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I promised all of you that I would blog more often. However, I've found this is easier said than done. I guess it's because we've been here so long. Two years isn't an exciting experience with new and exciting things to write about. It has become our regular life. How do I write about things that have become so ordinary for me? Maybe I should just describe a typical day in my life here. For your sake, I will divide this into 3 blog posts so you don’t have to read it all at once. Welcome to my morning......
I wake up in the morning to the alarm on my cell phone. We never bought an alarm clock, I'm not sure why. I wander into the kitchen and look out the window. Ninety percent of the time, it's cloudy or raining. However, for the sake of my writing, we'll say that on this particular day it happens to be sunny. <<insert good mood here>> I grab my breakfast...in the winter, it's oatmeal; in the summer it's frosted flakes. I munch on my frosted flakes without milk, because I don't like the taste of Chinese shelf milk. While I eat my breakfast, I look at my computer, hoping to see an email from home and a good weather report. I log on to an internet proxy to check Facebook and blogs, because the gov’t has blocked all of these websites on the regular internet. I usually give up in frustration after about 20 minutes, vowing to take revenge on the Great Firewall. I get dressed for class. My shoes depend on the weather...if it's sunny, I can wear my sandals, but if it's raining I have to wear sneakers or else I'll slip on the granite walkways and surely meet my doom. I’ve included a picture of the building I teach in.
When I'm done getting ready for class, I make sure I have everything I might need to survive the upcoming 4 hours of class: books, paper, ipod, sunglasses, an apple, a fan, toilet paper, hand sanitizer, a bottle of water, and my camera. I give myself a pep talk in hopes of energizing myself, even though I'm exhausted, and I head to class. It takes about 10 minutes to walk to class, and I'm not joking when I say it's all uphill. Since it's sunny, I'm in a good mood; however, that also means it's hot...by the time I've climbed all the hills and stairs to get to class, I'm panting and sweating. The students don't seem to notice since they're all happily chattering away in their desks...and why shouldn't they be? Even though it's only 8 am, most of them have already been awake for 3 hours. I muster up an appropriate level of gusto, and call out, "Good morning, class!" They enthusiastically echo, "Good morning!" After I take roll and listen to several lame excuses like, "my roommate wants to ask for leave because she has to wash her hair," class begins. To be honest I'm not a fantastic teacher in the grand scheme of things, but the students hang on my words like their lives depend on whatever comes out of my mouth. I like them that way.
After 4 hours of me laughing at them and them laughing at me, I head home for lunch. The streets and sidewalks are packed with students. Because it's a sunny day, most of them are carrying umbrellas to shield their skin from the sunshine. In their other hands, they carry their lunch; usually it's something mungbean-related. On the way home, I stop at the corner store to buy some potato chips. I get home and make my usual lunch: potato chips and a peanut butter sandwich.
So every once in a while, a teacher gets lazy and decides to show her students a movie instead of teaching. My students are well aware of this fact. When I went into class on Friday and said "Your teacher isn't feeling well, so...." I couldn't finish the sentence because the students had already begun cheering. Boy, do I feel loved. Anyway, the movie I had decided to show them was Nacho Libre. Part of their assignment was to write down some words they heard in the movie that they didn’t understand, and to guess the meanings of those words. Here are some of the words I found in their homework, in their original mistake-ridden format:
lotion = a kind of scream
nucleus = trousers
sacred = deeply frightened
bum = bottock
pro = frofessor
friar = fighter
nun = fun
pony = small house
orplan = a child without parents
celibacy = not sexing
slack = loozy
pubby = a lively dog
bum = the part of your body on which we sit
PJs = night pub
buttload = some animal
And, since I feel like I can’t blog without pictures, I’ve included pictures of my students having class outside
By the time we finished our trip throughout the tourist cities of Beijing it was mid-February. The first day of second semester was March 1st...considering the fact that we are in the twelfth week of school, I think I've been a little remiss in the blogging. So here's the question...how do I summarize 12 weeks of our life in China? I can try, but I'm sure I can't do it justice. The long and short of it is this:
We pretty much are doing the same things we're always doing. We spend five nights a week in our study groups, trying to cram in every bit of work we can before we leave in July. We've had a few let-downs, but we've also had some incredible successes and encouragements. One of our sisters is even working for us as a translator, which is helping us a lot in our work. I won't get into too many more details about our work, since I'm sure many of you have heard about it from Zack's emails.
So, let's see...aside from work, has anything else interesting happened? Maybe, but right now I can't remember any of those things. Last Thursday, our friend brought a puppy to our door and asked us if we could keep her for him for a month. We accepted, super excited. He found her on the street and picked her up, but since dogs aren't allowed in the dorms, he wants us to keep her until he moves out. So since last week, we've been taking care of a tiny, cute puppy. Her name is Bingo...which, in Chinese, means "ice dog." She's a bit of a mutt, but we love her!!!
So here's my plan: blog more often. One of our co-workers, Jessica, has made a commitment to write a blog every day from now until the end of the semester. An admirable goal, but mine is much more vague. I just don't think I can fulfill such a specific promise like Jessica. Anyway, I'll do my best to write blogs more frequently. In the meantime, I'll give you links to the blogs of our coworkers, Katie and Jessica.
Katie: http://katiemarshall.blogspot.com
Jessica: http://jesscusterinchina.blogspot.com
When we went to the train station in Shanghai to buy our tickets to Hangzhou, the woman in the ticket booth told us there were no seats left on the train. Begrudgingly, we bought standing tickets and made our way through the mob of people to our platform. For such an international city, Shanghai has an incredibly confusing train station. In a very foul mood, we eventually boarded the train, prepared to stand in the aisles with our heavy packs for the next few hours. However, when we got into our car, we were surprised to find that nearly every seat was empty. We still don't understand why the woman sold us standing tickets, but when we travel, there is a lot we don't understand.
The city we were visiting next is called HangZhou. Within China, it is very famous for Xi Hu, a beautiful lake that is known for being the inspiration for dozens of famous Chinese poets. This was actually the place I was looking forward to the most...three days relaxing in a hostel near to a lake so beautiful it is the stuff of poetry. However, perhaps it would have been best to visit in June, rather than February. When we arrived, it was pouring rain. We took a taxi from the train station, but the driver would only take us to the street our hostel was on before dumping us on the sidewalk in the rain to find the hostel on our own. Each of us carrying two heavy bags and an umbrella, we plodded down the street for what seemed like hours, trying unsuccessfully to find our hostel in a foreign city without a map. We tried to get another taxi, but they all refused us. We asked several locals if they knew where it was; none of them had even heard of it. The situation was hopeless. We were completely soaked from our knees down, our shoes were filled with water. As the rain got heavier, so did our bags. After an hour of this, despair set in. Zack was furious, I began crying like an infant. Another 45 minutes passed...what happened next was what I then considered to be nearly miraculous: somehow, we found the hostel. Looking back, I don't even remember how it happened. But we were there.
We spent the next three days traipsing out in the rain and then traipsing back to the hostel to dry our clothes with a hairdryer. Unfortunately, we didn't see much of the lake at all because of the constant rain, meaning we have no pictures. The picture I included is one I found on the internet. The highlight of the trip was our visit to a Brazilian restaurant. The picture of Zack is him eating a duck head at the Brazilian place. I realize that I spend a lot of time in my blogging talking about food. But you don't realize how big a part of your life food is until everything familiar to you disappears. When we're missing home, nothing provides as much comfort as a taste of home in the form of a Western meal.
After HangZhou, we made a short and rather uninteresting trip to another city to visit a friend before heading back to Yichang. When we returned to our apartment, we were exhausted, but had gained experiences we will never forget...not to mention an enormous amount of souvenirs.
The plane from Beijing brought us to Shanghai around 10 pm in the middle of the pouring rain. Every kind of travel in China is exhausting, so we were beat as we staggered outside the airport hoping to find a taxi. What we found was a line of hundreds of people wrapped around the front of the airport, waiting for taxis. Likewise, there were hundreds of taxis waiting in line for passengers. Three at a time, taxis would pull forward while a security guard waved passengers to their open doors. After waiting in line for more than an hour in the rain, we finally made it to the front of the line and had our turn in a taxi.
The first taxi driver shooed us away because he'd never heard of the place we wanted to go. The second driver didn't know either, but he wasn't about to give up his chances to drive us foreigners to our destination. So, he put our bags in his trunk, called our hostel, and asked for directions. Eventually he figured it out, and 45 minutes and a rather expensive fare later, we made it to our hostel.
When we woke up in the morning, our sixth day of traveling, we had a goal that had nothing to do with the city of Shanghai: laundry. When we left our home city, we only packed enough clothes as would fit in our backpacks, so by the time we hit Shanghai we were rather dirty. Our hostel in Shanghai happened to have a washer and dryer. We brought our clothes down to the laundry room to find the machines were full. We came back an hour later and put our clothes in. Another hour passed, and we went back, hoping to switch everything to the dryer. What we found was that someone had put twice as much clothes as they should have in the dryer, with hours left on the timer. A few hours later, we finally got to put our clothes in the dryer. They weren't dry after, you guessed it, hours. By now it was 4 pm and we were starting to worry that we wouldn't get to do anything in Shanghai. You see, we had spent the entire day in our pajamas because ALL our clothes were in the wash. Eventually we decided to take matters into our own hands. We spent the next hour drying our clothes using an iron and a hair dryer. Ridiculous? Yes. But when you live in a foreign country, ridiculous is relative. Finally we left the hostel and climbed onto the subway wearing our still-damp jeans.
By now it was dinnertime, so we decided to take advantage of the fact that Shanghai has so much to offer in the way of foreign foods. We went to a mall and witnessed the most incredible array of American restaurants: Papa John's, Coldstone Creamery, Subway, Carl's Jr., and Starbucks. (I’ve included a picture.) As if that wasn't enough, this mall contained what I considered to be the promised land in China: an American candy store!!! Hershey's Kisses, Reese's, Twizzlers, Whoppers, chocolate chips, Symphony bars, Heath bars, peppermint patties, chocolate covered pretzels, Milk Duds, Jolly Ranchers, chocolate syrup, and more. Considering my near obsession with candy and the fact that in our home city I can only buy M&Ms, Skittles, and Snickers, I almost wept tears of joy. The only downside was the prices...a bag of chocolate chips for nearly $10? No thanks. However, I did indulge in some licorice and Whoppers.
After we had our fill of American goodies, we made our way back to the hostel to get some rest, since we were leaving the next morning. So, all in all, we did two things in Shanghai: wash our clothes and eat American food. And while some travelers would gasp in horror at our lack of effort to experience the real Shanghai, I consider our visit to be a success.
On the morning of our fourth day in China's capital city, I stayed in bed (if a plank of plywood with a sheet on it can be called a bed). Some of the more adventurous travelers in our group set off before dawn to see the flag-raising ceremony at sunrise in Tian'anmen Square. However, still feeling exhausted from our trek up and down the Great Wall the previous day, and having no desire to find out how cold Beijing must be without sunlight, Zack and I decided to let this experience fall by the wayside. After breakfast, Zack joined the rest of our friends for a visit to the Forbidden City; I stayed behind, still playing the "too-tired-from-the-Great-Wall" card. So, if you want to hear about the Forbidden City, you'll have to ask Zack, for I have nothing to say on the matter.
After everyone returned from the Forbidden City, we had lunch and then decided we would go to visit the Temple of Heaven. We were excited about this particular attraction, because this is the place where the ancient Chinese made sacrifices to the "heavenly emperor," in a way not dissimilar to that of the ancient Israelites. Unfortunately, we had set our hopes a little too high, and most of us were a bit bored with the temple. It had been heavily restored, so any of the ancient-ness we had looked forward to was...well, ancient history. But, I have included a picture so you can at least see what it looks like.
After leaving the Temple of Heaven, we decided our next stop would be Beijing's famous snack street. Probably most of you saw glimpses of this street on TV when the Olympics were held in Beijing in 2008. The news anchors showed foods like scorpion shish-kabobs, if you remember. Well, for such a famous place, it was nearly impossible to find. After consulting a guidebook, a map, a policeman, and several passersby, and after wandering around for over an hour, we finally found it: the land overflowing with milk and honey...or rather scorpions and centipedes. I will try to list for you some of the "foods" we saw that night: scorpions, centipedes, grasshoppers, starfish, lizards, worms, caterpillars, sea-horses, and sparrows. Of course, they were also selling more palatable foods, like legs of mutton and fruit on a stick. None of us dared to try any of the more...exotic cuisine; not even Zack, who claims the only reason he didn't try something was that the prices were too high. However, we all sampled some of what I believe is the best food in all of China: candy-coated fruit on a stick. They dipped all kinds of fruit in a clear, sugary liquid and let it dry, so it looks like glass: strawberries, pineapple, kiwi, mandarin oranges, even crab apples. Our favorite was the strawberry; I included a picture of Katie and Jessica and me enjoying our snack. Even though I felt like I could eat 20 of them, we all tried to curb our eating, because our next destination was a Peking Duck restaurant.
When the waitress brought our food to the table, I nearly wept tears of joy. An entire meal before us, and not a single appearance of the chili peppers I'm all too familiar with in Yichang. I am now convinced that Peking Duck is the second-best food in all of China, after the candy-coated strawberries. Of course, when I shared these feelings with my friends back in Yichang, they looked at me with surprise and told me that they thought that the duck I considered to be mind-blowingly delicious was "bland." For the first time since we moved to China, I left a restaurant feeling genuinely full. As I blissfully drifted off to sleep that night, I dreamt of a land full of duck and strawberries, where nobody has heard of chili peppers or tofu.
The next morning, we set off for our final attraction in Beijing: the Silk Market. We were very excited about this, because when you think China, you think silk. Also, our trip to the Pearl Market was so awesome, we figured that the Silk Market would be the same. We were wrong. On the one hand, the merchandise was beautiful...silk dresses, robes, ties, scarves, table runners, purses, as well as the usual hodge-podge of tourist souvenirs. However, the prices were astronomical and the vendors were either extremely rude or annoying. They refused to budge on their exorbitant prices, possibly because we are foreigners and they assumed we were naive enough to buy their products for ten times what they were worth. In one particular stall, we spent a few minutes looking at scarves while the sweet salesgirls politely helped us. Just like we had in every other stall, we told the girls we wanted to have a look around and then maybe we'd come back. When they heard this, they were incensed, and suddenly transformed from sweet and polite young ladies to vicious fire-breathing hags. They shouted at us, "you stupid Americans! you are all the same, you stupid! stupid! stupid!" This is extremely out of character for a Chinese person to shout at a foreigner; usually foreigners are treated with respect and people will fall over themselves trying to leave the foreigners with a good impression of China. Needless to say, we quickly emptied our hands of the scarves we were considering buying and promptly left, while the silk-hawking hags shouted more insults after us.
When we left the Silk Market, we had very little in our bags but plenty in our wallets, so we went to Starbucks to recuperate before dinner. After a hurried dinner, we packed up our completely overloaded backpacks and took the subway to the airport. We said goodbye to Beijing and started to look forward to our next destination: Shanghai.
On our third day in Beijing, we set out to accomplish what we had come to Beijing to do in the first place: climb the Great Wall of China. While I am not particularly fond of traveling long distances, sight-seeing, or hiking, I did all three just to see the world-famous wall. You may ask, "Elizabeth, why did you even go if you don't like any of those things?" The answer can be summed up by the picture above. I wanted to be able to say "yes" when I come home and you all ask, "did you see the Great Wall?" And I wanted to have a picture to prove it. Now I do.
Getting there was no simple task in itself. Most tourists who come to Beijing to see the Great Wall book a tour. We didn't want to do this for two reasons. Firstly, it costs about double the price to go with a tour. Secondly, we fancy ourselves locals and are constantly trying to avoid being suckered into the overpriced things like the other foreigners. Of course, the reason most foreigners book a tour is because going on one's own, especially when you are neither fluent in Chinese nor familiar with Beijing, is quite an undertaking. Armed with a subway map and a guidebook, we were on our way. When we got to the subway stop the guidebook told us about, we stepped outside and asked some security guards where to go. They gave us a very confused look, and then unconvincingly pointed, "that-a-way." We hiked up the street alongside the highway, foolishly confident that we could find the bus stop we were looking for. After investigating three wrong bus stops, we found what we thought was the right one. This was when the real pandemonium started. Allow me to give you a play-by-play:
"Excuse me, is this the bus to the Great Wall?"
"No...you want the fast bus...it's over there."
We walk "over there."
"Excuse me, is this the bus to the Great Wall?"
"No...this is the slow bus...that one is the fast bus."
We walk to the second bus in line.
"Excuse me, is this the bus to the Great Wall?"
"Yes, but..." [insert incoherent babbling] "...go over there" (points to the original stop we were at)
We go back to the original stop.
"Excuse me, is this the bus to the Great Wall?"
"Yes, but it won't come for 20 more minutes."
20 minutes pass. The bus pulls up.
"Excuse me, is this the bus to the Great Wall?"
"Yes, but this is the slow bus. You probably want the fast bus."
"Where is the fast bus?"
"Over there." [points to one of the buses we've already been to]
"But you can take us to the Great Wall?"
"Yes, it costs 20 yuan per person."
We resign in our efforts to find the elusive "fast bus," pay the fare, and board the "slow bus."
When we finally settled on the right bus, we realized why it was called the "slow bus." Apparently, it was simply a city bus that made many stops throughout the city, one of which happened to be near 八达岭 Badaling, a section of the Great Wall. But, no matter...slowly or not, we were on our way to see the most famous structure in all of China.
As we neared 八达岭 Badaling, we could catch glimpses of the wall through the bus window. Zack began frantically snapping pictures in spite of the fact that the grimy windows would undoubtedly make for poor photos. He was effectively announcing to everyone on the bus that we were tourists; of course, if they saw our "is this the bus to the Great Wall" routine, they already knew.
When the bus dumped us off in the center of all the touristy souvenir shops, we began to wander around, looking for the entrance. After some confusion, we found it and paid the entrance fee of 40 yuan per person (about $5). First, a little about 八达岭 Badaling, the section of the wall we chose to visit. Parts of the Great Wall were built as long ago as the 5th century BC, but 八达岭 Badaling was built during the Ming Dynasty, in the 1400s. The older parts of the wall have mostly been abandoned and left to fall into disrepair, but Badaling has been heavily restored several times. It was the first section of the wall to be opened to tourists, in 1957. Some of the more committed tourists don't like it, because it's "not real" anymore. However, it is the most popular section for most tourists to visit, Chinese and foreign alike. As we began our ascent, we were acutely aware of this fact. Because we've been in China for so long and because there are only a handful of foreigners in our home city, we couldn't keep ourselves from staring at every other foreigner we passed. Eventually, though, we had to tear ourselves away from staring at their strange white or black faces and focus on the wall itself.
In spite of its debatable authenticity, it was awesome. As we scaled the steep incline, the freezing mountain wind whipping around our faces, we were stunned by the ruggedness of the terrain. It was unbelievable that people were able to achieve such a feat as this, especially in ancient times. It's really like an emblem, hailing the determination of the Chinese people, their unyielding willpower. In any case, we both rather enjoyed the exhausting climb up and down the wall, in spite of the fact that the Coke in Zack's pocket exploded mid-trek. As I sit here with my computer in front of me, searching for the words to describe the Great Wall of China, I find myself at a loss. What can I say about the world-famous structure that is so awesome and huge that you can see it from space? I'm afraid I'm going to have to give up and just insist that each and every one of you go to see it for yourselves. After all, as Chairman Mao famously said, "He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man." I'm not sure what that says about me.
