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.