Shelby in Xi'an

still shaking

2008-05-15T11:44:00.003+08:00

As the death toll of the earthquake keeps rising, I'm so so thankful that everyone I know is OK, but deeply mournful for those who are not. This disaster hit a lot closer to home than most; I felt the same rumbles that felled buildings and killed thousands of people who, just like me, were going about their lives with no expectation that something so disastrous would happen so suddenly.

Xi'an escaped mostly unscathed. I have heard that a crane fell and killed three construction workers and I have seen several slightly damaged buildings, but thankfully that seems to be the extent of it. People are shaken up and paranoid, but they're sleeping inside again.

I wish I could say the same for all of China, but what felt like a 5.8 earthquake here in Xi'an was a 7.9 in western Sichuan. Too many lives and homes have been lost. Thankfully my friend Meg in Chengdu is OK, both because she is a dear friend and wonderful person and also because she is working hard to help some of the people most affected to recover from this disaster. Meg's time thus far in China has been spent doing microfinance and community development with a rabbit farming village west of Chengdu, and she is able to use her skills and contacts at this crucial time to help villagers in the affected region begin the process of rebuilding. If you are able, please donate money to support this earthquake relief project. Every little bit will help.

evidence that the chalk artists are well and working hard

2008-05-13T16:57:00.006+08:00

After hearing from several commenters on my previous earthquake posts that there is a group of Americans here in Xi'an right now doing chalk art, I set out on a mission to find them. It was a pretty easy mission, since I got a comment telling me exactly where they were and it was the first place I was planning to check anyways.

So I showed up at Ginwa Plaza in the middle of the afternoon, found the chalk artists hard at work on their drawings, and interrupted them to tell them that I, Random Stranger, had received worried messages on my blog from some of their people back home. The delighted shock on Cyndi's face honestly made me tear up a little, but I'm excessively empathetic.

Paul, Marie, and Brenda: I spoke with Cyndi and Lori, and can now offer authoritative proof that they are alive and well after the earthquake:

Cyndi with her Superman-in-progress

Lori Escalera and her 3D Monkey King

There were lots of people crowding around watching the work in progress.
(That brown building in the background is actually a Starbucks, so I imagine they had no trouble finding coffee after the 4 am aftershock evacuation.)

The chalk art is being commissioned by Century Ginwa Shopping Center to celebrate their 10th anniversary. I'm looking forward to going back later in the week and seeing what the finished product looks like. And it sounds like the chalk artists have had pretty limited communication with the outside world, so I was more than happy to be a go-between. There are few better things in this world than meeting friendly people and making their days a little brighter.

Update: Still Alive

2008-05-13T07:07:00.002+08:00

As far as I know, everyone in Xi'an is fine.

In fact, the city feels more alive than ever before. Since the earthquake, there have been tons of people outside. This has been a little disconcerting, as I'm sure they know things I don't. We received cryptic warnings last night of a second earthquake to hit between 10 pm and midnight. I tried to find more info online, but all I could find were a few foreign news articles saying that there had been a warning posted on a Chinese news site, but it had been taken down and the government wasn't saying anything.

Here on campus, there were people camped out on the badminton courts, in the gardens, seemingly anywhere but inside. I found Lily studying for the GRE in the hotel lobby, but when I asked her what she knew, she said she'd heard from her dad in Shanghai that the rumors were false. She was mostly in the hotel lobby because it was a quiet place to study away from her jabbering roommates, though she figured being on the first floor wouldn't hurt in the event of more aftershocks. She recommended that I stay up until at least midnight, but I was far too exhausted to feel that paranoid.

If there were aftershocks at 4 am, I definitely didn't notice them. Further proof that I can sleep through anything.

My morning survey from my bedroom window reveals that there are STILL people camped out on the badminton courts, though not near as many as last night. Lily said that one of the boys dormitories on campus never seemed especially structurally sound in the first place; her labmates decided to sleep in the lab rather than on the 17th floor. Otherwise, things look mostly normal. It appears to be a nice sunny day, and I am about to be late for Chinese class.

But first, a message to the commenters on my last post: Hello strangers! Where can I find these street painters? I just graduated from college a year ago with an art major, so I can't sit around on campus all day while there are street painters somewhere in the city. I'll be at Chinese class all morning, but Mission: Street Painters will commence at 1400. I'm more than happy to ferry messages between you and your loved ones if I can find them.

EARTHQUAKE!

2008-05-12T19:33:00.002+08:00

This afternoon at about 2:30, as I was laying in bed reading in between classes on the new campus, my stomach started to rumble. I thought maybe my lunch hadn't totally agreed with me until I noticed that the rumbling had grown, and soon the bed was shaking, the windows were shaking, the walls and floors were shaking. I have seen cartoons of earthquakes before and always thought that the undulating appearance of everything was a comic exaggeration, but it's not. That's exactly what it looked and felt like. I grabbed my laptop and stood in the doorway, a supposedly safer place. At that point I wasn't about to try to evacuate the building, what with everything moving as it was. After a few minutes the floor stopped moving, and a few more minutes after that the lights hanging from the ceiling stopped swinging, so I settled back in to my free afternoon.

Of course, Kitty came in about half an hour later to get some stuff and check if I was there and informed me that everyone else on campus had evacuated every building and were all standing outside waiting for further instruction. After going outside, Hou Laoshi (the teacher in charge of my freshman students) pointed out two huge cracks in a nearby academic building.

All afternoon classes were canceled, so I watched Kitty's students continue their game of kickball while we waited for more news. The news was mostly inconclusive, but eventually we found a student who had heard from Ma Jing that our evening classes would be canceled as well, so Kitty and I came home on the 6 o'clock bus.

This was my first earthquake, and apparently it was a 7.8 on the Richter scale in northwestern Sichuan province where it originated. The earthquake was felt as far away as Bangkok. Every time I check the news, it sounds worse. 4 kids dead in a collapsed elementary school in Chongqing. Somebody crushed by a fallen water tower. 900 students trapped in a high school in Sichuan. The latest confirmed death toll is 107, but estimates are up to 5000.

We've heard rumors of another quake coming within the next two hours, but the government hasn't released any official warning, and I have few sources of information. Cell phones mostly aren't working, and I haven't had any natural disaster units yet in Chinese class. Wish me luck.

my silkmoth, his sad life, and its eventual improvement

2008-05-09T18:10:00.005+08:00

This semester, I have been tutoring three 10-year olds once a week. Every Sunday evening, the kids greet me outside Anna's apartment complex. Sam gestures in the open air and says, "Teacher, come in! This way please!" "Teacher, please go first!" "Teacher, welcome to your home!" His grasp of English may not be amazing, but his hospitality is top-notch. Jinlin usually arrives a little late, which gives Anna's mom plenty of time to bring me tea and talk to me in way more fast Chinese than I can understand. She thinks my Chinese skills are better than they are because I've learned which parts of her questions to repeat in order to give a satisfactory answer.

Our hour-long tutoring session usually starts with textbook dialogues and devolves into the kids drawing pictures on the whiteboard saying, "Teacher, what's this?", Anna using new vocabulary to insult Sam, Sam getting annoyed with Anna and trying to overtake everyone else's turns to speak, and Anna turning any conversation into one about her rabbit, who then must make an appearance. Our first lesson couldn't begin until Anna had shown me her rabbit (who is either incredibly tolerant or has learned that resistance is futile), turtle, fish, and silkworms. One week there were tadpoles. She tried to give me some, until Jinlin's mother convinced her that this was impractical since I live in a hotel.

I usually can't make it out without some sort of gift. The first two weeks Anna wanted to play songs for me on the piano after class. Her mother has often sent me home with snacks, including a Chinese donut thing, various candies, an entire bunch of bananas, and two lemons. Last week there were no snacks, but Anna gave me a silkworm pupa.

Yes, a silkworm pupa. Her worms, whose weekly progress I had been monitoring as they grew and munched mulberry leaves, had all spun their cocoons and gone into hiding. Anna handed one to me and told me to put it in a container with a napkin on top when I got home. I tried to ask her if I needed to feed it eventually, but every time I asked "What does it eat?" she answered "Yes." So I put it in a bowl with a napkin on top, and waited to see what would happen.

A few days later when I checked on my silkpod, there was a creepy silkmoth standing next to it, and a weird trail of something that looks like blood coming out of the cocoon:

Research reveals that it is not blood, but enzymes that the moth uses to make a hole in the cocoon. Research also reveals that silkworms are pretty fascinating creatures. They aren't actually worms at all. They are caterpillars, and are perhaps the most domesticated creature, since they are now completely reliant on humans for survival. Each cocoon is made of a continuous thread of silk almost a kilometer long, and the annual world production of silk filament could make more than 300 round trips to the sun.
Unfortunately for silkmoths, research also reveals that adult silkmoths cannot fly or eat; all they do is reproduce and die within two weeks. Sad life. Even sadder: If I had wanted to harvest the silk, I should have BOILED the silkmoth to death inside the silkpod so that it wouldn't cut the fibers on its way out.

Instead, I got a sad and lonely little pet. When I lamented to Lily about his loneliness and inability to perform his only remaining function, she recommended that I ask Anna for another silkmoth, but I wasn't quite sure how to go about telling a 10-year-old, "Hey, my silkmoth is horny and needs a woman."

Luckily, Anna is wise to facts of silkmoth life, and after class tonight she told me that I actually need two silkmoths. I took a lady silkmoth, in the hopes that my guess about the sex of the original was correct. And I'm pretty sure it was, because he perked up immediately upon the arrival of his new companion and began flapping his wings nonstop and trying to figure out how to do what he was supposed to do.

Hopefully I'll have silkworm babies someday soon.

(If you're interested in learning more about the mating habits of insects, I recommend checking out Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno, a series of short films in which she wears hilarious bug costumes and demonstrates their bizarre sexual practices. I can't watch it yet from China, but I've heard good things. And don't worry Grandma, it's not really porno, just a funny Italian lady pretending to be an insect!)

Oft trifft West

2008-04-21T07:19:00.002+08:00

I just stumbled across a project called Oft trifft West by Yang Liu, a Chinese artist living in Germany, which attempts to explain several differences between Chinese and German culture. I'm not German, but close enough:

This is a obviously a somewhat simplistic view of things, but sometimes it really does feel like this. Especially when you know you need to leave China two weeks before your contract ends to attend one of your best friends' weddings and would like to get proper permission to do so. I've been asking questions since I got here, but probably won't arrive at the answer until a week or two before I leave the country. I'm confident that I will eventually get the permission I need, but there are several hoops I must jump through and people I must appeal to before that can happen. In any case, I've booked a plane ticket and I'll cut and run if I have to.

CCTV strikes again

2008-04-19T15:59:00.007+08:00

This morning I was reading an article about the promise of concentrated solar power, and now CCTV International is teaching me about the Yang Sui, a mirror mentioned in the article that was used during the Zhou dynasty to start fires with concentrated sunlight. This is a rare moment of convergence between CCTV and any other media I may consume.

CCTV International can be pretty amusing though. Since I turned the TV on a little bit ago while sorting my laundry, I have seen:

several westerners in China saying what a shame it is that the Olympics have become so politicized
a Chinese language-learning program focusing on words associated with ping pong
a comparison of three of the most popular skin-whitening products
interviews with several foreign students in Beijing who will volunteer at the Olympics
a stock car race taking place in Shanghai
an instrumental cover of One Night in Beijing (perhaps our favorite Chinese song!) played on the erhu, the pipa, and the dizi

I'm feeling inspired to bring my computer into the living room more often.

still alive!

2008-04-09T02:23:00.005+08:00

In the weeks since this semester started, I have received several emails including questions like "Are you still alive?" and "Will you ever blog again?" The answer to both questions, especially the former, is a resounding YES! I am alive and quite well, though I'm afraid that perfectionist tendencies have kept me from blogging when I still haven't posted pictures from October (now a full six months ago).

To remedy this situation, I have finally posted pictures so that I can resume blogging. I have all of October (including National Day week), November, and December ready for your perusal, with more of the stories behind the pictures coming up soon.

Also coming up soon: photos and stories from my nearly-two-month vacation, and updates on life since!

the eye of the storm

2008-01-21T16:35:00.000+08:00

Today is a strange, in-between day, the eye of my 7-week vacation storm. Yesterday I said goodbye to Steve at the Xi'an airport; when I met him there 7 days earlier, I was coming straight from a week and a half in Taiwan. Tomorrow I will fly to Chengdu to visit my dear friend Meg, in a week I will fly to Bangkok, and in a month I will finally return to Xi'an. Today I am calm and still. Today I am waiting for laundry to dry, trying to eat all the gingersnaps from Mom and leftover roast duck, catching up with my inbox and RSS reader, and enjoying the peace and quiet of my apartment before I jump into another adventure.

Having Steve visit was wonderful. I don't think I fully appreciated how good it was at the beginning, having just spent an also-wonderful time in Taiwan (pictures and stories to come, someday!), but I certainly appreciated it yesterday upon returning to my empty apartment. Despite it being frigid and snowing in Xi'an all week (making my plane 3.5 hours late last Sunday!), Steve being jetlagged (but not near as bad as I remember being when I arrived), and me being somewhat sick (I caught something in Taiwan and am just now getting over the cough), we managed to see a fair amount of Xi'an, eat a lot of good food, hang out with some of my friends who were still around, and mostly just enjoy getting to spend time together for a change.

Here we are in the midst of some delicious hotpot:

Right now I'm staying bundled up indoors -- it is STILL snowing in Xi'an, for the 10th day running, and will potentially turn into a blizzard in the next few days. I've heard it's the most snow they've had here in 20 years. Of course, it doesn't remotely compare to the blizzard I experienced at home last winter, but I'm glad to be heading south soon. Right now I'm researching potential options for beaches and maybe even a scuba diving course in Thailand, and thinking warm thoughts.

seeing stars

2007-12-31T00:21:00.000+08:00

I just read a heartbreaking journal entry written by one of my students. For Thanksgiving, I asked them to write about what they are most thankful for (I know that was awhile ago, but I only collected journals twice during the semester and am just finishing the last little stack of them tonight). This student wrote that he is most thankful for the sky. He wrote about laying around watching the sky as a child in the countryside, counting stars with his grandfather on summer nights, then wrote about how the sky is grey now and he can't see the stars under all the city lights. He is thankful for the sky because it gave him a happy childhood, showed him the beauty of nature, and teaches him that some things are very rare and easily broken and should be cherished. "I have lost the blue sky, I don't want to lose other 'blue sky' any more."

Tonight walking to dinner with Jens and Sarah were talking about how I am still grading journals, since I can't bring myself to do them all at once and thus it seems like I am constantly grading them and have been grading them for ever. I mentioned how mind-numbing it can be to go through too many in a row, and we joked that I shouldn't let my students know that a little piece of my heart dies every time I have to grade a journal. Usually that is not true, but maybe it was for this one.

It can be easy to forget about the stars when you can't see them every night. I miss them. That was one of the most wonderful things about climbing Mount Hua (beginning of October, still haven't blogged about it, photos at least to come very soon!): I could see the stars, and they looked amazing.

So for the benefit of all of us, here is a photo of the Milky Way taken by my newspaper-photographer-turned-recreational-astronomer uncle:

(Don't steal his picture for anything other than personal use [i.e. looking at it and remembering how good life is; Uncle Jerry says "I find it gives me a sense of scale to any problems/frustrations"], but if you do, at least give credit and good karma to Jerry Telfer.)

In other news, I hope everyone has been enjoying the holiday season and is looking forward to another new year!

It was a little weird not being home for Christmas, but I had a lot of fun celebrating it here. Mostly it just felt like a completely different holiday, which was pretty exciting, though I'll look forward to having Christmas-as-I-know-it again next year. Still, there was lots of merriment and good food and good company and a small mountain of presents (my mom went a bit overboard -- thanks!!!), which is what any good holiday is made of (except for the presents -- a good holiday doesn't actually need presents).

I leave in three days for Taiwan, where I will spend a week and a half, followed by a week back in Xi'an and surrounding areas with Steve, followed by a solid month of travel to such exciting destinations as Chengdu, Thailand, and Cambodia (specifically, Angkor Wat!!). I'm hoping to do some serious blogging catch-up before I leave, as I'll obviously have a LOT more to say when I get back, but I can make no real guarantees. I'm also hoping to write all of the long emails I have been owing people (if you've sent me an email and haven't heard back, you know who you are), but again, no guarantees. So if you don't hear from me, know that I'm thinking of all of you and missing you and wishing we were together in real life so you wouldn't have to be tortured by my agonizingly slow blog and email response rates. I am 15 hours in the future and running out of time!

recycling and related thoughts

2007-12-18T22:05:00.000+08:00

Check out this video from China's Green Beat, which I recently discovered via TreeHugger:

Of course, I started seeing bicycles like this immediately after arriving in China -- I remember that one of the things that surprised me the most when I arrived jetlagged in Beijing 2.5 years ago on my scholar garden trip was the sheer quantity of things that could fit on one bicycle -- but I didn't realize right away how comprehensively all the trash is sorted. I asked Ma Jing awhile back if there was anywhere I could take my recycling, since the hotel maids just took everything with the trash. She said I didn't need to worry about it, that all the trash would get sorted and recycled. And now I know how.

I have mixed feelings about China's relationship to the environment. On one hand, China is burning massive amounts of coal and has surpassed U.S. carbon emissions (of course, it also has more than four times the population, and the U.S. is largely implicated in creating and perpetuating the pollution problem by relying on cheap consumer goods made in China). On the other hand, people in China use much less and re-use much more (see Kitty's blog for an example of re-use taken too far). It isn't about the environment as much as it is about what is viable in a highly populated developing country. And I worry about that word developing, because so many of the ways in which China is environmentally superior to the U.S. (smaller apartments in high-density mixed-use urban areas, lots of public transit and bicycles, fewer private cars, more repair and reuse of damaged goods rather than discarding and repurchasing, etc.) seem to be at odds with the consumer culture, dare I say the "American dream," that so much of the world aspires to, a culture and dream that have historically disregarded environmental protection in pursuit of economic growth.

I've been reading and thinking a lot about this lately. I've been following the news about the UN conference in Bali, where the Bush administration wouldn't agree to set targets for greenhouse gas reductions and doesn't want to agree to anything if China and India won't agree to limit their emissions as well. I don't think that economic growth and environmentalism must necessarily be at odds (in the long run, they certainly aren't), but I don't see how we can expect China to develop in the most environmental way possible if we aren't willing to make amends for the fact that we didn't.

And it doesn't matter whether or not you believe that global warming is happening and is caused by humans (though I certainly do) -- in any case, I don't think that we are entitled to consume so much more than our fair share of resources, and I don't think we should rely on energy sources that create so much pollution when there are other potential options, and I don't think that having so much stuff makes us any happier.

So I'm trying to stop being a hypocrite and start doing my part in being kinder to our planet and the other people who are living on it. I drinking boiled tap water stored in reused bottles instead of buying bottled water. I am taking the stairs. I am only washing my clothes when they really need it, and don't have a dryer. I am wearing more layers instead of turning up the heat. I am being vigilant about lightswitches. I am not taking showers when I don't need them. I am walking and taking the bus whenever possible instead of taking a taxi. I am saving and reusing whatever I can -- bottles, bags, papers that my students have written notes to me on one side of. I spent three weeks in class talking with my students -- future airplane designers, weapons designers, members of the communist party -- about environmental issues, about what we can do as individuals, about what China can do as a country, and about the relationship between the environment and the economy. I am not buying things I won't fully use. I am trying to keep educating myself and keep getting better, though I have a lot further to go and sometimes feel limited by my circumstances, especially when language barriers keep me from making more-informed choices.

Whew! That turned into a much longer post than the "check out this video" I was intending, but I guess there is a lot to say.

Christmas preparations, China style

2007-12-16T22:23:00.000+08:00

Last night Sarah and I attempted to make gingerbread men, which was certainly a comedy of errors given our attempts to make do with the ingredients and kitchen resources available to us in China.

This started with an afternoon adventure to Metro, a German chain paradise of imported goodies that we had heard about but not yet seen. I was willed a Metro card with a blurry picture of a white female with brown hair by a previous Whitman in China teacher, so we could have used that to get in, but Ali managed to get me a letter in Chinese from the university that said something to the effect of, "Shelby is a teacher at our university; give her a damn Metro card!" It worked, well enough to get Metro cards for Jens and Sarah too. Metro is huge and apparently sells everything -- mostly things we could get at Ren Ren Le without the long bus ride across town, but we were on a mission for various Christmas recipe spices and baking ingredients, and a side-mission for cheese and gin.

We couldn't find all the spices we were looking for. There is seemingly no nutmeg in China, and we found outrageously expensive vanilla beans but no vanilla extract. No baking soda either, though perhaps that is around and we just don't know where to look. This means no eggnog and a carefully selected fudge recipe.

The cheese, however was plentiful. I almost bought a 5 kg brick of cheddar which was misleadingly labeled as costing 77 kuai (less than $10), when in fact that was the price per kilogram. Of course it had to be -- no way could imported cheese really be that cheap -- but I had even asked somebody who worked there and she made it sound like that was the price for the whole thing, so I carried it around the store for awhile until finding out it was really too expensive and abandoning it. I did get a little package of Australian white cheddar though, which claims to be "sharp and bitey." Can't wait to try it.

Anyways. Gingerbread men. Sarah had a recipe from her mother, which called for very British things like treacle (which we've decided is probably the same as molasses) and golden syrup (which is made from sugar cane juice). When Sarah first described golden syrup it sounded a lot like simple syrup, so we tried to make some of that as a substitute, but ended up with a sugary disaster when Sarah didn't heed my warnings that we should keep the heat low and it probably would never get as thick as golden syrup. Ooops. Take two, I just skipped making syrup and went to the next part of the recipe, where the syrup was to be combined with the non-existent treacle, brown sugar, and butter. This seemed successful, but the measurements were off somewhere, because when we mixed it with the flour and ginger it was way too dry to possibly resemble a dough. So we added more, ended up with a sticky mess, added a ton more flour as I eventually worked my gingerbread-covered hands into something that seemed the right consistency. So we thought we were doing well, and proceeded to roll out the dough and cut out people and Christmas trees, as well as other great shapes such as a Christmas rhino, Christmas anvil, and Christmas giraffe.

Of course, then we had to bake the things in Sarah's oven, which is basically a glorified toaster oven. The first batch ended up extraordinarily hard and crunchy, but we took the second batch out sooner and they were mildly better. Sarah tried to decorate one with the "frosting" we had picked up at Ren Ren Le. After using it and inspecting the packaging in greater detail, we discovered that it was actually strawberry-flavored sweetened condensed milk that came in a tube. Oooops. We didn't make it through all of the dough last night, as it was going on 2 am, but I suppose we made a lot of mistakes and discoveries that Sarah can benefit from when she tries to make another batch for her Christmas party next weekend.

I'll be making fudge. I have all the ingredients, but don't trust myself to make fudge this far in advance and still have it around for the party. Steve is in Colorado and ate dinner with my mom the other night, who brought him lots of cookies and fudge, which reminded me how good fudge is and how I will have to make it myself if I want to eat it anytime soon.

I apologize for the detailed technicality of the above kitchen rambling. I miss cooking! I really do. The one major downside to living in a hotel is that my kitchen is pretty insufficient, meaning that I have no stovetop and no oven. I've been getting pretty creative with my rice-cooker -- who knew that you could hard-steam an egg, or steam frozen lamb meat? -- but there are a lot of things that I just can't make. Of course, there is little need to cook, considering how plentiful, inexpensive, quick, and delicious all of the restaurants around here are, but every time I think of something I want to make I am again thwarted by my kitchen. (Also by lack of ingredients. I made an amazing raspberry-lime pie last year; there are no raspberries OR limes [probably my two favorite fruits] in China.)

In other news, the Christmas season is in full swing here. I absolutely wasn't expecting that, but Ren Ren Le has been filled with Christmas decorations and music since the end of November, and lots of other stores and restaurants have been slowly following suit. There are Christmas trees with lights and ornaments. There are big cardboard Santa faces on every hotel door. There is Christmas music sung in Chinese. It will be interesting to see how Christmas is actually celebrated -- I've heard rumblings about a Christmas Eve downtown that is part Mardi Gras, part New Year's Eve, part 4th of July parade, and very little like any Christmas Eve I have ever experienced (which have mostly consisted of Christmas books, candlelight church services, and the traditional family Christmas Eve chili and Pepsi). It should be an interesting evening.

Here is my own little Christmas tree, courtesy of Aunt Marita and Amazon.com:

Apparently my mom saw the same thing at Barnes & Noble, thought it would be perfect for me, forgot that Aunt Marita had sent me one, and shipped it in my Christmas box, which will hopefully arrive soon. Oooops! Free Christmas tree for Kitty!

More to come soon, with lots of photos. At least I've realized that the fact that I'm way behind on blogging should NOT keep me from blogging until I've caught up.

Be Careful!

2007-11-04T20:33:00.000+08:00

Check out this somewhat ominous, though quite wise, sign that I saw today while walking around campus with Lily:
This brings up a few important topics:

The weather here has been awesome recently, as you can see. It has been clear and sunny, and often around 60 degrees, which seems quite warm for late October / early November. The beginning of October was dreadfully cold and rainy and I wasn't sure that I was going to make it until November 15 when the heat comes on. I had several nights where I woke up shivering, even bundled up in a sweatshirt and fleece pants under an extra blanket, before Kitty figured out that our air conditioning units can also make some heat. Lately that has been entirely unnecessary, but the radiators will turn on in 11 days regardless of what the weather is doing.
There are some excellent signs in China. I could fill a whole blog just with photos of amusing English translations I've seen around the city, IF I weren't so used to them by now that I rarely take photos of them anymore. We saw a great one last night on our way between the bowling alley and a hotpot restaurant. It was underneath the Chinese name for a clothing store, and said something to the effect of "They're really popular at the moment." Guess it can't last. There is another amazing sign on campus that I keep meaning to take a photo of, because in Chinese it only has 8 characters but in English it has an absolutely astounding number of words, and I am baffled as to how they could say the same thing.
I have been being careful and cherishing life. I've been thinking and reading and talking a LOT about environmentalism and sustainability recently, and that has something to do with it. I'll write a lot more about that when I have time to devote a whole post to it. In the meantime, you shan't go entirely empty-handed; I have uploaded a ton of photos from my first month here, meaning that at least my photo uploading has caught up with my blogging, even if neither of them has caught up with me.

so much for the Great Firewall

2007-11-04T11:36:00.000+08:00

It seems that the Great Firewall of China may be falling down. Not only is YouTube back (it ha disappeared a week or two ago), but now I can access most blogs without going through Anonymouse!

In other news, I have been eating a LOT of hotpot lately and life is good. Will update more soon.

What I've been doing while not blogging

2007-11-01T16:18:00.000+08:00

Life here is turning out to be constantly busy, such that new adventures and stories are always happening and I am finding very little time to write them all down. I know it's important that I record my thoughts and experiences, both so all of you can know what is going on with me and so that I can fully process them and have something to look back on one day when I get nostalgic about it, but doing everything tends to take precedence over writing about it. It's hard to chain myself to my keyboard when there are journals to grade, lessons to plan, delicious meals to eat, Chinese classes to attend, buses to ride, people to talk to, ping pong and badminton games to play, mountains to climb, English speaking contests to MC, etc., etc.. (Admittedly, I've also spent a lot of time on my computer reading the AV Club, No Impact Man, and things sent to me by DailyLit, but I digress.)

I've been doing the math and it turns out that though I'm only teaching 10 hours a week, there are 40 scheduled hours a week in which I'm required to be somewhere:

26 hours on or traveling to or from the new campus:

10 hours teaching

6 hours on the bus

4 hours of office hours
2 hours eating dinner with students

4 hours of lunch and doing whatever we want in the foreign teacher apartment (which for several weeks included at least an hour of tutoring a few of my students for speech competitions, but those are over now)

14 hours of Chinese class

I started going to the Chinese classes offered for the international students at NPU a week or two ago after realizing that I wasn't really learning much Chinese on my own due to my lack of motivation to sit down and study. In fact, I was probably a lot better at Chinese right at the end of June when my intensive course at CSU ended. Since then, characters have been slowly slipping out of my brain, and then I got to China and realized that everything here is written in simplified characters anyways (I learned traditional). I didn't go to the classes here for the first few weeks because they started at the very beginning and I didn't want to do that again, but I think starting a few weeks in was a good choice. The pace here is much slower than the pace of my intensive course this summer, but we've been spending a lot more time on tones and pronunciation, which is helpful, and we're using a different book with different vocab in a different order, so I'm still learning new things. Most of all, it's just helpful to have Chinese study time in my schedule, and going to class is inspiring me to spend some more time studying on my own as well.

I still feel like my Chinese is abysmal, but I'm learning and people generally understand what I'm trying to say. One of my students told me the other day that my pronunciation of Xi'an was perfect – I was speaking English and saying something about being in Xi'an and he stopped me to say that I sounded Chinese when I said it. Of course, I'm still waiting for the day when my Chinese gets good enough that people stop complimenting me on it.

Chinese Mythbusters!

2007-10-11T15:31:00.000+08:00

Myth #1: All Chinese people are short. WRONG! If Yao Ming wasn't enough proof, behold the following:
Our new pal Tang is 2.02 meters tall and used to be a professional volleyball player for China. He became a professional athlete at the age of 14, spent 10 years traveling around playing volleyball, and is now a junior at NPU. He compensates for his lack of junior high and high school education by being very charismatic and taking his professors out to dinner on the day before an exam. So I can't bust any “myths” about bribery and corruption in China yet, but he sure is tall!

MOONopoly

2007-10-10T23:36:00.000+08:00

When I last left off blogging it was around Mid-Autumn Day, so I suppose it's time to tell you about Mid-Autumn Night, which is really the important part, it being a lunar festival. Unfortunately we couldn't see the moon through the smog and clouds, so instead we stayed indoors and enjoyed the moon via Moonopoly, a game that is almost identical to Monopoly: Here & Now, with the notable addition of post-it note moons (thats the Chinese character for woman and a rabbit on the moon; go read the wikipedia article on Mid-Autumn Day if you want to know why).
(Monopoly: Here & Now is almost identical to Monopoly, except that you can be french fries or a labradoodle instead of a hat or some standard dog breed, and you can purchase such fine properties as Red Rocks [for all you CO folks] and the White House, only the 3rd most valuable property on the board.)

We also tried to enjoy mooncakes, though with the boxes of mooncakes we were given there was about a 1 in 4 shot that it would be delicious and a 75% chance of me making that face I was making in the picture I posted with my haircut. I can understand now how my students got sick of them so quickly. I still have 3 mooncakes left, so some of you might get lucky enough to have the mooncake experience.

I still exist!

2007-10-10T23:35:00.001+08:00

I know it's been a long time since I've updated, and I apologize for dropping off the face of the earth. I am still here, and alive and well! Life has been sufficiently busy and blogging hasn't always been my top priority, but in the interest of keeping in touch with everyone back home, I'm going to attempt to catch up with myself and stay caught up. So keep tuning in for a series of chronological posts about what I've been up to for the past two or three weeks, and send me comments or emails if you want to hear any stories in greater detail. Actually, send me comments or emails anyways, as I'd really like to hear how things are going on your end of the world! I feel like it's been a long time since I've talked to a lot of you. Let's get caught up.

my swanky new haircut

2007-09-28T21:44:00.000+08:00

Last Tuesday was a momentous day: my first professional haircut in years! Being as cheap and appearance-apathetic as I am, I probably only had 3 or 4 haircuts all the way through college, and I'm pretty sure that they were all done by various friends. Thanks again to everyone who ever cut my hair (especially Megan, who cut my hair last minute when I needed it for performance art!), but you're no professionals. Apparently the haircuts that Kitty and I got were really expensive by Chinese standards, but they felt cheap to our wallets full of converted-from-US-dollar-money, and it is always nice to have someone else shampoo your hair and then tell you that your head is a funny shape and you would look better with some shorter layers in the back. She must have been right, because later that day while trying to look at some puppies for sale on the sidewalk, I was hassled by some man who really wanted to recruit me for modeling. I walked away, but I'm starting to feel poor enough (or anticipate feeling poor enough once I start traveling) that I might consider it next time.

And now for the results, since I told my little sister I would post more pictures and I know she won't let me get away without these ones.
Here is what I looked like the day of, after an extensive blow-drying routine that I will never ever care enough to reproduce:And here I am one week later eating some less-than-delicious mooncake:
More from Mid-Autumn Day to come!!

part of the Whitman family

2007-09-28T20:46:00.000+08:00

When I last left off on chronological blogging, I was telling you about how many Whitties were around 2 weekends ago. LOTS. In addition to the ex-teachers and Chinese medicinal scholars we spent time with on Friday, we also saw Karlis, a current Whitman junior who is studying abroad in Beijing this semester. Karlis was in Xi'an for the weekend with a group from his school before heading further west along the Silk Road. Karlis knew Ma Jing when she was at Whitman, so the four of us all met up in the afternoon outside the museum that Karlis had been visiting.
From there, we walked to the Big Goose Pagoda and walked around it for awhile, then took a bus toward Ma Jing's apartment, stopping for some candied hawberries on the way:
It turns out that Ma Jing lives only a block or two from the actual starting point of the Silk Road, where there is now a really cool statue of a caravan heading West: Ma Jing's husband (who does most of the family's cooking) made us a fabulous dinner with at least six different dishes, so we spent a long time at the Ma house (in Chinese names, the family name goes first, for anyone who was unaware) drinking tea and eating food with Ma Jing, her husband, and her son. At one point, we heard Ma Jing speak to her son referring to Kitty and I as his jiejie and Karlis as his gege – older sister and older brother in Chinese – so we felt very welcomed into the family. We might even get to tag along to a relative's wedding at some point, if the timing is right!
Here is a photo of Kitty and I with our didi (little brother) at lunch the day after Teachers' Day (note that Ma Jing gave me these first few photos and is thus not in any of them): It is nice, when I am so far away from home and the people I love, to still feel like part of something here. Life is good.

Happy Mid-Autumn Day!

2007-09-25T11:49:00.000+08:00

I interrupt my attempts at chronological blogging (I promise I'll catch up with myself someday!) to bring you this important broadcast:

Today is Mid-Autumn Day!!

It took me a little while to figure out what the Mid-Autumn Festival is all about, but after extensively grilling Ma Jing and some of my students, I think I have a pretty good idea. It's been compared to Thanksgiving, as it is a harvest festival and a time for family reunions and lots of food. It is also a time for MOON CAKES! I've been seeing moon cakes at every grocery and bakery since I got to China, and lately I've been seeing lots of people walking around with bags of moon cakes. Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the full moon of the eighth lunar month, so in addition to spending lots of time with your family, you are also supposed to hang out outside with them watching the full moon and eating lots of moon cakes. Just how many moon cakes, I'm not sure. I've asked some of my students, but it sounds like a lot of them are a little sick of moon cakes, as they grew up eating moon cakes for the full week or month surrounding Mid-Autumn Festival, not just on the day of.

I am the proud owner of 8 moon cakes in a fancy box, given to me by the waiban (foreign office). Kitty and Ali and I tried one from Kitty's box the other day and didn't really like it, but I guess they are all different inside, because I had one this morning and it was great!

MOON CAKE!!!

I did some further internet research on Mid-Autumn Festival, and found this:

For thousands of years, the Chinese people have related the vicissitudes of life to changes of the moon as it waxes and wanes; joy and sorrow, parting and reunion. Because the full moon is round and symbolizes reunion, the Mid-Autumn Festival is also known as the festival of reunion. All family members try to get together on this special day. Those who can not return home watch the bright moonlight and feel deep longing for their loved ones.

So tonight as I'm staring at the moon (if visible through the sometimes-smoggy sky) and eating my moon cakes with some of my friends here, I'll be thinking fondly of all my family and friends back home. I'm wearing my "Somebody Loves Me In Walla Walla" t-shirt to commemorate the event. I know most of you aren't in Walla Walla, but a few still are, and it seems like the correct sentiment. Happy Mid-Autumn Day!!!

Whitman in China indeed!

2007-09-21T16:48:00.000+08:00

Last weekend Xi'an was overrun with Whitties! By overrun, I mean that our ranks doubled from 3 to 6, which seems like quite a lot of us considering that Whitman is tiny and we're in the middle of China. (Note: According to the Chinese, we are in the northwest. If you look at a map of China though, you'll notice that we're pretty solidly in the center. It's just that not many people live further northwest. [Further note: "Not that many" is still a lot of people in China.])

Last Friday night Kitty and I went out to dinner with Chris and Katie, who graduated from Whitman in '03 and '04 respectively and spent two years teaching here, Pat, an '03 grad who is here studying Chinese medicine, and Lily, a Chinese friend. We went to a restaurant near campus whose name roughly translates to "Smelly Fish Bowl." The smelly fish bowl was really delicious, as was the fish-flavored eggplant and deep fried mushrooms. I'll definitely be going back. After dinner we went to KTV, which is where you rent out a little room for your own private karaoke party. Tons of fun. A lot of the songs are accompanied by ridiculous videos of people in the 80s doing things that have nothing to do with the song, and the room comes with a tambourine and two maracas.

We are the world! We are the children!

Kitty plays the tambourine.

Katie hears "My Humps" for the first time.

More about last weekend and Whitties being in China to come; now it's about time for another Friday night to begin!

and now the same views at night!

2007-09-21T14:47:00.000+08:00

And now, because I think everything looks cooler at night, here are the exact same views again:

some views from my bedroom window

2007-09-18T18:48:00.000+08:00

Last Thursday I woke up to the clearest, most beautiful day I had seen in Xi'an yet. I could see the mountains in the distance from my apartment!!! Of course, they barely show up in the pictures, but you can kind of see them if you think really hard about it.

Looking to the left/center (southsouthsoutheast):
Note the abundance of cranes (the national bird! Hahahaaaa...). All of China seems to be under construction. Also note the abundance of trees here on the old campus. Excellent.

And to the right (southwest):The building in the foreground has a big student cafeteria on the ground floor, just across the street!

The weather this past week has been wonderful, even a little too hot for my tastes -- about 80 degrees and sunny every day, and clear blue skies on the best days. I've been told that the pollution has been much less apparent lately than it usually is this time of year. October is supposed to be the worst. We'll see...

May you happy everyday!!!

2007-09-18T18:26:00.000+08:00

Last Monday, the start of our second week of teaching, was Teachers' Day here in China! Yippee! We were unaware of Teachers' Day's existence until we were handed cards and flowers upon our arrival to the new campus Monday morning, but it was a nice holiday to celebrate so shortly into our teaching careers. Here are all of my Teachers' Day spoils:

The gold thing is a pomegranate from Ma Jing, to wish us a fruitful year as teachers. The following day, she took us out to lunch and presented us with Teachers' Day cards signed by all of our Highlights students. There was a surprising abundance of the phrase "May you happy everyday," which is probably grammatically correct when you say it in Chinese, as well as a lot of comments about my height and my smile. As usual, some of the most entertaining snippets:

Love me, Love my dog
Love you, Love your class.
Shelby, Happy Teachers' Day!

Everyday is sunshine, yes?

With an angel-like face, a slim figure, your teaching style really fascinates me. Wish you a sweet memory in China! Happy Teachers' Day!

Wow! You really gave me a great surprise! So creative and open-minded as you are. You leave me a deep impression! Your teaching style is really excellent. I'm looking forward to your class. Thank you and Happy Teachers' Day!

You're tall and you're looking so cool! Thank you for giving us so interesting class. We'll support you, we're good students. We'll be friends. Happy everyday!

May you have a good day. Be taller, happier and cooler.

May you happy! Everyday! OK?

And now for the strangest compliment I've ever received:

You're so creative! If you're in China, you'll be regarded as a boy. Maybe a lovely and naughty boy.

Absolutely baffled, I asked Ma Jing what this could possibly mean. She said that boys are traditionally regarded as the movers and shakers in China, the ones who achieve great success and bring honor to their families. And by naughty, my student probably meant something along the lines of "successful" or "hilarious" or some other such adjective. This is either an example of really poor translation on my student's part or really excellent diplomacy on Ma Jing's part.

my first real weekend in china: digest version (a week and a half late)

2007-09-18T17:53:00.000+08:00

So my inability to blog about things in a timely manner is largely due to the fact that I've been getting busier and busier since I've started having a social life in China. For the first week here I felt a little lonely and out of place and had plenty of time to sit at my computer, but since then it's been a lot harder to find the time.

On Friday of the first week of classes we finally had our big meeting for all of the foreign teachers, which was excellent because it gave us a better idea of what is going on, a lot of free stationary products, and a chance to meet the other foreign teachers. Our meeting was followed by a banquet, which ended with the younger set of foreign teachers all migrating together to Jennifer's Cafe and then to my apartment. This cast of characters includes (besides me and Kitty): Ali, who is from Scotland, spent the past year teaching English in Korea, and lives in the apartment directly below mine in the hotel; Sarah, who just graduated from Cambridge; Jens, who is dating Sarah, also just graduated from Cambridge, and is from Denmark but has the most posh British accent you'll ever hear; and Jan, who is a German teacher in his 2nd year here, and who we don't see as much of.

I believe pictures will speak louder than words about anything else I have to say regarding the weekend in question.

Kitty and Jens attempt to pull/push a cart full of beer up a non-functioning escalator ramp at Ren Ren Le.

Ali and the Chinese friends he made on the non-functioning escalator. Ali has an amazing ability to meet people everywhere he goes.

Jens thought photo time was a good time for tickling me, so now you all get to see my teeth.
Which reminds me of a note from one of my students on my Teachers' Day card (still to come): "I hope your teeth can see the sun everyday; that means you are smiling!"

And a solitary photo from Saturday evening! Yes, I'm still in China. There is an absurd amusement park area downtown in Xi'an. See Kitty's blog for some photos of Ali and I singing karaoke and being proposed to by a large German man.

adventures in eating

2007-09-15T15:25:00.000+08:00

One of the biggest problems with being almost entirely illiterate here in China is that when we go into a restaurant, we have no idea what food is available or what we are ordering. This being the case, Kitty and I have only gone solo to a real restaurant once so far, and we got lucky because they had a picture menu. Of course, the pictures were really small and we still had no idea what we were ordering until it came.

This is what we ended up with. Some cold noodle-esque things that may have actually been strips of some kind of seafood, some fried peppers and squid (not my favorite, though the peanuts in it were really good), some strips of what looked like canned cranberry sauce but was actually some kind of hawberry jelly, and a whole fish covered in all sorts of veggies and served on a giant contraption that kept its juices bubbling the whole time. Not bad, and we were able to take home our leftovers.

Of course, we're not always quite so lucky, even in the cafeteria where we can point to the food we want. Case in point: Kitty accidentally ordered chicken feet at dinner the other night. It was a somewhat terrifying experience when we figured out that's what it was and spent the rest of the meal watching it reach for us from Kitty's tray. Chicken talons make great toothpicks though! (Ewwww....)

Chinese mission #1: Learn more food words.

smashing things must be fun

2007-09-14T17:44:00.001+08:00

Last night the mosquitoes didn't bother me (thank you electric mosquito incense thinger!), but instead I was kept from falling asleep by the demolition crew across the street who decided that 1 am was a really good time to begin smashing things. Really loud smashing too. But it's ok -- I used my laptop ro record the smashing sound that was keeping me awake, so maybe I can figure out how to post that on my blog someday, or maybe I will just incorporate it into some strange laptop music somewhere down the road. Alternatively, I will submit it to Learning To Love You More, as I think it is one of their projects anyways.

Speaking of Miranda July and not getting much sleep last night, I just woke up from a really strange long-afternoon-nap dream where I was Miranda July's assistant. Also in this dream I somehow had a baby who was born as a 3-year-old, even though I gained no weight before having him, and I fell asleep in the English class I was teaching and then I woke up and we all went to a sushi restaurant.

some Chinglish from my students

2007-09-14T00:10:00.000+08:00

As I have previously mentioned, my students are pretty delightful and hilarious. If the questions they asked me weren't example enough, I have plenty of further proof. During the first week of classes, I had each of my students fill out a notecard with some information about themselves and how I can make the class most interesting for them. This resulted in some fascinating reading for me -- a lot of fine specimens of Chinglish, as well as a few insights into Chinese culture and perceptions of the US. Here are some of the most entertaining bits:

ENGLISH NAME
Many of my students have very normal English names, though I have a surprising number of students named Alex, Peter, Jack, Summer, or Tony. I also have some male students with names like Emily and Flower. And then I have Bush, Immortal, Lionstrong, Ealth, Little Bai (this sounds like a Chinese textbook name, but the student's Chinese name does not contain Bai), Morning Horse, Fish, Bird, Pixy, Latter, Seven, XO, XF, Bubby, O'Neal (named after Shaq), Kwanza (his misspelling, not mine), Meteor, None (he had to put a special note me that None is his actual name, lest I think he have no name), and Vantasy. I'd love to figure out where all of these names came from.

MAJOR AREA OF STUDY
"the technique of measure and control"
"design and make the airplanes"
"the department of flying vehicle in design and engineering"
"tin fish (a kind of weapon)"
"information countermeasure technoledge"
Yipes! Suddenly "Art" sounds so tame.

WHY ARE YOU STUDYING ENGLISH?
(BESIDES THE FACT THAT YOU HAVE TO)
“I study English to make my childs free from English.”
“English opens the door to a whole new world for me. I'm lovin' it!”
“I have a dream that I can learn about American culture and have fun.”
“To tell the truth, I don't like English, but I have to learn the foreign knowledge. When our country strong enough, foreigners will learn Chinese.”
“Because I think managering a language can be a lot of fun.”
“I think speaking English is just like singing songs and I enjoy singing.”
“1. I don't know the real reason in fact. 2. But perhaps I like English. 3. Maybe just because it's interesting. 4. Probably that's all.”

WHAT ARE SOME TOPICS YOU ARE INTERESTED IN DISCUSSING?
“life, what we should do to make ourselves satisfied, famous people”
“I want to know how a America think a question.”
Many students are also interested in discussing the show Prison Break, which I had never heard of.

WHAT KINDS OF CLASS ACTIVITIES INTEREST YOU MOST?
“I think music can mould one's sentiments.”
“If there're movies, I'll be glad.”
Speeches, because: “I shall have confidence and it's a way to learn many useful skills. Such as how to make me calm down and so on.”
“debates (even though I'm most nervous about it). drama plays (pretty fun!). movies (hottest!).”
“Wow, debating is challenging and exciting, so I can't help waiting!”

I close with a final quote from a student notecard:
“That's Aal All! Thank you for reading! May you happy Everyday.”

a message to my mosquito "friends"

2007-09-13T03:54:00.001+08:00

It is the middle of the night here, but I am awake and blogging because I am being absolutely terrorized by mosquitoes. In addition to biting me relentlessly, they have also been dive-bombing my head and buzzing loudly at me so that I get distracted from sleeping and end up having very strange dreams where I can reason with the mosquitoes and convince them to stop biting to me if I just communicate with them. So here I am, blogging to mosquitoes: cut it out! I need to sleep! I also need to live without itching sometimes.

I've been getting mosquito bites quite consistently here, but Kitty hasn't gotten a single one yet. Maybe my blood is tastier, or, as a student told me, "they can smell fear." Mosquitoes: I am not afraid! Just tired and sick of the itching. And I am hunting down bug spray and anything else I can find to destroy you tomorrow, so watch out.

EDIT: Apparently it was actually Kitty who told me that they can smell fear. Ooops. It sounded like something one of my students would say.

Wo shi laoshi!

2007-09-11T17:03:00.002+08:00

So I survived my first week of teaching. Actually, more than survived -- it went shockingly well. I had no clue what to expect and was really nervous the first morning, but by the end of the week I felt like an old pro. Sucks for my Monday classes. Here's me being an old pro:

I'm surprised at how much teaching feels like performing. And how much better I'm getting at it with practice. In a lot of ways, I had thought of a year teaching in China as a year off from the rest of my life, a valuable pursuit and a great chance to see the world and experience another culture but not a professional stepping stone in any way. As it turns out, I'm learning a lot of skills that I'll probably use for the rest of my life. I'm becoming a better public speaker, a better communicator, a better stand-up comedian*, a better organizer and motivator -- and I've only taught 7 classes!

The best part of the first week of teaching was starting to get to know my students, who are pretty delightful and hilarious when you start talking to them. In order to let my students learn more about me without having me do all the talking, I had each of them write down 5 questions about me, then had them take turns pretending to be me and guessing my answers to 5 questions from a classmate. Some of my favorite questions:

Do you have a boyfriend? How many boys are pursuing you? (student guesses: yes, 10)
Do you think that George Bush is a fool? (student guess: no, I like my president. The whole class clapped for me when I said that was wrong.)
Since you are so tall and beautiful, have you ever considered being a model?
Do you play basketball?
I get the impression that you are very outgoing and easy to talk to. Is this true?
What do you think of China / Chinese people / Xi'an / NPU / Chinese food / Yao Ming / Chinese men / etc.? (All of these questions led to great praise of China and all things Chinese.)
You are so tall and have such a slim figure. What can I do to be taller and slimmer? (You should have seen my class when I told them that my dad is almost 2 meters tall.)
Please give me a short introduction to your hometown / college life / family / lifestyle / boyfriend. (Of course all of these questions led to ridiculous descriptions with no basis in reality. Amazing.)

I know there were plenty more such awesome questions, but you'll just have to imagine.

*At the end of the summer, one of my mom's friends was asking me what I plan to do. When I told her I planned to become an architect, she said I should really have a job that showcases how witty I am. I told her that I think humor is really valuable in any profession, even if only a few people get to see it. I still think this is true. Anyways, that's why comedy makes the professional skills list, in case anyone doubted its relevance.

Go with the flow.

2007-09-11T16:52:00.000+08:00

We have internet in our apartments once more! With our own usernames and passwords now, even, so that they can track us if we release any state secrets. Dad, I'm expecting you to crack the codes.

I'm not sure how it is that anyone thinks I could possibly even discover a state secret. My Chinese is barely passable, and I'm learning very quickly not to ask too many questions when things don't make sense here, because the answers usually make less sense. It is much easier to accept the fact that things in China are generally somewhat crazy, repeat my new mantra ("Go with the flow. Go with the flow. . . . "), and wait for the moment when somebody actually decides to tell me why my internet no longer works or when we are having a meeting or how I will get into my office.

So far, it's worked. I have internet again, I went to the meeting AND the banquet, and I know how to get into my office now.

And now that I'm back, I can finally start writing down all the stories I've been waiting to tell everyone about. In shorter, more specific posts now, because that one I wrote last Sunday looks ridiculously daunting.

a spam haiku for my father

2007-09-09T15:09:00.000+08:00

It has been a very busy and eventful week, and I have a lot of stories to tell, but they will have to wait for a day when I have internet access in my apartment again and do not have so much lesson planning to do.

In the meantime, I present to you a brief haiku written for my dad, who enjoys spam haikus and had been asking me recently whether or not we have spam in China:

we do not have SPAM
we only have LUNCHEON MEAT
but it looks gross too

(For the record, Kitty and I think that there actually was spam [or something like it] in one of the dishes we were served last night at a restaurant whose name translates to Real Love.)

I encourage comments to this post in haiku, whether or not they are spam-related.

a bit about my apartment, as promised

2007-09-06T11:30:00.000+08:00

In the interest of MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY, I am not going to post about my apartment, as Kitty already posted about her apartment yesterday and mine is exactly the same except that you should hold a mirror beside your computer and look at all the pictures through it.
Instead, I will refer you to Kitty's blog and my additional comments:

TV: Star movies is, indeed, crazy. I found the schedule online today, so I can finally know what is going on and can have some fair warning if they actually play anything decent. We also get CCTV International, a 24-hour Chinese news station in English. I watch it sometimes, though I'm well aware of how much slant is being put on my news.
Fridge: I have no peach nectar. BUT I have grapes and jujubes (see photo!) left over from our fruit party on Saturday, as well as lots of little tupperware containers full of various Chinese leftovers, some beer, and some orange soda. Until last night, I also had a can of lychee beer. It was on sale at Ren Ren Le. I don't think it is actually beer at all, as it didn't have the character for alcohol anywhere on the can and didn't taste like it, but it was delicious lychee soda.
Bed: The bed, though surprisingly un-cushy, has been more comfortable than I had expected. I've been sleeping fine on it, or at least jetlag has been to blame and not the bed. (Jetlag update: I got 9.5 hours of sleep in a row last night. Victory!)
Bathroom: My bathroom emits no "poison," which is good, because Ma Jing keeps talking about people getting cancer because of the poisons coming out of their room decorations. Eeeep!

Off to Ren Ren Le again! We're obsessed and can't stay away.

now that I have a powerpoint presentation to procrastinate on, I suppose it's time for a real update

2007-09-02T19:50:00.000+08:00

Alright! Time for the official update on my China experience thus far, since I was far too jetlagged last time I posted to say much of worth.

The flight here was LONG. Extremely long. My mom and I left our house for the airport (via Johnson's Corner, where I bought some kitschy Colorado souvenirs to give as gifts) around 7:30 on Wednesday morning and I arrived at my apartment here in Xi'an around 11 on Thursday night. Given the time difference, it ended up being about 25.5 hours door to door. Suffice it to say I was extremely exhausted when I arrived, having only gotten 3 hours of sleep the night before and a few more on the planes. The trip went smoothly enough though; my baggage all came through fine (Kitty was not so lucky) and we made all of our connecting flights. My only travel fiasco happened in the Denver airport -- my big suitcase weighted 83 pounds when I got to the airport, 33 pounds over the limit, but I managed to redistribute my belongings and bring it down to 50 pounds exactly. I'm frugal enough to not want to pay $50 for overweight luggage if I can avoid it by taking a 30-pound backpack of books as a carry-on. And I had plenty of reading material for the flights.

We were met at the airport by a woman named Ma Jing / Sandy, who is an English professor at NPU (Northwestern Polytechnical University) and spent a year at Whitman two years ago. She recognized me, which probably has something to do with the fact that I was dating the RA of the Asian Studies House at the time. After some investigation into Kitty's lost bag, we were driven to the Zheng He Hotel on the NPU campus, our new home away from home.

Living in an apartment inside a hotel is pretty interesting. I have a living room with leather furniture and a TV, a kitchen with cutely small appliances, a bedroom with internet access and an unexpectedly hard mattress, and a bathroom with a toilet that runs constantly (I haven't yet figured out how to explain this to the hotel staff). I also have a maid who comes by every day to make my bed, rearrange my towels, and fold the end of my toilet paper into a triangle. This is entirely unnecessary and I feel a little funny about it, but I suppose she is being paid by NPU and I should let her do her job. Besides, anyone who has ever lived with me knows how I feel about making my bed -- not good. (We also know how I feel about top sheets -- unnecessary if the blanket you are using is easily washable. Because when you don't make your bed frequently, the top sheets always end up scrunched at the bottom. Thankfully, the Zheng He Hotel has only provided me with a very nice comforter with a washable cover that they only wash when I put the little sign on my bed asking them to.)

Friday was, as previously mentioned, a crazy day filled with errands. Some highlights:

We had ID photos taken in the morning at a little photographer's shop that also advertised photos resembling GlamourShots. Kitty and I think they might have tried to give us a little glamor too, as our skin looks unnaturally clear in our new ID photos.
The medical exam! Though I had already had all the tests done in the US and had medical records documenting all of it, as well as a signed form from my doctor, I ended up just forking over the 334 yuan (about $45) for the medical exam here, as Ma Jing wasn't even there to translate (got called to an important meeting 10 minutes before it happened. Apparently this is a frequent occurrence here) and it didn't seem worth the trouble of trying to haggle about it when the most likely outcome was having my records turned down and having to do the exam again anyways. Let's just think of it as the money I saved through luggage redistribution. (Note to future Whitman in China participants: If the handbook still tells you that you need all of those medical tests before going to China, don't try to be proactive about it and get them all done during spring break, because you will go to WIC training at the end of spring break and be told it was all a waste of your (parents') money.) Anyways, the medical center where we had the exam was remarkably efficient. After filling out our paper work and paying for the exam downstairs, we just had to visit each of a number of labeled rooms, complete their test, and get their signature. Once we had all the signatures, we were free to go! Of course, this makes it sound a little more fun than it was, as the first station I went to involved drawing blood and then me having to hold a bloody cotton ball on my arm for the next 15 minutes. One station also involved an ultrasound of my stomach, which made me giggle a lot, and another involved the most hilarious EKG device I have ever seen. The chest X-ray people called me back in to ask, "Do you know that your spine is crooked?" which also seemed really funny to me at the time, given that I've known about it for 10 years. All in all, a pretty entertaining medical exam.
We met up with the whole English department at a hot pot restaurant for lunch. It was amazingly delicious, though one half of the hot pot (it was divided into a yin yang shape) was a little spicier than I could really handle. I am a wimp, and will have to learn to get over it. Hopefully soon, as I might be visiting Meg in Sichuan in about a month. But anyways, it was really amazing. My favorite things were the strips of lamb meat and the slightly wilted leafy greens. Also the peach nectar. Not juice, nectar. We met a lot of other teachers in the department, all of whom were really nice. The three women sitting to my left (two of them will be teaching writing and translation to my advanced students) were very impressed with my Chinese name, Bai Xiaoping (白曉平, to those of you whose computers can read Chinese), asking me "Who gave you this beautiful name?" All credit goes to Chiu Laoshi, and I suppose to my parents for giving me an American name that sounds like Xiaoping.
I found out which classes I will be teaching. I'll have 10 hours of classes for the first week, though there will probably be more at some point in the future. I'll have five different sets of students, and I'll meet with each of them for a 2-hour (or maybe less?) period once a week. Three of the classes are sophomore Highlights students, who are the top 200 non-major English students based on some test they took last year. They will be learning writing and translation from Ma Jing and spoken English from me (or Kitty -- Ma Jing teaches all 200 and we each teach 100, split up into three groups). My other two classes are sophomore Advanced students, who are the top 200 students based on their entrance exams. They learn writing and translation from Lu Fang and another woman I met at lunch Friday whose name I didn't catch yet. I tried to figure out what class a student goes in if they are in the top 200 of the English test AND the entrance exams, but I don't think Ma Jing understood my question. Anyways, the Highlights and Advanced students are actually all at the same level, so I can presumably use one lesson plan for both classes. There are two different textbooks to choose from, both level 3 textbooks in the New Horizons series. Unfortunately, it sounds like my Highlights students may have already gone through half of the better textbook last year, but I'll make do.
After our busy day, Kitty and I were so exhausted that we didn't go out for dinner, and instead made oatmeal and tea in her apartment and watched King Kong on TV. I don't recommend King Kong, but do recommend oatmeal and tea.

Saturday morning I felt very jetlagged and hungry and overwhelmed and homesick, as one is wont to do in a new country when she has not yet established a regular eating or sleeping schedule and hasn't figured out all of the details of her new job or what is expected of her. It was a rough morning, but life got a lot better after I got out of my apartment and discovered the joys of the cafeteria across the street. Like the medical place, it involves a lot of efficiency and stations. There is a counter for every type of food, so you just go point to what you want (if you are me and don't know the food names) and pay for it by pressing your pre-paid campus card up against a little cash register machine. The portions are huge, the food is cheap, and now that I have tupperware it's easy to take home leftovers. After discovering the joys of the cafeteria, we discovered the wonders of Ren Ren Le (人人樂), the huge 3-story everything store just off campus. We only made it through the first floor on our first excursion, but that was more than enough to convince me of its greatness. My favorite find was my new journal, which has horribly cheesy giant strawberries on the cover and says "Always Smile / It right out of something from a farly tale / A terribly exciting and a scary tale." Seems like an accurate enough description for my time in China.

Saturday also got better when Ma Jing came over and we had a chance to grill her about all the vagaries of our classes and what we are supposed to be doing about them. There are still plenty of vagaries -- as I'm sure there will continue to be -- but at least we have a place to start now. It sounds like flexibility will be key, as nothing is quite as organized here as it was at Whitman. Later Ma Jing took us on a walk to show us where the post office as and where we can buy the cheap fruits. In the basement of a building on campus, there is a giant market full of fruits and vegetables and tofu and dumplings and other exciting things. Ma Jing introduced us to the fruit vendor she knows, so he will now presumably give us good prices and the best fruit. Ma Jing bought some fruit from him and we came back to my apartment for a fruit party. Kitty and I eagerly ate the giant cantaloupe (it isn't actually cantaloupe -- looks and tastes like it on the inside but has a darker, greener rind and is the size of a watermelon) and nervously ate the jujubes and grapes, which had been washed in the tap water we were told not to drink without boiling.

We haven't died yet. And I've still been eating the grapes, though I've rinsed them two more times in boiled water. It's hard to tell how paranoid one should really be. I haven't had any of the stomach problems from the traveler horror stories yet, but I think nothing hit me until the second week last time I was in China.

I'm still trying to work through the jetlag. It's strange for me to have problems sleeping, given that I'm usually impossible to wake up. Friday morning I woke up at 4:15 and again at 6, Saturday I woke up at 7 after taking a three-hour nap in the evening and going to bed at 1, and today I woke up at 6 after falling asleep on my couch at 8:45 last night watching CCTV International, waking up several times, and eventually moving into my bed. My main goal is to be able to be awake enough to respond to my alarm clock tomorrow morning (shouldn't be a problem) AND to still be awake at 9 pm tomorrow when my last class finishes (a little more iffy).

All the classes I teach are on the new campus, a 45-minute bus ride away. Tomorrow I teach from 10-noon and from 7-9 pm, leaving a 7 hour break in between. Luckily, there is a teacher hotel there that I can stay in for free, so I will have a place to nap and rewrite my lesson plan if it goes horribly awry during the first class.

Today: mostly uneventful. Kitty and I went back to Ren Ren Le and investigated the basement this time -- a full grocery store! The Chinese seem to have some confusion about what is yogurt and what is milk. I was actually surprised to see so much dairy -- Kitty couldn't even find the soy milk -- but got my hopes up a little to high and was disappointed to realize that despite the abundance of milk and yogurt, there is no cheese. Anywhere. I must learn how to make cheese. Sam and I watched a History Channel show on cheese last week, so I've seen some of the tricks.

Other than that, we've just been getting ready to become TEACHERS. It's hard to believe that I will be the one standing in front of the class tomorrow morning telling everyone to turn off their cell phones and not plagiarize.

Some last words: If you don't have Skype, go download it. Now. It is oh-so easy and free. And eat some cheese for me.

Coming soon: Photos of my apartment. Photos of other things. Hopefully positive stories about my first day of teaching.

safe and sound in China

2007-09-01T00:44:00.001+08:00

Well, I'm here! And exhausted. It was a long journey and today was a crazy day full of acquiring every kind of card possible (bank, phone, bus, and campus center -- plus my apartment key is a card too, since I live in a hotel), getting our medical exams, going to a little photographer's shop to get ID photos taken, getting our textbooks, eating lunch at a hotpot restaurant with the whole English department, and various other little errands. I took a 3-hour nap earlier, only waking up because of the FIREWORKS outside. Haven't figured out yet why there were fireworks, but if they happen again it will require further investigation.

In any case, I'll write a real entry when I'm more awake, but I wanted the world to know that I'm still alive. Hope you're all well.

If you thought I was a bad procrastinator in college, you're still right.

2007-08-29T11:43:00.000+08:00

I will be leaving my house for the airport in little more than 9 hours. I have not truly started packing yet. I realize this probably sounds atrocious to most people, but it really doesn't phase me. This is how I operate. I have acquired everything I need (I hope!), my laundry is almost done, my clothes are sorted into piles, my bed is covered in other piles, and I have empty suitcases awaiting all my stuff, once I decide exactly how much of it I am actually bringing. Packing for a year is hard. Especially when you aren't sure how long it takes you to go through a tube of toothpaste, what shoes will end up being most comfortable and appropriate for teaching (in a country that doesn't sell women's shoes my size! Last time I was in China I tried desperately to go shoe shopping and felt like the ugly stepsister everywhere), or how much time you will have to read books. I'm trying to strike a balance between being prepared for everything and packing as lightly as possible. I think my general rule of thumb is: bring LOTS of books, bring LOTS of dental floss, and be prepared to wear the same clothes over and over again.

Someone told me that you can't buy dental floss in China. I told this to my dentist yesterday. He was fixing an old filling of mine that probably wouldn't have caused any problems in the next year, but who wants to risk it? He was wondering how the dental care in China is, saying, "It might be really good, but you probably don't want to find out." I told him about the dearth of dental floss, and he shuddered and said it was a good thing I was there getting my filling fixed. I don't even floss regularly, but being told that I won't be able to buy dental floss is making me pack a lot of it. I think we might be flossing our teeth some day in my American Culture class, if I verify that floss really doesn't exist in China. I'm skeptical. But prepared.

The fact that I am leaving for China in the morning still hasn't really set in. It doesn't feel like the summer is over. It doesn't feel like my job at the architecture firm is over. It doesn't feel like Steve and Pythagoras (our kitten) are on their way to Phoenix, not to be seen by me for 10 months. And it certainly doesn't feel like I will be moving halfway across the world to become an English teacher.

Watching Stephen and Pythagoras drive away today was one of the hardest things I've had to do in a long time. And I wasn't even doing anything; I was standing there crying and waving and laughing when Steve drove the wrong way down the street at first and had to turn around. It's a bit difficult to reconcile the fact that this exciting new chapter in my life comes at the cost of leaving behind a lot of people and places that I love.

This is probably why I'm having so much trouble packing. As much as I love traveling and going new places, I hate the little transitions where I don't have a place to call home. Which is why I packed for college the night before, packed for Italy the night before, and packed for every summer the night before. Once I start packing I just want to LEAVE, so that I can get to a new home and unpack. I can't wait to unpack in Xi'an.

Next time you hear from me I should be in China, jetlagged and ready to hit the ground running.

T minus 5 days

2007-08-25T10:09:00.000+08:00

So I leave for China in 5 days. I've known this was coming for awhile, but it feels a lot more real now. Today was my last day of work for the summer, and it's a strange feeling knowing that I won't be going back there on Monday and plugging away on drawings like I've been doing all summer. Instead I'll be frantically trying to finish gathering all the things I need, packing, enjoying the last of my time with Steve. I leave Denver at 11:17 am on Wednesday and arrive in Xi'an at 9:25 pm on Thursday. Granted, China is 14 hours ahead of CO, but that's still more than 20 hours of travel. Then again, it's better than the 3 days it took me to get home from London last spring.

I'll back up for those of you not entirely in-the-know:
I'm going to be spending the next year living in Xi'an, China, teaching English to rocket scientists and the like at Northwestern Polytechnical University. This has been made possible in part thanks to the Whitman in China program, so once again I am glad I went to a small liberal arts school with enough money to fund things like alumni fleeing the country. I took a 3-week intensive Chinese course at CSU in June. It was truly intense. We learned a semester's worth of Chinese in a sixth of the time. So I'll be able to get by, but I have a LOT left to learn. Like how to actually pronounce tones and how to remember which ones go with which words. Thankfully I have a pretty firm grasp of English, though no clue how to teach it. It should be a year full of adventures and new experiences.

I'll try to write about those here as much as possible, so keep checking back! You can find all of my contact info in the column on the right, and you can leave comments/questions/jokes/etc. here too. I'd love to hear from people as much as possible; I know I'm going to feel very far away sometimes, so it will be good to know that everyone is still within reach.