Music and Shoes

Having finished one tough semester of grad school, I have winter break off. So I'm taking that time to catch up on sleep and do things I won't have time for again until next winter break. (I will be in school spring, summer and next fall...bummer.)

So to indulge in my vanity, I've been looking at shoes and listening to new music.

Music
Recently I've been obsessing over Rayito. Not Rayito Columbiano as it shows in every internet or music search online. Just Rayito. I bought his CD and can't wait for it to come through my mail into my little hands. Originally of Spanish and Japanese origin, he grew up in Spain before moving to Miami when he was 14. He's been playing guitar since he was really young. There are super cute videos of him on youtube when he was slightly pudgy but even at that young age, a virtuoso. He combines flamenco with pop along with lyrics he can turn on a dime. He is soooooo talented (really an understatement) and you should listen cause you will not be able to stop. His most recent album came out in 2006, so yeah I'm a little behind, but I can't stop listening to his songs or watching his music videos.

For a taste go here

For the CD haz click aqui

Now onto shoes:
I just saw these heavenly pumps and decided these are hot. I don't like the silver toe but then again I don't like the $600 price tag either. That's life. I'm still looking at shoes for fun, I don't really need any right now.

Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools

I'm a picky reader. In fact, I'm so picky that I always thought I didn't like to read. Really, I just needed to find some books that were interesting and would captivate me. I only rediscovered reading while I was in China. Of course, that sort of thing happens when you're deprived of English reading materials.

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
Stones Into Schools by Greg Mortenson

These two books are amazing. Everyone should read them. The first chronicles the life of Greg Mortenson, a man who failed to climb K2 but whose life changed irreversably after he began building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Stones Into Schools continues the journey in 2008 with his attempt to build schools in Afghanistan and onward. It's a little strange to speak of attacks on the Taliban by the US in the past tense considering it's still going on, but I guess that is how history is written. It's also a little strange to hear the other side of the story, how someone over there experienced these things.

Right now I'm listening to the part where he is talking about the devastating earthquake which killed 86,000 people and it's heartbreaking. It's a strong reminder of the Sichuan earthquake in China in May of 2008. I'll never forget that day.

I don't think I even heard of this earthquake in Pakistan. I was in China at the time. Maybe it was censored because of how raw and painful that wound was still in China.

Anyway, these books are amazing. Everyone should read them.

December in America

Update on my life:
So my term finished on Monday and I'm already quite lost on what to do with myself. It's not like I can just hop on a train to Beijing for a weekend or crash a friend's apartment in another city. December 22nd will mark 5 months since I left Korea and the 24th will mark 5 months since I left China. I miss it a lot. I guess it doesn't help that I still listen to Chinese and Korean music every day. Or talk to people there. Today I got a Christmas email from a friend in Beijing. A couple weeks ago, I got pictures of the snowstorm in Shijiazhuang from students and friends there. I've decided I'm not in the right country.

A few days ago, I had dinner with some friends and all they did (well it was one person more than both of them) was complain about their very comfortable jobs and about shopping for Christmas presents for everyone. First of all, you have a job. Shut up and be grateful. And you are around friends and family. Shut up and be grateful. For the past two years, I received thoughtful gifts and cards from students and friends who really didn't have much to spare but never, ever complained about it at all. I totally checked out of the conversation once I started hearing whining. I miss that about Chinese people. They are so kind and genuine.

So, I don't know if that's a normal reaction or if it's just how I've changed since going abroad but there it is.

America

I am in America again and I guess I've hit boredom since I've been back. Korea was amazing and beautiful even when it was pouring rain (at least it was clean rain!) and Chicago was a lot of fun. I got to see friends I hadn't seen in 2 years.

So now all the fun has subsided and I am waiting for school to start. I really miss Korea and China but I hope I can go back within the next 5 years. So now the goal is school and a job to pay off my loans and then hopefully save enough to go back.

Memorable moments in ESL teaching...

So this year, teaching has been much smoother because I kind of know what to expect from my students. I've been pretty successful in getting them to talk, even some of the more shy students in my classes. I teach freshmen right now but I've had sophomores in the past as well. Anyway, some of my students have some incredible stories but you'd never hear it from them unless you asked. One question I asked them was to tell me about a time when they were lost. I got the funniest stories most of the time. I told them about all the times I've been lost and it makes some of them not feel so stupid for getting lost.

One story that was really memorable though was from a student who was almost kidnapped at 2 years of age. She was lured away by a woman in a busy market away from her mother and the only reason why she's here today, still with her family is because she saw an aunty she recognized and started crying really loudly. The aunty recognized her voice, talked to the woman and the woman got frightened and ran away. The aunty brought her back to her mother. Isn't that nuts?

Another student told me about a time when they decided to take a shortcut through a field (why does that always seem like a good idea?) to go home with a friend of his after school one day. They got lost in the field for several hours and the owner of the field saw them and directed them to their houses. They were only about 10 years old at the time. You might think that's pretty old to get lost, but in China most students stay on campus from middle school age and up. So they don't get to go home very much. Which also means they don't go outside of campus very much so they don't know the city as well as American students that age.

Another student (one of my Korean students) got lost on a mountain very close to his back yard. He had never climbed it before and decided he would do it one day, so he climbed it to the top and when he got to the top he noticed there weren't any good paths to go back down because it had started raining. So when he went back down the mountain, he was in a different city. So since he didn't know where he was, he had no choice but to go back up the mountain to get back to his home.

Anyway, it's interesting to hear from them and I'm glad their levels are good enough that I can hear stories like this from them.

Learning Chinese and other lovely skills

So living in China for almost two years, I've learned a lot of things I would not have expected to learn before coming here. Language wise, I've learned a lot of phrases because of the crazy things that have happened here. For example:

Earthquake
Tuberculosis
Appendicitis
Help!

Although "help" in Chinese is really long and if you were really dying, you'd so die before you get the entire expression out.

As of April 28th, I've learned the words for:

swine flu (zhu liu gan)
epidemic (wen yi)
flood (hong shui)
mad cow disease (feng niu bing)

Useless skills I've acquired since being here (mostly food related) that will have no purpose in the states:
-Making toast and garlic bread without an oven or toaster
-Making breadcrumbs
-Cooking entire meals using one pan
-Making ice without an ice tray
-Making pseudo-pancakes using only three ingredients
-Getting around in my place without locking myself in/out of rooms/my apt with my broken doorknobs
-Not electrocuting myself with the faulty extension cords, outlets or water heater in my bathroom
-Fixing doors and drawers myself (I never knew I was so handy)
-Making conversation with taxi drivers and shop owners without really knowing what they're talking about
-And of course, how to get around a new city without a map or English, especially in Beijing, city that I love and hate

Favorite Bizarre Moments from Spring Fest...

Hangzhou:

So we walked around the plaza and souvenir market and a girl came up to me. I could tell she was working up the courage to talk to me, so finally she said, “You are beautiful!” I said “Oh! Thank you.” She continued walking with Kim and me. Then I stopped and said to her, “Can I help you?” and she said, “Yes!” and skipped away. Then I watched her for a bit thinking that she was trying to pick our pockets or do something. But nope, she just skipped away to lala land.

Also in Hangzhou:
After eating dinner at Pizza Hut, Kim and I went outside and I noticed a crowd of people across the street. I wanted to see what was going on, so we watched for a few minutes. Then they started to run. I thought maybe there was a celebrity or somebody important coming. Nope. It was the bus. They all ran like there was a famous person on it or something but there wasn’t.

Huangshan (Yellow Mountain):
The showering facilities are hilarious at the hostel we stayed in. You assemble it yourself. When the old grandma took it out of the box, I couldn't help but crack up. Are you serious? The shower hose attaches to the sink and it drains into the toilet. And it leaks from the sink where it attaches to the faucet. Oh I wish I had taken a picture of it.

Back in Hangzhou:
We missed the 1:30 bus to the Pudong airport in Shanghai unfortunately by like mere minutes. So we got on a 2 pm regular bus to some other bus station on Shanghai. We ran to the subway and I definitely ran over some woman’s feet with all of my luggage in the subway. I felt a little bad about that. We ended up getting on the Maglev fast train at 6 something and we actually got to the airport at about the time our plane was leaving. We missed our flight. We bought two tickets for the next morning to Guilin and then Kim asked, “Uh excuse me, do you know where the Burger King is?” Yes, we just missed our flight and yes we just paid an extra 390 kuai to get a flight tomorrow and we have nowhere to sleep tonight but we’re more interested in Burger King, the shining jewel of Shanghai’s Pudong airport. That was an interesting night.

In Shenzhen:
We woke up at like 6 am one morning because of the Thai lady who wouldn’t stop burping and snoring next to us. Oh my goodness. I don’t know what was wrong with her GI tract. She was nice but man…those sounds were just not right. She belched loudly for at least an hour in the morning. Kim said she woke up and stared at her like, "Are you really gonna do that?" Yes, she really did that. I tried to sleep through it but it was impossible. It was like an earthquake coming out of her esophagus.

We had breakfast at noon at the hostel and then we went back to the room and the Thai lady prayed with us. She gave us her business card for Bangkok, Thailand which was quite funny cause we actually ended up going to Thailand.

Hong Kong:
We ended up going out with Dani as a last minute thing to Lan Kwai Fang. It was one of the most memorable nights of my life. It ended late and there was a brawl in the street. Kim and I were running away from the fight but they were like rolling down the street and fighting at the same time cause they kept up with us as we were trying to run away. And an ambulance came and the guy jumped out like a superhero and in a dramatic way asked, "Where was the fight?" And took off in the direction. It was crazy.

This spring festival was more memorable than last year's for sure and I managed to keep all my stuff which is good. It makes me a little sad to think that I'll be going back to America and I won't have these adventures anymore.

Some thoughts...

Last night, I went bowling with a bunch of Koreans that live in my building. Which meant that most of the time, they were speaking Korean and whatnot. I was the only non-Korean person there which didn't bother me. Sometimes I forget these things. I guess if I wasn't used to this sort of situation, it'd bother me. I guess it's just something I do. I don't usually hang out with other people who are Indian, I don't know why. Maybe because I didn't grow up in an area with tons of Indians. Actually, now that I think about it, I never had Indian friends until college. Mostly because I didn't know any other Indians until there was a small population in my university. In middle school and high school, I always hung out with the southeast Asians it seems. Or at least they were my closest friends.

So the trend continues in a different continent. You'd think in China surrounded by 1.3 billion Chinese people, I'd at least be hanging out with a bunch of Chinese people or the other Americans from Drake. Nope.

Tai was right...my life is ridiculous

A few days ago, I went to work out at the gym near my school. I saw a plump, naked woman there which is perfectly normal at gyms here. I had a feeling she'd start a conversation with me so I avoided eye contact and tried to get my stuff to go work out. "Hi," she says timidly. I knew it! Let me say she was more afraid of speaking in English than of being naked in front of me. So we talk for a little bit, she says that she's seen me before at my school. I told her I am a teacher and she told me that she is a student. I awkwardly avoid looking at her. So I got my water bottle and went to work out. I worked out for about an hour or so and went back to the locker room to retrieve my purse. She was still standing there....still naked. At this point, I was like okay whatever and got my things and left.

Then I thought about it for a while. Did I stun her with my "foreignness" so much that she couldn't put on any clothes for the next hour? Was she reliving the moment over and over in her head so much that she forgot she was naked? Does she just hang out at the locker room buck naked for kicks? Anyway, I realized that my life really is ridiculous as a friend once pointed out to me.

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.