soldiers and a chariot. It was likely used as meeting rooms for dynasty officials at some point. Next we headed to Pit 1, the largest by far. At one end of the huge room (think soccer stadium), most of the soldiers had been preserved unbroken and arranged in their supposed original locations. At the other end were excavations in progress as well as soldiers and horses being pieced together from fragments. The individual features of each solider allow them to be essentially re-assembled with some glue and filling. We walked around and stared (and listened to our electronic guide) for about an hour. It was great, and worth the entrance fee. I would recommend visiting at a warmer time since we were bundled pretty good and still were cold from standing around so long. We caught the bus back (the right bus), and spent the next day walking around more. We spent a few hours revelling in one of two Starbucks at a single intersection before hopping another bus to the airport. Our only issue was figuring out how to change clothes from winter wonderland (hats, coats, sweater, long underwear) to tropical paradise.

Sanya 三亚 (Hainan Island Province): 2008.01.14 - 2008.01.16
We arrived in Sanya, tourist mecca of Hainan Island, at midnight. Luckily, the public bus was still sitting outside waiting to fill up before heading into the city. It took only 30 minutes for us to reach Dadonghai, where we were promptly harassed by taxi drivers who pretended not to hear when we told them we had a place to stay, didn't need a ride, etc. They left when the owner of the hostel came to meet us and walk us back. The hostel we stayed at is the one recommended by Lonely Planet, and it was worth every penny. The owner, Peter, was so friendly and accommodating. When we were checking in, he reached behind the counter and gave us two small plastic-wrapped fruit husks, proclaiming "Want some drugs?" I think this was just his use of English conditioned by his marijuana-seeking clientele, when really he was offering us dried betel nut. He indicated that it would make us "warm and only a little dizzy." I stuck mine in my mouth, but didn't feel much after a very long travel day.

The next day when we awoke it was rainy and "the coldest day we've had." We saw another volunteer sitting outside eating breakfast, so we got the lowdown from her. V* had been there a few days and had been laying on the beach every day in searing sun and heat, though thoroughly enjoying herself. After some pleasantries (she teaches in a different province), I asked "So, how is your school?" Most volunteers like their students, their counterparts, the landscape, or their apartments. She surprised me with "miserable," and proceeded to describe the various ways that her school suspected her of both missionary activity and being a spy, with repercussions such as lack of support and stopping her inventive project to lead her students in teaching English at a nearby orphanage. It was then that I started realize how lucky we are to have a school that supports us in extracurricular activities and relationships with other teachers and staff. V*'s situation is a hard one, and her discussions with Peace Corps have helped them to come to the conclusion that no volunteers should be placed there in the future, though V* can't transfer to another school because it would cause the current school officials to lose face. In China, there is a concept of embarrassment called "losing face," where someone has failed or caused a muck-up of something. The person cannot be directly implicated because it would simply be too embarrassing, so excuses or speak-around devices are used to imply that something just went wrong, by no one is to blame. If V* left her school, the foreign affairs department et al would clearly be to blame, so she is forced to stay. This is not to say that her patience is infinite; she may decide to leave Peace Corps early (Early Termination "ET").

That day we bummed around and laughed every time we were approached by Chinese vendors speaking Russian. The majority of the tourists there were Russian, reflected not only by the vendors' approach but by the Russian signs, Russian food, and Russian liquor for sale. It was great fun to speak back to the vendors in Chinese, telling them "We're not Russian! 我们不是俄国人!" One thing that's really interesting is that the Russians were so much bigger than the Chinese, in general. We're from the US, I know, but we've been here around the skinny and short for 7 months. It seems like other people are giants. One person's theory is that the Russians there were tall and husky because the people with enough money and connections to "winter in Sanya" were in the army or KGB. The theory is somewhat unsubstantiated. Nick played beach volleyball for many hours with Russians, Swedes, and Chinese, who were much more skilled than the Physical Education majors at our school. We ate cheeseburgers for dinner at the Rainbow Grill, with meat imported from the US - the best burgers in China so far.

The next day the sun came out for 2 hours in midday, so I got a sunburn through the patchy clouds. At the expensive supermarket, we ran into Jersey C* and R*, other volunteers who we didn't know were in Sanya. They were on the prowl for meat to make fajitas in the 3-bedroom condo they had rented for the week. That night we went up and celebrated homemade fajitas with all the people who had come to Sanya: 11 volunteers and a sweet girl from Chongqing.

Wuzhishan City 五指山市: 2008.01.16 - 2008.01.17
The following day we dropped our bigger bags at the swag condo and took a small bus to the interior of the island. The 3-hour ride was bearable, as we traversed valley after mountain after valley after mountain. Each bus in China has a person, usually female, who makes sure everyone gets a ticket, has a decent seat, and puts their bags somewhere secure. On this bus her main job was to hand out little black garbage bags so people could vomit, then promptly throw the bags out the window. This caused Nick and I to briefly re-evaluate our stance that trash should not be thrown from bus windows.

We arrived in Wuzhishan City, named for the nearby "Five Fingers Mountain." We got a room at the hotel across from the bus station and went out for a look around. The city was once the capital of the island, which was the Miao and Dai (minority groups) Autonomous Prefecture, but it has since renewed its classification as a province. We saw no obvious signs of minority culture on the streets, but we also weren't looking too hard. One thing we did see was a local market down a side street, complete with vegetables, live seafood, and one cleaned and dressed dog for sale. In the US we would apply the terms "cleaned and dressed" to beings like deer, that you hunt. However, in South China and especially around Spring Festival, dog is a delicacy food. We have not eaten dog here (I likely never will), but this really brought a new aspect of Chinese cuisine into focus. We ate dinner in a deserted restaurant, and ordered a local specialty of rice-fed chicken. It was basically just boiled chicken served on a plate, with the head attached. So, it was good, but not great. We walked around after dark along the river, where the city had gone to great lengths to apply Vegas-style lighting to the guard rails lining the river, the bridges that crossed it, and the light poles that stood on the corners. The lights were all coordinated to change colors in rhythm, and not a single light bulb was out. We found the famous spot where the college kids congregate to eat barbecue, drink beer, and play pool, except it was the winter holiday so it was us and some locals. It was good, however, as advertised, and we ate lots of sticks of beef and lamb and mantou (steamed bread bites). Here the mantou was fried and then covered with a layer of sweetened condensed milk - if we closed our eyes, it was almost a glazed donut. We played some pool after that, and hit up the internet bar for an hour before heading to sleep on our rock-hard mattresses. One day I'd like to open up a Chinese mattress and find out what makes them feel like rocks but weigh so much less ...

Qiongzhong 琼中: 2008.01.17 - 2008.01.18
This little city didn't have much to offer except a great little 2-story market area and our inner-island goal: a waterfall. We checked into the corner room overlooking the Times Square of Qiongzhong, then set off for the waterfall. We walked the direction that the hotel clerk sent us until we found the Xinhua bookstore, which didn't have any maps. The pointed us down a few feet and told us to make a left. We walked a few more minutes, then began the task of finding a little moto-taxi to take us up the mountain. We went with the guy who gave us a low price, after bargaining in front of a small crowd of locals and other moto-taxis. About 100 yards down the street, our driver stopped and told us to get in another guy's taxi because our driver was headed home to eat lunch. We checked that the price hadn't changed, and off we went. Now, what is a moto-taxi? Well, it's a motorcycle with a lawnmower engine that has a two-seater covered bench welded to the back. The maximum speed on flat ground is about 20 mph, and you sit with your knees a few inches from the driver. So you can imagine how two "Western-sized" people slowed it down when we were going up the steep grades. At some points we could have walked as fast. In 15 minutes the driver stopped at a staircase leading off the road into the forest. We couldn't really verify that a waterfall lay beyond the staircase, but we paid him anyway and told him we'd walk the 7 km back to town.

The waterfall was beautiful. It started with a small picnic area with stone tables and the water tumbling over some rocks. At this point I should tell you that we were taking anti-malarials and wearing a thick layer of insect repellent to prevent diseases from the mosquitoes and other fun animals. It was overcast, but a warm-ish day only requiring a long sleeved shirt. We started up the stairs and the sound of rushing water grew louder. Some portions of the staircase were crumbling, moss-covered, and slick, so it was slightly tricky going. The first landing was the bottom pool of the 75-meter waterfall, which was very refreshing. We took some pictures and kept heading up. The top landing of the waterfall was also exceedingly beautiful, so we stopped awhile to look out over the mountain. It had these crazy mists that would fall so quickly over small areas (and us), then just as quickly disappear. The only animals of note were the inch worms invading our shoes and pant legs. There was water buffalo dung everywhere. This, along with the neglected staircase and mud-filled bathroom, leads me to believe that the waterfall was made into a park some years ago, then left to rot and be grazed upon by water buffalo. We stopped again at the first landing with the pool on our way down so I could climb across the rocks and stick my feet in. Nick waited awhile, then suddenly began to strip down. Lonely Planet mentioned some people swim here, and we were the only people for miles, so Nick decided to take advantage. Thigh-deep, he started to turn around. He told me later that he wished there had been some male friends around to heckle him to go all the way in, but he was glad that I did it anyway. So, Nick took the plunge in the waterfall in the jungles of Hainan. We hiked down to the bottom, feeling like our bodies and lungs had been refreshed by nature (though my sunburn still hurt some), and then walked along the road for about 2 hours back to town. Two things I liked about the walk were the cows with wood knockers around their necks and the strange method of pine sap collection where you scrape a large, inverted chevron shape into the tree and post a plastic bag underneath.

It took us forever to find dinner that wasn't hotpot, and when we did find it, we had to go over to the wall o' food, and pick out the meat, vegetable, and preparation. (Up to this point in our restaurant navigation, we've gotten to the point of using menus, so this trend in southern China of choosing the food and just telling the waitress how you want it prepared was a little daunting.) Who knew you could prepare eggplant with little pieces of fish? The next day we took the 4-hour bus ride back to Sanya through the mountains and valleys, and dozens of little apiaries. I guess the warm weather is suitable, but it seemed like around every corner was a small house (or tent) with a circle or rectangle of bee boxes outside. We didn't see much honey for sale along the roads (like near that curve in the road in small-town central Florida), but there was lots for sale in shops in the towns. Honey is a delicacy condiment here, with fancy kinds in many price ranges. Also, most farmers on Hainan have at least one water buffalo, which is good for farm work, milk, and eventually meat. "Beef" in China can mean cows or water buffalo; in restaurants there's no telling.

Sanya: 2008.01.19 - 2008.01.21
We picked up our bags from the Swag condo to find out that some of our friends were having beaucoup trouble getting transportation back to their schools, then on to Chengdu for the in-service training conference (IST). Peace Corps discourages overnight buses, though that seemed to be the only reasonable option, so they booked that, giving them just enough time to get home, re-pack, and get the train to Chengdu. We all went to the beach every day for 3 more days, laying around, playing volleyball, and people-watching. The beach in China is an interesting place where the methods of relaxation can be anything from walking around in super-skimpy thongs and banana hammocks (Russians, any size) to wandering the beach in matching floral shirt-and-pant sets, taking pictures frolicking in the water (mainland Chinese tourists). Those two sets made up about half the beach population, and the other half were normal beachgoers in modest bathing suits or linen clothes. It will be along time before all these people converge on some vacationing style, but that's what makes it great. You can buy a whole coconut for Y5; someone hacks off a side until they reach water, then they stick in a straw and it's yours. I tried one, but it was super-bland. It tasted like a watery honeydew melon. There may have been some draw if they threw a little vodka in on top.

The other volunteers' bus tickets ended up being canceled due to the ice and snow that racked China over the holidays. So, with no time and some money, the 2 of them and the sweet Chongqing girl bought full-price tickets directly to Chengdu. We spent our last day in the sun, taking pictures, and eating fruit.

We even tried some of the fresh betel nut mixed with slaked lime (described to us as "crushed shell powder"?), which is described in various online dictionaries as both a "mild stimulant"(American Heritage) and "narcotic" (WordNet). I would say more like a stimulant, like coffee or tobacco. Here's how it happens: you buy a small red baggie from grandma on the street with 2 betel nuts cut into thirds and 6 little packets of slaked lime wrapped in a green leaf (you just see the leaf). Put one slice betel nut and one leaf packet into your mouth; chew for one minute. A bright red/orange foam will form in your mouth, which you spit out once. Continue chewing, and you'll feel your face get hot, then you'll get a little lightheaded. It goes away in about 15 minutes. Spit out the mess in your mouth when it has no more flavor and looks like a bunch of plant fibers. Don't worry, we weren't jonesing for more when we left. Keep all this in mind if you visit southeast Asia, and don't assume that there is chicken blood all over the ground (like I did, which is just betel nut-chewer's spit), or that the man you asked directions from was just punched in the mouth and bleeding (which I also thought).

That's all for now - stay posted for the next installment which will include our fab In-service Training Conference, a dog bite or two, some darn good bargaining, and a beautiful gorge. And don't disturb the lawns in Sanya; "Tiny grass is dreaming."

Travel

2008-01-12T09:34:00.000+08:00

Today we depart. By February our "provinces traveled" will increase from 2 to 5, and we should get tans. We'll be blogging sparingly until February, but we'll be back!

Saturday Trip

2008-01-06T16:31:00.000+08:00

This Saturday we took a trip with a student to visit her hometown of Qin'an. I talked to her briefly during the semester, and overall we had an excellent time with her family.

These are the events of Saturday:

At 9 AM, we went over to the apartment of a recently-moved international teacher to take his computer to use in our apartment. What happened to our laptop, you ask? It died on New Years' Day. I do wonder if this is some sort of omen that I should look more into, or just coincidence. In any case, the laptop will soon be on its way back to the US for warranty-covered repair. For now we have to deal with either the internet bar (convenient, and has Microsoft Office installed), or the 4-color, all-pirated software computer that semi-works in our apartment. Luckily, we're headed out next week on some pre-training conference vacation.

At 10 AM we waited for our student May at the bus stop by the main square. At about 10:15 a different student emerged from a bus to tell us that May (whose family we were to visit) was running 10 minutes late. The four of us made it to the long-distance bus station at about 10:45, at which point we got in a mostly-formed line to catch the 45-minute bus to Qin'an. The bus held only 10 people, so we figured we'd get on one of the next 2 buses. We bought tickets from an agent who counted the next 10 in line, which included the 4 of us. After 10 minutes, another bus pulled in but stopped in a different place about 50 feet to our right. After the people from Qin'an debarked, we saw some desperate people rush the bus and sit down, though they hadn't yet bought tickets. We walked on over, knowing they were in our seats. Some angry ticket agents boarded the mini-bus and yelled at the people to get off, almost grabbing an old man by his jacket to get him off. Eventually they got off and the agent slammed the door. May kept looking back at me and laughing nervously, as this did not bode well for saving face. I smiled as much as I could and told her it didn't matter, because it didn't. May walked up slowly and showed him that we had 4 valid tickets, so we got on, and arranged ourselves: bags on top of bodies on top of left-over mazi, or small seeds, that people eat during travel. The line of people waiting to go to Qin'an had grown to about 40 people, from our vantage point on the bus.

We pulled out near 11 AM, and then promptly pulled over outside of the bus station to load 4 more passengers and a puppy in a box. The passengers sat on collapsible stools in the aisle; the puppy was in a cardboard box behind our seats. We found this strange given the other 40 people waiting in line in 30 degree (F) weather at the bus station. The explanation: those people "did not want to wait in the bus station," but they still paid their 10 yuan, and on we went. Before turning the corner to get on the highway, we pulled over yet again, all this taking place to loud puppy barking right behind our seats. The bus driver hopped out, along with our newly acquired passengers, and he put them in a cab. We were told that he was afraid the police would see the illegal passengers and he'd be fined. So, back he came, pushed the collapsible stools down, and off we went.

Around the corner there was indeed a brief inspection of papers and a glance inside the bus. The on-ramp to the highway was preceded by a short bridge with decent-sized shoulder. Here, the passengers who had been put in the taxi before the checkpoint re-boarded and settled in for the ride. About 5 minutes later, in the middle of pleasant conversation, we felt something nuzzling our legs. The puppy had escaped. He wandered around for a few minutes, then settled down under the seats in front of us for a quiet ride. May told me that she hadn't told her roommates that we were going to her home, explaining that they would have been jealous, and would have wanted to come along. Eight students, all trying to speak with Nick and me, would have been dizzying, and who knows how long May's mother would've had to slave to prepare us all a welcoming lunch. She said if she had told them, but asked them not to come, that they would have been extremely offended. I'm not sure what I would have done either.

We arrived in Qin'an, and hopped in a 3-wheeled (car) taxi. I guess this particular taxi wasn't used to 4 passengers, so when the driver hit the gas, it sounded like an off-kilter washing machine, and felt like one too. The whole thing rattled and it took us a good 3 minutes to get up to bicycle speed. The house was close. Rather, the path to walk to the house was close. We got out and started up a dirt path between brick walls, with some runoff along the side in a ditch. I thought the house might be right up the hill. At the top of the hill began the maze. Between brick walls we first made a right, a left, a right, a left, and then a series of rights to come to an open door at a dead end of one of these paths. I couldn't have done it again if I tried.

May's family was especially hospitable, ushering us into the small living room/bedroom with a stove in the middle to keep it warm. The house in itself was nice; it reminded me of the Salazars' house in Leon, Nicaragua. It had a good-sized courtyard with a garden area surrounded by 4 concrete rooms with open doorways. They had sheets for doors. The kitchen was somewhat large, with lots of counter space for rolling dough and making breads. I only stuck my head in briefly, but I saw all of the ingredients and implements for making the dumplings and steamed bread that we had for lunch. The other rooms were a storage room and an additional bedroom, though that one wasn't in use because it didn't have a stove. The most interesting part of the courtyard was the large satellite-shaped reflector dish in the middle. It looked like a mosaic of 1"x1" mirrors aligned on a 4-foot wide dish with a rack in the middle. In summer it was used to boil water and sometimes make flat bread. You could also rotate and tilt the dish to aim it more towards the sun. Talk about using energy well. I thought you had to use solar panels for that kind of thing; turns out you can do it with a hand-made mirrored dish as well. The outhouse was off to one side of the courtyard, and kept neat by a wooden cover placed over the hole when not in use.

This house was quite different from the house where we stayed in Chengdu. In cities there is very little single-family housing, but in the smaller cities, in the outskirts, there are plenty of single-family houses with courtyards. We had to fill out evaluation forms before leaving training, and one of the questions was something like "How has the home stay experience prepared you to transition to a more independent lifestyle at your site?" I wrote that I didn't know; I felt like in Chengdu we had so many Western-type conveniences that it was hard for me to feel as though I had prepared for a change in lifestyle at all. (My overall answer was "Yes!" because the investment of our host family in talking to us every day and taking us places was the most help we received to be able to live in China successfully.)

Lunch at May's house was wonderful. Before lunch we were asked to sit and served some hors d'oeuvres, or snacks of oranges, bananas, sunflower seeds (guazi), smaller seeds (mazi), and larger roasted beans (literally - dadou means "big beans"). Her father made us some really sweet tea from leaves, sugar, and dried figs; it was so sweet I had to drink it slowly! May told us that her father could play a vertical flute-like instrument, so she brought it to him. It was crafted from a bamboo shoot about 3 feet long with an open end and 5 openings along the top. He was quite skilled, and he played us various traditional Chinese songs, one of which we knew from training: Kang ding qing ge. After he had played a few songs, May took the flute outside and poured boiling water through it. This made me recoil after years of playing in school bands - I thought surely this was a strange cleaning method that would cause the bamboo to swell, and the whole instrument to break! However, it clarified the sound slightly, and everything was fine.

The meal itself was even better than the first course. We had a large plate of cold beef and tofu to share, seasoned with peppers and cilantro. There were large steamed rolls available too. Each of us got a large bowl of dumplings and pepper sauce for flavor. We sat around and talked for about an hour, and tried to finish the food. After lunch we went outside to take some pictures; their film wasn't loading right into their camera, so we used our digital camera to take some pictures. May showed us her family's photo album after that; all the pictures were great. She offered us some wonderful pictures of local sites in summer time; leaves aglow with color. The pictures I really loved were the ones of her grandparents and her as a child growing up in a rapidly changing China.

After lunch we made a trip to the local market, to a museum, and then back to the bus station. The market was great; it looked like a flea market in the states, though with better merchandise and more helpful shop assistants. We saw everything from pipes to socks to fabrics, and even underwear with a pocket on the front for storing valuables ... like money. We bought some candles and a headscarf (to be used as a tablecloth).

After the market was a walk to the local museum. All along this trip, and especially in the market, we were greeted with surprised exclamations of "Waiguoren!" or "Foreigner!" which was funny at first, then got old. May's father was gracious in his infinite ability to explain that we were American teachers. At times, it almost sounded like bragging. I think 80% of the shop owners of the 100+ stalls we passed asked about us, stared, and some followed for a little while. It was the same on the street. We had to stop for a minute and wait by a hardware seller, so Nick was asking him what some large steel staple-shaped things were for - we ascertained that they were in fact large steel staples for construction, and I think we also helped the seller to realize how human we are; not just a foreign freak walking through the town. The museum was wonderful. Just north of the town is an area where an ancient people called 'Dadiwan' once made their home. There were many artifacts such as pottery, tools, bronze mirrors, and Buddha statues on display, as that area was a main stop on the route that Buddhism took from India through China. My favorite was a 1-foot tall statue of a horse and rider made from yellow/orange jade. On a side note, the museum wasn't actually open. May's father knew the curator, so we had a private tour.

After the museum we walked to the bus station, and once again were denied when we tried to pay the fare back to Tianshui. The Chinese custom of hospitality, and sheer quantity of it, makes me uncomfortable and happy all at the same time. The only thing we were allowed to pay for the entire day was the 3-yuan head scarf. We had a great ride back; only a few passengers in the aisle of the bus, and we arrived quickly. We are welcome back any time, and we might go. The family, and the day, were great fun.

Holidays and semester ends

2007-12-26T16:21:00.000+08:00

Dear faithful readers, we have been very busy the past month, but things are slowing down a little, so here goes:

Early in December, we put together a library improvement proposal. In the lab, I got some experience knowing how much to say and what to focus on, so I thought I would give it a shot. Turns out it was a good idea, since the department is trying to get funding for our ideas. They include: new bookshelves, DVD and magazine racks, chair covers, curtains, and DVD organization system. Mostly boring stuff, but if we can spruce the library up to the point where it looks cool, has cool books, and can be run by students, then we'll have done our jobs.

The middle of December was peppered with Christmas songs taught in class and lectures at a neighboring teachers' college. Apparently there is a Chinese version of Jingle Bells, which shares the lines "Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way." Then right when you think the students already know it, you hear "mmm ah huumm ah mmmm hummm." So we went through the rest of the song slowly, and even figured out what a "one-horse open sleigh" is. It was great at the end of class, singing along with the music, wondering if the other teachers were going crazy on the other side of the cinderblock walls. The Christmas lights in the library helped immensely to make it really feel like Christmas.

Our lectures at the Tianshui No. 2 Teachers' College were interesting (pictures here). Nick went and did an hour on U.S. History and Civil Rights, then got questions such as "What do you think about Iraq?" I did a disjointed hour on the U.S. Education System and Christmas Traditions. I got various questions including one about the effect on me and my home from the hurricanes that regularly crash into Florida. The students there were great, and had really prepared for us. Nick had maybe 200 students attend, and I had closer to 100. We may go back next semester. One awesome thing we saw there was a map installed by some British volunteers where they had put titles and authors on the various countries from where the English books in their library had come. The administrator, Andrew, who invited us, is a great guy. His wife is 4 hours away getting a Master's and he cares for his 7-year old daughter. After my lecture we walked 15 minutes in freezing weather to a great little restaurant with sizzling lamb. His daughter made cute faces and tried to speak Chinese to us the whole time, at the same time putting away 2 bowls of rice. Then she hopped on the back of Andrew's bike and they took off back to the school, and we walked 5 minutes home.

We had a loud and cozy party at our apartment, where we gathered all the available desserts in Tianshui - and ate them all (pictures here).

Christmas has been interesting, to say the least. We knew that we would have a writing final exam some time after classes ended (on Dec. 21st), but we weren't sure when. Our counterpart teachers took the trouble to make sure we had the first possible exam time so that we'd get finished grading early. However, that happened to be Christmas Day.

Christmas Eve we were invited to dine at the Tianshui Hotel, Western food buffet. We did have roast beef, turkey, and ham, along with noodles and Chinese desserts. It was nice - I was interviewed by the local paper, Robbie played the piano, and Bridget sang a Jamaican Christmas song. All that hurrah was a little dampened for me by all the little old ladies selling hand-made orthotics for a living on the street outside, but the dinner was nice. After dinner we walked back to the main square. When we were approaching the Catholic church, we started to hear the fireworks and see the crowds. We saw the crowd in front of the church, so we decided to take a tour inside. Inside it was like an art exhibition, or cell phone promotion. People were staring at the walls, taking pictures, and walking through slowly as though they were giving something out. They weren't - Ron told us that it was the same last year; people were there waiting for a miracle. After seeing it for myself, I don't think they were waiting for a miracle. They may have been curious about religion, and the story of Jesus, and the lights and robes, but there was no truth conveyed. I think the lights and robes won out. It was while standing in the foyer of the church that I was most warned about pickpockets. Nick considered stopping to genuflect, but there was a policeman sitting on the font, as well as before the altar.

We continued walking through firecrackers (and Nick kicking them back toward the kids from whence they came) to KFC, where we shared coffee with Alex and reflected on the plethora of Western foods available for sale in Xi'an (think big city, Terracotta Warriors). See some pictures here.

Christmas morning was great. We drowned in thankfulness for the gifts and thoughts of our friends and families. Then at 9:30 we put on work clothes and went to the Writing I final exam. At 11:45 we had the exams in hand and went for lunch. We relaxed in the afternoon, and then went out for dinner with my counterpart teacher and her husband. It was nice.

The coming week looks like paper-grading and relaxing, and on Friday going up to Lanzhou for the New Years' Party dinner for all of the foreign experts in our province. And since we've been watching quite a bit of "The Office" on the internet, I'll leave you with this fun thought: our students and Michael Scott are both learning how to use PowerPoint. Oh, I wish the writer's strike would end!

Todd on Names

2007-12-23T16:18:00.000+08:00

I am still putting together time to write a substantial blog entry. However, I did come across one of our friends' blog entries, which details the Chinese students choices of English names, and the wide variety of them. You should definitely read it:

Todd on Names

More soon!

Christmas Card

2007-12-11T01:13:00.000+08:00

Here is an online card that I received from a student. It's for you all as well! Here is another.

Blog pause

2007-12-10T11:26:00.000+08:00

Hello all:

There is much to write, and much to do. We are up to our ears in finals planning and such. Expect some updates within two weeks, to include wondrous subjects like:
teaching Christmas songs in class
lecturing at a nearby teachers' college
our library improvement proposal
how we are celebrating Christmas

Cheers!

The First

2007-12-01T09:34:00.000+08:00

This is just a quick update: it's snowing in 天水 (Tianshui)!! There are big fluffy flakes dropping from the sky, but only a few are sticking to the bushes, trees, and grass. Happy December 1st, Happy World AIDS Day, Happy first snow!

Thanksgiving and AIDS Awareness Week

2007-11-29T14:18:00.000+08:00

So, what does Thanksgiving in China look like? The first thing it looks like is students asking all week how you'll celebrate on the day. It looks like us answering something like "well, we each have two classes to teach, Chinese conversation practice, and a recitation competition to judge that day, so we won't celebrate until the weekend."

So, on Thanksgiving Day, we did just that. The annual recitation competition was like English from another planet, in some respects. Each student did 4 tasks: a short recitation, answering an interview-type question, performing a short skit, and answering general knowledge questions in English. All of the students performed admirably, with the most popular passage being something called "Youth" by Samuel Ullman. Many of the students, especially in the previous round, pronounced it "yoose," which started them off on the wrong foot. However, most of the students practiced a lot, and their intonation and pronunciation were right on target. The interview questions were great, and the students had inspiring answers about working hard, looking up to their parents, etc. The skits were also great, as many students' vocabularies are high. The one piece of advice they need is just to listen more. Natural responses are better than talking over someone in response to their first few words. The last round of general knowledge questions wasn't planned as well as the other parts, so some questions had the wrong answers, or the students weren't given enough time to answer. I think all the international teachers judging sort of threw that round out. In the end, one of my writing students was the champion! So, good luck to him and all the contestants next year.

On the Saturday following Thanksgiving proper, Nick and I hopped on a train up to Lanzhou. I promptly made some mashed potatoes with my Italian spice stash, and were were off to dinner in the English meeting room. To my surprise, the volunteers up here really pulled it off! Someone had been sent Thanksgiving decorations like plates, cups, napkins, and centerpieces, and everyone brought a dish. There were mashed potatoes, potato salad, green beans, gravy, stuffing, shells 'n' cheese, Mozzarella cheese bag (hey, we don't have cheese in this part of China), cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole, and as the main course ... KFC buckets of chicken! Later at one volunteers apartment we feasted on pumpkin pie, chocolate chip banana muffins, and cheesecake. We played some pickup football (what are those crazy Americans doing?), and had a great time hanging out and talking with the other volunteers. I heard that volunteers in other provinces went out for dinner or lamb hot pot. That sounds great, but not as good as our dinner of 32 (28.5 Americans)!

This week has been AIDS awareness week, as Saturday is December 1st, World AIDS Day. Nick had I have been taking a short, general quiz from Avert to our classes each day, then going over the answers in detail with the students. Because of recent government and NGO efforts, the awareness of AIDS is increasing exponentially in this part of China, which is great. If we can somehow curb the misinformation, then we'll really have a leg up in protecting our students and their communities around Tianshui. Some of the students knowledge impresses us, as they know you cannot contract HIV from touching of hands, or sneezing on someone. They also know it is a virus, and there are no obvious symptoms. However, some of the students' information scares me, as they have been sheltered from the real risks facing them. For example, almost 90% believed that most people become infected with HIV through blood transfusions. This was never the case, though there have been few serious incidents in China of selling blood or tainted blood. They have no idea what various contraceptive and protective measures are (contraceptive pills, spermicide, condoms). Also, I'd say 40% answered 'homosexuality' when asked "What is AIDS caused by?" So, we went over the answers and told them that anyone can get HIV through risky behavior. We reviewed the 3 methods of transmission, and emphasized the ways to protect themselves and their communities: 1) keep yourself safe, learn what condoms are, and 2) tell you friends, family, and community which practices are dangerous (intravenous drug use, visiting sex workers, unsafe sex). We tried to empower the students to be the prevention for their communities by education. We also told them we are around to answer any questions they might have about sex, HIV, or pregnancy. None yet, but it's only been a few days.

From what we know, sex and HIV education is mandatory in senior high school and college, though some schools skirt the regulation or take inappropriate measures such as handing out short pamphlets. Combine that with sheltered adolescence, questionable condom quality, and a one-child policy, and you've got quite a bit of confusion. We're trying to figure out how it all works still.

Also, we are honored to be the guests on a campus radio show next week about HIV/AIDS! Thanks Simon!

So, those have been our recent thrills. We love getting e-mails and packages! If you would like any information about how to send us a package (for us or our school library), please do not hesitate to e-mail me! Thanks!

November Thrills

2007-11-18T08:51:00.001+08:00

November has been full of thrills of all kinds: a trip to Tianshui's claim to fame, Maiji Mountain, another visit from Peace Corps, brief food poisoning, and a student speaking competition.

A few weeks ago we took a trip to Maiji Mountain, a large cliff that has many hollowed out sections with buddha statues and paintings (up to 7000). Over the years, a staircase was built up the cliff, so that people could see all of the buddhas, and they are also now all protected from birds with metal mesh doors. The doors make it hard to see sometimes, but the toxic bird poop doesn't degrade the clay or the paint. Nick, for one, had a great time taking pictures of me looking scared of walking on thin staircases up the side of a cliff. In the end, it was definitely worth it! The buddhas are beautiful and varied, having been added by different dynasties, with quite a few in the 6th century (AD).

Shortly after we arrived home from Maiji Shan, I was hit with a round of food poisoning for 3 days that left me with fever and no appetite. I had some good advice from the medical office in Chengdu, so the illness was gone rather quickly.

During the illness was a visit from our programming assistant, Ms. Liang. In an ideal world we would have had some meetings, gone out to dinner, and she would have observed both of us teach. Instead, Nick did most of those things and represented me because I was stuck at home. We found out one thing that we really had forgotten to do, which is educate the students about Peace Corps, and what we do. We have been too focused on course content such as speaking and writing, I guess.

Speaking of classes, I realized that we don't post very much of what we actually do with the students - I do apologize. Our work here is quite interesting, and takes into consideration both TEFL teaching and methods, as well as cultural awareness. So, for example, a speaking class (Oral English) might go like this:

We follow the units of the textbook, so for each lesson, there are four dialogues provided, with pertinent vocabulary. One of last week's units was "Suggestions and Advice." First we read through the given dialogues and I explain any rare words or weird constructions. We also stop if there are glaring pronunciation errors such as "zis" instead of "this" and "urually" instead of "usually." After that we begin various activities to reinforce the dialogue, and attempt to move away from looking at the book while speaking. One of the activities for this unit was to look over a supermarket flyer from the U.S. (meanwhile learning some new vocabulary and cultural things), then work in a group to create a dialogue giving advice about what to make for a large supper. Then we might have some groups perform for the class to reinforce the lesson visually, and also to increase the confidence of the students while speaking English. Each week I try to introduce some slang, which is a big part of spoken English. Some additional things we might do are pronunciation drills related to the lesson, poetry readings, short cultural lectures, etc.

Last week, we were conscripted to judge this semester's English Recitation Competition. Each of 40 students had 2-3 minutes to give us their best short essay, read with accuracy, correct intonation, etc. It started out with some pre-speech entertainment by our language tutor Harry, who also happens to be English Club guru and emcee extraordinaire. He and another girl alternated in a dramatic reading of Frost's "The Road Not Taken," complete with a backdrop of dramatic music. It was a little distracting, but we were somewhat impressed. Little did we know that the dramatic music backdrop would be a fixture of the competition. Each student got up and did a good job, using practiced intonation and overall good pronunciation (an example piece is "Youth" by Samuel Ullman), but always with this music in the background. Some students actually leaned on the music, pausing for too long in too many places, and taking cues that their intonation should be that of a cheesy coffee shop poetry reading rather than an official speaking competition. These were the non-stellar parts, but the students all performed admirably. This round was rehearsed speeches only, but the next round this Thursday includes some impromptu speech and a short Q/A with each student. Should be great! Also, I was very impressed that students from other departments besides ours chose to participate; some were from business, chemistry, and Chinese. (The reason that their English is good, and sometimes better than English majors is that the college entrance exam includes English. The better a student does overall, the better the major they can have. So, all science majors have decent English because you must get a much higher score on the exam to be a science major.)

Last night we wandered around town looking for a new restaurant when we came upon the Ma Da Huzi, literally "Horse Big Beard." There was a waitress eager to usher us in, and it looked like some other people were there, so we headed in and upstairs. It turned out to be a mutton restaurant, so we ordered some dry (likely roasted) mutton and potatoes, which were both amazing. Then we came home and watched a few more episodes of "The Office," British version. The characters on that show are painful to watch, but hilarious.

Next weekend we are off to Lanzhou to celebrate Thanksgiving with our American compadres of Peace Corps. The main dish: KFC! I'll be sure to take some pictures. So enjoy your Thanksgiving dinners for us! We miss you all!

Assimilation/Conversion

2007-11-09T18:05:00.000+08:00

This has been a landmark week for us here in China. Some weeks both of us feel off, like mannequins in a world of the living, or, say, Americans living in China. This week we have felt like people, working in China. Some great things that have happened over the last two weeks are these:

Our language conversation partner came over for dinner. I made country ham, eggs in a basket, sweet carrots, and green beans with parmesan cheese. It was great, and she got a big kick out of cooking the eggs in the center of a piece of bread. The next day we got a package from Nick's parents, which had bacon as well as A Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends, perfect for making ESL college kids think, speak, and write. So far we've enjoyed the bacon more, but it's close.

We attended and participated in the English Club-planned Halloween party, attended by 3 Americans, 1 Russian, 3 New Zealanders, and 150 Chinese college students. The events included group dances, talent showcase, bobbing for apples, and musical chairs. Nick will tell you I edged out a 7-year old Chinese kid to win musical chairs, but really, I just have more experience. We had a great time after the 50+ photo ops ended. A picture taken with a foreigner must be worth about 5000 words, above and beyond the measly 1000-word photos.

Little Daniel, my favorite best friend's son, turned 1 year old on the 5th.

Wednesday, the Peace Corps doctors J & G came from Dingxi on their tour of Gansu province, in part to show us the hospital in our city and facilitate some vaccinations and checkups for other volunteers living nearby. We not only got see the hospital, which is well-equipped, but also to hang out with the doctors and another married couple serving in a much smaller town about 3 hours southeast of us. I left early to give a midterm exam, but Nick stayed, found the awesome DVD store with them, and then had lunch at KFC in the town square. It's great to talk to other volunteers to get their opinions about things (foreign affairs office interactions, for example), and also to assure us that we are not the only ones who are frustrated, excited, confused, and tired. The doctors are really fun ladies, as indicated by our discussion of (jokingly) how to steal a gypsy baby in Russia and take it back to the states.

After my midterm, I went for a short hike and a long facial with our pseudo-sitemate, who lives about 30 minutes away by bus. She is really fun to talk to, and her understanding of Chinese culture is great, though she doesn't always embrace it. Right now she's on the fence because her service will end next summer, she has great law school prospects, and she also has a boyfriend (who is a local). The only two feasible options are separation or a fiance visa! Facials at AVON are a good way to forget your problems (if you can tune out the music in the spa room ...)

Today Nick went and met with the dean of the foreign language department about some scheduling issues and preferences for next semester. We weren't sure how it would go, considering we were asking for fewer types of classes and fewer teaching hours (based on our contracted 16 per week). Right now Nick has 3 types of classes, and I have 2, so between us that was 5 "preps" (teacher speak for class preparations). But, with the school cutting the semester short to save on heating, the classes that were cut were put back into the regular semester as extra classes. Rather than teach our contracted 16 hours, we are teaching 16-20 hours with like classes that could be as many as two lessons apart (ahead or behind). That might seem like beans to a 40-hour work week, but we prepare for class, grade papers, have library duty, meet with tutors and language partners, and attempt to plan outside projects (improving the library, health education seminars, reading groups). I really do think the extra teaching hours are hindering our ability to do the outside (and possibly more interesting and helpful) work this semester. Anyway, the meeting went exceedingly well, and we were told that the system of extra classes will be abolished after the first trial semester, so we'll have only 16 hours of teaching, as well as our classes being on the same lesson each week. We had some fears of indirect refusals and confusing words, to be argued about later by our program manager back in Chengdu. Luckily, none of that is necessary! We agree with the Chinese on this one!

In other news, Nick and I have been thinking quite a bit about sustainability and development. China's economy is exploding, and you can see it even here in Tianshui, with all of the new buildings going up and college students looking for better jobs. In the course of this, I took a step to lower my contribution to the trash in the world, especially since I don't actually know where trash goes in China (yet). I don't think I've seen a landfill, but maybe I haven't been looking. Anyhow, I have ordered, and am now using, the DivaCup. What, you ask, is that? Is Beyonce in that movie? Well, it's a women's product; any men reading now who don't care for discussions of sustainability with respect to women's products can now surf on to another page. Now, to continue: the DivaCup is a replacement for sanitary pads and tampons. It is a silicone (or latex) cup which collects the fluid, and you just empty and clean it occasionally. The DivaCup website reports this "In 1998, 7 billion tampons and 13 billion sanitary pads and their packaging made their way into landfills and sewage systems in the USA alone!" Cotton is biodegradable; some of the plastics used are not. So, I have been converted. Any women reading this can take it from me: it's not messy, it's not difficult. And the investment will last not only monetarily, but also in the landfill and carbon footprints we all are learning about.

What are bloggers for?

2007-10-29T19:59:00.000+08:00

A recent comment changed the nature and tone of the (very limited) conversation on this blog; it seems our community is widening. While we mentioned in our first post way back in March 06 that this blog is intended “to keep all our friends and relatives up to date about our time applying for and serving in the Peace Corps,” we welcome readers who find themselves here for different reasons.

We did want to take a few minutes to reestablish the tone for posts and comments here. This space is still reserved for updating our friends and relatives on our Peace Corps China experience; other topics will be limited to the comments area.

Our posts and comments, while intended to be informational to those uninitiated in the PC/TEFL world, are certainly open to comment and critique from PCVs, RPCVs, VSOs, and other TEFLs in China or elsewhere. We simply ask that these responses be offered in a manner that would be helpful and informative to our main audience: our stateside friends and relatives.

What is helpful to our readers? Engagement with our ideas and experiences, serious dialogue, and arguments that positively state one’s own experiences and position. What would best be left to a personal email, or left unsaid? Sarcasm, arguments ad hominem, rebukes, and exhortations.

We do apologize for providing personal email addresses only at this late date; until now all our readers had this avenue open to them. Feel free to contact us at mrnickinchina@gmail.com, or alisoninchina@gmail.com. Also, we apologize in advance for being far slower in responding to comments than to emails.

Thanks,

Nick and Alison

Halloween Highs

2007-10-29T16:24:00.000+08:00

This month has been one for settling in. We've become absorbed in many things, which is good and bad. We're giving midterms, researching secondary projects, building relationships, relaxing, and eating way too much candy.

One way I became absorbed on Thursday was plant shopping and Avon facials with our nearest Peace Corps friend, Melissa. It was such a great break from classes. First we took a bus to the plant market, which was a giant greenhouse with various plant vendors. There were some standard plants, like hanging spider plants and ferns, but also many plants that I had never seen before. I ended up buying two flowering cacti and a delicate leafy green plant, as well as some soil and pots. One thing that was great was that most of the vendors had plants to sell, but they also had beautifully manicured orchids. Most plant stores in the states would have a wide variety, but not too many plants that required such art to care for - a distinctly Chinese feature. The facial was great too - much more massage than skin care.

I also became absorbed in giving a speaking midterm. Having taken linguistics classes and many foreign language classes, I had a decent basis for a grading rubric, but there's nothing like looking at your watch and telling the students to "go" for the first time. I think it went well - the students completed their conversational tasks with few problems, but also some hiccups along the way. Some students tried to end the conversation before others could complete their tasks, and sometimes the "natural timing" wasn't so natural. I'd still introduce them to my parents; their English is good.

Food: being absorbed with food here isn't hard. It's plentiful, it's varied, and some of it is seasonal. The oranges are sometimes green, the tomatoes are sometimes orange, and sometimes you buy a melon that you think it a large citrus fruit. The ribs sell out in the morning, and you always have to ask if the street bread is salty or sweet.

Transportation, I think we almost have down. We no longer tense up when the buses cross the center line, or the cab drivers come within inches of pedestrians but swerve 10 feet to avoid a pothole. Last weekend we took a bus to Dingxi to visit some other PC volunteers, Kathy and Ben, and we were relaxed on the 3 buses and a train that it took from door to door. And the party was great, by the way. Beer pong, black costumes, loud music, and the water cutting out intermittently all made it worth the trip. Plus, our friends are great, and we couldn't do this without them.

So, here's to another week of midterms, and finding a balance of being absorbed in so many things.

A week in the life ... would you like to make a speech?

2007-10-15T20:56:00.000+08:00

This past week was filled with events that could only happen in China. Here goes:

On Thursday I went to my first student-organized class party, for class 07-1. I really didn't know what to expect, but it turned out to be fun. All the students performed songs, skits, or recited poetry. One of the skits involved some Chinese history, and many of the songs and poems were about love. Love of what? Well, love of country. At the start of the party, two large Hanzi characters were artfully written up on the board : 爱国. Love of country; it was the theme of the party. Another older class stopped by to check on the freshmen to make sure they were behaving. Toward the end, I was asked if I could perform, but I politely declined, as I hadn't prepared anything ... any may never. But then again, maybe I will. It won't have much to do with patriotism in China though.

On Saturday evening, we were invited to 'English Corner,' which is reputed to be a time where students can get together and practice speaking English in a conversational atmosphere. When we, and the students, showed up, we all found out that instead of English Corner, the English Club was hosting a lady doing a pitch for the upcoming visit of Li Yang, wonder creator of the English learning method 'Crazy English.' He devised it back in the early 90s to help Chinese students to both improve their English and overcome shyness when talking to native English speakers. His method involves many skills, but the basis of it seems to be just shouting English loudly in isolated places. There are quite a few critiques of his method online, but also it goes against the Chinese values of humility and reservation, so it's certainly not accepted by traditional teachers here. Nick and I are not fans of the method because it still doesn't have students practicing in a communicative way, or using appropriate body language. Li Yang uses his own sort of body motions for the different sounds, but they don't reinforce meaning outside of repetition (which is just a rehashing of traditional Chinese teaching methods). Tonight we were even asked to be a singing act to open the show! No way!!!!!!!

Well, after finding this out, we still stayed for awhile. The students tried every trick in the book to get us to sit in the front, give a small speech about learning English, and to drink the hot water they had lugged from somewhere. We stuck to our guns, having come for light conversation, and repeated over and over that no, we were not prepared for this, and no, we are not making a speech. Nick and I both know that anything we are invited to that is described as a 'party' likely means that we will be asked up on stage to do something or other. This was the first time it happened to us, for real. We're going to attempt to establish a precedent of requiring notice before being expected to give a speech, perform, or otherwise take a leading role in some large group (200+ students) activity. Welcome to China.

Sunday we had a wonderful day. It started out with an 8 A.M. trip to Nan Guo temple, perched near the top of a hill in Tianshui. The hill has some restaurants, a hotel, a flower garden, and the temple at the top. We hiked up the road for maybe 20 minutes after the bus ride to the bottom of the hill. The temple was great at 9 A.M.: empty, smelling like incense, and very peaceful. Our two students hosts were wonderful and translated signs to us. One of the students was a Buddhist and did the repetitive bows to the various idols. She asked us if we wanted to, but after a short conversation about being our being Christians, she didn't ask us again. She said "So you can't ..." and I said "So, we don't want to!" We walked around the temple for about 45 minutes. I think if I need some solitude, I'll go back there in the early morning - there is nothing like a 2200-year old tree to make you feel like there is some order in the world.

After that, we were invited to the home of sister of one of the students, where she made us a famous noodle dish from scratch. It is called 炒面片 (chao mian pian "chow me-en pee-en"), which means fried, chopped up noodles. It has a plethora of vegetables added, and also some spicy peppers and bean paste for flavor. Nick and I took some pictures, and help rip the noodles by hand before they were boiled. It was a great time, and we were truly grateful for the gesture of being invited over, as well as the privilege of learning how to make this great dish from scratch!

National Day/Golden Week 2007

2007-10-07T20:27:00.000+08:00

This past week we have had all 5 "school days" off, and both weekends. Most people celebrate this time by traveling, going to see family, and having fun. We were only able to do the last one for 9 days, but it has been fun. (Can't travel without passports, which are tied up in a resident visa application.)

Last Sunday we listened to Florida game slip in the last seconds to Auburn, then hiked up the hill just south of our campus. We were determined to get to the top, but when we got there, the fog was so thick and our shoes so wet that we were confused as to where the top even was. We saw some beautiful things along the way, including spider webs full of water droplets, large pheasants that flew out of the bush at the last minute, and some forest scenery that would take your breath away. It took us about 2 1/2 hours go get up and down, after light lunch at the east dining hall. We eat most of our meals there unless I cook.

Monday we did some planning, laundry, and filled out a teaching schedule for the Peace Corps.

Tuesday we lazed around in the morning, then went over to Sylvia's parents' house for lunch, which was wonderful. They are the first family we have spent time with in Tianshui, and they welcomed us warmly. We showed up with some fruit, but they already had bought tons. We were greeted with some family members making dumplings, but we were encouraged to sit down and start eating the fruit and hors d'oeuvres. Nick helped to make a few dumplings, for which the shells had been made from scratch earlier in the day. I ate a pear, and then some roasted chestnuts. I have sung the song "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire ..." for my whole life without ever tasting a chestnut. They are everywhere here, sold all along the streets. They are roasted in large, wok-shaped dishes on top of fires inside old oil drums. The nuts are just mixed with cinders and roasted, with frequent mixing. Then they are sifted out with big sifters, and sold in steaming baskets along the streets. For lunch we knew we were having dumplings, but they prepared many other items to put in our dumpling soup to make it taste better. These things were egg strips, pulled chicken, onions, pickled cabbage bits, and a few other things. They sure do beef up the dumpling soup, especially with some vinegar, soy sauce, and hot pepper. We left stuffed and on a search for some long underwear for Nick, which we found at a store on the way to the bus stop. Heather gray.

Wednesday we had dinner with another teacher here, Robbie from Michigan. We ate at Little Lou's of course, and he made fun of us to the waitresses in his great Chinese. It was a lot of fun. We wanted to be a little social this week, rather than sit home and watch movies all week (which we also did).

Thursday we had plans with our Chinese conversation partner (Miss Pan) to see Nan Guo Si (Nanguo temple) at the top of a mountain, but she determined that it was still too wet outside. We were ready to do something that day, so we walked over to Fuxi temple (about a 20-min walk), and see one of things that Tianshui is known for. It was preceded by a street of vendors selling thoroughly Chinese souvenirs, and we'll definitely take any visitors to Tianshui there, because some of them are really nice. One thing we almost bought was a big piece of cedar hollowed out as a decoration/pen holder/stuff holder. It smelled great, and probably would for a long time. The inside of Fuxi temple is great too - it's got not only multiple buildings with shrines to the the Fuxi, but interesting tree trunk growths, beautiful artifacts, and museum guides who will swoop in with surveys for foreigners (which we were sorry to see invalidated after they found out we live in Tianshui). It was interesting to see a progression of pictures detailing the Chinese creation story, for which the Fuxi is responsible. The statues of him show a stately man with a short beard, holding a yin yang in his right hand. The progression was all in Chinese, but the pictures indicated generally that he had to consult something in the skies before man was created. Maybe next time we'll get a tour in English.

Thursday night we had dinner with some other teachers here, a family from New Zealand. We went back to Little Lou's and had another great time. Their family includes two sons, 11 and 13. They have grown up traveling around China with their parents, so they're a little bit crazy. We went back to their apartment after dinner for tea and dessert, and got to know them a little better. It was really refreshing to be invited into someone else's family rather than having to initiate a relationship with a single other person. It was comfortable. If the 11-year old had stopped trying to attach himself to Nick, he may have been a little more comfortable. Just kidding.

Friday we went into town in the early afternoon and finally got ourselves a cell phone. We won't use it often, but it will come in very handy when we aren't home. If you want to attempt a call to China, we'll give you the number :)

Saturday I helped clean up the English language library, and we did some more lesson planning.

Today started poorly with Florida losing again in the last seconds to a school we should have beat (in this case LSU). The rest of the day was filled with some exercise and finishing up lessons. Back to school! It's good because we'll actually have something to do, but bad because it's actually work.

Tianshui life so far / Science for the people

2007-09-24T09:59:00.000+08:00

Here we are, beginning week 3 of teaching. We are still doing well, and starting to get into the real meat of the classes rather than endless introductions of ourselves and the classes. A typical day looks something like this:

around 7:30 AM: Wake up, make breakfast, get ready, and talk to some family and friends online.
9:55 AM: The third class period, but often when our classes begin.
11:45 AM: We meet and walk to the student cafeteria for a lunch of some of the following: various breads, rice and dishes (like meats, veggies, tofu, eggs), or noodles. Sometimes the students that we sit with (there is just the right number of tables) will talk to us, sometimes we try to talk to them. Often it involves a student saying "My English is poor." Often we think his/her English is great, so we try to diffuse that attitude.
12:30-2:30: Rest time. China operates with a nap time after lunch, much like siesta in Spain. We sometimes rest, sometimes do some class planning, or walk around the campus to get more familiar with it.
2:30-4:20, or 4:30-6:20 PM: More classes. Writing in the late afternoon is sometimes hard, as the students are sick of class by that time. They have classes most of the day in these big 2-hour chunks. They've been good sports so far.
6:30 PM: Find dinner out or cook dinner.
7 PM - 10 PM: More class planning, shopping, or watching movies. Then it's on to bed.

If you have any specific questions, e-mail me and I will put the answers here!

This weekend we took our first trip alone up to the capital city of Gansu Province (甘肃省），Lanzhou (兰州) for a 'Welcome to Gansu' party orchestrated by a lovely volunteer there, Kari. The theme of the party was 'revolution,' and the dress was camouflage. You might think that would be somewhat taboo here (Americans walking around in camo), but the costumes were fairly easy to obtain due to the compulsory military training of all college freshmen. Everyone acted responsibly outside of the party, so there were no problems. Our host sister told me that in Chengdu, sometimes people wear military clothes around because they are durable, and those people don't really have their own clothes. So maybe the general populace thought the Americans were homeless ... anyhow, the party was great, and we got to meet many of our colleagues who arrived in China last year (the China 12s), as well as some American/Canadian/Norwegian guys who work in Lanzhou at an oil company. Which bring me to my next topic: brushes with science in China.

1) Before we arrived here, I was excited about the prospect of finding some science-related things on our campus to be involved in, such as technical writing editing. This has not materialized as yet because I really have to seek it out. The science departments on campus, though internationally published, do not seek out the help of international teachers in their publications (even though they need editing help). Reading one of the articles through online UF subscriptions, I found it to be publish-able, but nowhere near good English. Sometimes publications really loosen their standards for foreign submissions, especially Asian countries. I hope to make time to work on this, and seek out some contacts.

2) One of my students came up to me the first day of class and had me sign multiple pieces of paper indicating that she had changed her major. "Changed her major," you ask, "why?" Well, her major was chemistry last year, and she said that she loved working in the laboratories and the beautiful colors (I assumed she meant that when you burn different elements, the flame can be different colors like red, purple, green, etc). However, over the summer her older brother convinced her that chemistry labs were too dangerous for women, or at least her, and that she should find a safer major. Now she's in my class doing speaking exercises. My first reaction was such disappointment and sadness that a girl who is so smart (you have to test very high in High School here to major in science) switched her major to English from chemistry. My engineering background almost made me tell her to change it back! The most interesting twist to this is that the chemistry labs at this school, or this part of China, or China in general, may not be safe. I have no way to tell. So, her job prospects have gone from product testing and development in a factory (either around these parts or in a bigger city!) to likely teaching English to children at a remote school. Yikes.

3) The American oil company in Lanzhou. At this party was an engineer and a financial assistant there who I was able to speak with about their job and their lives there. Their company is called National Oilwell Varco (NOV), and they are (supposedly) the largest supplier of oil drilling equipment in the world. In Lanzhou, they oversee the fabrication of many standard drilling systems as well as fabrication and testing of custom systems, such as one heading to a country south of China in the near future. The financial assistant visits the fabrication facilities to make sure all is running smoothly, and the engineer does electrical control design and testing of the equipment before it is shipped out. He told me it's cheaper to make the parts here and do an assembly test, disassemble the parts and ship them to Houston (TX), then ship them out to the clients, than it is to make the system in Houston and ship it to the client. It's because of the super-cheap labor costs. They quoted two figures: unskilled fabrication workers make Y500/month (~$67 USD), and skilled workers or management make Y2000/month (~$267 USD). Their jobs seem great initially - travel, be an engineer, etc. However, I don't know how much of the international oil politics they are really aware of, or at least they don't talk about it. I guess an American international company such as that could be heavily embroiled in things like the UN call for China to withdraw its oil contacts in the Sudan. I don't know. In any case, these guys really didn't seem interested in the development work in China. One guy said he admired us Peace Corps volunteers, but he and the other Americans make big salaries and have translators. I guess it's good for China to bring in this kind of business to boost the economy in Gansu.

I make no judgements about science in China, but I am keenly aware of my brushes with it, considering my background. I think overall China is doing a great job encouraging fundamental science as well as developing technologies, especially with their goals to go green. Many of the teacher apartments at Tianshui Normal have solar-powered water heaters on the top.

In other news, I have added some new pictures to our picture website on Picasa (find a link on the right side of the screen under 'Peace Corps experiences'), and I have figured out how to write in Chinese characters on the computer.

See you!
杜娟
Nick, walking up the hill just south of our campus, between two goats.

Football and church

2007-09-16T13:19:00.000+08:00

This morning was an interesting mix for us. First football, then church ... in China. I'd better explain.

Coming from the school where the football team has just won the championship, we really love watching the games. We're familiar with the game day atmosphere, the stadium, and the great performance of the team. However, CBS doesn't broadcast over here. So, how do we keep up with the games?

Well, there is great audio on Yahoo Sports. That is how we made it through the first game, but it wouldn't do for the big games. So, we investigated some other options:
Sopcast: free TV streaming, but very limited selection and unreliable
Gator Vision: official UF game replay site, $50/season
Planet Gator: independent free replay site
skype broadcast: free streaming, but skype quality
CSTV online Pay-per-View: $10/game

This weekend was the first big game, Tennessee, so we woke up at 3:15 AM to watch it by the 4th method above. My brave dad agreed to set his laptop up in front of the TV with one arm (he recently had shoulder surgery). This was good for about an hour, and we got to chat. We saw the Rugenator asleep in his crate, and Hamish standing at the ready. However, skype wasn't made for TV broadcasting. The video update for skype wasn't as smooth as we had hoped; maybe it is skype, or maybe it was the Great Firewall wreaking havoc. In any case, Nick's dad offered to sponsor us to buy the pay-per-view, so we changed over to that about an hour into the game. The game feed is great, but there is an annoying blank screen that comes up during time outs and commercials. I felt like I was back in middle school listening to the AOL noises wondering if it would really sign me on this time. However, the game always came back. And isn't our team great! 59-20!

After that we went back to sleep for about 45 minutes, at which point it was time to get up again and go visit the Christian church in Tianshui with another international teacher (i.e. foreign teacher, not Chinese). So, we met him at the university gate at 8:30 and took a taxi down to the church building.

I really didn't know what to expect from a Protestant church in northwest China, especially due to the state regulation of the churches and their unification under something called the "Three-Self Movement." However, the church was lovely. We walked in to singing. At the opening of the service, there were a few minutes of guided prayer followed by five full minutes of prayer "with your own voices." It looked to me like every person in the congregation was focused, and in audible prayer. The woman next to me began to cry during her prayer, but I didn't feel as though I could even reach out to touch her arm for fear of her reaction and my inability to communicate in Chinese. After this, we sang about 4 songs from the hymnal (our colleague had a bilingual version, though most of the songs are taken from English anyway). After a reading of scripture there was another guided prayer, then began the hour-long sermon. Now, we have studied Chinese pretty intensely for 10 weeks, but that study was not sufficient for this. Not only is his Mandarin non-standard, but I didn't know much of the vocabulary. So, I tried to pick up some things, but mostly read about the history of the hymnal in the front. I found out that Don Snow, who has written a plethora of ESL China literature, has also translated many hymns written by Chinese people. Also, one of his organizations, Amity (Amity Teacher's Toolkit), published the hymnal. At the end, we sang one additional song, and we were out of there. Our colleague spoke to a friend he had met a few weeks previous, and we stood around waving to old people and trying not to look awkward (it's impossible).

I have many questions about the churches here, but I was very pleased with the devotion of the congregation and their enthusiasm. I don't know if we'll go there on a weekly basis since we don't understand most of it, but it was a good experience.

So, onto the rest of our Sunday ...

P.S. The views of this post are mine alone, and don't represent our university, Peace Corps, or the U.S. Government.

We are Volunteers!

2007-09-13T17:35:00.000+08:00

My apologies to our devoted fans! We have been extremely busy. First, most recently:

Today was an easy teaching day, so this afternoon we went to buy a toaster oven and some other small things. I needed to get a new watch battery for my Timex, so we stopped by the watch repair shop. The repair man popped off the back of my watch, and saw what type of battery it was: 1216. He dug through his battery supply until he found a similar one, i.e. same supply voltage, only it was 1220. He put it in, checked it, and then couldn't fit the back on because this new battery was a little thicker than the old. No problem, of course. Just take out a tiny hammer and flatten the new battery some, until it fits into the watch.

Our classes here at Tianshui Normal College are very good so far. The Oral English classes will be pretty fun, though a little repetitive. The students are very embarrassed when doing some simple things in front of others, such as introducing their partner or shaking hands. I think after a semester of practice, they won't let the giggles stop them from speaking. The writing classes are good too, though not very interesting yet. Nick and I have chosen 2 short story mysteries as the basis for their writing this semester, so that they are not continually having to express some opinion or other. I do hope they enjoy a good murder mystery.

The other foreign teachers here are truly a mixed bag. Without giving away too much personal info, there is a Russian man, and older man from Maine, a young guy from Michigan who's been in Beijing for a year and half, a Jamaican woman, and a couple from New Zealand that are "on sabbatical" from their normally hectic schedule of training new teachers in China (+ 2 sons). We have all gotten along well, if sharing library hours is any indication.

The other Chinese English teachers (that is, from China, teaching English) are great also. My counterpart teacher, Sylvia, is very fun, and honest. She took us shopping today, and then she invited us to her home for some tea (and watching her wedding video, only 2 months old!). The Waiban, or Foreign Affairs Officer, is a really nice man with a slight British accent. He has friends all over the world, and is very happy to help us. Nick's counterpart teacher, Hugh, has been around, but only I have met him briefly. I have also met two other Chinese English teachers around the building here, both eager to have "some chats" with Nick and me to keep up their spoken English.

Our swearing-in ceremony was wonderful, but brief. It began with all of us Trainees lined up on a stage in a mostly-empty ballroom. The U.S. Ambassador to China came in and swore us in, and then it was time for speeches, performances, and lunch. Each training site performed in some way: a song, a skit about training, or a photo slideshow of their time in China thus far. All were great hits. Our group (the best group) from Chengdu University sang a well-known pop song called "Tian mi mi," or "Sweet Honey." The song is super-cheesy, but everyone knows it and it's beautiful.

Training wrap-up was really exciting (you know, being issued water filters and smoke detectors), but also very fast! We went over most relevant Peace Corps policies from the coveted Volunteer Handbook, as well as received some great lectures. The lecture I enjoyed the most was by Professor/Dean Shi Jian, of Sichuan University (top tier university in China). The title of his talk was extremely hard to cover - "Higher Education in China and Challenges to College Teachers" - but he really got it all in. We learned amazing stuff about how most older professors are still influenced by the old Russian education system, even as far as the architecture of educational buildings. He told us a moving story of his father, who died after a fight with the Red Army in 1968. At this point Mr. Shi had moved out to the countryside to continue his education. He was in charge of starting dinner, so he would memorize a page of words from the English dictionary, and then use that page to start the fire. In this way, he learned and English dictionary with no excuses, since the words were quickly gone.

Later on when Deng Xiaoping came to power, he reformed the education system enormously. There is a common joke about his leadership, with respect to conservatism vs. liberalism, and it goes like this:

Taxi driver to Deng Xiaoping: We are coming to an intersection, should we turn left or right?
Deng Xiaoping: Let's turn right, but put on the left turn signal.

And here are some interesting statistics:

22% of high school graduates in China go to a university

25% of students have difficulty paying tuition, 15% take out loans for schooling

college tuition is about 10,000 RMB/year, or $1333 USD

in 2004, there were 53,000 English-major graduates, China-wide

in 2004, there were 26,000 jobs for them

the 2004 average income of a primary school graduate was 8,744 RMB/year ($1166 USD)

the 2004 average income of an advanced degree graduate is 37,880 RMB/year ($5051 USD)

the current 5-year plan is to devote 4% of the GDP to education, most of which will go to primary schools in the countryside (it was 2.7%)

Whoa, those are some big numbers; big because they are small in the US. Speaking of big here, small in the US, we moved out of our host family's house, and we will miss them, especially the laughter, food, and the little dog, Miza.

As for pictures, I have been lazy about that as well. However, I have uploaded a few videos to youtube, so you can see, in part, as we do. More pictures soon!

We miss you all, and hope you are well. The sky in Tianshui is great today, and we can see all the hills clearly.

Nearing the end ... of Training

2007-08-30T20:27:00.000+08:00

This week we have been busying wrapping up the training for Peace Corps China. Here are a few of the interesting things that have occurred, or we have learned:

Safety and Security: We've had weekly sessions on everything from personal safety to how to deal with police detention to (my personal favorite) determining counterfeit bills. If you are wondering, the numbers on the bottom left change color when viewed at different angles, and Chairman Mao's picture is textured, not flat. Those are the easiest ways to tell.

Chinese medicine: Our host sister Wei works at a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) hospital, and her stomach has been bothering her ever since she came back from Hong Kong/Macau last week. So, she obtained a mixture of dry leaves and some 'small animal' (I think a cicada, from her description), which has been boiling on the stove all through dinner. She'll drink 3 glasses a day for five days, which should settle her stomach. She told me one of the advantages of TCM is that it's very hard to overdose. All of the ingredients are somewhat natural, so their potency, as we would define it, is less. Very interesting -- as far as this goes, I really believe that a holistic approach to health makes alot more sense than treating parts in a detached way from the rest of the body. I don't subscribe to TCM or to purely Western practices, but right now I'm open to it all. We have a friend in Gainesville who has trained as an acupuncturist, so his work has certainly piqued our interest.

Trainee life: We've been having a great time with the other trainees. Without giving away identities without permission, we have made friends with such dynamic people. Here's a cross-section; we work with other Americans who have
-served in PC before: Jordan, Philippines, Bangladesh
-worked in Africa, Australia, Eastern Europe, South America, India, and China
-love soccer, love basketball, love college football
-studied Christian ministry
-given up on religion
-cooked breakfast for a Chinese family
-finally kicked a drug habit
-had multiple Fulbright exchange grants
-taught high school in the U.S. ... successfully
-used a squat toilet that doesn't flush for 8 weeks
-made us feel welcome, wherever we are

One guy we all love showed me today that he has a Warhol reproduction on his back, a drawing of birds. He gives one to each person that has been meaningful in his life, and he remembers all of them.

Teaching Planning: We had a great seminar last week about teaching writing using literature as a base, which was amazing to hear. Our lecturer talked about all the advantages of this method, including giving the students concrete examples and evidence for real arguments about something, rather than trying to develop good writing around essays like "Are noodles better than rice?" Right now our plan is to use two short stories in the mystery genre because our students are Freshmen. This is the first writing class they've had in English, so the reading will only be about 30 pages total. First read, understand, then analyze and write. Easy enough to say, but it will take an entire semester. Our goals for the end are to have them choosing appropriate words, making accurate and meaningful sentences, and organizing them into coherent paragraphs. They must be proficient in this to pass their exams as English majors, so we are their first exposure to preparation for them. Hopefully they'll be willing to hit the ground running!

As for Oral English, no firm plans yet, but lots of great ideas, and lots of words ready to speak and model. Even some slang to make them happy ....

Well, hope life in the U.S. is good - if my family's webcam is any indication, it's great.

from the city of heavenly water

2007-08-22T22:48:00.000+08:00

Ugh, we have been busy. On Sunday afternoon we got on a train with 11 other trainees for the long haul north, for us only 16.5 hours. We had a "hard sleeper," which means a bed somewhere in a triple bunk that is cushioned by a few covers. Really, it was similar to the mattresses here: pretty stiff. So we slept some, and arrived at 7:40 AM Monday morning. A representative from the foreign affairs office (FAO) named Z- Hui came to meet us, threw our stuff in the back of the extended cab truck, and off we went for the 25-minute ride from the train station (in Beidao) to Tianshui Normal College (in Qianzhou).

Then we went up to our 5th-floor apartment and rested a few hours before lunch in the city center. Our apartment is nice; it has many amenities such as a DVD player and a microwave, as well as high-speed internet. The Peace Corps volunteer who lived here left sometime early in 2007, so the place was vacant for about 6 months. Though there were some great renovations like new windows and a new stove vent, the place was so dusty! I have spent the last 3 days cleaning some each day, the highlight of which was the 2 hours it took to get the kitchen wiped down and disinfected. However, this cleaning has really allowed me to take ownership of the place and it is starting to feel like home. I don't know if that is a woman's touch or what, but the clean kitchen with the nice linen fabric I brought as a shelf liner has given me a deep sense of taking care of things. If you would like our address, please e-mail me and I can give it to you.

Lunch was great - I met my counterpart teacher, Mrs. Y- Hui Wen. She is young and very willing to talk to us about everything. We learned that many people in Tianshui attend the Catholic Church, but she cannot visit, as she is a member of the Party.

The past few days we have met the person in charge of English teaching, taken the bus downtown, bought food, and planned some aspects of our classes. There are a few highlights:

Classes:
Nick will teach 3 classes of Sophomore Oral English, 3 classes of Freshman Writing, and 2 classes of Freshman Oral English. I'll teach 4 classes of both Freshman Oral English and Freshman Writing. We're looking forward to having a positive impact on the students, no matter their levels coming in.

Other foreign teachers:
There are three other foreign teachers that have been here for at least a year, and at least two more are moving in at present. We've met two of the original three so far: Alex and Ron. Alex is half-Russian, half-British, and all frankness. Don't know much about Ron yet.

The bus:
The other night Nick and I were meandering around the road outside the campus East gate, and I heard a low rumbling sound. I thought it might be an electric motorcycle or some car coming slowly, so I didn't look up quickly. Nick, did, however, and he found that it was a city bus, going full speed toward us, with no lights on! We had enough time to move, but we'll have to remember: even at night, the bus has no lights. Also, the bus we took today still rolled along after it had "stopped," so we had to really watch our footing getting on and off.

Chinese encounters:
Today we had 2 encounters with Chinese people that were complete opposites. In both cases we attempted to speak Chinese, and with great accuracy I think. Case 1: We went downtown to find a tea house to do some class planning. Hui Wen told me that there were three of them, and pointed in the general directions. However, after getting lost in the computer store and asking two women, we ended up walking in circles without finding the shop. The third woman we asked refused to try and understand our Mandarin. It might have been a mistake to ask an older woman who had never spoken to foreigners. However, we were frustrated by the outcome, which was us getting back on the bus and working at home. Case 2: We went to a "dishes restaurant" around the corner from campus, Nick armed with a notebook of dishes we know how to order, and know what they are. We had backups and backups so that we'd be getting some food we knew, no matter what. Turns out that the owner spoke some English, though we ordered in Chinese, and the food was great. Toward the end of the meal, he came and sat at our table with a plate filled with various vegetables and meats. I initially thought he was going to eat his dinner with us, but really he wanted to tell us the names of all of the foods, and teach us how to say them. We did so with joy, already having learned some of them in Chinese class, and the new ones were helpful, like "carrot." He also gave us a taste of their "Da Pan Ji" or big plate o' chicken. We asked his name - "you can call me Little Lu." No problem, Little Lu, we'll be back. We felt so welcomed by his gesture and his care. So, as it is challenging for some of the Chinese to deal with us, so we are also challenged by them - I hope that with our work and our students' work, we can help to overcome some of these challenges. With understanding and patience.

That's all for now - tomorrow we'll ask some more questions about our classes, try to finagle a toaster oven, and see the English library. Friday night we hop the train back to Chengdu for two more weeks of training wrap-up, host-family appreciation, and our official swearing-in as Peace Corps Volunteers. So exciting!

I have some more pictures, but forgot the cord to transfer them, so some more pictures will be up on Sunday. Zaijian -

Site Announcement!

2007-08-14T17:36:00.000+08:00

Hello! Turns out for the next two years we will be teaching at Tianshui Normal University (English: Teacher's College of Tian Shui "Heavenly Waters.") It's in the second largest city of Gansu Province -- the first largest is Lanzhou where 8 other volunteers will be; Lanzhou is the biggest city on the Silk Road.

We are very excited to see it next week and meet our future colleagues.

Google maps link

Wikipedia link

ChinaTravelZ link (best info so far)

Tianshui Normal University Website

Study at TNU

Very informative current event ...

That's all for now. If you encounter too much Chinese, use a translator like Google or Yahoo's babelfish.

Cheers!

End of Model School & things to come

2007-08-11T13:44:00.000+08:00

Throughout the week when I am away from a computer, I constantly think of things to write, then forget them all. So, first of all:

If you want me to answer any questions on the blog (see following format), just e-mail me with the questions and everyone will be able to read the answers. E-mail me at toalison@gmail.com

Example:
What do you eat for breakfast?
We eat crispy fried eggs, oatmeal with hot milk and sugar, instant coffee, and sometimes a slice of bread or sweet roll.

This was our last week of model school, which means we are back to schedule filled with seminars (teaching, health, security) and 4 hours of language. Our model school experience was great; I feel like my students learned something, though I couldn't tell you exactly what. With more time to put together unit plans, and my own class, I'm sure my grasp of meeting objectives will improve. For some pictures of my model school students, please see this website:
Model School Pictures
I will try to add more pictures of Nick's class when we get them from his teaching partner.

Our schedule for the next few weeks is thus:
Aug 13-17: keep a-learnin' & site announcement on Tuesday (=where we'll be for 2 years)
Aug 24-27: visit our future site! get to know apartment, department, supervisors, etc.
Sept 7th: swearing-in as official Peace Corps Volunteers: new perks & regs

Well, keep looking at our pictures. Cheers!

finally, a training update

2007-08-05T20:39:00.000+08:00

Forgive us, friends, for not updating in two weeks. We have had a great time, continuing to learn from our host family, learning more Chinese, and now teaching classes every other day in a Chinese classroom in preparation for our real jobs in the Fall.

All throughout the past 2 weeks Nick and I have been teaching 90-minute English classes to many willing volunteer students. Nick has done body parts and family with his lower-level students and I have done job interview skills and health with my more advanced class. We love the students, and both of have had very successful lessons, as well as lessons where the constructive comments will help us successfully navigate the jobs in the Fall. We work hard to do things like speak slowly and explain activities such that they can be navigated. We work to talk about things that matter to us, and to engage the students as human beings as much as we can. The students are great because as I'm teaching, we both know that these are not only activities to practice English, but also life lessons in cultural integration and understanding. The levels of this job are many and complex.

I'll try to be brief and mention everything I think you'd like, in order from most recent to least recent, following blog structure:

Saturday, August 4th:
Today we went on a field trip with the other 61 trainees who came to China with us at the beginning of July. The country director and most of the staff accompanied us as well: we all hiked (or were chair-lifted) up Qing Cheng Shan, a mountain (alt = 1260 m) that is said to be the birthplace of Taoism. It was very beautiful: misty, steep, treacherous, and cool. After two hours of hiking various terrains such as wide flat stairs up ridges and short slick stairs up ravines, we made it to the top, where there sits a huge temple and shrine. When one of classmates first saw it, he said "Oh, look, the Golden Calf." It wasn't really, but it was a 3-story golden bull ridden by the Tao (I believe ..). Sometimes after reading about the high places during Moses' life, I don't think much of them. Of course I wouldn't have worshipped an object as close to the heavens as I could build it. Well, I rethought those sentiments looking out over the mountains of Western China, and I think I realized why anyone would be inspired to do it. You literally feel like nothing is between you and the vastness of the sky. Certainly the gods can see you there, and see what you do - maybe you could take the most beautiful objects you can think of and build a tribute. Certainly you would be looked upon favorably. In this case I'll refer to the transfiguration, where Jesus told Peter to refrain from building three tabernacles for each of Jesus, Moses, and Elijah - that maybe you can't build a place to meet God, but rather you meet him in His Creation.

Anyway, it was a great trip, fully subsidized by Peace Corps. Thanks to all the staff who set it up. Also, on the way up I had a good talk with my Chinese teacher about how people get jobs in China (largely still the "I know a guy" system), and her background trying to learn the differences between British pronunciation & culture, and American pronunciation & culture. Just as it's hard for us right now to see the differences between locations in China, it's hard for the students to understand the differences between the English-speaking countries.

Tonight six of us volunteers went downtown to check out a Western bar. We ended up having a few drinks and literally dancing the night away -- so after a beautiful hike and a great night out, I'm ready to get back to class. Hopefully I can figure out the speaker situation for my music lesson tomorrow .. wish me luck.

Around Wednesday, August 1st:
Today our seminar between English teaching and Chinese learning was an overview of the political setup of China and the historical background of their present system. The guy who gave it did a great job. I feel like I could explain the Chinese vision and fears between the World Wars, and their adoption of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, as well as the subsequent reforms and economic advancement. Right now land and other reforms have helped the people to become very positive about their futures. We discussed a few differences between the very general setups of the U.S. Government and the PRC Government, mostly between shared power and centralized power. I think that I will be able to understand my students when the mention words like 'democracy,' which means something different here. I do no know much about 'pure' democracy, but I cannot argue for either our usage or theirs at this point. For further reading, you should check out the PRC Constitution, adopted December 4th, 1982. As far as I know, it cannot be amended.

Tonight we had a great seminar on how to paint the characters that make up the translation of "Peace Corps." See the picture page for my own masterpiece.

Sunday, July 29th:
Today we went into town and saw our host family's other house, their holiday house. There are two lengthy breaks in the university schedule: Spring Festival, which runs early January through late February, and summer break, which runs mid-July through sometime in September. So who would want to spend them on a barely-open university? Only Peace Corps Trainees. Anyway, the house is beautiful; a sixth-story condo with a great rooftop garden, terrace, and sunroom. We learned to play Sichuan rules mahjongg ("Májiàng") in the sunroom, then had a nice lunch out, followed by a nap, then back home to Chengdu U. Naptime in China is something like it is in Spain, though it's demise is less imminent. For centuries things have been quiet after lunch for rest time; within the last decade in an effort to increase efficiency, naptime was officially declared "over." Needless to say, it didn't work and it was so foreign to this culture that it was eventually reinstated.

Tonight we decided it was time for a haircut. We walked to one of the 10 salon-type places right outside of the university, and rolled the dice. Nick came out with two hairwashes and a decent cut, completely sculpted with the thinning shears. I came out with what I thought was an Edward Scissorhands thinning job that left me with only a few long wisps of hair, but in the past week I have come to realize that I actually have a hairstyle now, and it's easier to take care of. Not too thin. So, I'm glad that was a success. Otherwise you'd start seeing more pictures of me with short hair ...

Saturday, July 28th:
Today we walked up the Luo Dai Great Wall, or the "Little" Great Wall, which is a big replica of the real Great Wall. We thought it would be something small you take a picture in front of and then leave. We were very wrong, however. You climb a very large wall up the ridges of a small mountain (maybe 800 or 1000 meters high) to the top, where you have tea at the temple. Then you walk back down through a peaceful forest, which takes half the time it did to walk up the stairs and inclines. The hardest part for me was when I didn't think the family chihuahua would really make it up the mountain, but she did. She rode back down on a car with our host sister, temporarily out of commission due to an ankle sprain. The pictures of the wall on the picture website are pretty cool.

Our friends Matt and Melissa Hamilton, who I used to work with, had a baby boy a few weeks ago: here are a few pictures.

Eating enough & student email

2007-07-23T19:54:00.000+08:00

Today was our first day of model school, where 16 college students were subject to my (Alison's) teaching, and the same amount of slightly younger students were subject to Nick's teaching. Both of our classes went well, and we have both learned the importance of describing instructions in detail and speaking very slowly. Our volunteer facilitator (Peace Corps Volunteer helper for training) told us that we will have to speak painfully slowly, and boy, it has started.

Tonight at dinner we started to have a familiar conversation: Nick is not eating enough. We learned two things in training: 1) The Chinese like to show hospitality through food, and 2) It might be considered rude to not finish your rice. So, for us, who are hoping the 'Peace Corps diet' of walking in the sun and eating strange foods will help us to keep in shape and maybe lose weight, it is not easy to keep our host family appeased. They give us bowls of rice with about 1 1/2 cups of cooked rice, and they expect it all to be eaten. They often tell Nick that he has eaten too little "tai xiao le," and tonight they (spec. our host mother) went so far as to say that I was behaving (guai) while Nick was not behaving (bu guai). After that there was talk that I should have my mother call Nick's mother so that she could urge him back on the straight and narrow, or to eat all the rice. Then, finally, it all came out. Nick's mother would think that Nick is not taken care of, and she loves him, so he MUST eat all of his rice.

One other thing that happened today is that I gave my email address to a student. Our volunteer helper said that even though he often gave out his email (or one he made up just for that purpose), the students rarely emailed him. Well, I am 1 for 1 on this. I have put the email below because I think all along I hoped that some girls would look up to me and want my wonderful advice, but with that comes some pressure and some responsibility to handle their problems. I've got to decide what to internalize and what I can reasonably only pray to God about and try to let go. Here is the email:

亲爱的朋友：
　Alison,

I am --------.my Chinese name is --------.I am from GuangDong Province.I am happy to talk with you.I know my English is poor .I have a dream that I can make a friend with a forigner.May I make friend with you ?I knonw you are very busy ,and we haven't that much things to talk about.My appose is simple.I have a lot of problem,I hope I can ask you ,and you can give me same advice.

I have learned English nine years,but my English is rather bad.Remember that I liked English and my English was always good in my class.But since I come to college,I become lazy and my English is worse and worse.Now I almost lose the feeling of English.But I know English is very important and I also like English.I hope I can get back my feeling and learned English well.

Or you can help me introduce same friends,so I can practice my English.Make more friends.

This is my first time to write to you!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also, I have added a blog in the links to the left entitled 'China 12: Neijiang writings' that is a blog of student writings compiled by another volunteer. You can really get a glimpse of the lives of the young adults of China through their writings.

Cheers! Gan bei "empty cup"!

Model School & Luo Dai

2007-07-21T09:42:00.000+08:00

Today is Saturday -- we finally got to sleep in! We've been very busy this week doing language homework and writing lesson plans for the 'model school' which starts next week. Each of us will be team-teaching (not with each other) for a class of volunteer students every day for the next 3 weeks. The aim is to learn about Chinese classrooms, try out lessons, and get some experience. I (Alison) will be teaching college students though Nick has been assigned Middle School Junior students, which means 14-16 years old. I guess there aren't enough college students around during their summer break to come and volunteer for free English classes for all of us needy volunteers, so they had to dip into the highschool-age. And even though they are younger, they could very well have more English experience than the college students.

I have added some more pictures to our picture website of our visit to Luo Dai ancient town yesterday. We went off the tourist road and up a hill (there were many stairs practically begging us to climb them) to find a graveyard and some great views. It was like a breath of fresh air after being on flat urban land for the past 3 weeks.

Cheers!

Monday: summer project visit

2007-07-17T00:49:00.000+08:00

Today we had a lot of fun, especially this morning. We got on a mini-bus at 8:30 AM and rode to the middle of Chengdu to a teachers’ college where we observed the summer project of the China 12s (volunteers who arrived last year). I sat in on a class by Sarah and Phil where they read a great story, The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. They asked the students, who will all be English teachers one day, to make predictions about what they thought might happen in the story after each section. Then afterward the volunteers explained about using predictions as a teaching tool for them to use in their own classrooms one day. After that they did a dialogue using the vocabulary words introduced in the story. Pretty good, although I can’t imagine someone using the term ‘stumps’ in a conversation except on rare occasions.

This afternoon was a technical session about teaching lower-level students, and then language class, followed by a quick birthday party for one of the other trainees. I would have normally attended a belly-dancing class after that, but tonight we ventured into Chengdu to have a “married couple dinner” with one pair of current volunteers and the other two couples in training. We were told that we could just catch a cab right outside of our campus, which is outside the Third Ring Road (= far away from downtown), but after five minutes and no cabs, we hopped on the good ‘ole 97 bus and headed for downtown. We have never ridden a Chinese bus and had forgotten to bring any phone numbers with us, but we made it just fine. We got off the bus near a busy intersection and snagged a cab over to the other training campus.

The dinner was great, and was facilitated by Michelle and Thad, whose blogs are listed to the right. (My favorite dish tonight was the qiezi ‘chee-edz-uh,’ or stuffed eggplant.) Then we went down to the local shaokao for a beer and some more conversation. My first Chinese beer besides Tsingtao (=Qingdao in current pinyin) was one called Snow, which Todd said was aptly mis-pronounced by his host family as ‘Slow’ beer because of its low alcohol content and bland flavor.

The night finished up with yet another cab driver getting lost on his way back to “Chengda,” or Chengdu Daxue (Chengdu University, or the "Duda"). Seems like no one really knows what’s out past the Third Ring Road unless you make them go there.

Also, Nick and I think that China should come with the caveat "watch your step." We have tripped countless times on curbs that would have been painted bright yellow in the U.S., but here, are left unmarked for people like us.

Off to another week ...

Sunday: the market

2007-07-17T00:43:00.000+08:00

This morning Nick left for his trip to give a lecture at Mianyang University, and I was sitting on the porch reading Edna Ferber’s Ice Palace when Cun Ayi approached me and said something which indicated she wanted me to go with her. So, I grabbed my purse and off we went, me in flip-flops and her in her sun hat.

After 10 minutes and a shortcut out of university housing, we ended up at the Sunday morning market. I had not yet seen a market of this caliber; it has everything you need. Close to the entrance were the many xigua (watermelon) vendors, as it is the season. Further along were many onions, and many many gourds of various sorts, some of which I have only briefly seen in the U.S. There were lots of plums and peaches, some shirts-and-capris stores (popular fashion), and the odd hair salon stall. One man had a great shoe soling shop complete with specialty sewing machine. Cun Ayi bought some onions when she found a good price, and then we moved on to a section that opened up wide, with a concrete floor: the meat market.

I was a little surprised at first, but there were many interesting characteristics of note. The first is that none of the meat is refrigerated. Each vendor (mostly pork) hangs their sides from meat hooks above a counter made out of wood, stone, or concrete. If you want one, you ask how much per jin (half kg), then you bargain down to what you think it’s worth. They then remove the meat and stick it in their scale, which is a long stick with a basket on one end and a weight on the other. There’s a handle in the middle, and when you slide the weight down the stick such that the moments are balanced from your product, they read you the weight and ta-da! give you the total price.

Side note on the scales: all vendors have a similar scale. Some are smaller for goods bought in smaller quantities, and some are bigger, like for meat products. They have probably been using these same scales (even before SI units of measure were around) for thousands of years. You could mark any weight scale along the stick, and use it until you basically whittle away the stick from sliding the weight so much. Very few vendors have digital scales, and it’s probably not worth it to buy one because of the maintenance.

After you pick out your pork, you can choose to have it ground up for you, which involves the meat being put in one of two mystery holes on top of a metal box, and then it comes out the front into a plastic baggie after lots of whirring and banging from the box. Actually it seemed like a safe process (i.e. still has bacteria that must be cooked out, but no foreign objects).

Another interesting part of the market is the homey atmosphere. Each booth is a family affair, complete with a kettle on top of a cylindrical oven-thing which is bolted to the ground outside of each stall. They use coal pellets that look like big hockey pucks, and those keep this little oven warm the whole day while the family uses the water for tea, cooking, and miscellaneous washing of hands or products. Don’t stand too close to them because you’ll breathe in the coal fumes and cough for 10 minutes.

Tonight our host sister Wei brought home a kitten from the market. Now, there are always puppies or something for sale in the markets, but we were told specifically not to touch them, because the can harbor all sorts of diseases including rabies. We need one more shot to complete the rabies series, which will happen Tuesday. Anyhow, when she was showing me, I could tell the cat was infested with something – lots of black little crawlies on the white fur. However, she really impressed me by then taking the tiny kitten into the bathroom and washing it for an hour, painstaking removing each flea by hand and drowning it in a basin of water. The kitten was not at all happy and mewed and clawed the whole time, but before dinner, every flea was gone, and the kitten even drank some milk. I don’t think I’ll handle it too much, but it is cute. Now, if only the chihuahua could stop barking at it, we’d all get some sleep …

Saturday: hotpot

2007-07-17T00:39:00.000+08:00

Today was a lazy day for me, while Nick prepared his lecture to the middle school teachers at Mianyang University. I ended up watching about an hour of the Chinese version of American Idol, which premieres on Friday nights for about 4 hours and then gets re-run on Saturday morning. The three finalists were all male, and sadly, the ‘very handsome’ young man from Chengdu was cut. He did look pretty dashing with his various costume changes and performances, however. Next week is the finals. I think the guy who plays the guitar will win.

Tonight we went to hot pot with our family, which is a restaurant style where you order raw food and then stick it in the boiling pot in the center of the table before eating it. We got a variety of foods including potato, celery, beef, pork, pork balls, tofu, duck organs (unknown), and tripe. I stuck to the foods I knew, and put them in the non-spicy pot, while most of the family stuck their food in the hot portion, spiced with the peppers native to Sichuan province, or Szechuan as it’s known in the states.

Friday: the bar, the taxi

2007-07-17T00:29:00.000+08:00

Tonight we had quite the adventure when we went downtown to a bar to hang out with our host sister and her friends. The crowd consisted of us, Wei, her cousin Peng, her other cousin Summer, friend Suki, other friend Juan, and two of Peng’s friends, one of which has some association with a famous singer in Japan. He is also an actor from Chengdu.

The night started with Wei asking us if the bars in the U.S. would ‘preserve the wine’ for you at the bar if you didn’t drink it all, so that you could have it the following time. I told her no, I didn’t think so, as people didn’t usually drink wine at bars, and it usually goes bad. I wondered what she meant. When we got there, we met Summer and Suki and had some nice conversation in a cool booth with beaded curtains, sort of half-indoor, half-outdoor. Wei said that we’d get two bottles of wine. I thought sure, I like wine.

The waitress then brought around a bottle of Jack Daniels and a bottle of Kahlua. The previous questions about ‘wine preservation’ finally made sense, and Nick and I realized that she meant liquor. At this particular bar, and maybe in most, you buy some bottles of liquor up front. You the buy some cheap mixers, and the waitresses come around to make mixed drinks in big pitchers on the table. Then begin the games.

The first game is just with your thumbs. You hold up your hand, and say “1, 2, 3, X,” where X is the number of people you predict will put up their thumbs at the end of your counting. You go around the circle; if you guess correctly, you’re out of the game. If you’re the last one left, you drink. A whole drink.

The second game is with dice. I don’t remember the name, but you put one die in a cup for each person at the table. One person shakes the cup and then memorizes the sum of the numbers. Each person takes a turn, going around the table, saying numbers in order. If there are 4 people, you start with 4, 5, 6, etc. Each person can say 1 number, 2 numbers, 3 numbers, pass, or reverse the direction of play. The range of numbers for 4 people would be 4-36. The object is to keep from saying the number that was the sum of the dice. Play goes around until someone says the sum, and that person loses and has to drink. Some special things that help the game are that the ‘dealer’ cannot pass or reverse, so they get stuck sometimes. The most dangerous numbers to say are the ones right around half-range, i.e. 16 in this case. Peng managed to lose the game a good six times in a row, so his night started early. More friends arrived and kept the party going.

I went to the bathroom once and forgot to roll up my pant legs. I will only learn that lesson once.
At the end of the night, we asked Wei who would drive us home, and she pointed to Peng. She doesn’t really drive. We told her that we couldn’t get in a car with him, but she assured us that “it’s okay” and “he is good at drinking.” We knew that, he was sort of okay, and he could hold his own, but after an estimated 8 drinks, we still couldn’t get into a car with him behind the wheel. I kept thinking about having to explain to the Peace Corps staff why we were at the hospital at two in the morning and why we were there because we got into a car with an intoxicated driver. After some affirmations to Peng that we had a great time and were friends, we explained that we don’t get into cars with intoxicated drivers, even in the U.S. So, Wei was kind enough to take the taxi back with us to Chengdu University. With the exception of the driver getting lost and not knowing where Chengdu University is, disaster averted.

homestay impressions

2007-07-08T22:58:00.000+08:00

Hello everyone! On Thursday we settled in with our enthusiastic host family made up of a kind math professor, his teacher wife, their 25-year old daughter (on weekends), their nice housekeeper, and the family chihuahua. They are very generous, especially with food.

For breakfast we have fried eggs, oatmeal (w/ boiled milk), some wheat bread with jam, coffee (2 + 1 Nescafe mix), and sometimes meat. When I say fried eggs, I mean fried to a crisp. You can barely cut them with a fork, let alone chopsticks. We are becoming experts with chopsticks, though our host father is the master. He can spread jam with them and then eat the bread with them as well. For lunch and dinner we have a variety of dishes; The Chinese like for each person to have a bowl of rice, then there are many dishes (~5-6) in the center of the table for everyone to take from. They are usually awesome, from pickled cucumber to pork and green beans, many squash/zucchini veggies, ribs, and eggs with tomatoes. We are never hungry. One thing to avoid is taking the serving chopsticks and accidentally using them to eat your food while your own chopsticks sit off to the side. It was quite funny when the family realized that I realized what I was doing :)

We have been to play tennis where I made a fool of myself and the professor beat Nick soundly. For the most part, we talk, study, read, watch TV, play with the dog, and do laundry.

Today was very fun, as our host sister and the professor took us to "Folk Road" in Chengdu, which is an old section where the buildings are all black, and have beautiful wood inlay on all the walls and shutters. We had a nice lunch there, then walked around. They sell cute little teapots, and some other touristy things. When we were about to leave, I realized that we didn't see the advertised local monastery, so I asked, and we walked back to where it was. Before I could stop him, the professor was already buying us tickets, and we went in.

The Wenshu monastery contains one of the four major temples of Zen Buddhism, and is very large and beautiful. Its campus has a bookstore, library, teahouse, restaurant, and many shrines. It is enclosed by a red smooth wall, and all doorways have a big board across them that you have to step over. The stone is grooved from all of the footsteps from a couple of thousand years of people stopping to step over the threshold. There is incense to light at most shrines, whether they are statues of the buddha, towers, or bell houses. Most people there were tourists, but some were there to worship, methodically bowing before a temple or shrine. I am ashamed to say that I do not know the purpose of that, but I was impressed by a young girl in tennis shoes, bowing in reverence. Our host family is clearly a-religious, or possibly even anti-religious, as they did not even suggest seeing the monastery, though it is clearly the oldest and most beautiful place around. I was glad to see a young person seeking something beyond herself and her city, which is more than most here.

This week will be hard, with our nice language teacher who is sometimes more like a drill sergeant. Last week we learned how to bargain in a market, so it is useful. Also we had some cultural homework from a Volunteer Facilitator, a guy whose tenure with Peace Corps China is almost up; we had to take a picture with our host family, print it out, and bring it in. This was quite the assignment since it involves interaction, communication, and buying something. Also it involved money since there are no cheap photo places. We went to a photo shop which consisted of a guy behind a desk with a computer and Adobe Photoshop, as well as an individual photo printer. He took our flash disk and printed out two pictures, which ended up costing 16 yuan, or about $2.13. That is the cost of about 3 lunches out!

I put up some pictures on our picasa site listed in the link on the left, and here is a video of the courtyard where we ate lunch (my apologies if it didn't work!):

Chengdu impressions

2007-07-03T04:53:00.000+08:00

Chengdu so far has taken me by surprise. At first glance, it's pretty much like any other city: dirty, loud, fast. It has smog so thick that you don't know where the sun is, and all the buildings are smaller than in the U.S. We made our way to TrustMart yesterday, which is like an extended version of WalMart. The foods section made me gag from the smells of sea creatures and unknown items, but also there are a variety of teas and herbs that you can't find readily in the states, i.e. lavender.

Our language teacher is great so far -- she was a little nervous the first day, but I think we are starting to get the tones and words. I'm sure we will all improve after 3-4 hours each day. I have been assigned a Chinese name - Du Juan - which I at first thought was unnecessary. However, I now see that it's a great way for me to begin to listen to Chinese and pick out words. I can figure out amid the other parts of the lesson if the teacher is calling on me, and I can hear the same name said many many times, which helps with my own pronunciation. Nick's is Wang Liyong.

And last, Nick shaved his beard! We had some talks at staging about first impressions, and how in general, Chinese people do not trust those with beards. To us that sounds like something silly, that surely it doesn't apply to us, but Nick went about it in a very wise way. He told me that when he began teaching last year, other teachers mentioned that he would be correcting the mistakes from his first week throughout the rest of the year. So, if that trend applies to our new teaching environment, the beard goes, until we are at site and have established some rapport (September-November).

We have not found a Starbucks yet, but have not searched either. We did find a Coffee Beanery, but the prices were pretty high (= same as or higher than in U.S.). Also there was only 1 person in there and we were shuffled to the counter and asked expectantly what we would like. Tomorrow I'm going to practice saying "we are looking" so that we'll have some time to just observe.

Zaijian!

Staging: Day 1 - Introduction

2007-06-29T13:37:00.000+08:00

We arrived in San Francisco! Today was our first introduction to the entity that is "the Peace Corps." We learned quite a few interesting things, the first of which is a general definition of sustainable development:

"Any process that promotes the dignity of a people and their capacity to improve their own lives"

My questions are these: what defines the dignity of a people; what defines the shame of a people? Especially North Americans and Chinese people.

Some other good quotes from today were these:

"I'll buy you dessert; I don't have the balls to go teach English in China" - waiter at dinner

"Hey, buddy, this isn't a strip club, it's a trolley -- grab the pole and lean inside the car" - trolley operator to another Peace Corps trainee

The elite. The best of the best.

2007-06-27T23:16:00.000+08:00

A Poetical Reflection on the Departure of a Compadre...bye Nick

william glass

Have a good time, and be happy, be blessed;
and please expedite your return to the west,
where the people are happy unless they're oppressed,
and talking is gratis, unless it's protest,

and airlines are bankrupt, unless they're southwest;
and while you're away I will keep you abreast
of the changes that happen while you're the houseguest
of a reluctant hostess, though I must confess

they're learning so quickly the ways of the rest
of us. You must speak up even if they suppress,
carry Gideon's bibles tied up close to your chest,
and even if you are placed under arrest,

You must witness to China, you must attest
of the betterness--you could say good, better, best,
all mean something less than the word betterness--
of things of which Amerikuhns are possessed:

like blessings, we are all so richly blessed,
no maladies here like the ones that infest
the waste land of wongville, how I have digressed
from a nice benediction to making a footrest

of the apex of Eastness, the best of the rest.
But I hope you'll forgive me if I must process
a certain discomfort, a certain unrest
at the sudden departure of the best of the best

And now my best jokes, my liveliest zest,
will lie fallow, taking a well-deserved rest,
until you return, from the biggest midwest
in the east, to the best

of the best of the best.

wednesday is the packing day

2007-06-27T21:12:00.000+08:00

So, we are down to "the last day." We've said goodbye to almost everyone, and all that's left to do is make some last minute phone calls and re-pack the suitcases, so we are sure that our combined weight is not more than 80 lbs apiece (checked bags). Last night was a great party at Nick's parents' house, with many relatives and some kids to make it lively. One named Glen was about to leave when this conversation happened:

Linda: Glen, say "Bye, Nick, have fun in China!"
Glen: Bye Nick, have fun in China!
Nick: Bye Glen, have fun in America!
Glen: I'm not going to America!!

I hope we meet some kids in China that are fun too.

Speaking of, my friends Marcus and Sarah just had a baby girl on Monday night. I told Sarah she was on the clock and she needed to deliver before I left Gainesville, but she didn't quite make it .. 3 days late!

Off to do some last bits of laundry ..

P.S. This blog may not be updated for up to a couple of weeks after we make it to China due to our having to get it approved by the country director, and China's blocking of blogger.com. However, I will do my best, even if we have to wait on the pictures.

getting to Fort Lauderdale

2007-06-23T13:35:00.000+08:00

On Friday morning, we set out for Fort Lauderdale in the Mazda, to make it there by 5 to check into the hotel, change, then go to the rehearsal dinner. What we didn't factor in, of course, was the ability of the air conditioning compressor to malfunction further, which caused us to just make the dinner. The time there was worth it, however.

When we were about to pull on to I-75, there was burnt hair-smelling smoke emanating from the compressor pulley, so we pulled over. After some conversations with my ever-helpful father-in-law and the guy from a car place (if I say the name, he gets fired ...), we decided to buy a box cutter and cut the belt that drives both the compressor (smoking/burning), and the power steering (not even malfunctioning). There was only 1 belt, so they both had to go [top picture].

Before we left, however, the mechanic gave us some powerful advice about getting to China:

"Don't dig a hole, fly in a plane"

Two hours after our original leave time, we were on the road. Driving a car without power steering, that was designed to have power steering, takes quite a bit of muscle, hence the driving gloves [picture 2].

We ended up having a great time all weekend, especially hanging out with friend we were surprised to see: Steve, Sam, Megan, Didi. Tim and Brittany were studs, and looked like they were made to put on a great party [picture 3] and have a wonderful life together. All the best!

P.S. I started a Picasa album for our pictures. And below is a test video:

the things we are made of

2007-06-20T21:20:00.000+08:00

picture 1: Pierce Pettis live, 2nd street bakery, June 15th
picture 2: lab going away cookout, June 16th
picture 3: the Rugenator in his element, June 16th
picture 4: loadin' the truck, June 17th

riches and friends

2007-06-15T10:52:00.000+08:00

Both of us over the past week of packing have realized how much we will miss all of our friends. We not only derive great joy from the jokes and companionship, but we are also truly in debt to them for their kind consideration and sacrifices on our behalf.

One thing that we have done this week is get rid of some things that we have liked to collect. The first thing is books. We gave over half our books away, with some going to friends, the church, and the Friends of the Library. Maybe this doesn't seem like a big deal, but we love us some books. The second thing we did is give away about half of our clothing. I know you're thinking "Oh, no, what will they wear?!" but we have discovered that we still have enough to wear, and even to move to China and teach in. It is very liberating to give away some of things you like the most, and still survive. It reminds us that, as Tyler Durden says, "You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your f** khakis." It also reminds me of the song by Bjork called 'Hyperballad' where she talks about waking up before her lover, walking to the edge of the mountain, and throwing a bunch of useful stuff off so that she can "feel happier to be safe up here with you." It took me awhile to get that song, but it's very true. The collection of things and stuff can not only reduce our identities down to man-made things, but also segregate us from those we value the most. How simple, but how deceiving is the world.

And on top of this, the story of the rich young ruler comes in. He sees Jesus and believes that he knows the secret of eternal life, so he asks him. Rich people know how to ask pointed questions. Jesus tells him to obey the previous commandments. You would think that would be enough to catch the ruler, but no. He says that he has kept those his whole life. Then Jesus hits him with this (quoted from the story as told by Luke, ESV): "One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have, and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."

I have a lot of questions about this story. By no means do I think that I have done this, or achieved this. I have only lived in a way that is relatively rich, and tried to get rid of some of my belongings. So maybe I've scratched the surface. The questions remain.

Why is the ruler to sell what he has rather than give it directly to the poor? Does the ruler own things that are not useful, like statues and such, that the poor would have no use for? Possibly. Is it so that the ruler can see the monetary worth of his things before he gives it away? Is it so that the ruler can see the faces of the poor to whom he is giving?

What would this advice be if this story happened today, to me? I mean, I think I did a decent job of taking the clothes to a place that actually sells to the poor, donating the books to support the library. Should I have sold these items and given the money directly to the poor? (Would some of them have then bought alcohol with it?) Should I have sold them and given the money to a charity? Seems like I can pretty much reason away this advice, and just be happy with what I could do.

I guess it's a good thing that Jesus described us as "justified," not so we could hold back in our attempts to emulate His character, but that we didn't have to let those attempts define us. Back to the edge of the mountain ...

update: 20 days until departure

2007-06-09T02:39:00.000+08:00

As of today, we are both done with work. Some more things that we've done in the past few days:

+ given away a bookshelf
+ sorted all books, given away some
+ reserved a moving truck
+ made plans to see relatives
+ gotten the car looked at (problems again!)
+ gotten plane tickets to the staging city

Totally interesting, huh? The next week will be good - there will be trips to Salvation Army and boxes getting taped up. And some sleeping in, for suuuuuure.

update: 27 days until departure

2007-06-01T22:51:00.001+08:00

We get asked almost every day if we are "all packed up, ready to go?" Well, not really. The ratio of things we have done to things we need to do is still on the order of 1:50. Some recent things are these:

- Bought a new (new to us) computer online last week. It is a small notebook from Averatec. Though it's not a ThinkPad or a Vaio, it'll do for our time and be light to carry. The specs even say the adapter plug isn't grounded! You would think that would be undesirable due to safety, but for us, it means I don't have to take any pliers to the plug to be able to use it with plug adapters or the dynamic outlets of mainland China. Bought a nice sleeve too.

- Check with Yahoo.com & facebook.com groups daily to get packing/technology/teaching/language advice from helpful current volunteers. I've added a few more blogs to the section of links below entitled "Peace Corps Experiences." I take no responsibility for the content of those, by the way.

- Sorted through all books. The Friends of the Library has been, well, friendly to us over the past 7 years, and we have collected a lot of books. Some of them we've never read. We set aside books that might be helpful for teaching, though this stack must be pared down even more. The books to be given away are labeled by genre and friend to whom first dibs will be given. Then the church gets a go. Then they go back from whence they came to be sold and re-sold in Gainesville.

- Had a wonderful going away party at the CSCG with our friends. I am sure that Nick and I will both have dreams about sitting there, finding our way with friends, and drinking (or making, in Nick's case) coffee and espresso. We should get a staging packet very soon with instructions for acquiring plane tickets and specific information about the orientation in San Francisco.

Cheers!

P.S. Timestamps are now China Standard Time.

maidanglao, James, magnolias

2007-05-18T21:17:00.001+08:00

The magnolias are in bloom in central Florida. Even after just having taken a sip of coffee, when you're walking through the Plaza of the Americas at UF, you can still smell them. I think they smell even better after the rain that we just had. Rain has all sorts of functions like putting out fires, nourishing the earth, and making the magnolia scent drift down to meet me on my way to work.

Even though this phase of our lives is about joining the Peace Corps, as is the blog mostly, I'm going to put something personal in here, an obituary. I must confess, I have never been to a funeral or memorial service. I think that anyone who would have invited me did not want to trouble my life in that way. I don't know right now whether this is good or bad, but I do know that death continues to become more tangible to me as I get older.

That aside, a co-graduate student that I had worked with on various projects took his own life recently. I have included the coverage of his death from the (unofficial) school paper at the end of this post. I thought that the best way to honor him would be to simply write about what I know of him. So, here's to you, James Wu:

The first time we met, you were late. You were driving me to the slaughterhouse so that I could train you (or so you could stand it) to harvest eyes for nano-indentation on the corneas. I called you when I thought you were already supposed to be here, and you said you were just leaving your lab, but that was okay. We got there, and I think you were a little intimidated by the cow carcasses hanging from the ceiling and the smell of meat; the other engineering students there getting eyes didn't seem to mind anymore. But you were interested, enthusiastic, ready. I explained to you all about the process of using the disposable scalpels to get around the soft tissues on the sides of the eyeballs. When we got our turn to walk up to the rack of the skinned cow heads, you watched. After I did one, you took a deep breath and went for it. You did fine, and if you gagged I didn't even see it. You got a few more eyes - enough for initial experiments, and we were off.

The next time we met, you were on time. I trained you about how to use the micro-indenter, so that we could get some mechanical properties of brain tissue. Needless to say, this was a little easier than our first project. You were very adept at remembering how to use equipment, very quick to take ownership of the project. You did the background work, you put in the hours. I had fun talking when we were waiting for the long hold-time tests to finish. You asked me about my wedding, about my traditions and what mattered to me. I asked you where you were from, a little about your family. You explained the intricacies of taking the class Anatomy & Physiology, about how as a newbie they kept you from anything controversial. You were truly interested in the body parts and how they functioned - you chuckled about it. And I am sorry you are gone.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nick is reading a book by Peter Hessler entitled Oracle Bones. I think it's a memoir about his time after Peace Corps service in China, either travelling there again or living there. Anyway, it's pretty funny. What it has introduced me to so far is the way that English words and names are 'translated' into Mandarin. It should probably be called something else like 'transphoned' because the meaning is the same -- you just change the sounds slightly so that they can be tackled by the Mandarin tongue. Here is a common example: the last name "Brown."

English: Mr. Brown
Mandarin: Pulang xiansheng

English: McDonalds
Mandarin: maidanglao

Just sit on that for a little while. I think I'm a little fearful that even if someone is trying to speak to me in English, I still won't understand because of the "sound barrier." Look for more on this when I have some personal anecdotes.

Anyway, have a good weekend-

some documents: final PC resumes & aspiration statements

2007-05-04T01:12:00.000+08:00

Both are in PDF format.

Alison's Peace Corps resume
Alison's aspiration statement

So you wanna work in China?

2007-04-29T01:47:00.000+08:00

check out the hula hoops.

we are going next week to get this done-

cheers!

A New Country

2007-04-24T22:03:00.000+08:00

These all died ... not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles ... For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had the opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country ...

Who has written this quote? Is it perhaps an Iraqi refugee, a Lebanese person who lived close to Israel, a Palestinian? Is it perhaps the youth of the suburbs of Paris, who feel like strangers to the point of rioting and destroying their own neighborhoods? Is it perhaps the working class of the U.S.A. who aren't sure what Medicare and Social Security will be doing in 20 years?

I guess all of us feel like strangers and exiles at times - abandoned by our leaders, our options, our families, our bodies. Yet here we are. Sometimes the better country we seek is the country we are still in, and we long for it to transform into a homeland, a place we belong. In my life, as an American, I feel overall as though I am valued, I am educated, I am fed. This is my homeland. So, I want to go help others feel more like that. I can't do it all at once, so my aspirations for the coming years are to empower the Chinese university students in their English skills and show them how it can affect the rest of their lives. Now, who will feel more like a stranger in that particular situation is another matter :)

Photo by Gavin Hellier/Getty Images

Language hints - "just say it really fast!"

2007-04-14T03:12:00.000+08:00

In the past few years I have been given the same advice about completely different situations of speaking foreign languages. The first was from our campus minister, K.B., who said it when trying to read old testament names. The second was from a friend, M.W., who spent a year in China teaching English.

So, about both ancient Hebrew and Chinese, if you don't know how to say something, just go ahead and say it really fast. Apparently it gets the point across!

We have just sent in our no-fee passport applications and visa applications to the Peace Corps travel office (SATO). Next up is sending updated resumes and aspiration statements to the office in China, so that they can be introduced to our amazing skill sets and dynamic personalities (haha). Then we will be waiting for a travel packet in order to schedule travel, and some more medical junk (PRC requires volunteers to have a chest x-ray and EKG, or so I have heard).

Cheers!

U.S. Foreign Policy - the reductionistic picture

2007-04-12T00:58:00.000+08:00

I recently found this video on YouTube that directly compares the reach of the U.S. Peace Corps and the U.S. military. It omits a great portion of the U.S. foreign policy with respect to working with the U.N., immigration policy, etc. However, the numbers are interesting. Enjoy!

Invited

2007-04-07T04:50:00.000+08:00

Hello all:

We have officially been invited to go to P.R. China on July 1st (leave for training on June 28th)! We have accepted the invitation, and are now working on passport applications (even if we already have them), visa applications, aspiration statements, and updated resumes.

After having considered all of the implications of this choice, we decided to take it. It was not our first choice, as our preferences were "warm climate," but it does offer many benefits, such as living in a sizable population and staying within academia. Some implications were discovered after accepting, but those, at this point, are unavoidable. So, I will keep updating this as our progress continues.

As of right now, the plans are to give away lots of our belongings and put the rest in storage, as well as leave the dog with my parents, sell the car, and put critical things into a safety deposit box. This list will grow exponentially, but those are the big picture plans.

(got those characters from On-Line Chinese Tools)

2007-04-04T20:26:00.000+08:00

Invite on the WAY!

2007-04-03T23:21:00.000+08:00

"Hello Allison and Nick – good news! We received word from Post and they would like to invite you! I am FedExing an invitation today to your home of record:

XXXX NW XXrd Blvd Apt XXX

Gainesville, FL 32605 UNITED STATES

Please let me know if this is not the correct address!

Regards,

Y---"

Medical Clearance - Completed!

2007-04-02T09:51:00.000+08:00

Hi everyone:

We are finally medically clear!! It has been mere 312 days since we were nominated. Feels like a huge weight has been lifted. The weight of taking our whole medical histories and skills and life experiences and charting them out. Were we gather information for some sort of memoir, we'd be set. Maybe some other time.

We spoke with our placement officer Ms. H--- on Friday, and she was very helpful in telling us the next steps. We are good in her eyes to be invited to China soon, but China is one of the countries that requires pre-approval for invitation. That translates to Ms. H--- e-mailing our resumes to "post" (which we believe to be mainland China) to see if our skill sets qualify us in their eyes. Nick is a shoo-in because of his current job, but I am the wild card, as I have TA experience and some tutoring, as well as some language classes, but nothing on par with training in teaching or extensive experience. Should that fall through, we may be placed elsewhere in Asia with Nick still teaching English and me being a sanitation engineer (read 'build latrines and teach people about them') or we go to Africa where I can teach math, and Nick would do English or community development. I think in general we are still hopeful for China, as that has come to be our expectation.

The language and culture of China are to us at this point a labyrinth. We know very little, but want to learn much. One thing I am a little concerned about is the perception of Christianity there. I do wonder if there are some similarities between a post-modern Western world and a post-communist, spiritually starved Eastern World. We need to read up on this big time. Here is some introductory reading - Christianity in China on Wikipedia, The War for China's Soul in Time Magazine, Christianity is China's New Social Revolution in the London Telegraph.

Anyway, here goes:

We are medically cleared!!!

The Third Degree

2007-03-28T08:40:00.000+08:00

Hi everyone! Today Nick and I went to the Health Department to get our 'childhood immunizations' up-to-date for the initial Physical Examination for the Peace Corps medical clearance process (before we get invited anywhere specific). Well, what I thought might be a 20-minute give-us-the-shots-and-sign-the-paper turned into a 2 hour lecture on all possible health mishaps that could plague us anywhere in Asia while living there for two years. Now, it was helpful, and we learned that we should think independently of the recommendations of the Peace Corps for health precautions, but! We had to learn about everything from people diseases to vector-borne diseases to water filtration, while animated nurse C---- made clicking noises, dug for pamphlets from the bottom of her shelf, and threatened us if Nick doesn't get his immunization records from highschool so she can put together a comprehensive record for him (his was lost somewhere in college). Anyway, we escaped with the necessary shots (polio for us both, Td booster for Nick), and tonight faxed in all remaining paperwork that we had control over. That consisted basically of short essays about medical incidents in the past, nothing big. We are waiting on some paperwork from a counselor that Nick saw 3 years ago, then we will have it all in.

At that time there will be huge annoying gifs flashing at you from this page that we have it all in, and are awaiting medical clearance :)

Wish us luck!

Physical Exam results received

2007-03-22T21:18:00.000+08:00

Medical Clearance Progress

2007-03-14T21:54:00.000+08:00

So, just to start off, I'd like to dispel a myth. That myth is that joining the Peace Corps is essentially free. That is not true for anyone I have spoken with or the hundreds of anecdotes I have read online over the past year. Maybe someday I will disclose what it is costing us monetarily, but you can likely guess from the following list of requirements (Peace Corps covers only $60 for dental and about $150 for the physical):

Feb 27:
-Nick and Alison are sent medical packets.

March 2:
-Nick and Alison receive medical packets.

March 5:
-Alison gets dental x-rays and cleaning.

March 12:
-Nick gets dental x-rays, cleaning, and examination.
-Alison gets dental examination.
-Nick gets general physical, additional questioning, TB skin test, and 6 blood tests.
-Alison gets general physical, additional questioning, TB skin test, and 6 blood tests.

March 14:
-Alison and Nick go back to get skin TB tests read.

March 15:
-Nick gets additional tests done for lipid profile, fasting blood glucose, and thyroid studies.

March 19:
-Nick and Alison get all lab results back and check over forms for any omissions.

March 20:
-Alison faxes in 2 medical packets (with the exception of immunization forms), and an addendum still be filled out for Nick
-Alison faxes in 4 reimbursement requests (that's $435 coming back!)
-Alison faxes in 2 dental packets
-Alison mails in dental x-rays

March 26:
-Nick gets two fillings and two wisdom teeth out.
-Alison receives calls for additional short paragraphs and pathology from flags on medical report. Is informed that these would be nice but are not required for clearance.
-Alison goes to UF and finds Nick's shot records from the student healthcare center.

March 27:
-Alison and Nick go to the health department for a polio vaccination/Td booster.
-Alison faxes in the last 2 pieces of the medical packets - immunization forms.
-Alison and Nick fax in short essays about previous health incidents, including mole removal and use of an inhaler for a short time (Alison's packet is now complete).

March 28:
-Nick faxes in paperwork from a previous counselor, and his packet is complete.

March 30:
-Medically cleared!!!

End of April:
-we get invited

June 28:
-We go to staging on the west coast.

Well, those last few are our hopes anyway. Wish us luck.

Medical Kits Sent

2007-02-28T22:50:00.000+08:00

Timeline update

2007-02-25T10:21:00.000+08:00

Here is a brief update of our timeline - it is moving again!!

Feb 15th, 2007 - we fax in Nick's personal statement and 4 references regarding three years of alcohol sobriety

Feb 20th, 2007 - our screening nurse (we have a name!) emailed Nick and said that someone would contact him to set up his phone interview to go along with the personal statement and references

Feb 24th, 2007 - phone interview complete! the interviewer was positive, and we should hear something within the week about getting the medical packets.

cheers!

Another step forward

2007-02-20T23:44:00.000+08:00

We had a great time in St. Augustine last weekend with David and Krissy, and on the 15th of February, Nick faxed in 4 letters of reference and his own personal statement. That should begin our medical review process officially. Once we are cleared on that issue, they should send us medical packets right away! One of the screening nurses that I e-mailed said that our file would be distributed to a screening nurse this week (02/20-23/07). Nick received an e-mail saying that they also need to do a 1.5-2 hr telephone interview about it. So, we wait!

There are zero Peace Corps volunteers

2007-02-07T01:29:00.000+08:00

check out the stats

New Year Updates

2007-01-28T01:17:00.000+08:00

First of all, we are still planning to join the Peace Corps. There have been many, many things that have piqued our interest for next year, including jobs, starting a family, etc. In the end, we decided that for now, our draw toward international teaching and living experience was stronger than the desire to pursue better jobs, start a PhD, have a child, and all that.

That being said, Nick has requested some letters of reference and started writing his personal statement. When that gets faxed in, we should be receiving our medical packets promptly! My guess is that will arrive sometime in the 1st or 2nd week of February. I will try to update this blog as we get medically cleared, so that others can use this as a reference for their own medical clearance.

Alison (me) is still working diligently at the lab, but now with an eye toward which projects should be closed down completely, and which I should pass on to others. It's a new feeling. I've been working here for 3.5 years now, and the workspace feels like an extension of me, or at least my hands and eyes. It will be hard to leave.

Nick is teaching away, and the FCAT is soon, so he is busy. He has grown to like some of his kids, but he is also considering pursuing a job at Ambleside Ocala at some point. Hopefully Todd will set up a dinner with the founders, and it will be easy when we come back ;)

Also, while looking around the other day, I came across this "furnishing," the DutchTub. Nick and I were talking about whether it embodies the concept of Bobos in Paradise, or whether it is a legitimate product (though expensive) that urges people to enjoy nature and friends more naturally, i.e. without consuming electricity or using chlorine like standard hot tubs.

Anyway, wish us luck!

The fam

2006-11-17T03:10:00.000+08:00

Hey guys:

Still no pictures of me or Nick. Who wants to be the person so concerned about documenting things that the things themselves become less meaningful? Not me, at least not yet.

However, my brother is doing fun things, like competing with the Harvard Freshman Lightweight Crew Team. He is the one below in the blue hat-

brief update

2006-10-06T05:30:00.000+08:00

Hi guys:

Sorry, no real updates for awhile. We are busy learning how to work full time and still have friends :) I am hoping to take more pictures of our life, as I have not really taken any in the past year. Here is one that someone else took, of me in the lab.