The month in review

So a little update on what I’ve been up to since coming back to China:

This past weekend, I went to the Botanical garden about an hour outside of Shijiazhuang with some friends. The place is huge and really pretty, we were there for most of the day. Usually they have an exhibition; I think it must have been roses this time because they were everywhere. It had a butterfly garden, an amusement park, a lake, a waterfall, and the most violent bumper cars I’ve ever driven. We also saw bumper boats which seems a little dangerous.

I went to Shanghai and Suzhou for National holiday (first week of October.) Suzhou is China’s “Venice.” Shanghai is just a cool, modern city. We saw Jinmao Tower (which is now the second highest tower in Shanghai and next to the tallest tower). Yu Yuan garden was nicer this time around because we had time to explore more of it. Tai Kang Artspace is fantastic and I would definitely go there again. It’s an area with lots of galleries and cute, small shops. It’s just fun to hang out there. And we went to Burger King! Twice! Oh onion rings, I heart thee. Erin and I had found the fruit tea that we had been searching for throughout China.

Suzhou is a nice city to walk around in as long as you know where you are going. We did not know where our hostel was exactly, all we had was the address written down on a piece of paper and it took us 3 hours to get there from the train station. The hostel is actually only about 15 minutes away from the train station. But our Chinese failed us as did the hostel’s English. That aside, they have nice markets to shop around in but we didn’t have much time to shop since we were there for only two days. We went to a Silk museum and a performance, although I understood little of the performance, it was still cool to see. It was different. We went to the Lingering Garden and indeed we lingered. We went on a boat ride down the canal next to our hostel which was really pretty at night with all the lanterns lit up alongside the buildings. Erin and I shot our first rifles at balloons. I discovered I have a talent for shooting things. Who knew?

Trapping athletes

This is hilarious. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqNaAU2vXlI And I agree with every word they say.

I'm in America...

Although I've adjusted now, I had a rough start to America which started with traveling to Beijing. I had to take a train to Beijing with all my luggage because the school couldn't get a car to Beijing that wasn't forbidden by the government (because of the Olympics). So I started out Friday morning at 8:30 towards Beijing and my flight from Beijing wasn't until 4 pm. After the train, I had to take a taxi an hour and a half to the new terminal (which is really cool by the way.) I didn't arrive in Des Moines until 9:30 at night Friday (which technically was the next day in China). I was on the verge of tears after getting through O'Hare because I almost missed my flight to Des Moines. Everything went smoothly in China (note I said China, not America). It just took an ungodly amount of time to go from Shijiazhuang to Des Moines. Immigration sucked and so did burning my hand the next night.

So now that has all died down. Except it's really quiet here and there are NO people anywhere and there are so many cars. Also, whenever I go outside, my eyes hurt because there's no pollution to filter all the bright colors.

When I went to Wal-mart on Saturday, I managed to stay calm until I got to the check out lane and then I gasped at the candy. Oh candy!!! I grabbed the Reese's peanut butter cups. They don't have a wide variety of delicious chocolate candy in China. So that's been my semi-awkward transition back to America thus far.

What I've Been Doing...

A lot has happened since I last blogged. So this will be long.

Caroline was in a motorcycle accident. That was by far the worst day I’ve had in China and I’ve had a few doozies. What amazes me still is that everyone showed up at the hospital around 5, 6 am when we had all been out the night before and had just gone to bed an hour or two before. Usually I wouldn’t ever answer the phone because I’m a sound sleeper to begin with, let alone if I’ve been up really late. She didn’t break any bones and didn’t suffer any lasting head trauma. When she called me at 5 am, that was the most frightening call I have ever received in my life. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. I have no teeth and there’s blood everywhere. I was in an accident. I don’t know where I am.” I’ll never forget that phone call. Luckily, she’s okay now. She healed really quickly. That was about a month ago.

So last Thursday, I went to Chengde with Jenna to visit Jeremy before he went to Lead America. It was fun hanging out with him. Khaled was cool too. It’s weird to think that he has a son and a wife. The first thing we did when we got to Jeremy’s apartment was sleep as we had none on the train to Chengde. Then some Chinese men came into the apartment and Jenna said, “There’s some Chinese men in here.” I said, “Oh, okay.” Then she closed the door and we went back to sleep. We were too tired to care. They may have been surprised to see us since no one is supposed to be living in Michelle’s apartment.

After Chengde, I headed to Beijing and met up with Caroline, her family, Erin and Jon. We were running around trying to get train or bus tickets to Hohhot (Inner Mongolia) because they kept telling us they didn’t have any. That was a bit stressful. Finally we got train tickets. We had soft sleepers which was my first experience with that. They were awesome. Eleven hours went by quickly. Hohhot was fantastic. I rode a camel in the desert and did sand sliding. We thought we didn’t have much time to do other stuff so I didn’t get to do parasailing in the sand which would have been fun. But I rode a camel in the desert!!!

The next day we went to the grasslands and we ate in a yurt with an Inner Mongolian family. We had traditional Mongolian milk tea and sweet cheese and millet for a snack. It was cool. It was really relaxing and reminded me of Iowa with the farm animals. Then we went horseback riding. That was a little frightening. I have ridden a horse once when I was like 8 years old but I was led by someone. This was different because they didn’t lead us and I had no idea what I was doing. They didn’t really explain anything but what else should I have expected? My horse kept wanting to take off. Erin’s did too. Her horse really just wanted to run off. Both of us were the least experienced and had horses that kept trying to run. But it was soo fun. I’d do it again.

Hohhot was fantastic and we were lucky the weather was great. The torch relay was also there too, but we didn’t get to see it because we were in the desert that day. Jon and Caroline’s mom saw it and thought it was cool.

Life in the limelight

A student of mine asked me for Playboy magazine in class today. He said that since it’s banned in China, maybe I have some male friends that wouldn’t mind sending it to him. “You know, I’ve heard there are lots of pictures and a lot of really good English articles in it.” I got his hopes up falsely, I told him perhaps. Fat chance buddy! “Perhaps” and “maybe” mean no to most Chinese people, you would think that he would have gotten that.

I must have been really out of it in class today because 3 different students asked me if I was okay and I totally passed out in the office sleeping for a good 30 minutes after the first class. The typist said she saw me on TV at the Red Cross donating stuff to give to the earthquake victims. So now, I’ve been on TV, radio, and the newspaper. I get a lot of media coverage here.

I had dinner with Governor Chet Culver tonight and his buddies and the vice governor of Hebei province. We met at 5:30 at my campus and didn’t have dinner until 7:30 and everyone left at 8:30 pm. We talked with Governor Chet for a few minutes and had our pictures taken. I don’t know which newspaper that will appear in, but we were told it would appear in some paper. I don’t know if that means in Iowa or in Hebei. After dinner, we all went to DQ for ice cream. He’ll be in China for a week total, spending a day in Shanghai, two in Hong Kong and he was in Beijing for three. He will be in Shijiazhuang for a total of maybe 12 hours. Shijiazhuang is Des Moines’ sister city and he’s spending the least amount of time here.

Moment of silence

We had 3 minutes of silence at 2:28 pm. It was strange and surreal. The traffic stopped where it was in the street and horns blared for 3 minutes straight. I watched out my window. I noticed one person on a bike who stopped. There were a few people who kept walking. After it was over, the wind started blowing again in the trees and traffic went on as usual.

Earthquakes abound!

So around 2:30 pm today, I was beginning my class as usual and found that several of my students were really fixated on the lights in my classroom. I thought maybe there was a bee or a spider up there. I looked up in confusion and asked them what they were looking at and noticed they were swaying back and forth. Then I felt the ground move a little bit. Half of my class freaked out and said, “Earthquake! Earthquake!” and then I noticed people leaving the classrooms. Then one guy who took pity on my general state of confusion as a foreigner said, “EARTHQUAKE!!!!” in the doorway of my class and said we all had to leave. It was the most dramatic thing ever. My students got their stuff and we all went outside and waited for half an hour. I thought somebody would make an announcement that it was ok to go back inside but nobody did.

So some of my students and I led the way back into the building and the other students slowly trickled back into their classes as well. We started class again and my last student came in and said where the epicenter was in Chinese and some of my other students frantically got out their phones to call home because their homes are somewhat near the area. It was located in Sichuan province and it registered somewhere around a 7.5 on the Richter scale. The famous earthquake that happened in Tang Shan 30 years ago registered nearly the same and that killed almost 300,000 people. I have several other friends in Kunming and Chongqing that were a lot closer to the earthquake and probably felt the effects a lot more. An early report said an elementary school collapsed and that 4 children died and that 100 students were injured in Chongqing. The epicenter as far as I can tell is closest to the city of Chengdu which is way down south and not at all near where I live.

Later I found out that there was a smaller tremor in Beijing that was about 3.9 on the Richter scale. So I'm not sure which one I felt.

Enterovirus, octupus and train crashes

There has been an outbreak of Enterovirus 71 in China which has killed some children and stricken about 1200 ill. So the following picture is kind of frightening.
http://shanghaiist.com/2008/04/30/dish_of_the_day.php

I saw this yesterday on shanghaiist.com and it is really the one thing I will not try. I will not be eating anything that is still alive anytime soon. It freaked me out so I asked one of my Korean friends if he has had it and he has octopus that has been freshly killed so that the tentacles are still moving but not while it was still alive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BIDJlsSSFM

A couple of days ago there was a train crash on the way from Beijing to Qingdao which killed 70 and injured roughly 400 people. The reason why I mention this is because my friend and I were planning on going to Qingdao for the May holiday. If our school had given us a few more days off like lots of other schools, I could very well have been on that train because it was an overnight train which is what I was thinking of taking when I looked at the train schedule. Anyway, my friend and I had been talking and we had changed our minds the next day (before the train accident occurred) because there weren’t many hostels available so that worked out.

China Drake Relays!

I just got back from the first ever Drake Relays in China. I was in Handan which is about an hour and a half south of Shijiazhuang. We held the relays at #3 middle school which is where Erin and Ben teach. The actual relays were only from 12:30-2 pm because the kids had class (on a Saturday, mind you, which is just wrong). We had three-legged races, water relays, piggyback races, egg tosses and my favorite event, the slowest bicycle race. For those of you that don’t know, the Chinese have a fabulous talent of cycling at approximately the speed of a turtle. It’s innate really. We proved it cause we all sucked at keeping our balance and maintaining that slow of a speed. Amy was the only Chinese person who competed with all the teachers and she won easily.

It was a lot of fun and the students really enjoyed it. We had lots of fun with it too. Before we headed over to the track, we all sat on the benches outside their classes to see what would happen when they saw 10 foreigners in one place right before their classes dismissed. Some noticed before class was dismissed and their teachers got pissed off at the distraction. It was nuts. They all lined the balconies and didn’t really know what to do. Some were brave enough to talk to us. Most just stared from afar.

Anyway, after the relays, we had a scavenger hunt throughout Handan of things that you should not leave China without doing. Some of my favorites were: buying a bag of baijiu and having some locals share it with us; eating a cornsicle (which is really good by the way); riding a rickety, old roller-coaster; and helping construction workers with their work. I guess you don’t have to do these things before leaving China to experience China but I think they represent life in China best.

Then the real relays began. It was pretty great.

First thunderstorm in Shijiazhuang

Okay, so I take what I said back. It does storm in Shijiazhuang. We experienced our first storm in the Shiz last Friday. It took most of us by surprise. When I heard the thunder, I assumed it was a car accident on my street. Another Shizzite saw the lightning and was plugging in a new hairdryer at the same time and thought she electrocuted herself. Another person thought that there were fireworks going off again. Clearly, it has been too long since any of us have experienced a real thunderstorm. Almost 8 months for me. It made me happy but it also seemed to drive the foreigners inside. When I went to Mcdonald’s, I was the only foreigner there. Usually there are no Chinese people there. I was really confused as to why the place was packed with Chinese people but I couldn’t think of a reason other than the rainy weather.

Last night, I had sushi for the first time. It was good. Since being in China I’ve had Russian, Korean and Japanese food for the first time.

Qinhuangdao

I just got back from a weekend in Qinhuangdao visiting some fabulous friends who I met over the spring festival holiday. We met more of their friends and ate delicious food and saw Old Dragon’s Head, where the Great Wall meets the sea. We also went to Olympic Park which is really pretty. It was gorgeous and the air was soo fresh. It turns out that their school is a five minute walk to the sea. It is also where the Olympic athletes will practice soccer during the summer. They are so lucky.

Anyway, on the train ride back to Shijiazhuang, I saw thunder and lightning for the first time in 7 months. I’m not sure why, but there aren’t any thunderstorms in Shijiazhuang. So I really liked the storm. I just like rain in general.

In short, I <3 Qinhuangdao.

Medical emergency in class? Check

So I taught Thasha’s sophomore class Monday since she is back in America for a while. I thought I was doing well teaching them, I had some of them from last semester. Then I made these two girls stand up and talk in class. They were doing a telephone conversation and the first girl finished her lines. So the second girl started to speak, then she faltered a bit. I thought it was because I made her talk with her partner, but then she said, “I’m sorry….I’m…” and passed out on the floor. Naturally, class was over then and the entire class circled around her while the people next to her held her tongue and rubbed her chest to soothe her and maybe wake her up. They put water on her forehead because she started to sweat. Then she started making some groaning noises and I thought she was going to have a seizure. I sent some students to go get help and it arrived pretty quickly, not that they did anything. They brought in a stretcher and a couple of hard cases of stuff but they didn’t put her on it or check her out. They didn’t really do anything, then the nurses left. The students had done more than the nurses did. She came to eventually and her classmates stuck by her and I felt really dumb because I couldn’t have done anything else that they hadn’t already done. What else can you do? Turns out, she has blood sugar problems and occasionally passes out. Sounds like hypoglycemia to me. I’m glad that it wasn’t anything worse. I have no idea what I would have done if it was something more serious.

So the moral of the story is: when in China and something medical happens, you’re pretty much on your own. I’m really surprised the nurses didn’t have any smelling salts or glucose tablets or anything. Actually, no I'm not. I'm in China.

Luckily, the student is fine now, except perhaps a bit embarrassed at having passed out in class.

Incubus and Baseball

So I got back from Beijing on Sunday. I was there from March 12th through 16th. I saw the Incubus concert in Beijing. It was fantastic even though the bassist was sick and they had to play acoustic the entire time. Star Live Music Hall was like being in Val-Air. It had a small club atmosphere. Actually, it was a lot smaller than Val-Air. But it was great because not many people were there, maybe a few hundred (mostly) foreigners. I got a few videos on my new camera. It definitely felt like being in America because I had to fight to get in front of these tall assholes who were blocking both me and Claire and would not let us around them. So “elbows up, side to side,” became our anthem. However, we did not lean like a cholo.

I stayed through the weekend because I thought it would be pointless for me to go and come back in two days. My girls from the Shiz met up in Beijing. We all shopped and at night had a decent meal at TGIFridays and went to Sanlitun after that. I’m not sure why but shots are super cheap in Beijing, which is not how it is in Shijiazhuang. 10 to 20 kuai (1-3 dollars) was typical at the places we went and in Shijiazhuang, they are usually 20 kuai minimum. Anyway, it was fun hanging out.

On Sunday, the LA Dodgers and the San Diego Padres came to town and played on Saturday and Sunday at Wukesong Stadium. They tied on Saturday and the Padres won on Sunday. The Dodgers had a press conference afterwards and the Padres did not. Why? I’m not sure. How do I know? Because my friends and I snuck onto the field after the game and hung around, taking pictures and generally just enjoying Americana. My friends stole signs from the stadium. I refrained because I don’t really care much about baseball. Then we saw the coach for the Dodgers in the press box and then some of my friends were a little bit inebriated which may or may not have contributed to us being kicked out of the stadium. It could have been the stealing of signs. Haha, it was great. As we were all standing in the parking lot of the stadium, everyone was arguing about why we were kicked out and who wanted what sign and as this was going on, I waved good-bye to the baseball players as they drove away in their private buses. Some waved back, most did not. Oh well. It was a humorous moment. “Bye, thanks for playing even though we showed why the world hates Americans.”

Then we had to go back to the Shiz since most of us taught on Monday. The train ride back was mixed. This lady was being a huge bitch about letting us stay in the dining car instead of standing the whole time because we didn’t have seats. We had standing tickets. So lately whenever we have standers, we go to the dining car and sit there until we reach our destination. We could tell she was going to be a bitch as soon as she came up to us. She kept yelling at us and saying, “No, no pijiu (no beer) and no, no mifan (no rice).” We know that you have to pay 20 kuai to stay in the dining car but we were willing to do it. She wouldn’t let us order what we wanted and then we watched as other Chinese people pulled out their own food and just sat in the dining car. Some had beer if I remember correctly. It was soo dumb. Then we finally ordered some crappy food that we all ate very slowly because we didn’t want them to kick us out if they thought we were done. Then they kept trying to take our food and we kept yelling at them not to. But it was an alright ride because it was only 2 ½ hours and we were all together. Most of the time, we slept or read.

It was good to be back, especially for me because Beijing is not my favorite city in China even though there are a lot of fun things to do and see. Beijing is associated with travel hassles for me and a lot of other people. The weekend before when I was in Beijing, we tried to get a bus back to Shijiazhuang and they simply said there was no bus. We know this isn’t true, but we ended up scrambling back to the train station to get a train ticket and we stayed in the dining car. To quote Jeremy, “It just isn’t a trip to Beijing if something doesn’t go wrong.” Other friends have missed trains back to their cities because trains have left early or because they didn’t make it on time.

I'm back!

I am back in Shijiazhuang as of yesterday. If you didn’t know, I was traveling from January 22nd to February 22nd for the spring festival holiday also known as Chinese New Year. The Chinese New Year fell on February 7th, I was in Hong Kong at the time. I went to Beijing, Harbin, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Macau, Sanya, and Haikou. I have many stories and not enough blog, so you’ll have to talk to me if you want to hear them. : P I will leave you with my favorite quotes and entertaining snippets.

Memorable quotes
-The leaf just lactated on me (from Sanya, Hainan)
-I’m taking off my pants! (Sanya, Hainan)
-Do you have putonghua (Mandarin) coming out of your ass? (probably in Hong Kong)

Highlights
-going in circles in Beijing (Temple of Heaven, the mall to the subway, our hostel)
-walking into a massage parlor and asking for lambsticks
-the preferred mode of transporting five people in a taxi which only allows four in Harbin and Tianjin
-finally climbing the Great Wall!!
-being fed by a policeman in Harbin (with his chopsticks)
-being stalked in Harbin
-real Indian food in Hong Kong! I died that night and went to heaven, I’m pretty sure.
-a group of about 10 foreigners singing songs throughout the streets of Hong Kong
-Erin and Jenna performing various Rent songs on the Hong Kong subway…which somehow led to the 7/11 crawl in Hong Kong (best idea ever)
-Hong Kong fireworks on New Year’s day, it doesn’t get any better than that
-climbing a mountain…or three with a man in shorty-shorts as our guide
-how Erin and I managed to lose two cameras with 2300+ pics, a passport, a phone, an iPod, a backpack, a cute D & G purse, money and became way too familiar with the Chinese legal system in two separate cities
-rickshaws and riding in the backs of trucks to go see volcanoes in Haikou
-the 5 hour standing train back to Shijiazhuang at the end of spring festival holiday

Blitz to Beijing

Okay, I need to tell this story about my daytrip to Beijing. So if you don’t want to read a long story, stop now.

December 30th (Sunday) I was supposed to go to Beijing at 11:45 am to meet up with Jeremy, Michelle and CJ. My train was delayed…and delayed…and delayed for another hour and 15 minutes. By the way, that’s the longest delay I’ve ever experienced with a train in China, generally they’re on time or maybe 15 minutes late at the most. So I get on the train to Beijing at 1 pm. Let me explain another thing that happened before I got on the train. While I was purchasing my tickets at the train station, they sold me a standing-room only ticket, meaning all the seats were sold out and that I would have to stand on the train to Beijing, which is only 3-4 hours away, so it’s not bad. So I took the ticket. This is what I saw when I got on the train.

Where are the people? There were tons of people waiting for this train and I don’t know if they just took another train or what, but this was the emptiest train I’ve ever been on. When we got to Baoding, about halfway to Beijing, everyone got off the train and I was the only person in my entire car. I was questioning whether the train decided to not go to Beijing and if so, how I was going to get to Beijing. So logically, I took a nap.

After my nap, I noticed these train attendants who kept walking up and down the aisles in my car. Finally, out of nowhere 5 or 6 of them sat down in my area and started talking to me. Then more attendants came, so there were about 10 of them or so. I also made friends with a cart lady who spoke the most English out of all of them. It turns out they’re all from Chongqing, where Kyle teaches. They were really friendly and surprisingly very young. One guy was only 19. The cart lady gave me spicy tofu and a clementine. This was probably my favorite train ride. Then the boss came by and yelled at all of them and they left. Five minutes later, they were back and chilling.

Anyway, I got to Beijing and it was around 5 pm. I was really late and my phone had no service, so I walked around the train station for about 20 minutes when I saw a long, bright blue coat with a white and pink hat in the distance. It was Jenna. I bolted after her and was able to use Ericka’s phone to call Jeremy. It was pure chance that I saw Jenna at the biggest train station possible. It was 5:30 and the good news was I found Jeremy, CJ and Michelle. The bad news was the train back to Shijiazhuang was going to leave at 8 pm. So I had 2 hours to explore and shop. So I left with Michelle and CJ on our most efficient shopping spree ever. We took the bus and the subway to our destination.

First we went to a DVD shop. This was the coolest place ever because we walked in and the lady behind the counter moved the bookshelf away from the wall and knocked on the wall. The wall opened up and they let us into the secret part of the DVD shop where the nice ones were. There were a couple of other foreigners already browsing, so I guess it’s not that secret, but you would never know it existed if you just walked into the store. So we got some DVDs and moved on to Silk Street. Silk Street is actually a building with 6 floors of different markets. We could spend no more than 15 minutes at each place that we wanted in order to get back in time and not miss our train. We were actually doing well, Michelle got her earrings that she wanted and a purse and CJ got a purse and DVDs. I got a ring and a DVD. We were 5 minutes ahead of schedule. We finished and took the bus back to the train station and made it onto the train about 10 minutes before it left. I was a little nervous about missing the train but Michelle and CJ were pros at this, so I was in good hands.

This train ride was sweet by the way. It only took 2 hours and it was more like an airplane with more legroom and no loud, obnoxious music. Although I didn’t make friends with any attendants on this train. : P