**Written Wednesday May 1st, mid afternoon local time; in the car driving from Murighiol to Brasov munching on delicious Romanian tomatoes, oranges and sunflower seeds.** -just not a lot of down time (with internet) to write and post at the same time :)
My introduction to Romania has been great and oh so very exhausting. We've been in Europe less than 72 hours but it feels like a week, albeit a very fun week!
Monday(April 29) was our full day in Bucharest and we walked all over...literally half the city. Our hotel, Vila Toparceanu, was a little outside the city but close to the airport which was why we chose it, turned out to be one of the best hotels I've ever stayed at! Had an awesome breakfast then the hotel driver drove us into the city! So nice, he gave us a little information on the city and then drove us up to Ceausescu's Palace, which is now the Parliament house. It is the 2nd largest building in the world, after the Pentagon....I never knew the Pentagon held that record. But since the Pentagon is s military building Bucharest likes to claim the largest (civil) building in the world. My impression is that Ceausescu had a bit of a Napoleon-like complex and he wanted everything bigger, but not necessarily better...and at times it's spilled over to the Romanian culture, they like to claim records and call everything they can a palace (the telephone company building for example...they call that a palace haha)
We were dropped off in old town then worked our way north..even figuring out how to take public transportation. The Romanian people are very friendly. While walking the city we met lots of people who helped us figure out where we were, find what we we looking for and sometimes how to make sue we didn't get ripped off. 2 really nice girls on their lunch break took us to the tourist information center which was a big help. From there we jumped on the metro, stood with some very interesting smelly people, and rode up a few stops to Charles de Gaulle statue in Herastru Park. This is when things got a little frustrating. The weather in Bucharest was beautiful, nice and oh so hot! All a wonderful combo for vacation, just not when you are traipsing around the city looking for what tour sites said was a 'must see', 'one of the best sites in Bucharest'....The Village Museum. Took us an hour to find it and then we were there for 20 min, let's just say it was not the best museum I've ever been to. It gave a good look into what old Romania looked like and how dedicated the Romanian people are to preserving their history. The village is comprised of original, renovated, buildings/homes from different periods that were transported whole to this outdoor museum in Bucharest during the communist reign of Ceausescu. The most interesting thing Mom noticed was the thickness of the thatched roofing....a good 2ft probably.
We trekked back down to about mid Bucharest to do a little self touring. The churches in the city are very beautiful and mostly all Romanian Orthodox (Christian) churches. They are scattered throughout the city in the most random locations. Originally I thought that was because the churches were there first and then the city came up around them like I saw in some places in England. However we learned that Ceausescu had wanted to get rid of the churches, and probably religion eventually, as they were symbols that detracted from communist beliefs. But he knew he couldn't just demolish them as that would create an uproar amongst the people. So he so very cleverly came up with a solution that he thought would give him the result he wanted, extinction of the church. He told his citizens that he needed to make a new road or bulldoze a certain area and that they could move the church if they chose to save it, he gave them about 2 weeks notice....so the citizens were left to figure out how to save their beloved, history filled churches. One church we visited that I found particularly eye catching, Manastirea Stavropoleos, was moved in a very ingenious way. With a couple days left to go a citizen was watching how bottles of the ever important beer/vodka was delivered and decided a church could be moved the same way. Large planks were placed underneath it to raise the foundation then larger blocks with wheels were slid underneath and the church was pushed/carried by many citizens across the city to where the government had designated. So Romanian citizens and culture: 1 point, Ceausescu's regime: 0...although that is not how it stayed :/
Manastirea Stavropoleos is a little church that is being refurbished. The inside had boxes all over but the main chapel, only big enough for a couple people to pray and move comfortably at a time, was painted beautifully and had ornate metal/wood work at the altar. 86% are Romanian Orthodox so most churches are set up in an Orthodox manner. While we were were enjoying the gorgeous interior many people came into pray, all in different ways but they all gave their bows and kisses to the same altars at the front, to Jesus and the Virgin. A wonderful man inside, who I think works at the church or he may have been a priest, tried to explain some of the symbolism of the decor to me. He only spoke Romanian so it was an interesting communication. But we found out there was a saints remains behind the Altar and the ceiling paintings represent heaven and purgatory...it really wasn't the most obvious of paintings that I have seen. Outside the smaller courtyard was also being refurbished. There were huge slabs of stone carvings and print laid up against the courtyard walls and 2 women were preserving them. It was a calming few minutes to stand there in the shade, letting our feet rest and enjoy the beautiful red flowers.
We had been told to have lunch at Cure ce Berre (1st beer house in Bucharest) so we left Manastirea Stavropoleos, walked 30 seconds and there we were! Food was great, but service was interesting. I really have noticed that citizens on the streets are very friendly and helpful but the workers really don't really seem that friendly. The hotel staff are always friendly but in other businesses (stores, restaurants, museums, and some other tourist areas) its very odd really....I've never really experienced that before.
We had about 2 hours to kill before meeting up with the walking tour, so we went down to the park at laid out in the sun watching clouds move! So wonderful :) The walking tour was fantastic, and free (aside from tip)! I was so tired by 4 that waiting for a 6pm tour seemed a horrible idea but I'm glad I went...even with a huge foot blister. We ended up learning a lot about he city and culture, more than I can really remember.
The country came out of communism in 1989 after years of oppression and turmoil. Ceausescu started the communist regime at the end of the 40s. And it finally came to a head during the 5 day rebellion in December of 1989 that ended with the death of Ceausescu & his wife, Elena.
Ceausescu came to power by overthrowing the existing Romanian Parliment. After he came to power he decided to change the whole city and literally did just that. He took the river out from the middle and made it run underground so that he could put in a giant square and fountains where before there had been a huge outdoor market which was very important to the citizens and the economy.
In the early 80s he visited North Korea and saw their grand buildings and came back to Romania wanting to build a grand building. As with everything he did it had to be the biggest, so he designed the Palace which is now the Parliment. The Government didn't have a lot of money and the money it did have was being given to pay off debts, which left very little money for the citizens. The construction started in 1982 and was worked on 24/7, with 3 different shifts. Ceausescu employed citizens which gave them jobs and military. In 7 years it was 80% completed as of Dec 1989 when Ceausescu was killed, the new Romanian government wanted to tear it down but realized it would cost more to tear down than to finish it, so from then until now only about 90% has been completed. There are still cranes all over the grounds, but the building is used for parliament meetings and other special functions. Michael Jackson was in Bucharest in the 90s and wanted to speak with the citizens, so the government let him speak from the building's balcony ...he was the first person to ever give a speech from that balcony, as Ceausescu had wanted that space for him to speak from. MJ started the speech with "Hello Budapest"......which both cracked up and appalled the crowd equally, haha.
Walking the city there is very much evidence of communism and post communism. I am so glad that I decided to come here vs. Italy because this will all change in 40 years, and I like seeing it still so fresh. Ceausescu bulldozed most of the housing and moved people into the traditional communist style tall apartments, drab and gray. And after the fall of communism most people could not afford nicer housing so they stayed. Those that could moved out and the vacant apartments were given to the homeless. However they never did anything to up keep them so all the apartments and building are in disrepair but still inhabited. All over the city you see it. This is also why there are so many stray dogs. When everyone was moved into communists housing they gave up yards and their dogs because it was to hard to take care of a dog on a 7floor walk up with your whole family in a little room. So the dogs were turned out, did what animals do and before you know it there are tons of stray dogs running around. We didn't notice a big problem with stray dogs, you saw them but all looked well fed just a little scruffier than a pet.
The old buildings that made it through the regime are beautiful and ornate. But one of the most interesting parts of the city are the new age artwork. There is a statue of a man holding the body of a wolf with a snake/dragon coming out of its head. When it was revealed it was said to be in the ugliest sculptures (which it really is) but it was placed in front of the National Museum, across the street from the National Bank....so weird. It portrays a naked Roman empower carrying a wolf to represent the blending of Ancient cultures in Romania.
In the square where the revolutions started there are 2 monuments that are particularly significant to today's Romania. 1 is a tree that is barren with missing and broken branches. This is a tree in a drought and it is a parallel to the country/society/citizens during communism. The next is a pillar with a wooden nest on the top. The pillar has young people made out of iron linked together on one side. The pathways leading up the the monument are in the shape of a cross and made out of slices of young trees. These young trees represent the thousands of young lives lost.
Bucharest was definitely not the most interesting cities I have ever been to but I did enjoy learning the history before seeing the rest of the country.
One thing both mom and I were quick to notice is how handsome a lot of the Romanian men are! I was actually really surprised, but they are very good looking-they do become less attractive after I've smelled them though haha. But Mom loves seeing all the men dressed up, and how they wear V-neck shirts that show some chest hair (I say eeww, but to each their own)...it's quite funny actually.
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Sunday, April 28, 2013
1st Stamp :)
April 29, 00:39 local time Bucharest
This is my first blog entry written on a mobile device (iPhone)...so hopefully it catches enough of my spelling errors :)
I am currently sitting in one of the cutest hotel rooms in Bucharest at the Vila Toparceanu, being serenaded by, what must be, a pack o dogs. Mom and I are both so happy to have nice beds.
I had to get a new passport in January so that it wouldn't be too close to expiration during this trip. So my first stamp in this new passport is Bucharest! It's a great new chapter in my life. I've become really happy living in SoCal, and this trip has really changed from what I had originally wanted back in November, when I bought tickets. This is now more vacation than anything else!! and backpacking through countries is new to me. I'm used to moving, living and then traveling for long periods of time. So I'm super excited!!
What a couple of flights! It's been 20 hours of flights and airports. With the Air Traffic Controller furloughs that happened at home all the flight schedules got pushed behind so our flight out of LAX that was suppose to leave at 9:30 left about 10:45. That meant more time in the lounge in LAX but also crazy rushing once we got to Heathrow. The flight to London was great-we had three seats for just me and mom so we got to sleep a lot which was great. In Heathrow, getting from terminal to terminal, through more security scanners and then out to the plane took an hour which isn't bad timing but by the time we landed we had a 45 min layover vs out orinal 3.5 hour layover....always a blast running through the airport with a huge backpack haha. But we made it and now we are ready to wake up in 6 hours to see Bucharest! On the plane of love listening to the different languages, and excitingly enough I've realized the Romanian has some similarities to Spanish (mom later read that Romania is a Romance language), which was really surprising to me. I was expecting a more Slavic language. I guess I will really see tomorrow when I'm not so tired :)
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Sultan of Brunei: my last month in China
Wow! I do not know how many times I have said this in the last year but OMG these past 2 months have been a whirlwind of crazy and awesome! I have sat down meaning to write something and kept being distracted by travel plans, scrapbooking, packing and hanging out with friends or exploring new places.
This is the entry I stared 2 weeks ago when I was in Phuket.
So I am sitting in my hostel 5 min away from Karon Beach in Phuket. I was deciding between watching an episode of How I Met Your Mother or doing some scrapbook pages for my recent travels around China.....but instead chose the third option: writing! I have been putting this off for 2 weeks which is long enough.
My last month in China was amazing!! I was super excited about my mom coming on January 15th! I love travelling but it is difficult to travel alone, because in 10 years I can’t reminisce with someone about 'that one night in that one place'. So, it’s always wonderful to share a part of my travelling life with someone who will always be in my life-and it happened to be Mom! I could hardly sleep the night before, which was odd since I was so exhausted from working. But after a busy Saturday and Sunday of teaching I jumped on the fast train to Beijing to meet her at the airport. It was great to see her and finally give her a hug after 4 months (even thought it was one of the shorter separations...I’m used to the 7 months of being away). I had to work on January 16th so we only spent 3 hours in Beijing, and that was only spent in the train station. But we did have a wonderful dinner and mom got to experience her first squat toilets!! On the train there was the cutest little boy with his dad, and his dad kept coming round to talk with us (he spoke a little bit of English). He was also very excited to exchange some Yuan for 1 US dollar, it was great! We were both exhausted by the time we got back to Cangzhou, around 10pm. We had to deal with horrible taxi drivers who wanted to charge my 5x more than normal so we just got on the bus. A half hour later and after my 6 flights of stairs we were greeted by Abigael at the apartment. Mom was wonderful and brought us all little goodies. Abi had requested some of her American favorites-Lucky Charms, Twizzlers & Crystal Light. Then she took out a box wrapped in red paper...Sees Candy!! Mom got a kick out of the fact that I knew the box at once.
Since I had to work the next day mom came to school, she sat and watched me...nothing to exciting but then again, life in Cangzhou isn't particularly exciting. I, of course, took her to our favorite noodle place for lunch and ordered her the usual. She loved it!! And even after our trip she said her favorite place to eat was our noodle place. We took it back to Edwina and Alistair's and the 5 of us had lunch together, just like we would have done any other day. It was wonderful; she got to meet Edi, Ali and Abi. We brought the box of Sees with us and had fun trying some out. Mom even brought goodies for Edi & Ali...toothbrushes!! They loved that her name and address were on them, I don't even think of that. I mean, doesn't every one have their dentist's (aka Mom) name and addresses on their toothbrushes haha.
After classes we an hour to see the sights of Cangzhou-the Iron Lion & the park across the street from the school. Then we packed bags up again and went to Beijing.
I was unbelievably excited to get out of Cangzhou again, and for 2 weeks this time! It was my 6th time to Beijing in 4 months...and I think my 3rd or 4th time at Happy Dragon. Mom fell in love with the hostel just as quickly as we all had 3 months earlier. After a delicious dinner we settled in for bed....one problem our room was FREEZING!! It had a heater but just powerful enough to heat the room up before the heat escaped through the cracks that are so common in Chinese construction...I think Papa would disapprove. But we made do, and just rushed around and then got under the covers and basically refused to get out of bed until the next morning.
We spent 4 days in Beijing. And we were very busy. We visited the Forbidden City, Olympic Green, The Great Wall, Lama Temple and of course the markets!! Mom even got to participate in dumpling making!! It was really fun being the pseudo tour guide, I felt very cool. I was actually pleasantly surprised that I could be the tour guide and even used my extremely limited Chinese.
On the 20th we left our hostel at 6:30 to get to the airport by 7:30 to check in for our flights to Guilin. After a few mishaps we got the airport and went to check in only to find out the flight had been overbooked for Chinese New Year and we couldn't get on. So we had to split up onto 2 different flights, her leaving 4 hours before I did, and I landed in Guilin around 8:30pm. As with all Chinese flights...and basically everything in China, it is frustrating, disorganized and consistently 1-2 hours late!! But I arrived and we were excited to get this part of China travelled. Over the next week we biked, hiked, and drove all around Guangxi province visiting the local people and minority villages. In Guilin we did a bamboo river raft; it was absolutely freezing but so beautiful. We even got to witness the famous cormorant fishing. Edwina had first told me about it, and it sounded sort of magical. Fisherman go out on bamboo rafts and, instead of using fishing poles, they have loyal birds that dive into get the fish and then bring they captured booty to the fisherman. At the end of the day the fisherman rewards the birds with a fish. It all sounded very symbiotic and...Like I said earlier a little magical. I should have known, after living in China for 4 months, that the illusion was to be shattered, haha. The fisherman had 4 birds tethered to his raft. He would choose one and tie a string around their necks (at first we couldn't figure out why); he would then un-tether the bird and toss it into the river. The bird would dive in and hunt. When he came up with a fish in his mouth, he would flounder around for a bit and the fisherman would help him back to the boat and pull the fish out of his mouth then the bird would do it all again. After a few moments we realized that the little string he put around their necks was to keep the bird from swallowing the fish......not nearly as cool as I thought it to be, but effective.
We drove up into the mountains to visit the minority peoples and I cannot begin to describe how cold mom and I were. I didn't realize we were going up into the mountains so neither of us packed for anything that cold....it was way colder than Beijing! We visited many villages, our favorite of which was Long Ji. It was a village nestled into the rice terraces. Cars are not allowed up to the terraces so we left our car at the bottom and had to hike up. 2 locals came down with baskets strapped to their backs to help us with our suitcases. I carried my backpack up with me...and after 30 min of hiking uphill in the middle of the freezing night I was so happy to get up to our hotel and dump the backpack and crawl into bed. We had a wonderful 2 days on the terraces, including celebrating Chinese New Years! Our hotel 'concierge' & cook, Feifei invited us to spend the important holiday with her family, which we of course agreed to. During the day we hiked all over the frozen terraces without guide. We had a great time. The people were so friendly. We met one woman who lived up out of the main village in a makeshift hut, she was wonderful. Mom was very interested in her teeth, she was missing a lot. Mom pointed out that it was from wear not decay. We chatted with her for about 10 min and took pictures with her. She even sang a song for us; it was wonderful to be serenaded with a traditional song of her Miao tribe while overlooking the rice terraces.
That night we headed out with Feifei to celebrate New Year’s. We sat in the little room with a tiny fire in the middle as they prepared some of the dinner: deep fried, stuffed tofu. We then went to another house and joined the rest of the family. We sat around a big round table over the kiang (a little fire to heat our legs as we sat. We feasted on bamboo shoots, veggies and what were at the time mystery meats. The meats turned out to be bamboo and mountain rats...can you say YIKES!!! Mom and I were stunned, but we did try a bit of each, but we filled up on bamboo and carrots mostly. Feifei was out translator during the 2 hours we were there and it was really fun. The family was so warm, that we got on great despite the language barrier. Feifei made a comment though that really stuck with me. I don’t know what the topic of conversation was but she said "We are rich. We have enough food to eat and houses to keep us warm." I was stunned, and then was surprised that I felt stunned. But this girl, the same age as me, was saying how happy and rich they are living in the freezing mountain town, which few people ever leave. It really stuck with me and made me see how happy people can be with so little if they just allow themselves to be. During Mao's Culture Revolution 1000's starved to death and millions more nearly did, even the people working these terraces because all of the grain was taken. So now, just 50 years later they see themselves as rich because no one is starving or freezing out in the cold. It's that perspective that just amazes me.
We travelled from Guilin to Guiyang with our tour guides visiting all the mountain towns. Most of the mountain people celebrate their weddings during the holidays, since they can take time off work. So we same a ton of wedding processions and even got to sort of join in on one. All the people were taking gifts to the bride in her house and we jumped out of the van with our camera and the tour guide and walked on into the wood, 2 story house. As soon as we entered we were greeted with 100 smiles and then quickly force fed rice wine. I am not a fan of it, but it is rude to turn down so when a woman walked over and poured an entire glass of it down my throat I smiled, bowed and quickly backed away, from then on I could politely refuse anymore. Mom was luckier and only had to take a sip of the wine....not sure why I had to take the whole glass. But after the burn of the wine subsided in my throat I turned around to see quite the site....an entire pig hanging on a stick over the tiniest fire I’ve ever seen, in the middle of the house! The bride was dressed in traditional Dong (the tribe) marriage attire. She was very nice and we smiled at each other and I found out she was 20 years old.
From Guiyang we flew to Chengdu. We spent one day in Chengdu and it was amazing! We had the best hotel so mom and I stayed up late drinking a cup of tea and reading about the Pandas. The morning of the 27th we got to visit the Panda reserve!!! I was unbelievably excited that the complete lack of sleep barely fazed me. We arrived right when it opened and got into the first group of people that were able to hangout with the Pandas. This was what I was most excited about when I decided to come to China, and so was bouncing all over the place. It’s an extra payment, about $200, to sit with a panda, but so worth it! Mom and I were dressed in surgical gowns, booties and gloves before being allowed to touch the pandas. After getting all dressed up we waited anxiously with 4 other visitors as the caretakers brought out the cutest 1 year old Panda I've ever seen. He jumped up onto the bench and waited happily to be given his apple. Mom was the first one to sit with the Panda. She just lit up when she sat with him; it was so fun to watch. The photographer let me sit on the other side of the Panda to take a picture with the both of us together. After a few minutes I was able to trade with mom and sit next to the beautiful bear. He happily ate his apple, not really caring what was going on. I sat down and scooted right next to him, feeling the fur. It's really different than I expected, thicker and coarser. I got a great picture when the panda started me by moving his paw and placing it in mine, it was amazing!! After a few minutes we had to leave, but we were both bouncing around like little kids for the rest of the day. We walked all around the reserve seeing the different pandas and the red pandas which aren't really pandas at all. After the reserve we drove further out of the city to the Sichuan Cooking Museum. I wasn't sure if I would like this but it was really interesting. We learned how they make the special Sichuan chili paste. They leave it outdoors for 1-2 years, uncovered to allow the flavor to deepen. Since it gets really hot and muggy in the summer we asked if bugs land on the paste, but honestly if I were a bug Sichuan chili paste is not where I would want to land. After the tour we got to be chefs!! We had chef outfits and hats and cooked alongside the head chef, learning to make kung pao chicken and spicy tofu. We had a wonderful meal!! Before our flight we did some walking around the Chengdu center and then boarded our last in-country flight to Shanghai.
Shanghai was wonderful!!! It was nice to be back in a big city, but also one that is so different than Beijing. It is more westernized and doesn’t seem as crowded as Beijing. I expected it to feel more like Manhattan, since people compare those 2 cities, but it felt more like Chicago, or LA. My favorite thing about Shanghai was having dinner on the Bund, the river that runs through the middle of the city. We went to 'M on the Bund' and it was amazing! We got all dressed up and walked the 10 min down the road and were transported back to a 20's bar lounge overlooking the lights of the Bund. The food was amazing, and I had the first cocktail I’ve ever truly loved...and it was French haha. We had such a wonderful time there that we came back the next night just for the cocktails and view after dinner at another restaurant. We were hooked up with a friend of a friend who took us around the city with her driver. She's lived in Shanghai for a while so she took out for delicious dumplings, showed us the insect market and took for amazing massages. The insect market was a trip! People carefully select crickets and grasshoppers like we would a cute little puppy or kitten. It was bizarre, but really entertaining. It’s really busy with hundreds of insect and bird vendors and then people hanging out playing cards. On the 30th Mom and I split, her flying back to LA and me taking the train back to Cangzhou. The whole time we were together mom kept comment on how much of a little family Abi, Edi, Ali and I were and it is totally true. Abi called me as soon as she got back to China from Japan and then when she got her train tickets to Cangzhou. And I did the same as soon as I got my train ticket back to Cangzhou. It was a relaxing train ride though, 4 hours of watching iPod sized movies.
After returning I had 2 weeks in Cangzhou before flying to Phuket. I thought I would be working, but after my visa issues I couldn’t so I got to hang out in exciting Cangzhou haha. Abi's friend Chris who went to Japan was there for a week so I just hung out with him, going to the store and what not. On Feb 6 the 4 of us and Chris made a last group trip to Beijing. We of course stayed at Happy Dragon. We had some fun going back to the silk market and spending lots of money on pretty scarves and I got a new pearl necklace at the pearl market. We spent the evening playing a really fun and way too loud game of Articulate. Edi & Ali and brought it back with them from Australia and we had such a fun time. Abi and I were fabulous teammates. It was nice that no one else in the hostel common area minded that we were there, but we did invite them if they wanted. It was just a really fun night, one of my favorite in China!! Life back in Cangzhou was pretty normal for the next 6 days before I left. Abi and I hung out, had movie nights and we would go over to Edi and Ali's.
Edwina asked me what my favorite memories of China were and I had a difficult time choosing, but now I’ve had 3 weeks to think on it and this is what I’ve come up with (in no particular order):
New Years (all 4 of us were in agreement that the party was awesome)
Pandas
Meeting Edwina, Alistair and Abigael
Explaining "Jizz in my Pants" to Tina
Hiking the Great Wall
Sharing the experience with my Mom
Our wonderful noodle place
Movie nights
Coming to China was the most spontaneous thing I’ve ever done and it has been some of the most memorable months of my life. Like anything there are frustrating times but the rewards were so much greater than those frustrations. I love that I go to live there and meet the amazing people I met.
This is the entry I stared 2 weeks ago when I was in Phuket.
So I am sitting in my hostel 5 min away from Karon Beach in Phuket. I was deciding between watching an episode of How I Met Your Mother or doing some scrapbook pages for my recent travels around China.....but instead chose the third option: writing! I have been putting this off for 2 weeks which is long enough.
My last month in China was amazing!! I was super excited about my mom coming on January 15th! I love travelling but it is difficult to travel alone, because in 10 years I can’t reminisce with someone about 'that one night in that one place'. So, it’s always wonderful to share a part of my travelling life with someone who will always be in my life-and it happened to be Mom! I could hardly sleep the night before, which was odd since I was so exhausted from working. But after a busy Saturday and Sunday of teaching I jumped on the fast train to Beijing to meet her at the airport. It was great to see her and finally give her a hug after 4 months (even thought it was one of the shorter separations...I’m used to the 7 months of being away). I had to work on January 16th so we only spent 3 hours in Beijing, and that was only spent in the train station. But we did have a wonderful dinner and mom got to experience her first squat toilets!! On the train there was the cutest little boy with his dad, and his dad kept coming round to talk with us (he spoke a little bit of English). He was also very excited to exchange some Yuan for 1 US dollar, it was great! We were both exhausted by the time we got back to Cangzhou, around 10pm. We had to deal with horrible taxi drivers who wanted to charge my 5x more than normal so we just got on the bus. A half hour later and after my 6 flights of stairs we were greeted by Abigael at the apartment. Mom was wonderful and brought us all little goodies. Abi had requested some of her American favorites-Lucky Charms, Twizzlers & Crystal Light. Then she took out a box wrapped in red paper...Sees Candy!! Mom got a kick out of the fact that I knew the box at once.
Since I had to work the next day mom came to school, she sat and watched me...nothing to exciting but then again, life in Cangzhou isn't particularly exciting. I, of course, took her to our favorite noodle place for lunch and ordered her the usual. She loved it!! And even after our trip she said her favorite place to eat was our noodle place. We took it back to Edwina and Alistair's and the 5 of us had lunch together, just like we would have done any other day. It was wonderful; she got to meet Edi, Ali and Abi. We brought the box of Sees with us and had fun trying some out. Mom even brought goodies for Edi & Ali...toothbrushes!! They loved that her name and address were on them, I don't even think of that. I mean, doesn't every one have their dentist's (aka Mom) name and addresses on their toothbrushes haha.
After classes we an hour to see the sights of Cangzhou-the Iron Lion & the park across the street from the school. Then we packed bags up again and went to Beijing.
I was unbelievably excited to get out of Cangzhou again, and for 2 weeks this time! It was my 6th time to Beijing in 4 months...and I think my 3rd or 4th time at Happy Dragon. Mom fell in love with the hostel just as quickly as we all had 3 months earlier. After a delicious dinner we settled in for bed....one problem our room was FREEZING!! It had a heater but just powerful enough to heat the room up before the heat escaped through the cracks that are so common in Chinese construction...I think Papa would disapprove. But we made do, and just rushed around and then got under the covers and basically refused to get out of bed until the next morning.
We spent 4 days in Beijing. And we were very busy. We visited the Forbidden City, Olympic Green, The Great Wall, Lama Temple and of course the markets!! Mom even got to participate in dumpling making!! It was really fun being the pseudo tour guide, I felt very cool. I was actually pleasantly surprised that I could be the tour guide and even used my extremely limited Chinese.
On the 20th we left our hostel at 6:30 to get to the airport by 7:30 to check in for our flights to Guilin. After a few mishaps we got the airport and went to check in only to find out the flight had been overbooked for Chinese New Year and we couldn't get on. So we had to split up onto 2 different flights, her leaving 4 hours before I did, and I landed in Guilin around 8:30pm. As with all Chinese flights...and basically everything in China, it is frustrating, disorganized and consistently 1-2 hours late!! But I arrived and we were excited to get this part of China travelled. Over the next week we biked, hiked, and drove all around Guangxi province visiting the local people and minority villages. In Guilin we did a bamboo river raft; it was absolutely freezing but so beautiful. We even got to witness the famous cormorant fishing. Edwina had first told me about it, and it sounded sort of magical. Fisherman go out on bamboo rafts and, instead of using fishing poles, they have loyal birds that dive into get the fish and then bring they captured booty to the fisherman. At the end of the day the fisherman rewards the birds with a fish. It all sounded very symbiotic and...Like I said earlier a little magical. I should have known, after living in China for 4 months, that the illusion was to be shattered, haha. The fisherman had 4 birds tethered to his raft. He would choose one and tie a string around their necks (at first we couldn't figure out why); he would then un-tether the bird and toss it into the river. The bird would dive in and hunt. When he came up with a fish in his mouth, he would flounder around for a bit and the fisherman would help him back to the boat and pull the fish out of his mouth then the bird would do it all again. After a few moments we realized that the little string he put around their necks was to keep the bird from swallowing the fish......not nearly as cool as I thought it to be, but effective.
We drove up into the mountains to visit the minority peoples and I cannot begin to describe how cold mom and I were. I didn't realize we were going up into the mountains so neither of us packed for anything that cold....it was way colder than Beijing! We visited many villages, our favorite of which was Long Ji. It was a village nestled into the rice terraces. Cars are not allowed up to the terraces so we left our car at the bottom and had to hike up. 2 locals came down with baskets strapped to their backs to help us with our suitcases. I carried my backpack up with me...and after 30 min of hiking uphill in the middle of the freezing night I was so happy to get up to our hotel and dump the backpack and crawl into bed. We had a wonderful 2 days on the terraces, including celebrating Chinese New Years! Our hotel 'concierge' & cook, Feifei invited us to spend the important holiday with her family, which we of course agreed to. During the day we hiked all over the frozen terraces without guide. We had a great time. The people were so friendly. We met one woman who lived up out of the main village in a makeshift hut, she was wonderful. Mom was very interested in her teeth, she was missing a lot. Mom pointed out that it was from wear not decay. We chatted with her for about 10 min and took pictures with her. She even sang a song for us; it was wonderful to be serenaded with a traditional song of her Miao tribe while overlooking the rice terraces.
That night we headed out with Feifei to celebrate New Year’s. We sat in the little room with a tiny fire in the middle as they prepared some of the dinner: deep fried, stuffed tofu. We then went to another house and joined the rest of the family. We sat around a big round table over the kiang (a little fire to heat our legs as we sat. We feasted on bamboo shoots, veggies and what were at the time mystery meats. The meats turned out to be bamboo and mountain rats...can you say YIKES!!! Mom and I were stunned, but we did try a bit of each, but we filled up on bamboo and carrots mostly. Feifei was out translator during the 2 hours we were there and it was really fun. The family was so warm, that we got on great despite the language barrier. Feifei made a comment though that really stuck with me. I don’t know what the topic of conversation was but she said "We are rich. We have enough food to eat and houses to keep us warm." I was stunned, and then was surprised that I felt stunned. But this girl, the same age as me, was saying how happy and rich they are living in the freezing mountain town, which few people ever leave. It really stuck with me and made me see how happy people can be with so little if they just allow themselves to be. During Mao's Culture Revolution 1000's starved to death and millions more nearly did, even the people working these terraces because all of the grain was taken. So now, just 50 years later they see themselves as rich because no one is starving or freezing out in the cold. It's that perspective that just amazes me.
We travelled from Guilin to Guiyang with our tour guides visiting all the mountain towns. Most of the mountain people celebrate their weddings during the holidays, since they can take time off work. So we same a ton of wedding processions and even got to sort of join in on one. All the people were taking gifts to the bride in her house and we jumped out of the van with our camera and the tour guide and walked on into the wood, 2 story house. As soon as we entered we were greeted with 100 smiles and then quickly force fed rice wine. I am not a fan of it, but it is rude to turn down so when a woman walked over and poured an entire glass of it down my throat I smiled, bowed and quickly backed away, from then on I could politely refuse anymore. Mom was luckier and only had to take a sip of the wine....not sure why I had to take the whole glass. But after the burn of the wine subsided in my throat I turned around to see quite the site....an entire pig hanging on a stick over the tiniest fire I’ve ever seen, in the middle of the house! The bride was dressed in traditional Dong (the tribe) marriage attire. She was very nice and we smiled at each other and I found out she was 20 years old.
From Guiyang we flew to Chengdu. We spent one day in Chengdu and it was amazing! We had the best hotel so mom and I stayed up late drinking a cup of tea and reading about the Pandas. The morning of the 27th we got to visit the Panda reserve!!! I was unbelievably excited that the complete lack of sleep barely fazed me. We arrived right when it opened and got into the first group of people that were able to hangout with the Pandas. This was what I was most excited about when I decided to come to China, and so was bouncing all over the place. It’s an extra payment, about $200, to sit with a panda, but so worth it! Mom and I were dressed in surgical gowns, booties and gloves before being allowed to touch the pandas. After getting all dressed up we waited anxiously with 4 other visitors as the caretakers brought out the cutest 1 year old Panda I've ever seen. He jumped up onto the bench and waited happily to be given his apple. Mom was the first one to sit with the Panda. She just lit up when she sat with him; it was so fun to watch. The photographer let me sit on the other side of the Panda to take a picture with the both of us together. After a few minutes I was able to trade with mom and sit next to the beautiful bear. He happily ate his apple, not really caring what was going on. I sat down and scooted right next to him, feeling the fur. It's really different than I expected, thicker and coarser. I got a great picture when the panda started me by moving his paw and placing it in mine, it was amazing!! After a few minutes we had to leave, but we were both bouncing around like little kids for the rest of the day. We walked all around the reserve seeing the different pandas and the red pandas which aren't really pandas at all. After the reserve we drove further out of the city to the Sichuan Cooking Museum. I wasn't sure if I would like this but it was really interesting. We learned how they make the special Sichuan chili paste. They leave it outdoors for 1-2 years, uncovered to allow the flavor to deepen. Since it gets really hot and muggy in the summer we asked if bugs land on the paste, but honestly if I were a bug Sichuan chili paste is not where I would want to land. After the tour we got to be chefs!! We had chef outfits and hats and cooked alongside the head chef, learning to make kung pao chicken and spicy tofu. We had a wonderful meal!! Before our flight we did some walking around the Chengdu center and then boarded our last in-country flight to Shanghai.
Shanghai was wonderful!!! It was nice to be back in a big city, but also one that is so different than Beijing. It is more westernized and doesn’t seem as crowded as Beijing. I expected it to feel more like Manhattan, since people compare those 2 cities, but it felt more like Chicago, or LA. My favorite thing about Shanghai was having dinner on the Bund, the river that runs through the middle of the city. We went to 'M on the Bund' and it was amazing! We got all dressed up and walked the 10 min down the road and were transported back to a 20's bar lounge overlooking the lights of the Bund. The food was amazing, and I had the first cocktail I’ve ever truly loved...and it was French haha. We had such a wonderful time there that we came back the next night just for the cocktails and view after dinner at another restaurant. We were hooked up with a friend of a friend who took us around the city with her driver. She's lived in Shanghai for a while so she took out for delicious dumplings, showed us the insect market and took for amazing massages. The insect market was a trip! People carefully select crickets and grasshoppers like we would a cute little puppy or kitten. It was bizarre, but really entertaining. It’s really busy with hundreds of insect and bird vendors and then people hanging out playing cards. On the 30th Mom and I split, her flying back to LA and me taking the train back to Cangzhou. The whole time we were together mom kept comment on how much of a little family Abi, Edi, Ali and I were and it is totally true. Abi called me as soon as she got back to China from Japan and then when she got her train tickets to Cangzhou. And I did the same as soon as I got my train ticket back to Cangzhou. It was a relaxing train ride though, 4 hours of watching iPod sized movies.
After returning I had 2 weeks in Cangzhou before flying to Phuket. I thought I would be working, but after my visa issues I couldn’t so I got to hang out in exciting Cangzhou haha. Abi's friend Chris who went to Japan was there for a week so I just hung out with him, going to the store and what not. On Feb 6 the 4 of us and Chris made a last group trip to Beijing. We of course stayed at Happy Dragon. We had some fun going back to the silk market and spending lots of money on pretty scarves and I got a new pearl necklace at the pearl market. We spent the evening playing a really fun and way too loud game of Articulate. Edi & Ali and brought it back with them from Australia and we had such a fun time. Abi and I were fabulous teammates. It was nice that no one else in the hostel common area minded that we were there, but we did invite them if they wanted. It was just a really fun night, one of my favorite in China!! Life back in Cangzhou was pretty normal for the next 6 days before I left. Abi and I hung out, had movie nights and we would go over to Edi and Ali's.
Edwina asked me what my favorite memories of China were and I had a difficult time choosing, but now I’ve had 3 weeks to think on it and this is what I’ve come up with (in no particular order):
New Years (all 4 of us were in agreement that the party was awesome)
Pandas
Meeting Edwina, Alistair and Abigael
Explaining "Jizz in my Pants" to Tina
Hiking the Great Wall
Sharing the experience with my Mom
Our wonderful noodle place
Movie nights
Coming to China was the most spontaneous thing I’ve ever done and it has been some of the most memorable months of my life. Like anything there are frustrating times but the rewards were so much greater than those frustrations. I love that I go to live there and meet the amazing people I met.
Friday, January 6, 2012
tissues please
Friday, January 6
This week has been going so well and then tonight happened! Things have been going really well at the school, even though we've not gotten a day off since New Years. My classes have been really nice (basically because in the beginning of the week, all my trouble makers were absent). I've been a little sniffily but it hasn't been affecting my week too much...I just spent yesterday lying in bed surrounded by tissues watching episodes of How I Met Your Mother and NCIS.
Last month Vicky (the TA) & I went to Passport Office and we were told to come back later when it was 2 months from the time I had to leave (Feb 12). So we went back today, and I was was unpleasantly not surprised. I have become used to the fact that nothing in China occurs the way it should. So even though I've been told at least 4 times that I will be able to extend the visa until February. But of course, when we went in today we were told that the system was down to allow me to extend for 2 months, since it is more than one month until I leave.
Thursday, January 12
Ugh, cold is still here in full effect. As with every Chinese person I've been told to drink tea & hot water. Shishi gave me some tea over the weekend which she and the TA's told me would cure my cold. So I took the tea over the weekend and spent the whole night up coughing...well more like hacking up a lung. So after 2 days, and my cold getting way worse I stopped taking at and have switched to drinking tons of water and have continued to sit with tissues near me at all times. It is getting better but I am hoping to be less congested by the time I have to board a plane next week. So excited that mom is landing on Sunday!! So excited to see her. Buying train tickets to Beijing to pick her up was an experience. It was the first time i'd done anything like this totally by myself in China. I took the bus down to the train station during my lunch break on Saturday, but when i got there they said I could buy a ticket more than 8 days in advance. So I went back on my Sunday lunch break and after a few snafus I purchased my ticket to Beijing and then mom's and my tickets back to Cangzhou! I had my TA, Carol, write a few sentences for my in Chinese to make purchasing tickets easier. But still they weren't going to let me buy mom's tickets because I didn't have her passport. So I stood their frantically saying "no, no she's in mei guo (America)" and then promptly waved my Ipod with mom's passport number on it. After a few moments they let me buy her ticket. The next day I had to do the same thing on Monday morning and again they told me no because I didn't have mom's passport but I worked it all out and successfully purchased tickets to take me and mom back to Beijing on Monday!
Aside from getting ready for vacation and Mom coming I've been dealing with my visa. Shishi has been telling for the past 2 months that it will be easy to get extended. But in the last 2 months I have felt like a ping pong ball being smacked around by the Chinese officials in the passport office. I've been told to come back, that the computer system wont allow me to extend for 2 months and then today I was finally told that they can't extend an American visa for more than a month. So they have my passport to extend for the next month. I am very happy to be getting it extended, but there is a bigger back story about how I am getting it extended but not for the internet.
Well as with 90% of the days in Cangzhou it is nice and smoggy....and really cold! Sitting cozy at the table watching NCIS and doing some scrap booking.
This week has been going so well and then tonight happened! Things have been going really well at the school, even though we've not gotten a day off since New Years. My classes have been really nice (basically because in the beginning of the week, all my trouble makers were absent). I've been a little sniffily but it hasn't been affecting my week too much...I just spent yesterday lying in bed surrounded by tissues watching episodes of How I Met Your Mother and NCIS.
Last month Vicky (the TA) & I went to Passport Office and we were told to come back later when it was 2 months from the time I had to leave (Feb 12). So we went back today, and I was was unpleasantly not surprised. I have become used to the fact that nothing in China occurs the way it should. So even though I've been told at least 4 times that I will be able to extend the visa until February. But of course, when we went in today we were told that the system was down to allow me to extend for 2 months, since it is more than one month until I leave.
Thursday, January 12
Ugh, cold is still here in full effect. As with every Chinese person I've been told to drink tea & hot water. Shishi gave me some tea over the weekend which she and the TA's told me would cure my cold. So I took the tea over the weekend and spent the whole night up coughing...well more like hacking up a lung. So after 2 days, and my cold getting way worse I stopped taking at and have switched to drinking tons of water and have continued to sit with tissues near me at all times. It is getting better but I am hoping to be less congested by the time I have to board a plane next week. So excited that mom is landing on Sunday!! So excited to see her. Buying train tickets to Beijing to pick her up was an experience. It was the first time i'd done anything like this totally by myself in China. I took the bus down to the train station during my lunch break on Saturday, but when i got there they said I could buy a ticket more than 8 days in advance. So I went back on my Sunday lunch break and after a few snafus I purchased my ticket to Beijing and then mom's and my tickets back to Cangzhou! I had my TA, Carol, write a few sentences for my in Chinese to make purchasing tickets easier. But still they weren't going to let me buy mom's tickets because I didn't have her passport. So I stood their frantically saying "no, no she's in mei guo (America)" and then promptly waved my Ipod with mom's passport number on it. After a few moments they let me buy her ticket. The next day I had to do the same thing on Monday morning and again they told me no because I didn't have mom's passport but I worked it all out and successfully purchased tickets to take me and mom back to Beijing on Monday!
Aside from getting ready for vacation and Mom coming I've been dealing with my visa. Shishi has been telling for the past 2 months that it will be easy to get extended. But in the last 2 months I have felt like a ping pong ball being smacked around by the Chinese officials in the passport office. I've been told to come back, that the computer system wont allow me to extend for 2 months and then today I was finally told that they can't extend an American visa for more than a month. So they have my passport to extend for the next month. I am very happy to be getting it extended, but there is a bigger back story about how I am getting it extended but not for the internet.
Well as with 90% of the days in Cangzhou it is nice and smoggy....and really cold! Sitting cozy at the table watching NCIS and doing some scrap booking.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
New Years 2012...Beijing Style
New Years Eve was EPIC!!! We'd been planning and re-planning new years for a month or 2 and plans kept being forced to be changed, but i'm so glad it did! We had a absolutely amazing time in Beijing. When we couldn't get tickets to Shanghai we decided to do an all-nighter in Beijing and I found a list of the top parties. We emailed the top 3 about buying pre-sale tickets and times and only one party got back to me, NOVA. I had been emailing one of the coordinators for a week about buying tickets and logistics and stuff. He said he would set aside 4 tickets at pre-sale prices!! So we got all excited about going to an actual party and getting all dressed up!! Edwina and I had been talking outfits for almost 2 weeks lol.
Abi, Edi and Ali had to work Saturday night so I met them at school and we took the 8:53pm train to Beijing. We had a fun train ride playing 'ring of fire' to pre-game. We must have been so loud from laughing but no one minded. We got into Beijing around 9:30pm and caught a taxi to the party location. On the drive there we were having fun driving through different parts of Beijing and seeing all the lights, and all of a sudden it hit me....I am in China haha..it was the weirdest thing. But the taxi ride was fun, we were all so giddy that there was lots of talking...i even tried out my Scottish accents by saying "my cow needs a mirror for Hogmany" just the way Abigael does...rolling the 'r's and everything....I first asked if Edwina wanted to use my mirror to put on lipstick and it led to a 5 min convo with all of us saying mirror in our various accents...so funny.
When we got to the party, first we were totally excited about the location. It was in an old oil tanker in the art/industrial district. When we got in and I gave my name and told them I had been talking with Dion...they just let us in!!!! No payment, nothing.....we were so excited haha. I felt like such a VIP. Abigael and Edwina got in fine when I said they were with me, but Alistair got stopped and so I ran back and said he's with me and they let him through, haha...it was so fun!! We got in at about 11pm so we got on the dance floor right away...and didn't stop until 3 am!! It was all techno music with many DJ's and ton of westerners!! It was wonderful!! One topic of conversation here in China is always the bathrooms and we got a kick out of the fact that the toilets here were port-a-potties that were... squatters!! haha, only in China would they make squat port-a-potties. But since we were just there to have fun and not get trashed the squatters made no difference to us. We danced and danced and danced... 12 hours after leaving my feet are still sore haha.
We left the party around 3:30/4 and then had a little adventure trying to hail a taxi. It was so cold outside and no taxis were stopping....so we had to walk down the block and cross the street and catch a taxi going the other way...by this time all of our fingers were frozen. When we got the the train station at 4:30am we were dissapointed to see that the station didn't open until 5:30, so we joined the rest of the freezing Chinese crowd in waiting. It was the coldest hour of my life....I half expect for my toes to freeze and fall off they hurt so bad. As you can imagine, after being awake for 18 hours on little sleep and then dancing for 3-4 hours straight...we were exhausted so the next few hours were not the best. We were freezing..even when we got into the train station. We sat in KFC till 8am just because it was the warmest. We had an 8:20 train ride and all of us sat down and crashed for the hour train ride to Cangzhou. When we got back (6 hours ago) at 10am and found I couldn't go to sleep. My body was exhausted, but apparently coffee at KFC is very strong. I finally got an hour nap from 1-2 but until then, NCIS & photo editing kept me entertained. It'll be good though that I didn't nap..I will sleep better tonight and be refreshed for my 10am classes tomorrow morning. Even with the freezing and being totally exhausted in a train station it was the best New Years eve! Such a fitting way to start 2012 and end 2011, a year that has been so exciting for me. Hopefully 2012 will be just has amazing as the start of it has been.
Abi, Edi and Ali had to work Saturday night so I met them at school and we took the 8:53pm train to Beijing. We had a fun train ride playing 'ring of fire' to pre-game. We must have been so loud from laughing but no one minded. We got into Beijing around 9:30pm and caught a taxi to the party location. On the drive there we were having fun driving through different parts of Beijing and seeing all the lights, and all of a sudden it hit me....I am in China haha..it was the weirdest thing. But the taxi ride was fun, we were all so giddy that there was lots of talking...i even tried out my Scottish accents by saying "my cow needs a mirror for Hogmany" just the way Abigael does...rolling the 'r's and everything....I first asked if Edwina wanted to use my mirror to put on lipstick and it led to a 5 min convo with all of us saying mirror in our various accents...so funny.
When we got to the party, first we were totally excited about the location. It was in an old oil tanker in the art/industrial district. When we got in and I gave my name and told them I had been talking with Dion...they just let us in!!!! No payment, nothing.....we were so excited haha. I felt like such a VIP. Abigael and Edwina got in fine when I said they were with me, but Alistair got stopped and so I ran back and said he's with me and they let him through, haha...it was so fun!! We got in at about 11pm so we got on the dance floor right away...and didn't stop until 3 am!! It was all techno music with many DJ's and ton of westerners!! It was wonderful!! One topic of conversation here in China is always the bathrooms and we got a kick out of the fact that the toilets here were port-a-potties that were... squatters!! haha, only in China would they make squat port-a-potties. But since we were just there to have fun and not get trashed the squatters made no difference to us. We danced and danced and danced... 12 hours after leaving my feet are still sore haha.
We left the party around 3:30/4 and then had a little adventure trying to hail a taxi. It was so cold outside and no taxis were stopping....so we had to walk down the block and cross the street and catch a taxi going the other way...by this time all of our fingers were frozen. When we got the the train station at 4:30am we were dissapointed to see that the station didn't open until 5:30, so we joined the rest of the freezing Chinese crowd in waiting. It was the coldest hour of my life....I half expect for my toes to freeze and fall off they hurt so bad. As you can imagine, after being awake for 18 hours on little sleep and then dancing for 3-4 hours straight...we were exhausted so the next few hours were not the best. We were freezing..even when we got into the train station. We sat in KFC till 8am just because it was the warmest. We had an 8:20 train ride and all of us sat down and crashed for the hour train ride to Cangzhou. When we got back (6 hours ago) at 10am and found I couldn't go to sleep. My body was exhausted, but apparently coffee at KFC is very strong. I finally got an hour nap from 1-2 but until then, NCIS & photo editing kept me entertained. It'll be good though that I didn't nap..I will sleep better tonight and be refreshed for my 10am classes tomorrow morning. Even with the freezing and being totally exhausted in a train station it was the best New Years eve! Such a fitting way to start 2012 and end 2011, a year that has been so exciting for me. Hopefully 2012 will be just has amazing as the start of it has been.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Dumplings aka. jiaozi aka. 饺子
My TA, Echo, left DD Dragon last week to go on maternity leave which is very sad for me because I really liked working and hanging out with her. However there is a bright side (other than the fact she is going to be a Mom), she has more time to cook and teach us westerners!! She invited us over for a dumpling party and we had a blast! She lives 20-30 min away from us so it was a long bus ride through a diffrent part of Cangzhou than we had ever been to. It was just Edwina, Abigael and myself that went over and we spent 4 hours laughing and learning to make dumplings with Echo & her husband.
Making dumplings is easy, all you need is:
Our dumplings were, according to Echo, "a great success"!! And boy were they yummy, the best we've had so far!
Here is a video of Echo rolling out the casings. She's talking to her husband, tell him to teach us how to fill and fold the dumplings. She rolled probably around 100 dumplings, maybe more.
Making dumplings is easy, all you need is:
- flour, salt and water to make the dough casing
- cabbage, garlic, leeks, chives, ginger all minced up really fine
- minced pork mixed with salt, water, pepper, chicken bullion, soy sauce, a type of oil the Chinese call 'smelly oil' and peanut oil.
- you mix it all together then wrap the mix up in the dough casings.
- boil 3 times: boil in water till they float, strain dumpling, add clean water then re-boil, then do it all again a 3rd time.
- now comes the most important steps: pour soy sauce or vinegar into a bowl for dipping and enjoy the yummy steaming dumplings!!
Our dumplings were, according to Echo, "a great success"!! And boy were they yummy, the best we've had so far!
Here is a video of Echo rolling out the casings. She's talking to her husband, tell him to teach us how to fill and fold the dumplings. She rolled probably around 100 dumplings, maybe more.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Christmas in China 聖誕快樂
Christmas in China is a very low profile holiday. Since it is an atheist country there aren’t a
lot of decorations or anything, but we made it work! I had 2 classes in the
morning/afternoon that went really well.
My little ones (4-9 year olds) were first in the morning. We played lots of games: Mystery word, pin
the nose on Rudolph, Santa relay (putting a balloon under their clothes) and
musical chairs/statues. They all had a
really nice time! It was a little exhausting for me and my wonderful TA, Carol,
but we managed. My older kids (11-15
year olds) were in the afternoon; this was a little more exciting class. When I first went up to set up my speakers
and iPod, I got locked in my room!! The door has been sticking ever since it
was fixed but we’ve always been able to open it. But yesterday I went to open it to let
students in & it was stuck. It was
fine, I was glad to be stuck by myself and not with 20 crazy kids, but still it
wasn’t the most ideal situation. It took
the kids a few minutes to figure out that I wanted to to get an adult and that
I was stuck. Then they brought Shishi
up, but she didn’t know how to open it. After
about 10 minutes she passed me a metal thing that I used to jimmy the door
open. The little thing that moves when
you twist the handle wasn’t moving to I had to get that pushed it. Then, of course, one of the kids closed the
door again! But this time it took 5 seconds to open and I moved one of the big
plants from the hallway in front of the door.
This class was really fun! We played Bingo (which they loved!), chubby
bunny, pin the nose on Rudolph, they did a word search and the Santa
relay. All of us, Carol & myself
included, had a really fun time.
After all of our classes we had a nice Christmas dinner, just
Edwina, Alistair, Abigael & myself.
We had a delicious dinner of veggies, pork wraps, and English style
fries. We had decided to do a gift exchange with a
20RMB limit which was fun. It was so
nice to have a little gift opening. I
made us all stocking with a chocolate in them! Edwina had made a banoffee
(bannan-toffe) pie, which was good. I
didn’t know you could make toffee from condensed milk so that was fun to help
her with. Since china doesn’t have very
many dairy products she couldn’t find whip cream for the pie but instead used
this yogurt cheese things, but it still turned out nice. Our holiday festivities concluded with 3
movies: Elf, Bad Santa & Home Alone.
A great night!!
聖誕快樂 (Merry Christmas)
**link to my pics posted to the right
聖誕快樂 (Merry Christmas)
**link to my pics posted to the right
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
OMG it's 37 degrees....sandal weather!!!
Today I got excited about it being 37 degrees here in Cangzhou, so crazy!! But I did get to wear my Rainbow sandals out today, they've been neglected the last month. It's been a busy week, considering it's only Wednesday. Monday we celebrated Edwina's birthday, had awesome pizza for lunch then a little gathering and cake at theirs that night. Its always nice to hangout with the TA's outside of school.
About 2 months ago Edwina & Alistair met this guy, Terry, at the passport office here in Cangzhou. He's a Brit, who moved to Australia and is now working in China for a bit. He's stuck in this little (little by China's standards) suburb of Cangzhou called Nanpi. He's invited us all to visit him in Nanpi, where he is bored out of his mind because....well the suburbs of Cangzhou are even more boring than Cangzhou. Edwina, Alistair and Abigael went out to visit him a few weeks about but I didn't go. So we decided to make another visit to see Terry. I had heard about the super slow, crap bus that takes us out there...and yeah it is slow! But that might be because it keeps being filled with people, it seems that no matter where I go in China I manage to feel like a sardine in a can. We heard about a bus crash in Beijing that killed a bunch of kids on board and it reported that the bus was about 50 over capacity. The Chinese seem to think that capacity regulations are negotiable, because if there is a spot to sit, stand, squat or lay down they will keep cramming people into or onto something. But anywhoo, back to the bus ride. It took us an hour to drive, and it wasn't all that bad, well it could have been worse. Minimal staring occurred, there was some squealing about us getting on the bus when we first arrived, one of the works was very excited about having foreigners on the bus. When we got to Nanpi, which was coated in more smog than Cangzhou (if you can believe it) we went right to Terry's hotel and met his wife and just hung out for a bit. It was so great to be with other westerners!! He had been in Australia for a bit and since his wife came over she brought some fun western stuff. They got us each one of those little koalas that's hands clasp. We were so excited about them haha. We had tea at a wonderful tea house, and just talked for hours in English!! And normal English, with big words at a natural tempo, not the stop and go snail like talking we have to do at work, or even sometimes with the TA's and Shishi. It was vocal & auditory heaven!! We've all commented that our speaking skills have gone down hill since arriving, so being around other westerners was refreshing. Terry and Carol, his wife, are wonderful company as well, we all got on great! Edwina commented on the way home that we are all very similar with similar humors and everything so we can talk and have fun without worrying about offending or excluding someone. Being around them though was like being around my parents which was very nice. After tea and more lounging in the hotel room we had a wonderful dinner at the near by hot-pot. It was fantastic!! And I even got decent Chinese beer...didn't think they existed, but Snow does and it is ok. After dinner we just had a nice time in the hotel room chatting, drinking (he had Jim Bean..normal western alcohol haha) and havin' a good time! During the 30 min taxi ride back, we couldn't stop talking about how nice of a day it was! And whats better is that Terry is coming to Cangzhou on Sunday to spend Christmas with us. Carol went back to the Sunshine Coast of Australia and so we invited him to our lovely smog-ridden town, but it beats Christmas in a hotel.
We've been planning Christmas at school for a bit, lots activities and games to plan. And then we are having dinner and a movie night with just us westerners so that will be nice.
With the holidays coming up it's got me thinking where I was a year ago. I was had finished up finals and was getting ready to go to Prague. I was so excited and had an idea of what i wanted to do but still wasn't sure where i'd be spending my holidays in a year, and I never imagined that I'd be spending them in China of all places. I finished my last final at CSULB on December 19, 2012 and exactly a year later I was sitting in China, so amazing! 3 months ago I was terrified about coming here, having crying fits every 2 seconds...well when I wasn't embarrassing myself by doing my "I'm going to China dance" haha. Now realizing that I am leaving in less than 2 months is sort of sad for me. There are plenty of things that I wont miss here, but it does grow on you. I am really glad that I came. Europe was fun and beautiful and western, but it wasn't really a growing experience. Now China, this is a wonderful growing experience! It's not as impacting of an experience as Ecuador but it is teaching me and making me learn new things about the world and people. It is just such a different way of...not just life, but everything here. Just Monday, I saw 2 grown man peeing on the side of the road, a man singing like crazy as he walked down the street, a baby's bare bottom and nearly got killed by the crazy drivers...nothing like it in the world haha.
About 2 months ago Edwina & Alistair met this guy, Terry, at the passport office here in Cangzhou. He's a Brit, who moved to Australia and is now working in China for a bit. He's stuck in this little (little by China's standards) suburb of Cangzhou called Nanpi. He's invited us all to visit him in Nanpi, where he is bored out of his mind because....well the suburbs of Cangzhou are even more boring than Cangzhou. Edwina, Alistair and Abigael went out to visit him a few weeks about but I didn't go. So we decided to make another visit to see Terry. I had heard about the super slow, crap bus that takes us out there...and yeah it is slow! But that might be because it keeps being filled with people, it seems that no matter where I go in China I manage to feel like a sardine in a can. We heard about a bus crash in Beijing that killed a bunch of kids on board and it reported that the bus was about 50 over capacity. The Chinese seem to think that capacity regulations are negotiable, because if there is a spot to sit, stand, squat or lay down they will keep cramming people into or onto something. But anywhoo, back to the bus ride. It took us an hour to drive, and it wasn't all that bad, well it could have been worse. Minimal staring occurred, there was some squealing about us getting on the bus when we first arrived, one of the works was very excited about having foreigners on the bus. When we got to Nanpi, which was coated in more smog than Cangzhou (if you can believe it) we went right to Terry's hotel and met his wife and just hung out for a bit. It was so great to be with other westerners!! He had been in Australia for a bit and since his wife came over she brought some fun western stuff. They got us each one of those little koalas that's hands clasp. We were so excited about them haha. We had tea at a wonderful tea house, and just talked for hours in English!! And normal English, with big words at a natural tempo, not the stop and go snail like talking we have to do at work, or even sometimes with the TA's and Shishi. It was vocal & auditory heaven!! We've all commented that our speaking skills have gone down hill since arriving, so being around other westerners was refreshing. Terry and Carol, his wife, are wonderful company as well, we all got on great! Edwina commented on the way home that we are all very similar with similar humors and everything so we can talk and have fun without worrying about offending or excluding someone. Being around them though was like being around my parents which was very nice. After tea and more lounging in the hotel room we had a wonderful dinner at the near by hot-pot. It was fantastic!! And I even got decent Chinese beer...didn't think they existed, but Snow does and it is ok. After dinner we just had a nice time in the hotel room chatting, drinking (he had Jim Bean..normal western alcohol haha) and havin' a good time! During the 30 min taxi ride back, we couldn't stop talking about how nice of a day it was! And whats better is that Terry is coming to Cangzhou on Sunday to spend Christmas with us. Carol went back to the Sunshine Coast of Australia and so we invited him to our lovely smog-ridden town, but it beats Christmas in a hotel.
We've been planning Christmas at school for a bit, lots activities and games to plan. And then we are having dinner and a movie night with just us westerners so that will be nice.
With the holidays coming up it's got me thinking where I was a year ago. I was had finished up finals and was getting ready to go to Prague. I was so excited and had an idea of what i wanted to do but still wasn't sure where i'd be spending my holidays in a year, and I never imagined that I'd be spending them in China of all places. I finished my last final at CSULB on December 19, 2012 and exactly a year later I was sitting in China, so amazing! 3 months ago I was terrified about coming here, having crying fits every 2 seconds...well when I wasn't embarrassing myself by doing my "I'm going to China dance" haha. Now realizing that I am leaving in less than 2 months is sort of sad for me. There are plenty of things that I wont miss here, but it does grow on you. I am really glad that I came. Europe was fun and beautiful and western, but it wasn't really a growing experience. Now China, this is a wonderful growing experience! It's not as impacting of an experience as Ecuador but it is teaching me and making me learn new things about the world and people. It is just such a different way of...not just life, but everything here. Just Monday, I saw 2 grown man peeing on the side of the road, a man singing like crazy as he walked down the street, a baby's bare bottom and nearly got killed by the crazy drivers...nothing like it in the world haha.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
official Chinese tea drinker
Well this past week has been beautiful! It's been blue skies and sun nearly all week!! It's still cold but with the sun mid-20's is bearable. Night time is a different story but with 2 pairs of mittens and lots of layers combined with biking at top speed, I am surviving. It is funny to see people complaining about the SoCal weather on Facebook, when it's like 50 haha. But then Sharon posted that it was 70 in LBC and she was in shorts, and here I am with layers and layers lol.
I've had a sore throat the last week or so which hasn't been fun. It's getting a little better, but at night and morning is the worst. Today my throat hurt so bad this morning it was horrible, but after getting some hot steam on my face it felt fine, just hoping that it goes away soon. Edwina and I think we have the same thing, but she totally lost her voice last week. So Shishi, who am I very careful around to always say I feel fine, took Edwina to the doctors for a checkup. Edwina said she walked into this back alley-ish doctor’s place; people were sitting on couches hooked up to IV’s and taking meds and all that. The doctor looked at her then gave her an injection in the bum….just telling me about how the place looked and felt I cringed. So I am doing my best to stay away from a place like that.
This week has been a good week, aside from some frustrations at work. Edwina, Abigael and I have started a work out regime. 5 days a week (the weekdays) we get together at Edwina’s and doing a 30-45 min cardio workout video on a website. It’s actually pretty fun. We’ve been doing combat ones led by a British guy named Pierre; he’s our new friend haha. We actually have a lot of fun with it and it is a pretty good work out. Abi and I like that we are getting out of the house more.
On Tuesday we did our workout then after getting cleaned up we rode down to the tea house in town. Shishi took us by it about 2 months ago and we’ve been wanting to go back ever since. It this beautifully decorated building in the main shopping center. It’s always a gamble if we will be able to order properly or not, and the menu they gave us was in all Chinese characters. But the cool part about it was that it was on a old-style bamboo scroll. When we realized that communication was going to be a challenge we phone Shishi who ordered over the phone for us. The tea is prepared and served for you in a private room; it really is neat to watch them. The woman puts in herbs into the little clay teapot then adds boiling water to it, pours it through a filter into another slightly larger clear tea pot. She then pours that first bit over the top of the clay teapot, which we thought looked wasteful, but I think the first brew was to open up the herbs. She then pours boiling water into the clay teapot again and filters it into the clear pot. She does this a second time and then served us our 4 little cups. Our first server was great and helped show us the Chinese way to drink tea! Your thumb and fore finger go near the rim and your 2nd finger goes under the bottom of the cup for support. Over the 2.5 hours we spent there, we had 3 servers and had who knows how many cups. Each thing of herbs could have about 4 or 5 brews and each brew gave us about 2 cups each…and I they changed our herbs 3 or 4 times. We were actually really surprised by how much time we had spent there, but I guess time flies when there are cards involved….we are becoming card fiends!!
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Safety-pins & Carabiners
Cannot believe that another week has passed. Every week Abigael and I always comment that it’s the weekend again, considering most of our time is spent doing a whole lot of nothing, it goes by so fast. Well Cangzhou has been staying at a brisk 0 degree Celsius or below most days. The other day I was super excited when it got up to a nice warm 4 degrees….who knew a SoCal girl would get so excited about 4 degrees Celsius, haha. Yesterday was particularly glacial. It wouldn’t have surprised me when I took off my mittens if my finger tips had turned blue…or just died and fallen off. The 8 minute ride home made my fingers just freeze…I thought frozen fingers just became numb, but apparently after numb they start to hurt like they are being bloated when there is no space to expand…not a fun feeling. But within 30 seconds of entering the apartment they started to warm up and taking off the mittens revealed 10 perfectly peach fingertips. Weather here is crazier than it is at home. I’m used to weather of 50 one day and 80 the next, that is normal. Here it shifts in a more normal manner (hot in summer, cold in winter) but it’s almost like the weather has a calendar that is uses. When I arrived in September it was hot. Then around the 1st or 2nd of October it cooled down by about 10 degrees (literally, September 30th just shorts and a tank, October 1st needed a sweater and jeans). Then November arrives and it cools down another 10 degrees so that pants, warm socks, long sleeved shirt, scarf and jacket are needed. Now December 1st rolls around and snow is introduced. Seriously, we went to Beijing November 30, no snow, come back December 1st, snow!!
I shouldn’t complain too much, I do like living somewhere that snows, it’s fun and different. But it would be great if the sun showed more, although that is more due to the amount of smog rather than the coldness. Yesterday and today have been beautiful! Blue skies and sun!! I sort of forgot that I missed it, but it has been wonderful! Abigael and I even got out of the house yesterday for a record breaking 3 hours!! It was beautiful and sunny (and the power went out in our apartment building) so we biked to Edwina & Alistair’s then went grocery shopping and went out for lunch and got back just in time for the power to come back on so we could shower for work!!
I have 4 classes: Y1 (4-7 year olds), Y4 (6-8 year olds), C (10-11 year olds) and a D (12-14 year olds). My favorites are the Y1 & D class. My Y1 class is my babies, they were my first class, and I got to name them all so I love them all. And my D class is just really fun, we have a great time. Today I had both my Y1 & D classes and I loved it!! I have been pretty sick the last few days and my throat has been so sore so I don’t want to talk too much or too loud, and today the kids were so good that I would just wait for 5 seconds and they would quiet right down. Such a contrast to my constantly-whining and obnoxious C class (even the TA is fed up with them), and my overly-competitive and fighting Y4 class. But even after the worst class I still love this, although sometimes I wish our curriculum was a little more challenging for both the students and me. We teach based on the DD Dragon curriculum and it’s not really teaching them anything they can use. They just memorize questions and responses. But I have gotten the D class to adapt a bit, and now I ask them lots of questions off script and they can create answers which is great!! And my Y1 babies don’t really learn any of the scripted questions (I ask them questions so they answer with their own answers, not the ones given to them), but they are so bright and fun!!
Well I was riding home today and parking my bike and realized that my less than 2-month old bike is already pretty rusted. They only thing that is not at all rusted is my carabiner holding my basket to the bike. As everything Chinese has a tendency to do, the basket and bike had a falling out (broke) and so my carabiner holds the basket on so that it doesn’t sit there and wobble. So on my way up to the apartment (6 floors to walk up, gives me about a minute of pure thinking time) I thought about some of my travel essentials and I came up with a mini list of things that every traveler should take with them, especially for long term travelling:
Carabiners. You can clip things to your purse/backpack...and they can really come in handy
Safety-pins. Sewing kits are nice, but sometimes you need to fix something quickly and don’t have time for sewing.
Sewing kits. A more permanent fix when you have the time (i.e train rides)
Chapstick. Chapped lips suck and some places just don’t have adequate chapstick.
These are 4 things that I have used so much this past year and that are not the easiest things to find in all countries (yes sewing materials can be difficult to find in foreign countries)
I shouldn’t complain too much, I do like living somewhere that snows, it’s fun and different. But it would be great if the sun showed more, although that is more due to the amount of smog rather than the coldness. Yesterday and today have been beautiful! Blue skies and sun!! I sort of forgot that I missed it, but it has been wonderful! Abigael and I even got out of the house yesterday for a record breaking 3 hours!! It was beautiful and sunny (and the power went out in our apartment building) so we biked to Edwina & Alistair’s then went grocery shopping and went out for lunch and got back just in time for the power to come back on so we could shower for work!!
I have 4 classes: Y1 (4-7 year olds), Y4 (6-8 year olds), C (10-11 year olds) and a D (12-14 year olds). My favorites are the Y1 & D class. My Y1 class is my babies, they were my first class, and I got to name them all so I love them all. And my D class is just really fun, we have a great time. Today I had both my Y1 & D classes and I loved it!! I have been pretty sick the last few days and my throat has been so sore so I don’t want to talk too much or too loud, and today the kids were so good that I would just wait for 5 seconds and they would quiet right down. Such a contrast to my constantly-whining and obnoxious C class (even the TA is fed up with them), and my overly-competitive and fighting Y4 class. But even after the worst class I still love this, although sometimes I wish our curriculum was a little more challenging for both the students and me. We teach based on the DD Dragon curriculum and it’s not really teaching them anything they can use. They just memorize questions and responses. But I have gotten the D class to adapt a bit, and now I ask them lots of questions off script and they can create answers which is great!! And my Y1 babies don’t really learn any of the scripted questions (I ask them questions so they answer with their own answers, not the ones given to them), but they are so bright and fun!!
Well I was riding home today and parking my bike and realized that my less than 2-month old bike is already pretty rusted. They only thing that is not at all rusted is my carabiner holding my basket to the bike. As everything Chinese has a tendency to do, the basket and bike had a falling out (broke) and so my carabiner holds the basket on so that it doesn’t sit there and wobble. So on my way up to the apartment (6 floors to walk up, gives me about a minute of pure thinking time) I thought about some of my travel essentials and I came up with a mini list of things that every traveler should take with them, especially for long term travelling:
Carabiners. You can clip things to your purse/backpack...and they can really come in handy
Safety-pins. Sewing kits are nice, but sometimes you need to fix something quickly and don’t have time for sewing.
Sewing kits. A more permanent fix when you have the time (i.e train rides)
Chapstick. Chapped lips suck and some places just don’t have adequate chapstick.
These are 4 things that I have used so much this past year and that are not the easiest things to find in all countries (yes sewing materials can be difficult to find in foreign countries)
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