新年快乐

...we know, it's been a while.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  With the holiday season, we have been busier than ever with classes, preparing for finals, grading finals, Christmas shopping, Christmas parties and banquets, and traveling.  Now we are finally settling down a little, albeit still surrounded by piles of post-finals week paperwork.  However, in the name of procrastination, I have decided to take a few moments to provide a much-belated update of our life in China.

Finals week, which incidentally was also Christmas week, was crazy.  After preparing all of our final exams, we learned that we are only allowed to make 1 one-page-copy at the school for each student.  So there I stood with a 5-page exam in my hand and exasperated exclamations rising in my throat with no idea what to do before my final the next morning.  Eventually we ended up hiking across campus to a print shop every night and paying to have all of our finals copied ourselves.  Just one of the many frustrations of learning to function in a different world.  When it came to actually giving the students the finals, we were even more frustrated.  We caught several of our students unabashedly cheating.  In one of my classes, I caught 7 students cheating and I'm pretty certain there were more of them that I didn't catch.  In the end I resorted to telling them that if I even saw more than one pen on their desks I would fail them.  Many of them seemed bewildered that their formerly laid-back and slack teacher had morphed into a super-strict hawk-eyed monster.  

On Christmas Eve I finished a final at about 9:30 am and we spent the rest of the day scouring the city for gifts for each other.  We had a Christmas party that night with many of our students, complete with punch, cookies, music, and a white elephant gift exchange.  After they all left, we settled on the couch to watch It's a Wonderful Life and fell into bed exhausted to rest up for Christmas Day.  When Christmas Day came, we opened gifts from each other and from home, cooked a delectable assortment of non-Chinese foods, and allowed ourselves some much-needed relaxation.

After finishing our finals on Friday, we embarked on a journey on Saturday to visit some of our expat friends in Enshi, a nearby city.  When I say nearby I mean in distance, but not in time...the city is about 110 miles away from us, but the bus ride there is 12 hours long.  No, I'm not kidding.  We arrived at the bus station at 7:45 am, took one look at the "bus" and turned around.  It was a van jam-packed with people and suitcases...however crowded you are imagining it in your head, triple it.  We exchanged our tickets for a "DA de qi che"...BIG bus.  After finally leaving, we spent what seemed like an eternity in another dimension.  Imagine that you are stuck in a straight jacket inside a bouncing inflatable castle with all of the loudest people you know and half of them are chain-smoking....and it's 35 degrees.  When they release you for 5 minutes to take a bathroom break, you climb down a cliff to a tin-roofed shack to find that these are not toilets...not even port-a-potties.  It's a trench with 18-inch high walls separating the "stalls."  And then it's back on the bus.  The only thing that made this trip tolerable was the view.  Beautiful mountains and cliffs with valleys full of farming communities and towns untouched by city life.  To be honest, one of our favorite sights was not the landscape, but the few villages we drove through that seemed to be having some kind of bizarre harvest.  I'm not even talking about the 8-or-so pigs we saw hanging upside-down with blood and guts all on display.  What we saw is something I never thought I would see in my life...dozens and dozens of dogs.  Not live dogs...dog carcasses, skinned and gutted, and hanging by their feet on meat hooks in outdoor markets.  Morbid fascination kept our faces glued to the grimy windows of the bus for a while, making us forget everything else.

That being said, we really enjoyed our time in Enshi with our friends.  We had a second Christmas and had a wonderful few days being refreshed and relaxing.  Then it was back on the bus again.  As the clock struck midnight on New Year's Eve, we were dragging our luggage out of a taxi and dragging ourselves up to our apartment exhausted and wondering, "what are all the fireworks for?"  Now we are at home, looking forward to six sensational weeks of R and R.  I've blabbed enough, now I'm sure you're all wondering if you read all of this for nothing or if I'm actually going to get around to putting up the pictures you came here for.  Here they are...

If you were wondering if we had a tree, yes we did...and here it is.

Two students "helping" me decorate Christmas cookies

My real helper

Our Christmas Eve party...everyone is showing off their new gifts.

The idea is that you can figure out for yourself what this one is.  Zack found it at the market.

In Enshi with some of our friends.

A weaving shop owned by some Tujia people, a minority group in Enshi.

That's all the interesting pictures we have from this month...in the hustle and bustle, the cameras fell a little by the wayside.  Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas season and good luck with your resolutions.

A Birthday Party, Thanksgiving, and an Earthquake

....things that happened in November.  

First of all, thank you(!) to all of you who saw our not-so-subtle-hint and sent us mail!  We were overjoyed to discover packages full of American goodies and comforts from home.  We are fully stocked and will last a long time on our bomb-shelter-like supply of non-perishables.  Thank you.

Last week was my birthday, and I figured it would be the same as every other birthday:  Zack begging me to tell him what I want, going shopping until midnight the night before, and giving me some sort of stuffed animal or superhero and a few pairs of socks.  When I was instead given a surprise party I was, well, surprised.  Or I would have been, if one of the students hadn't blown it by meeting us at the bottom of the stairs and walking up to the "surprise" party with us.  Katie, Zack, and a bunch of students worked their little fingers to the bone to give me a good birthday.  After the party, almost every one of our students mentioned either to me, to Katie, or to Zack, "Oh, Zack is such a wonderful husband!" or "Zack, you are such a kind and generous man!"  Let me tell you, text messages from our students are great.

Some of the attendees of the surprise party.

Blowing out the candles on one of my three birthday cakes.

One of my gifts was a mile-long scarf.  Zack and I can both wear it at once.

One of the birthday cakes...the cakes here are all really elaborate.

The flowers Zack bought...each flower stem was individually wrapped in cellophane.

In other interesting news, there was an earthquake in our area last weekend.  Fortunately, it was small, unfortunately it was so small that we didn't notice it.  Some of our students told us about it later, saying that they felt it, but we had no idea.  So, added to our list of experiences is that we have now survived an earthquake.

As you know, Thanksgiving was Thursday.  We celebrated just like we do at home:  by cooking all day and eating all night.  Here are some pictures:

This is our feast just before we began.  We had everything that we would normally eat at home on Thanksgiving except for turkey and cranberries.  Neither of these things exist in China.

We shared our thanksgiving meal with a french couple who are also teachers here.  Even if they don't celebrate thanksgiving and don't normally eat American food, when you are in a foreign eastern land like China, any western food is "home."

As you can see from this picture, after we were done eating we still had more than enough food for a second thanksgiving.  So we have been eating leftovers the past few days.  

Our students, knowing it was thanksgiving, inundated us with text messages.  We each received about ten text messages wishing us a happy thanksgiving.  Here are some excerpts:

"My dear Elizabeth,I am very happy that you came to china.Above all,you teach me English.Thank you very much !At last I want to say Happy Thanksgiving Day:-)"

"Today is a beautiful day with warm sunshine.  Hope you could have a nice thanksgiving day. Enjoy your wonderful day:-P"

"HAPPY THANX GIVING DAY!"

And my personal favorite, which Zack, Katie, and I each received multiple times from different students, "I open my wallet ,find no money ;I open my pocket find no coin ;I open my life ,find you ,then I know how rich I am!Forever My friend Happy Thanks-Giving Day !"

Because we are a Christmas-loving people, I already rearranged our living room and put up our Christmas tree.  The girls who lived in this apartment before us bought a fake tree and were kind enough to leave it here for us.  So, although we are in a faraway place with little resemblance to our home, in our third floor apartment, Christmas will prevail.

在瓷的生活

It has been two and a half months since we entered China and we've taken hundreds of pictures.  Here are some more for your viewing pleasure...

A few weekends ago, we went to a friend's house.  She is an elementary school teacher and she invited 10 of her students to meet us.  Here we are, teaching them how to play go fish.

Here we are with all the excited and LOUD children after playing go fish.

Here begin the pictures at the supermarket.  We were amazed to find their magical way of putting Chinese writing on the apples.

This is actually at the supermarket...we're not even certain what it all is, but it definitely all came from the inside of an animal.  We think the first thing is inside-out pig stomachs.

Again, yes...this is in the supermarket.  Live frogs.  For some reason that we can't understand, they don't try to escape, even though they probably could.

Apparently this guy was trying to escape...from his tub full of his little crab friends.

Here Zack is practicing Chinese ink calligraphy with one of our students.

We often go to Pizza Hut when we miss home, and every time we go, the waitress tries to convince us to order some really strange Chinese version of pizza instead of real pizza.  Here is one example from the menu...notice the shrimp and the raisins.

One of our students trying to eat her pizza with a knife and fork.

For Halloween, I made all of my students make themselves masks out of paper plates.

These are the winners for funniest mask, most beautiful mask, and scariest mask.

Zack playing ping pong against the wall of our apartment with one of his students.

Last but not least, a gift from one of our students.  A little produce-man.

Now I must bid you all adieu as I leave to go watch one of the many fireworks displays outside of our apartment.

The Sights of China

Feel like reading something beside the news of the election?

If you'd like to know what life looks like through our eyes in these last months, allow me to enlighten you...

It's almost always foggy.  Looking across over the trees and the buildings, you can see the hazy outline of mountains in the distance.  On a clearer day, you may be able to distinguish individual mountains, but usually they just form a shadowy gray backdrop behind a city cloaked in mist.  

Everywhere you go, there are people.  It's overwhelming how many people surround you daily, as is the awareness that you will never see most of them ever again.  It hits me hardest on days when it rains.  On a rainy day, the streets all become an enormous colorful sea of umbrellas.  Even more overwhelming is the uniformity.  At home, I notice the people who are different.  Here, I can't help but notice that everyone is the same.  The phrase "needle in a haystack" carries so much more meaning now.  An unfortunate byproduct of so many people is pollution.  Some days we aren't sure if the hazy sky is just fog or if it is smog.  Usually we just tell ourselves it is only fog and try not to think about it.  Our city is remarkably clean, but when we visited Wuhan, a bigger city, garbage filled the streets.  I can't say that I ever spent much time thinking about or being concerned about pollution, but here I am often.

Every morning there is a small "market" set up in the parking lot of our apartment building.  People, presumably farmers from the countryside, lay their produce on blankets on the ground in hopes that passersby will take notice of their wares.  Some of them have chairs, but most sit in a traditional Chinese squat.  The squat has become a very familiar sight for us, but is still nearly impossible for us in practice.  A middle-aged Chinese man is able to sit in this torturous pose for what seems like hours; we foreigners can barely manage to achieve it for ten seconds.  We waiguoren assume that the Chinese are capable of this due to a lifetime of using Chinese toilets...apparently the "squatty potty" is good for more than just one thing.

After passing the morning market, I begin my daily hike to class.  One thing that has not yet ceased to amaze me is how cheery and animated chinese people are in the morning.  As I stumble to class in a somnolent stupor, students all around me skip to class, arm in arm with their friends, perkily slurping spicy breakfast noodles, and chatting in a manner I can't understand, not only because I don't speak chinese, but because in my daze, I fail to comprehend a reason for their exuberance.

No matter how many times my eyes are given the privilege, I doubt I will ever grow accustomed to the sight of the implementation of the Chinese method of potty-training.  Diapers are simply not used in China.  Instead, babies and toddlers wear "kaidangku," literally "open-crotch-pants."  Using this method just means that when you gotta go, you gotta go.  When nature calls, parents assist their children in the baring of their nether regions in order to do their business.  One China Daily article I read called it "maximum convenience with minimum coverage."

Yet another visual marvel awaits us at every supermarket, specifically the meat section.  Your first glance goes immediately to the bloody chunks of animal flesh hanging from hooks above the counter; open to the air, and dripping bacteria-filled juices on everything unfortunate enough to be placed below it.  Turning around immediately, desperate to put an end to your germ-induced panic attack, you come face to face (literally) with an unsightly army of lifeless, naked chickens.  You squeeze through the aisle, carefully avoiding the dozens of fowl feet that seem to claw after you, all the while nervously aware that their empty, glassy eyes are watching your every move.  The next view, however, is far from reassuring.  The shopper is next presented with a bed of ice filled with a strange array of animal viscera.  One can only guess about the identities of what appear to be stomachs, intestines, and hearts...not to mention the feet of various creatures sprinkled in between.  Weary and slightly queasy, you attempt to escape from Old MacDonald's Massacre.  Just as you think you have broken free, your eyes are greeted with a completely foreign section -- fish, reptiles, and amphibians.  Unlike the graveyard you just experienced, these animals are all fresh -- fresh and alive.  Aquariums full of enormous fish, shrimp and prawns, squid, and huge, writhing eels are all equipped with nets for your convenience.  Opposite from them are bins filled with slimy frogs giant turtles, and piles of crabs.  Again, each bin contains a pair of tongs so that you may choose for yourself which creature will be dinner tonight.

Perhaps the most familiar sight in our daily adventures is the sight of small, curious, black eyes looking right back at us.  Staring is not a rude practice in China, and even if it were, I'm not sure they would be able to help themselves.  The sight of a foreigner on the streets of China is as rare as the sight of sunshine.  The eyes that meet ours seem to scour our entire bodes; black circles filled with wonder at everything so different from what is familiar.  Passersby immediately stop their conversations to make the most of the rare opportunity to behold the strange and exotic creature that is the foreigner.  Seeing their reactions, we continue on our way, reflecting on our small glimpse of the world beyond our home.

three magic words: you've got mail

SO. Here we are, in China, having lasted 2 months on the package my dearest mother sent me full of American sustenance. And I conveniently remembered that many people, before we left the states, offered to send us a package. Now, instead of being overtly rude and asking anyone for a package, I will instead just make it publicly known in a hinting sort of way that we would love to receive a package from anyone. You can't even imagine the immense amount of joy that fills my heart when I get a call from the international office at school and they say those three magic words, "you've got mail." In case you are so inclined to send a wonderful parcel of pleasure to your expat friends, here are some suggestions of things we would love to receive:

- microwave popcorn/kettle corn
- candy...any kind of candy that can't melt...chocolate melts in the mail
- granola bars
- ground cinnamon
- crisco sticks
- lysol/clorox wipes
- yankee votive candles
- 'just add water' baking mixes...muffins, biscuits, brownies, etc
- pentel R.S.V.P. ballpoint pens
- any 'souvenir' kind of thing from your home state...like a postcard or whatever. our students love it when we give them things like that as gifts.
- quaker instant oatmeal...apple cinnamon and maple brown sugar are our favorites!
- tiny, wonderful, delicious cans of diet dr pepper (if anyone sends this, seal it in a ziploc bag first, just in case.)
- chicken helper...the fettucine alfredo one, but just send the flavor packet, not the noodles or the box...it's all about saving weight.
- cream of tartar (it's like a spice, it would be with the cinnamon and stuff at the grocery store) 
- this may seem like a strange suggestion, but velveeta. we can't get any cheese here, so velveeta is practically a delicacy.

If you are reading this blog, that means you also most likely have our address already as we gave it out to a lot of people.  I'm not so keen on posting our address on the internet, so if you do want our address, just send either of us an email.

**Zack would like to add index cards to the list.

Neither would we mind a nice box of kraft macaroni and cheese.

三峽河巡航 - Three Gorges river cruise

Last week we had the whole week off from school for Chinese National Day...the Chinese are really patriotic.  Five of our [American] friends visited from another city for the whole week.  It was awesome.  We showed them our city for a few days, and we also spend a few days going on a river "cruise" through the Three Gorges.  Thinking back, I wish I could have taken a picture of our rooms to post here...oh well, hindsight.  Anyway, we had two rooms for eight people each with two bunkbeds with mattresses as pillowy soft as concrete.  But, pictures are worth a thousand words or something, so here we go.............

This is Zack and our friend David with a bunch of Chinese guys who randomly came up to talk to us to practice their English in the central square of our city.

We love taking pictures of the ridiculous English phrases in our town, and this is one of the most obviously strange.

This is a coffee shop in our town which so obviously ripped off its logo from Starbucks.

Walking down a lot of stairs to board our boat.

These little girls were really excited to practice their English with us on the boat.

I like taking pictures of bridges.

A big bridge near the Three Gorges Dam

We spent a lot of time playing cards on the boat

David and Katie high-fiving

Some people fishing with an awesome enormous net in the Three Gorges

I took this picture to show how big the gorges are...that little dot at the bottom of the gorge is a big cruise boat.

Craig and Jessica, two friends from the other city

There were a lot of caves along the three gorges and this one had stairs leading up to it...which we are very curious about.

This is some famous landmark along the Three Gorges on the Yangtze River

Zack is really proud of this picture.  The landmark is on the back of the 10 yuan bill.

Us in front of the landmark thingy

Again, I like taking pictures of bridges

Cute little kids who were really excited to scream at us (especially the little boy with the split pants) as we walked by.

A Buddhist temple...the gold bin thingy is where you put the incense you burn.

Before we came to China, we thought every building looked like this...unfortunately, we were wrong.

Another bridge...

This is a pond at the monastery of the White Emporer.  According to legend, a man was standing in front of this pool when a magical white smoke rose from the pond and became a dragon, so the man proclaimed himself the White Dragon Emporer...or something.

Bones of monks (I think) inside a display case.  A lot of people stuffed money inside for some reason we don't understand.

This is an example of the enormous amount of stairs we were forced to climb on our cruise.  We tried to make an accurate guess about how many stairs we climbed in the three days and we came up with between 1000 and 1500.  Exhaustion.

Standing by some cool weird trees

David, Nate, Jessica, Jessica, me, and Katie...Craig and Zack are mysteriously missing

This is to show how foggy it is in our part of the country...crazy foggy humid.

The Chinese flag on the back of the boat.

So, that was our trip.  I'm sure everyone is sick of looking at so many pictures, so that will be that for today.