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:

• flour, salt and water to make the dough casing 

To make the yummy middle we had:

• 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.

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

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.

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 2^nd 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!!

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 1^st or 2^nd of October it cooled down by about 10 degrees (literally, September 30^th just shorts and a tank, October 1^st 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 1^st rolls around and snow is introduced.  Seriously, we went to Beijing November 30, no snow, come back December 1^st, 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)

christmas over the phone

Last night was great! Edwina and Alistair came over for dinner (store bought dumplings, homemade rice and steamed carrots).  We had a great night chatting, venting, laughing and just hanging out.  Watched Shanghai Noon which is always great and then Abigael and I watched "The Help".  She just finished the book, and it is a great movie so I was happy to watch it a second time.  Then around 2:30 am i got to talk to my wonderful family!! I was half asleep since I had been up since 6am but it was worth it.  Got to talk with cousin Richard while Mom was getting the family moved into the motor home for present opening.  It was just our immediate family (Mom, Dad, Wesley, Sharon & Megan) and it was fantastic! I got to listen to them opening presents in the motor home in front of Alan and Judy's house in Vegas.  I didn't quite get what was so funny all the time, but there was non-stop laughing on their end of the phone haha.  I kept trying to be quite so as not to wake Abigael in the other room, but she said she didn't hear a thing.  I was on the phone with them for about 45 min which was great! Since Skype was acting up I called them so Mom was taking pictures on Wesley's iPhone and they were emailing them to me as they were opening presents haha.
It's just wonderful that even half a world away i can still be included as something is simple, but really important, as early Christmas present opening!

haych, veg and China

Today was a mildly frustrating day.  I’d had a nice morning and afternoon at the apartment relaxing.  Abi and I had gone to the grocery store to pick up some stuff (dumplings for dinner!! Yummy!) and then work for 3 hours.  My classes are going a lot better.  I am really enjoying the kids and teaching.  It does get annoying just parroting the DVD’s and the flashcards, but it does make lesson planning really easy.  My favorite TA, Echo, is pregnant!! She told me 2 weeks ago, before she told anyone else, so that was really exciting.  She is such a wonderful person, and I love working with her.  In my Y4 (higher level 5-8 year olds) class I have a new TA, Tina.  I am still getting used to her but it has been frustrating the last 2 or 3 weeks with her in the classroom.  She has a really good grasp on English and I really enjoy talking with her, but as my TA she is very difficult.  But hopefully we can work out the kinks and make it work out.  But things didn’t get frustrating till tonight.  I was talking with Shishi about wages and the school, Edi and Abi came as well because they had to talk with her about their own stuff.  And Shishi was just difficult, no more than usual, but it is still frustrating.  She also said some really hurtful and unnecessary things to us which just put a sour taste in my mouth for a while…it made us all a little frustrated.  But after an icy bike ride back to the apartment, Abi and I made dinner (dumplings, rice and steamed carrots), we watched a movie, and had a beer (Pabst for me…the only imported beer in Cangzhou) and my frustrations just got laughed away…it was very nice! Haha.  Things with the school have gotten a lot better since our big talk with Shishi in my first month.  We are still trying to tell Shishi that we would rather get paid full wages then be given gifts.  She just doesn’t seem to understand this and keeps spending way too much money on us thinking we want or need it.  And all she says is she doesn’t care about money and doesn’t need it, she just wants us to be happy….no matter how much we say we are happy without all of this.  After she couldn’t pay Edi & Ali full wages a few weeks ago and Ali talked to her about it, she did bump up the tuition costs at the school which is really good; since she wasn’t charging enough to even cover basic costs totally.  So hopefully that will keep going and she will be able to at least break even with the school. 

This last Tuesday we took a trip up to Beijing again.  We were craving burgers and just wanted to get out of Cangzhou.  The weather forecast just kept getting colder and colder and there was a prediction of snow, but when as the weather man ever been right? So it was cold….high 20’s low 30’s but no snow in Beijing.  We had a wonderful time though.  Abi, Edi & Ali wanted to try and set up an account to transfer money back to the UK so we ended up in the business district.  The building we were in had a medium sized Christmas display in the main lobby, and seeing it nearly made me cry…so ridiculous I know, but it was so great seeing Christmas decorations.  Ali actually came out and got us to show us the display because Edi and I love Christmas.  For the afternoon, Abi and I hung out in Tiananmen Square.  It wasn’t as crowded as it was last time I was there so that was nice.  Opposite the Tiananmen is the Forbidden City which is decorated with a large Mao picture at the front entrance.  I am learning much more about him and China in reading Wild Swans.  Some of the information is just appalling.  Some of what give me so many OMG moments is the fact that no one talked because they couldn’t.  That just seems absurd to me.  Growing up we were taught to be respectful and to think before we talk.  But for years people lived in fear that something they said could get them arrested, beaten, or their family shunned.  It just seems amazing, especially because this was all happening at the same time my own parents were growing up in California.  Just learning all this history and that fact that is happened so recently is really eye opening.  Some things that happened are beyond imaginable….I am currently in the late 1950’s when there was major famine throughout China, so bad that people did unimaginable things, the instinct of self-survival can be so strong that it would make people do the most horrible things, and this author captures it in print. Back to the Beijing trip, anytime I see a Mao picture it makes me think of the book, so my thoughts get sidetracked.  But ABi and I went up the Gate tower where an exhibition of Chinese art and culture is set up inside and it was very interesting to see it.  There are pictures from the 1960’s of a street where we’ve had Starbucks and it looks like the shanty towns set up in the US in the 1800’s.  We looked at the pictures and all I could think of was at this same time in the US we had Jackie Kennedy and major advancements in science and space travel.  It really is an education living here, and I am thoroughly enjoying it. 

Tuesday night we decided to further our cultural experience and went to a Kung Fu show.  It was great!!! Abi and I even listened to “Kung-fu fighting” on my ipod before the show….i’m sure that’s a totally authentic Chinese song, haha.  The show was beautiful.  With 7 scenes and a full story line it was more of a proper stage play than I had thought.  It was more of a ballet with martial arts show, but absolutely beautiful.  We all came out of it very pleased.  It was a really nice mini-break in Beijing and when we got back to Cangzhou Wednesday afternoon there was snow!!! Not a ton of it but enough…my bike seat had about an inch of snow on it! Craziness….i’ve never lived anywhere where it snows and I’m not 100% sure if I like it or not, especially since I have to ride my bike everywhere and riding on ice is dangerous.  But so far so good **knock on wood**. 

Oh some fun stuff that I was talking with Sharon about earlier today, I am using more British-isms than normal.  I have been watching a few episodes of The Inbetweeners, a very British sitcom.  On Facebook I made a comments saying the show was brilliant and Sharon, being the only American on my friends list to actually know the show commented on my British-ness now haha.  I now use brilliant even more than I did before.  Also ‘veg’…it bugs me when the other use it 9instead of saying vegetables or veggies) but now I am using it, and every time I do give a mental sigh.  Also saying half-nine instead of nine-thirty for 9:30, I don’t say it all the time but sometimes it just slips out.  And then one think I have noticed that I never thought I’d pick up is saying ‘h’ the English way.  The English pronounce it ‘haych’ instead of ‘aych’ and now it seems weird to say it the American way.  But I refuse to say ‘z’ as ‘zed’…that is too weird for me and not nearly as natural as ‘haych’….but yeah, that’s the random side notes. 

Now time for bed…yikes nearly 3am, thank goodness tomorrow if Friday and I get to sleep in!!

**There are new pictures posted in the 'China: Life in Cangzhou' and 'China: Beijing mini breaks' albums

Och No!!

October 25 & 26: Tai Shan Mountain

It is the one of the 5 sacred Daoist Mountain in China located in Shandong Province, and I had the opportunity to hike it.  Shishi had been telling us she wanted to take us to this mountain to watch the sunrise.  Naturally we were really excited! We wanted to see some of China’s natural beauty and get out of Cangzhou.  So Monday night after teaching we jumped on the slow train to Tai Shin.  Train rides are always an experience.  There are 2 trains: slow and fast.  We love the fast train because it’s faster, less crowded and less smelly.  However it doesn’t go everywhere and is more costly so we take the slow train a lot.  On this adventure we were on the slow train.  We all had seats in different parts of the same compartment.  I sat with a bunch of Chinese men.  At first it was uncomfortable because they just stare….you get used to it but it takes a few minutes.  Here we are celebrities of sorts in the fact that they don’t see a lot of westerners so we are an oddity.  My group didn’t talk to me, but they were very nice.  When I needed to stretch my legs they moved their feet for me for those 5 seconds.  I had my iPod which was nice and made the 3 hours pass fairly quickly.  Edwina however had quite a different experience.  I looked up towards her seat and there was just a crowd.  Apparently the people she sat around just kept talking to her, and once she let them know she spoke a little bit of Chinese they wouldn’t leave her alone.  Even after she had switched back to English, some who spoke English kept speaking to her.  I called her about half way through and she told me about it….in Spanish though (our secret code language here in China, haha).  We got in to Tai Shin around 12:30pm and checked into our hotel.  We were excited to see how clear the sky was…..we’d forgotten what the stars looked like in our always smoggy-Cangzhou.

We had breakfast the next morning, and I was happy to see that we could see the mountains very clearly from out hotel.  It reminded me of seeing the San Bernardino Mountains from home, it was great!  We had breakfast at this place across the way…dumplings and rice, the good breakfast for any hiker, haha.  It was very tasty though.  Shishi ordered us mountain goat dumplings, they were really good and it’s always fun to try something local.  The hike was nice and very long.  We weren’t in a big hurry so we walked leisurely, stopping to take pictures and even for Shishi to have a cup of tea.  It took us 5 hours to walk half way.  The hike is all up stairs, which isn’t fun.  But we were talking almost the whole way and made it a good time.  Near the end of our hike my leg started really hurting so that made the last 30 min or so very painful.  But when we made it to the half way point we opted to take the cable car up the rest of the way.  When we got to the top we were very happy with our choice since the rest of the stairs to the top were near vertical.  The cable car ride was nice.  We were riding it and sunset which was beautiful. 

It was freezing at the top.  In the hotel I slept in leggings, PJ’s, 2 pairs of socks, nylon long sleeved t, thermal t and sweatshirt...and was still cold. We got up around 5:30 for a 6am sunrise.  We put on basically everything we had brought up, and I was nice and comfy while I watched sunrise.  It was beautiful! We all stood on this cliff, with every other Chinese person up there, and watched the sun com up over the clouds.  There was major cloud cover which actually enhanced the sunrise.  When the sun broke the horizon it came out in a line of light because of the top layer of clouds.  After an hour of picture taking we headed back down the mountain and hopped back on the train to get back to Cangzhou in time for 6:30 classes.  It was great trip and quite the hike. 

October 31, Halloween at DD Dragon!

November 6, Tianjin

Since we like to get out of Cangzhou as much as possible we decided to go and explore Tianjin.  It is between us and Beijing.  It’s a more European city, brought up by the high business of china and European business men.  It has some European streets and quarters.  We decided to get a hotel for 2 nights, since we weren’t sure if it was a one-day city or overnight city.  We mainly just walked around while we were there.  Our only real goal was to find one of the European parts.  We walked the city in search of breakfast and found this outdoor market which was fun to explore for a while.  Next we went in search of the Italian town, since we had seen signs for it.  It was great, as we came around this corner we first spied a grown man peeing on the wall, but our ‘OMG’ moments was quickly interrupted with me and Edwina yelling in excitement……we had seen Starbucks, in none other than Italian Town!!! It was wonderful.  We walked around, planning on doing Italian for lunch.  But instead we opted for Starbucks and to wait and do Italian for dinner with Abi.  She had gone back to the hotel, because she had gotten really sick a few days before.  We sat in Starbucks for a while, chatting and eating.  It was all decorated for Christmas and Edi and I were happy to try the new winter lattes.  We walked along the water way back to our hotel.  There was a ton of men fishing along the whole river.  There were even men swimming in it!! We were bundled up with mittens and scarves and there they were in their skivvies swimming in the water. 

That night we had a nice walk back down the river taking pictures of the city all lit up.  We had a tasty Italian dinner followed by 2 hours at Starbucks.  Lattes and card games are the best, and in how many countries can you play ‘Bullshit’ and actually yell out ‘bullshit’ in your excitement and not get dirty looks for saying it, haha.  After we had gotten too excited at calling someone out we tried to change the word, but just couldn’t.  We tried saying “Och No” in the most Scottish way possible, but we would just end up busting up.  It was really fun!! We played with Alistair’s cards with a bunch of Chinese generals and philosophers and had fun reading about them.  It was educational and fun! 

What do they do about #2?

Wow, the month has flown by.  Time is really funny here.  Normally time flies by when you are really busy, but here we are working 14-20 hours a week and the days and weeks just fly by.  My theory is that we are going to a different place every week almost, so we are either planning a trip or going on a trip which makes time go.  I can’t believe that it is almost December…and only partially because I live where there is absolutely nothing to hint that Christmas is coming up soon.  It is freezing though, and I know it will only get colder.  We were given nice cozy comforters though, which are fantastic.  Except we sleep with them as extra padding on the stone hard beds.  Cangzhou is growing one me.  We have finally found places we like to eat, shop, bike, etc.  We still get lots of stares but not as much since we see a lot of the same people every day.  There are 4 million people in Cangzhou and 4 westerns so we are literally one in a million, haha.  I find this awesome! But since we live and work only in one part of the city we mainly see the same people so it’s really nice. 
I have started reading ‘Wild Swans’.  It was recommended to my mom by our pastor’s wife and my mom has kept asking me to read it since I said I was going to china.  I however kept putting it off and am glad I did.  I think if I had read it before I got here I would have been scared of China.  But after living here for nearly 2 months and getting to know the people and culture a bit and then reading it I have more perspective.  My mom has told me some things about Mao and read me excerpts from a biography and it is appalling, so when I came over here and saw his picture plastered on national monuments and commemorative plates I was really confused.  I know that a lot of what he did is kept secret from the Chinese but it still they have to know some of what he did.  Putting him on plates and monuments seems equivalent to putting Hitler, Stalin or Voldemort on a plate.  However after reading ‘Wild Swans’ I understand it more.  He freed the Chinese from much oppression and brought about a new order that in many ways improved the life of the Chinese…at least for a time (I’m only a quarter of the way through the book).  It is a really interesting read and I am anxious to finish it. 
I have been feeling quite homesick lately, which is new for me.  I have of course felt homesick before in travels.  But it’s normally like ‘oh, it would be nice to be in familiar places instead of trying to figure this out’, or ‘man I’d kill for a slice of Deli News pizza’.  Even in Ecuador I wasn’t homesick for home, but just to feel safe again.  But now I am actually homesick for people and home.  I love travelling and am so happy that I am blessed with these opportunities, which are truly amazing, but I am ready for something more which I find exciting and weird.  So at the moment with this crazy homesickness going on, I’ve had to take Toby Keith off my playlist as he is wonderfully American and reminds me of home and my family way to much which leads to cleaning out the tear ducts way too often haha.  But I am keeping busy, which is great and this last month has been very eventful. 
I am learning a lot more about China and the Chinese culture and things that are apparently perfectly acceptable to do in public.  We are still adding to the list, but some things we have seen done in public on a regular basis are:
SPITTING.  Not just your normal spitting if a fly flew in your mouth, but full on loogie spitting; and spitting everywhere from the street to on the train floor….even if it lands on someone’s foot.  The only place I didn’t see someone spit of on the airplane, and believe me I kept an eye out for it. 
URINATING. At home you would get a ticket for urinating and in some cases indecent exposure.  Here it barley even warrants a dirty look.  At first we thought it was just children (with their parent’s approval).  But Abi came home a few weeks ago and announced she had seen a grown man peeing in an ally way.   Then in Tianjin Ali, Edi and I were privileged with the same experience except he was peeing on a more public sidewalk, only slightly hidden behind a trash can.  Edwina and I screamed for at the same moment we caught sight of Starbucks (which we were desperately hunting for) and the man quickly turned around and walked away…I was glad to find Starbucks and that we embarrassed him a little bit. 
Aside from peeing, Abi has also witnessed a child defecating on the sidewalk….I mean come on people gross!!!!!
BEATING YOUR CHILD.  Horrible, I know!! In my class I have a very challenging child, William.  He’s really smart but has anger issues and hits other children and lashes out whenever he doesn’t get his way.  Last week was particularly difficult and he was upset with me because I had taken points away from him for hitting and scratching other children.  He normally doesn’t get upset at points be taken away because he knows why he lost them, but that day he just was out of control and kept calling me stupid, etc.  But after he attacked another kid and wouldn’t let go of this kids hair I took 2 additional points off and he attacked me (something he had never done before-I was so surprised) and scratched at my eye.  His mother came in an started kicking him, in front of the whole class and other parents! I was horrified!!! The TA moved in between the mother and William and I moved to Williams’s side trying to block his side because his mother was kicking around the teacher to hit him.  All of us teachers were just amazed that this was allowed.  Other parents were appalled by her behavior and pulled her out of the room but OMG this would never happen in the US or the UK.  This is also not the first time this has happened.  Never to this extent but it is commonly known that William’s mother beats him…not just a spanking to be disciplined, but full on beating.  It’s so sad, but as we are in China, it seems that nothing can be done.  I try my hardest to do positive reinforcement with William and give him chances to earn points back and give him attention when he is good so that maybe he will learn he doesn’t have to be bad to get attention, and it works most days but sometimes it doesn’t and when it happens we hope that another parent is quick enough to grab his mother before she comes into class to hit or kick.  It is hard though to see it and know that you aren’t able to do a thing about it. 
Ok on to less depressing quirks of the Chinese culture.  For a group of people that have a ton of superstitions to avoid sickness they skip the hygiene part of it all, and everyone seems to be sick.  There doesn’t seem to be general physicians, just hospitals….at least whenever Shishi or a TA is sick they always say they are going to the hospital…somewhere I never plan on going as if I ever get sick or hurt I have a plan to jump on the first plane to Japan or South Korea for medical treatment.  Shishi had a sore throat for a while, so she saw a doctor and came home with a prescription for this awful smelling/tasting tea with weird flowers and herbs in them, and burns around her wrists, neck and down her back.  She drank the tea for weeks and never got better, and the burns on her neck and check bubbled up and left scars.  After the tea didn’t work, the doctors cut her throat from the inside so she was unable to talk for about a month.  After this she was able to talk, but we didn’t think the cutting was necessary, she just needed to rest her voice for a few weeks, but she wouldn’t do it, until she couldn’t do it.  There seems to be no concept of sickness prevention, just reacting to sickness.  With all the crap that they put into the air and on the streets you would think people would be a little more concerned with making skin lacerations or anything to expose their body more to the cities of bacteria building up but they don’t.  They all get ‘healed’ with cups and different things that burn or cut.  And it doesn’t seem to fix anything because they are all constantly getting something done.  They also don’t drink anything cold because it is supposed to be bad for you, so they drink boiling hot water and tea….I mean super hot so that I can’t even hold the containers sometimes.  In restaurants we have to remember to order cold water not boiling hot.  Even the filtered water dispensers come with a hot water option.  They think it’s hilarious that we put bottled filtered water in the fridge to drink it cold.  And we 4 westerners are never sick and we do everything that is on the Chinese ‘will make you sick’ list.  Another thing that is very unsanitary are the bathrooms.  The ground is always covered in pee, it’s horribly disgusting.  And I have to give a shout out to my mom and dad, who took us camping a lot; and as everyone knows in camping there is not always a bathroom so the ability to squat and pee is learned quite early.  I never thought the ability to ‘pop a squat’ would be one that I would need in my everyday life, but like some many other things that have surprised me about china, this skill has become quite useful.  95% of toilets we have found are Chinese toilets.  Abi even told us of her experience in a train station bathroom that was just lines of these Chinese toilets with dividers on the sides but none in the front of back.  So basically you are facing someone doing the exact same thing as you….can someone say uncomfortable?  So for bigger cities I have down loaded an app “Sit or Squat’ that lists all public bathrooms in areas and rates them on cleanliness and lists if they are a sit or squat…we’ve only used it once but I think it will be quite useful.  But one thing we have wondered is what the Chinese do about #2? Weird thoughts I know, ones I would never have dreamed I would have but here they are popping up in our heads making us wonder. 
Also one thing that I have noticed about Chinese people is that they have really thick teeth.  Most of them have major decay which is difficult for me, and I spend a lot of time talking to people and trying not to stare at their black and broken teeth.  But I have noticed that they have super thick teeth….like 2-3x thicker than mine it seems. 
Well everyone knows about the one child law.  Each family is allowed to have one child; some are able to have more if they are wealthy enough to pay off the officials.  Not sure which officials they are but apparently there are baby officials.  When I was first here I found out that Shishi was forced to have an abortion some years ago after her son, Fenfen was born.  It was hard though to hear about her story and the fact that she was forced to abort the child at 5 months.  I understand the one child law in some ways but I still think it’s difficult to think that parents are limited in their family size and that most children will never get to experience having siblings.  Even as crazy as we can drive each other at times, I love having a brother and sister. 

(next blog will be all this past adventures of this last month!!)

Baby's Bare Bottom

I came across a quote (during my frequent quote Google expeditions) when I first got to Cangzhou that not only made me laugh but also was so true that it has stuck with me: “The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.” – Rudyard Kipling. 

Before this trip, this quote would have been just words on a page that made me laugh, but now they are the words prompting me to write how Cangzhou is affecting my senses.  So let’s run through them starting with smell.  I ride my bike everywhere now.  Even though I wear a face mask to protect my lungs and, let’s be real here, my snot, I still am able to experience the lovely aromas Cangzhou has to offer.  If I use Kipling’s quote I would have to say that what the smells teach me is that Cangzhou is normally pleasant at times, so putrid it takes everything in you not to vomit about 50% of the time, and every once in a while you are graced with something so lovely you take a minute to let it go through your whole body.  Every area in the world has a smell, as do the people that live there.  Here the people don’t smell bad, not like some places in Eastern Europe but they have a distinct smell, which reminds me daily that ‘yup, I am in China’.  Now the city smells are what really cement it in.  I will be riding my bike and everything is fine, it smells like air and normal stuff, them WHAM…I ride so fast and try not to breath just to get through a stench.  There must be sewer let outs on the streets or just concentrated spots where multiple people have participated in way too frequent practice of street urination, because about ever 50-100 feet you hit this 30ft area of rotten stench.  It’s a smell that just makes it physically painful to breath, so horrible.  But then there are rare those times (normally near a good restaurant) when the smells are just wonderful! But when those smells are overpowered by the street stench, there is always my trusty Japanese Cherry Blossom scented body spray from Bath & Body works!

These wonderful smells take us to my next sense: taste.  Finding good food in Cangzhou has been a culinary rollercoaster.  Since Cangzhou isn’t a tourist town we are left with nearly one type of food: Chinese.  There is a Japanese place, but its way overpriced and not that good.  Then there are the pizza places, and even though the Chinese invented pizza and Italians only perfected it, the Chinese really have no bragging rights in the pizza business.  So that brings us back to Chinese.  It has taken a month, but we have found 2 great places, besides our kitchens, to get food.  It took time to find these places because there are a million little shops everywhere that sell food.  But we were on a mission to find a place with not only good food but, honest owners, reasonably healthy (ie. not dripping in oil), and at good prices.  One of our places is the noodle place.  It is a run by a nice Muslim couple.  A big pro about going to a Muslim place is that there is no wondering what meat it is: white meat is always chicken and red meat is beef, since there will never be pork.  Also, they are great with sign language.  We normally get the food to go and when we couldn’t say it we mimed it and they got it, a rarity in China.  So now when we go in they ask us if we want to eat in or take out, all through sign language! And they are so friendly!! Plus, they make the noodles by hand, and it is so awesome to see, they got a kick out how excited the 4 of were to see them do this.  And the last deciding factor on if this place became a favorite was the price: great prices for good portion sizes, and they always put in a lot of veggies (or as my UK friends say, lots of veg). Our second favorite place is actually somewhere we have spent 3 weeks hunting down.  My first week here, Leann (Shishi’s husband) brought home this wonderful chicken, and would only tell us it came from across the street.  So we have been checking out the shops and stands across the street but never found it, but whenever we would look about half the shops would be closed.  So Tuesday we went out on another scouting trip and God must have known how much we wanted this chicken because we followed our noses (and the rare wonderful scents) and found our chicken shop…enter the harp playing angels as a light shines upon the shop.  It is a solely chicken place and so well priced we were ecstatic, 1 kilo of chicken for 21 Yuan (about $4).  We have been twice so far.  The chicken paired with stand bough veggies and rice or a yummy bread bun, is the perfect dinner! That is what Abigael and I had tonight minus the rice or bread buns, so great!
Here is a video of the awesome noodle maker:

Next sense: hearing.  There is a constant pollution of honking.  Even at 6am, it is there.  They use car horns not to be safe, but just to let everyone (drivers and pedestrians alike) know that they are there and driving crazy.  The driving reminds me of the quote by Henry Morgan: “A careful driver is one who honks his horn when he goes through a red light.”  It’s absolutely terrifying to bike around all of it.  There are also random yells of “Hello” which are always found to have come from a very smiley Chinese man.  But it is fun to hear and they are always so happy when we smile and say hello back.  There is also random music that floats through my windows on weekend mornings, around 6/7am.  It would be annoying but since weekends are my early days it’s a nice wake up.  There must be a group that dances nearby but I have never seen them. But it is nice Chinese music.  Walking around at night we have seen a group who does this slow karate dance in front of some shops to similar music, but I have yet to find the morning group, they must be gone by the time I bike to work. 

Sight: Here in Cangzhou, the dominant visual features are tall, plain buildings, millions of people (4 million to be more precise) and smog.  But after a while you see past that and notice the beautiful lights that line the streets at night, the rare more traditional Chinese decorated shop, bare bottomed babies, and on occasion the cute rabid dog.  Let me explain about the bare bottomed babies.  About 75% of the babies here don’t wear anything to cover their bottoms or fronts.  I don’t know why, but diapers are not used to much.  We still have not figured out why the busses, subways and streets are not covered in baby poop, but even though most of the babies are bare I have never seen anything plop out.  Abigael theorizes that someone just holds them over a toilet every 30 min or so and they can go on command…but we think that is a little too weird to ask the parents at work, so we are answerless.  When we were in Beijing Abigael and I could not stop staring at the totally open baby sitting with his grandmother.  He was moving up and down and just wiggling everywhere, giving everyone on the subway a good view of what he’s got going on.  And all we could talk about was why on earth would grandma sit the baby’s butt on her clean outfit…what if you pooped.  And then why don’t the people standing the wet zone move out of the way just in case…I would have.  But even on a 15 min ride, the baby was good. 

Ok the last sense is touch, but as I try my best to not touch everything, so as not to contract anything unwanted and waste my antibacterial wipes, I will not be describing how Cangzhou feels.  But All in all my 1^st month here has been educational and fun.  

we are supposed to be teachers not business gurus

This week has been a very trying one.  First of all, let me say that the Chinese have a very different approach to business and schedules than we westerners.  So different in fact that makes me wonder how they ever came to be a power that can threaten the UK or US for world influence.  Their approach to business seems to be “no schedules, we will just give you a call 5 min before and hope you are near your phone or can come.  When something goes wrong we will just laugh and smile till the westerners head’s are about to explode.  Then, instead of giving you what you need and ask for I am going to spend money on getting you something that is not only unnecessary but unwanted.  Oh, and surprise, I’m not going to tell you when you will be getting something I’m just going to send strange men over to your apartment and have them install it.  And don’t worry, if you don’t answer your door, they have a key and will just come on.”   That, in a very tiny (as well-mannered as I can be) nutshell, has been my week. 

Things in Cangzhou are fine.  I am getting used to the city, we bought masks to ride our bike with so we don’t die of smog inhalation, and I am even getting used to the street markets and expanding my knowledge of Chinese.  However, work is the frustrating part.  When I came I thought adjusting to the culture and china was going to be the issue, but now my issues seem to be in figuring out how to deal with Chinese business.  My boss never seems to listen.  She is the sweetest woman, but no business sense, she is digging herself into a hole with the business and we are all worried about having jobs for our contracted times.  Also, she won’t give a straight answer about anything, nor do the TA’s.  We ask about Chinese New Year breaks…we get “12 days for sure……or 15, I don’t know yet.” We ask when, I get told different things by the boss and the TA whom she seems to let be in charge of everything.  But after 2 weeks ago, when we were never told of schedule changes then got a call at 8:30am asking why we weren’t there to teach our classes, we lost all faith in the TA.  So now we are here trying to figure out this ludicrous system that not only wastes so much time and effort but is wasting precious money that the school does not have.  We even sat Shishi down and said that certain things are not acceptable and that we need to have schedules and be notified of changes, and she wrote it down and asked us to help her revamp the school to make it more efficient.  It lasted for about a week and then this week everything was back at square one.  To top it all off, the class I started, who are also my babies, had 17 kids in it, way too much for a class. So I asked if we could split it and Shishi (my boss) said oh yes, that is way too much, you should have no more than 10.  So I talk to Vicky (the main TA) and she just goes behind my back and takes 4 of my kids out and puts them in a beginner class! I was so frustrated.  Out of all 17 kids, a few could actually have used the help to get sent back to the beginning but she just chose at random and chose 4 pretty advanced kids, and it was so hard for me.  This week it just seems like one thing after another keeps piling up, and all of us are feeling it.   

Beijing, Toilets, Starbucks and Smog

Weeks 2 & 3 in China have been ones of travel and really learning about the Chinese people and culture.  I am really settling in here, it’s very nice.  I moved into my apartment in the middle of my 2^nd week here.  Edwina and Alistair were supposed to move into their place but (as we are in China) it was not finished, even though the construction team has been given 3 months to finish it.  So we are currently nice and cozy in my little 2 bedroom.  It’s actually not bad at all, we all get along really well and we would be hanging out together no matter what-this just cuts out the travel time.  October 1^st is National Day in China, about the equivalent to the 4^th of July to us-just without the fireworks.  My favorite thing about national day was 4 days off work!! Shishi had work off as well for she took Edi, Ali, myself and Fenfen to Beijing! It was great, and totally exhausting. 

(Oct 1) After a crowded, slightly smelly 3 hour train ride into Beijing we were so happy to get to the hostel and rinse off before exploring China’s capital. We hadn’t even walked 100 ft from the hostel before we were stopped by a group and asked to take pictures with them.  Walking through the very crowded streets we had multiple pictures taken of us and were just stared at like crazy, it was very funny at times.  Out game in the city became spot the person who is very non-discreetly taking a photo of you-we got very good at it.  After some very crowded bus and metro rides we went to this HUGE market that Edi and Ali went to last time.  It was quite the experience.  I have never been good at bargaining prices, but I got OK here.  Its 6 floors and you can find just about anything you would ever want.  My goal was to find scarves and some other gift items.  Walking around the market, you really get a sense of how well God designed the body and made it so your arms can be tugged, pulled and twisted without coming out of the socket.  The sales people literally try and pull you into their stores…and some actually bar you from going out if you won’t buy something.  Most people tug rather lightly and when you twist your arm they let go, but there were a few very persistent and rather rude people.  One lady actually grabbed my wrist with bother of her hands, pulled with her whole body and twisted my arm to try and get me into her store.  She kept pulling until I finally managed to yank free, but my wrist her for the rest of the day.  The sales people are also just like parrots...all you hear is “lady”, “buy a Prada wallet??” and “what you look for?” or “what you want?”.  If you do go into a store to look around, about half of them will try to keep you in there. They actually stand in the entry way and when you try to leave they won’t move and they keep asking going down in prices, it’s nice when you actually want to buy something, but when you don’t it’s just rude.  It only doesn’t freak you out, because they are tiny little Chinese women, so you are able to just sort of push them out of the way.  It sounds rude when I actually write it out, but when you are doing it, it’s just more a matter of self preservation.   Since I am not too good at bartering Alistair stuck around to help me for a bit.  But since the sales people speak some English we can’t discuss things in front of the in English so we would use Spanish since all 3 of us speak it.  It actually comes in very handy because we can say what prices we think are good, etc.  I did manage to make a few good deals though.  I bought a few gifts and even a cozy scarf for me. 

(Oct 2)  This is what I was most excited about when I decided to come to China: The Great Wall!! It’s a Wonder of the World, so big you can see it from space (if you measure in a straight line start to finish it is the distance from LA to Boston), and just totally awesome!  We decided to take a hostel tour to the Mutianyu section of the wall.  It was great! We were blessed with gorgeous weather so you could see out forever around the wall, and there were less crowd here vs. the more commonly visited Badaling.  Of course nothing about travelling is every perfect, I messed up charging my battery the night before and so as soon as I turned on my camera I found a drained battery, I just about died.  Edwina and Alistair had also just commented to me that they forgot to charge their camera and only had about half their battery left-but we are troopers and made it work.  To get up to the wall from the parking lot you can hike for about 45 min or take the 5 min chair lift-we of course took the chair lift to save time.  It was really fun and gave some great views as we rode up.  WE hiked the wall for about 3 hours.  And I say hike because it really is a hike.  Parts of it are so steep, but the aches are so worth it! Not only does it provide beautiful views of green mountains but it is awesome walking a place that started being built in the 7^th century.  Taking pictures was an amusing thing; we would turn on the camera and run to take the picture really quick.  When the battery started decreasing more, we would ask different people to use their cameras to take some pictures on our SD cards, it was very interesting.  It was surprising how many people were ok with it.  I even asked Chinese girls who spoke no English and I managed to communicate what I wanted and they let me use their camera for about 10 min while they sat waiting for their friends.  One of the more exciting things about the wall is how they let you travel down it….toboggans!! They have a toboggan lane that takes about 5-10 min you get down depending on how fast you toboggan.  It was great! There was a few times that I though “wow, if you were to fly out right now, you would fall down this large Chinese hill and die”, but it was great! And of course being daddy’s girl, I was down in about 5 min!  That night, Edi, Ali and I were on a mission to find cocktails and just have a night out…we found a wonderful backpackers restaurant/bar in the Hutong (little side street) near our hostel.  It had great cocktails and amazing food-burgers and pizza, how much more western can you get!

(Oct 3)  Summer Palace!!!  Again we had wonderful weather-no smog what so ever!!  We spent a good 8 hours walking around the Palace grounds and still did not go everywhere.  The Palace grounds are very spread out with beautiful ponds, parks, pagodas, mini cities and buildings throughout.  Even though it was crowded it was still a lovely escape from the rest of the city.  We had lunch along the water in this little village inside the grounds.  We walked along the water looking at the shops and trying not to be pushed into the water by the crazy crowds.  We did have a nice stop at the scribe.  It was a little old man, like someone straight out a movie, and he was so fun and spoke very good English.  I got a scroll done with a proverb.  He starts off by having us find our Chinese year sign; based on the year you are born.  Mine is a rabbit.  After that he puts down about 8 little pieces of paper and you choose one at random, and that is your proverb.  My proverb is ‘Happiness comes after suffering’.  He wrote it in calligraphy on a piece of parchment with some other characters.  It is such a great souvenir! Alistair and I each got one and are excited to get them framed and put up in the apartments.  We walked all around the grounds and then hiked up to the top of the main palace building to see an amazing view of the Beijing skyline and lake.  Walking around the grounds I saw the most appalling thing.  A little boy, about 4 or 5, was walking around with his mother and grandmother it looked like.  He had to pee so they just stopped on the stairs, he whipped it out and peed in the middle of the crowded walkway on the steps leading to the main palace.  I could not believe it!!  

(Oct 4) We had a very relaxing day just walking around Tiananmen Square, going to Starbucks and having cocktails at our new favorite Beijing bar (Helen’s).  Then we had a nice 3 hour train ride back to Cangzhou and had a fun few hours looking at the pictures on our laptops!

The next morning, Alistair got a call at 8:30am asking where he and Edwina were.  Apparently they had class all day and weren’t told.  About an hour later they called to tell me I had a class as well.  We learned that the Chinese do not actually get time off, they just move it around to appear to be time off.  The students got 7 days off for the National Day holiday and then to not get put behind they got to school on the weekend.  So the classes at DD Dragon were moved around to accommodate for that and instead of having a weekend scheduled on the weekend it was moved to be done on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.  Needless to say we were all pretty perturbed and had a good chat with Shishi about it on Friday night and since then things have gotten better.  They are planning more and letting us know of things in advance, which is very helpful.  The new teacher, and my soon to be roommate, Abigael came in on Wednesday the 5^th and we all started hanging out right away.  Well since we had a weekend off, we of course planned a trip.  Although with the holiday getting a train was nearly impossible so we settled for Beijing again, this time just us 4 teachers-it was great!!  We stayed at a wonderful hostel, Happy Dragon, and just hung out, relaxed, had a wonderful hot shower and slept.  We really wanted to explore the nightlife but our favorite place was the hostel.  Great prices, amazing food, the best burger in China, and yummy cocktails! We hung out at night there playing cards, eating and drinking-it was so fun!  In the days we went to The Temple of Heaven, Lama Temple then back to the market.  Temple of heaven was nice but after Summer Palace not too impressive, but since it there was hardly anyone there it was a wonderful escape from the crowds.  The weather wasn’t too good while we were there, so smoggy.  I took a picture of the sun in the sky and it is just a dim orange circle, because of the amount of smog.  Abigael and I went to Lama Temple by ourselves and had a good time.  It was a very nice temple and we were excited to see the monks.  There is also a 18-meter high Buddha carved out of one sand wood tree, it is so huge and amazing.  We all went to the Beijing Opera together, thinking it would be a nice night out.  It turned out to just be a weirdly entertaining night.  The opera is like nothing we expected.  After sitting through 90 min of interesting acts and singing we all just looked at each other, not knowing exactly what to say.  Alistair had it right when he said that you could take a cat, and flashy clothing and stick them all into a blender and get the same audio experience.  But it was still a good experience, I am glad we did it, but we all decided that next time we are going to the Kung Fu show!!

Back in Cangzhou, things are going well.  I am getting more comfortable teaching and really enjoying it.  I am learning a little more Chinese as well, it is quite fun.  We are planning our Christmas holiday, looking into Malaysia and Thailand! It’s rather excited! I also love being here with 2 Brits and a Scotswoman.  We are all having a great time!!  We all have bikes now so we are spending more time running around the streets.  The other day we were biking to a school to hand out flyers and we drove by a market selling fish.  The fish were laid out on a carpet, sitting and the dirty street, and they were flopping! Yes they put them out alive onto the street.  It was a little freaky.  But then I remembered: ‘duh! You are in China’.  Also, something that constantly reminds me of where I am are the toilets.  About half of the toilets are squat ones…meaning there is a ceramic hold in the ground and you squat and pee.  The ground around them are always so gross and dirty that it makes me miss the Wiki we made at camp on the red ant hill.   But ‘when you gotta go you gotta go’, so I am becoming better at just holding my breath and dealing. 

Along with that here are some things we have complied about the Chinese and China. 

Things not heard of in China:

Fortune cookies (…I know sad)

Manners (this is the rudest culture I have ever experienced)

Car filters (smog capital of the world)

Lines (or as my British cohorts would say: ques)

Plans (they are horrible at organization and planning, it’s so difficult)

Traffic Signals (they must just think they are pretty lights because no one abides by them)

After a certain amount of horn usage it stops being effective.  (You can walk anywhere without hearing horn blaring, they use them all the time)

Toilets!! (they pee on the street)

It is not appropriate to hawk a loogie in groups/public

It’s rude to stare (they just turn and stare right at you, people will actually slow down in cars or on bikes to stare at you)

Seatbelts

Child safety in motor vehicles (they just set kids in the rickety seats on the back of the bikes or they have them stand on the bike and hold on)

Finishing by a deadline (the never finish anything by the time they say)

Holidays (this is the hardest for us to understand-no time off, not time to travel, or to have fun.  It’s so sad)

But they make for it with:

A mean bowl of 5ft long noodles

The fact that you can buy anything you’ve ever thought for a cheap price

Selling super cute little face masks to reduce the risk of smog induced diseases

They have a ton of Starbucks in the Beijing!

Beautiful & ancient buildings

Not making vulgar/rude statements to you as they stare

China, Day 4

These last 2 weeks have been a roller coaster of emotions for me.  I have gone from super excited to come to China, to scared out of my mind, to just overly emotional and crying about nothing.  Part of the last part I chalk up to having 2 X-Chromosomes.  Even this morning, mom Skyped me and I became emotional.  Part of it is that I haven’t been sleeping well….i have a bruised hip from this bed.  Also It is just being in a new place, which no matter what place it is, is scary.  The third part that adds to my emotional state is just being bored, which brings me to today.  Today was my 4^th day here in Cangzhou and it was fabulous!! I met up with Edwina and Alistair at noon and they took me to a Japanese place for lunch.  It was great!! It is our favorite place so far.  After lunch we wandered over to the grocery store-what an experience.  Walking in it looks like a market that you would find in a smaller town in the US, not like a huge Vons in Long Beach, but more like the Piggly Wiggly in Louisiana.  In the stores there is a more open area-similar to a produce section in Vons-and here is where you know you are in a Chinese market.  There are tons of veggies, different than I have ever seen.  Some fresh, some dried and some just I don’t know.  There are tubs to scoop of different types of rice and other grains, and noodles.  Then there is the seafood section.  You know those restaurants that have the big lobster tanks when you walk in and Dad always says “we are eating them for dinner”…well Cangzhou may not have lobster tanks, but plenty of crab and fish tanks.  Big fish too!! It’s quite fun to walk around.  And as you are walking around, there are about 20 workers (everywhere is staffed likes it’s Disneyland on Christmas) in groups staring at you.  Not in a rude way, just in the Chinese way.  After, Edwina took me off the main street to walk down “the back streets of Cangzhou”.  It is more like what we westerners think China is like.  Just a little dirtier, but similar to what you would find the floor to look like after the Rose Parade.  We walked by the fire station, the fire fighters wear army print uniforms in their off time….we saw them outside cleaning up their garden and it took us a few minutes to realize they weren’t army.  A cool street to walk down was the produce street.  It is scattered with people riding their bikes and driving their little car wagons, old men playing chess and people selling fruits and vegetables.  Although we didn’t need anything we walked down and looked around, having a great time.  It was such a fun day! It was great to get out and see more of Cangzhou and to just not be bored.  I am so happy to have Edwin and Alistair here; we are the only westerners in the whole city.  For a while this didn’t make sense, because I figured a city this size would have multiple English schools (which naturally attracts more westerners), but DD Dragon is the only English school in the whole city.  If I was the only westerner this would have been a really difficult 6 months, but I am so fortunate to have 2 others, one more on the way, and to like them and get along.  I mentioned to Edwina that I was interested in taking a Martial Arts class, since we are in the martial arts capital of China, and she said that she was really keen to do it too, so yay!! We are going to be looking into that.  We also want to travel as much as possible so we are going to have travel/tourist Tuesdays, our off day. 

I observed my first class last night and was informed that I am doing a demo class tomorrow.  A demo class is when parents being their children to the school and see if they want to send them to the school.  So 10am tomorrow I am teaching not only my first class here at DD Dragon, but a demo class.  Edwina ran through it with me and gave me a demo, demo class.  They kids in the classes are great though, so I am not worried, but it is a little nerve raking since it’s my first time teaching here and the parents are going to sit in.  I have realized though, watching Edwina last night and Alistair tonight, that the best way to make it a fun lesson is just to act like a goof (which Mom informed me I do very well, haha) so that should be good for me.  I am very excited to start working and have a schedule again.  I also get to start at least 2 new classes, which will be great, because then they will really be mine, and I get to choose they western names! I am already thinking of fun names.