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