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While I couldn't possibly be any more excited to return to the land of the free and the home of the brave (just in time to celebrate the birthday of said land), there are a handful of things that I'm going to miss about China. While I'm sure it will be easier to think of the thing I miss about China once I actually leave China, I'm going to list some of them now anyway, so that I will remember to enjoy them in my last five days....
I am going to miss........
- my adorable students (I’ve included a picture)
- my friends!
- Chinglish signs and t-shirts
- not having to pay bills
- milk tea shops
- walking alone at night without fear
- fresh pineapple in the spring
- singing in Chinese
- the plethora of awesome office supplies
- the hilarious clothes
- buying an entire meal for 50 cents
- how easy it is to make friends
- google music
- having a job, pharmacy, convenience store, and supermarket all within walking distance
- the farmers' market every morning
- "friendship shops"
- everyone laughing at my dumb jokes
- people wishing me "happy every day"
- oranges in the fall
- KTV (I’ve included a picture)
.......and, most of all..............
- Shine, Emma, Hailey, Amy, and Howard!
In just ten short days, I (Elizabeth) will give up my home in China in exchange for my home in America. Zack will do the same two weeks after me. We are both filled with excitement, nervousness, nostalgia, uncertainty...the list goes on. But right now, the emotion I want to focus on is excitement. As you all know, our life in China is vastly different from our life in America. There are so many things that I do on a daily basis in America that I never do in China. So today, I’d like to share with you a list of things that I haven’t done in ONE YEAR (maybe even two for some things) that I can’t wait to do again soon!!!
It’s been a year since I have...
- seen my family
- driven a car
- drunk a Dr. Pepper
- eaten salad
- been to a movie theater
- gone swimming
- worn high heels
- set foot in a church building
- rented a movie
- tipped a waiter
- held a baby
- brushed my teeth with tap water
- eaten American Chinese food
- bought new clothes or shoes
- used facebook without a proxy
- used a dryer to dry my clothes
- vacuumed
- used a dishwasher
- had a haircut
- eaten fish
- listened to the radio
- used youtube
- spoken spanish
- seen people of different races
- exercised for the sake of exercise
and, saving the best for last...
- hugged my baby sister
By now it's getting close to dinner time, so I have to start thinking about whether I'm going to cook or just rummage through the cupboards and end up eating an apple with peanut butter. Actually, I often end up making breakfast food for dinner, because it's quick and easy, and it's one of the few things I almost always have all the ingredients for.
After cooking and eating my dinner, I have to open the windows in the apartment, for two reasons. First, to get the smell of my American food out of the apartment. Our Chinese friends always tell us that our apartment smells strange (actually one of them told us that's why our rabbit died) so I try to avoid giving them extra reasons to tell us how stinky we are. Secondly, once our neighbors start cooking, the smell of their food somehow makes its way into our apartment. While our Chinese friends might enjoy that, I don't. It's not because of the smell, really, it's because what they are cooking is so spicy that when it wafts into our apartment, we instantly begin coughing and sneezing.
Next it is time to get ready for our nightly activities. (I've included a picture of one night when many of our friends came to sing songs with us.) Most nights, we have anywhere from 1 to 20 people in our home, so we like to make sure we have some snacks for them. I go down to the corner store to choose some snacks, where the ladies who work at the store laugh at me...either at what I say to them or which snacks I choose. It's hard to choose snacks for our Chinese friends, because the snacks that I would choose are not necessarily what they would choose. So I fill my basket with corn flavored cheetos, corn candies, dried salted apricots, sweet sunflower seeds, and fish flavored potato chips. For drinks, I skip the pepsi, sprite, and gatorade, and instead I buy flower tea and some horrible concoction called "wang lao ji" that all our friends like. As I check out, I impulsively buy some M&Ms so that we foreigners will have something to munch on, too.
I have to get home quickly, because even though we won't begin until 7:00, it's not uncommon for people to show up at 6:30. It's not long before the first person knocks on the door. Sometimes people ask me, "Elizabeth, what are the differences between China and America?" Every time I get this question, I am overwhelmed and have no idea how to answer them. I want to say, "Everything! Everything is different!" Instead I just mutter something about individualism and collectivism and wait to tell them specific things until they come up in everyday situations. One such difference is the way people knock on the door. When a person knocks, I always know if that person is Chinese or American by the way they knock. In America, we usually ring the doorbell. But when we do knock, it is usually three or four solid, loud knocks. Then we wait for the person to come to the door. When Chinese people knock on the door, it is totally different. They knock very timidly and quietly, but continue knocking repeatedly until you answer the door. To us, it seems impatient and annoying, but to them, knocking quietly is being polite so as not to disturb you. Before I came to China, I had no idea that people could be so different that even the way they knock on the door could seem foreign to me.
I answer the door, and from that moment on Zack and I are busily serving tea and begging our friends to partake of the snacks we have laid out on the table. Chinese culture dictates that when you are offered a drink or some food, you must refuse it three times before accepting, whether you want it or not. After a while of this back and forth, we finally convince our friends to help themselves, and we begin our lesson. While we teach, our students give us looks of surprise, amusement, and wonder. Their questions and comments range from funny to insightful, and we're thankful to have the opportunity to teach them. After about 3 hours, they all filter out of our home, and I survey the damage in our living room. Every time a lot of people leave our home, it is a disaster zone. Part of the blame can be placed on the fact that a lot of the snacks Chinese people like are messy, and part of it seems to be that they have a gift for making messes. The floor is sticky from spilled drinks and the table is covered in sunflower seed shells, peanut shells, candy wrappers, and spit-covered apricot pits.
I spend the next hour cleaning up and then recuperating from a busy day before I collapse into bed, ready to start it all over again tomorrow. Now you know about what I do on a typical day. If you want to know what Zack does, you could ask him...but it's basically the same as what I do. In our line of work, the responsibilities are big, and we do our best to shoulder those responsibilities together. This summer, three of us will leave China for good, so we have been worried about leaving our one remaining team member to pick up all the slack. But now, we are happy to report that when we are gone, four new teachers will replace us, dedicating themselves to continuing the work we started. We hope that you will keep them in your thoughts as much as you have with us.
After lunch, I start doing the laundry. I have to take the opportunity while I have it; it isn't often enough that the sun is shining hot enough for my clothes to dry. I do several loads, because our washing machine is so small it can barely contain all of Zack's socks. In the hour or two that it takes me to wash the clothes and hang them outside our window to dry, I have to tiptoe through the house. Most Chinese people nap between the hours of 12 and 2, and the woman who lives below us can be a bit sensitive about noise. Don't get me wrong, it's not that Zack and I are usually stomping through the apartment or blasting techno music, but our wood floors are extremely creaky, hence the tiptoe mandate.
On a typical day, I have the afternoon free, so I will use that time either to clean or run errands. On this particular day, lets say it is an errand day. I have to visit 3 different places to get everything I need: only one bakery has whole grain bread, only one grocery store has imported pasta and cereal, and only Walmart has a variety of other thing I need. Armed with the same necessities I take to class, sans books, I head for the bus stop. When bus 23 pulls up to the stop, I elbow my way through until it's my turn to board and I deposit my one-yuan coin into the money slot. I avoid the orange seats and choose a blue seat. The orange seats are supposedly reserved for pregnant women and the elderly. Of course, if someone does try to give up their seat for an elderly woman, a pseudo-argument will ensue, until the woman has refused to accept, the customary 3 times, and says "谢谢 xie xie" and takes the seat. I choose one of the blue seats near the middle of the bus, because the back is way too bouncy for me, especially considering the fact that I just ate lunch. As the bus clatters up the hill and over dozens of speed-bumps, I direct my attention to the bus' TV. It is almost always playing the same laundry detergent commercial, and I sing along with the little girl on TV, "一比四 yi bi si!" Fifteen minutes later, we arrive downtown and I get off the bus.
The next two hours are spent with me elbowing my way through crowds (above is a picture of the crowds at walmart), trying to read the Chinese words on my groceries, and walking through the streets from store to store as children point their chubby fingers and me and shout, "外国人 waiguoren! (foreigner!)" I still don't understand how children that small come to learn such a strange word. When I'm finished with all my shopping, I carry all my purchases in a reusable canvas bag...so does everyone else. But it's not because everyone is trying to save the environment; it's because plastic bags cost money, while bringing your own bag from home is free. Usually at this point I am pretty weighed down with bags...when I go downtown I tend to stock up, since it takes a whole afternoon to go grocery shopping. And since bus 23 is packed when it goes back to campus, I usually decide to take a taxi rather than stand with my bags on the bus the whole way home.
So I traipse down the street and try to find the best place on the sidewalk to catch a taxi. After several taxis drive by and pick up other people who were faster than me or better at waving their hands than me, I get into a taxi with all of my bags and blurt out "三峡大学 san xia da xue" - Three Gorges University. At this point I figure out what the ride is going to be like. See, there are two types of taxi drivers: the kind that see I'm a foreigner and assume that I can't speak or understand a single syllable of Chinese and spend the rest of the ride grunting and pointing, and the kind that heard me say the name of our university and assume I am so fluent in Chinese that I can understand any obscure word they throw at me. So I'm either stuck for the next 15 minutes in silent frustration, or confused exasperation while repeating "听不动 ting bu dong - I don't understand." Throughout the course of the ride, there are usually two or three times where my heart nearly stops in fear as the taxi weaves in and out of incoming traffic and narrowly misses smashing into a bus or a bicycle. Somehow, and what seems at the time like a miracle, we always make it back to campus in one piece. I fork over the 7 yuan it usually costs, and stumble out of the taxi with my bags, then drag those bags up the 3 flights of stairs to our apartment.
For some reason I can't completely understand, this is my favorite part of the day: putting away the groceries. Maybe I like it because it's not confusing, exhausting, or foreign to me...I put them away exactly like I put them away in America. Or maybe it's because it's one of the few things in my day that I have total control over. Whatever the reason, I happily unload my bags while humming whatever song I last heard...if I was at Walmart last, it's probably a Backstreet Boys song.
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
