Sultan of Brunei: my last month in China

Wow! I do not know how many times I have said this in the last year but OMG these past 2 months have been a whirlwind of crazy and awesome! I have sat down meaning to write something and kept being distracted by travel plans, scrapbooking, packing and hanging out with friends or exploring new places.



This is the entry I stared 2 weeks ago when I was in Phuket.

So I am sitting in my hostel 5 min away from Karon Beach in Phuket. I was deciding between watching an episode of How I Met Your Mother or doing some scrapbook pages for my recent travels around China.....but instead chose the third option: writing! I have been putting this off for 2 weeks which is long enough.
My last month in China was amazing!! I was super excited about my mom coming on January 15th! I love travelling but it is difficult to travel alone, because in 10 years I can’t reminisce with someone about 'that one night in that one place'. So, it’s always wonderful to share a part of my travelling life with someone who will always be in my life-and it happened to be Mom! I could hardly sleep the night before, which was odd since I was so exhausted from working. But after a busy Saturday and Sunday of teaching I jumped on the fast train to Beijing to meet her at the airport. It was great to see her and finally give her a hug after 4 months (even thought it was one of the shorter separations...I’m used to the 7 months of being away). I had to work on January 16th so we only spent 3 hours in Beijing, and that was only spent in the train station. But we did have a wonderful dinner and mom got to experience her first squat toilets!! On the train there was the cutest little boy with his dad, and his dad kept coming round to talk with us (he spoke a little bit of English). He was also very excited to exchange some Yuan for 1 US dollar, it was great! We were both exhausted by the time we got back to Cangzhou, around 10pm. We had to deal with horrible taxi drivers who wanted to charge my 5x more than normal so we just got on the bus. A half hour later and after my 6 flights of stairs we were greeted by Abigael at the apartment. Mom was wonderful and brought us all little goodies. Abi had requested some of her American favorites-Lucky Charms, Twizzlers & Crystal Light. Then she took out a box wrapped in red paper...Sees Candy!! Mom got a kick out of the fact that I knew the box at once.
Since I had to work the next day mom came to school, she sat and watched me...nothing to exciting but then again, life in Cangzhou isn't particularly exciting. I, of course, took her to our favorite noodle place for lunch and ordered her the usual. She loved it!! And even after our trip she said her favorite place to eat was our noodle place. We took it back to Edwina and Alistair's and the 5 of us had lunch together, just like we would have done any other day. It was wonderful; she got to meet Edi, Ali and Abi. We brought the box of Sees with us and had fun trying some out. Mom even brought goodies for Edi & Ali...toothbrushes!! They loved that her name and address were on them, I don't even think of that. I mean, doesn't every one have their dentist's (aka Mom) name and addresses on their toothbrushes haha.

After classes we an hour to see the sights of Cangzhou-the Iron Lion & the park across the street from the school. Then we packed bags up again and went to Beijing.
I was unbelievably excited to get out of Cangzhou again, and for 2 weeks this time! It was my 6th time to Beijing in 4 months...and I think my 3rd or 4th time at Happy Dragon. Mom fell in love with the hostel just as quickly as we all had 3 months earlier. After a delicious dinner we settled in for bed....one problem our room was FREEZING!! It had a heater but just powerful enough to heat the room up before the heat escaped through the cracks that are so common in Chinese construction...I think Papa would disapprove. But we made do, and just rushed around and then got under the covers and basically refused to get out of bed until the next morning.
We spent 4 days in Beijing. And we were very busy. We visited the Forbidden City, Olympic Green, The Great Wall, Lama Temple and of course the markets!! Mom even got to participate in dumpling making!! It was really fun being the pseudo tour guide, I felt very cool. I was actually pleasantly surprised that I could be the tour guide and even used my extremely limited Chinese.

On the 20th we left our hostel at 6:30 to get to the airport by 7:30 to check in for our flights to Guilin. After a few mishaps we got the airport and went to check in only to find out the flight had been overbooked for Chinese New Year and we couldn't get on. So we had to split up onto 2 different flights, her leaving 4 hours before I did, and I landed in Guilin around 8:30pm. As with all Chinese flights...and basically everything in China, it is frustrating, disorganized and consistently 1-2 hours late!! But I arrived and we were excited to get this part of China travelled. Over the next week we biked, hiked, and drove all around Guangxi province visiting the local people and minority villages. In Guilin we did a bamboo river raft; it was absolutely freezing but so beautiful. We even got to witness the famous cormorant fishing. Edwina had first told me about it, and it sounded sort of magical. Fisherman go out on bamboo rafts and, instead of using fishing poles, they have loyal birds that dive into get the fish and then bring they captured booty to the fisherman. At the end of the day the fisherman rewards the birds with a fish. It all sounded very symbiotic and...Like I said earlier a little magical. I should have known, after living in China for 4 months, that the illusion was to be shattered, haha. The fisherman had 4 birds tethered to his raft. He would choose one and tie a string around their necks (at first we couldn't figure out why); he would then un-tether the bird and toss it into the river. The bird would dive in and hunt. When he came up with a fish in his mouth, he would flounder around for a bit and the fisherman would help him back to the boat and pull the fish out of his mouth then the bird would do it all again. After a few moments we realized that the little string he put around their necks was to keep the bird from swallowing the fish......not nearly as cool as I thought it to be, but effective.
We drove up into the mountains to visit the minority peoples and I cannot begin to describe how cold mom and I were. I didn't realize we were going up into the mountains so neither of us packed for anything that cold....it was way colder than Beijing! We visited many villages, our favorite of which was Long Ji. It was a village nestled into the rice terraces. Cars are not allowed up to the terraces so we left our car at the bottom and had to hike up. 2 locals came down with baskets strapped to their backs to help us with our suitcases. I carried my backpack up with me...and after 30 min of hiking uphill in the middle of the freezing night I was so happy to get up to our hotel and dump the backpack and crawl into bed. We had a wonderful 2 days on the terraces, including celebrating Chinese New Years! Our hotel 'concierge' & cook, Feifei invited us to spend the important holiday with her family, which we of course agreed to. During the day we hiked all over the frozen terraces without guide. We had a great time. The people were so friendly. We met one woman who lived up out of the main village in a makeshift hut, she was wonderful. Mom was very interested in her teeth, she was missing a lot. Mom pointed out that it was from wear not decay. We chatted with her for about 10 min and took pictures with her. She even sang a song for us; it was wonderful to be serenaded with a traditional song of her Miao tribe while overlooking the rice terraces.
That night we headed out with Feifei to celebrate New Year’s. We sat in the little room with a tiny fire in the middle as they prepared some of the dinner: deep fried, stuffed tofu. We then went to another house and joined the rest of the family. We sat around a big round table over the kiang (a little fire to heat our legs as we sat. We feasted on bamboo shoots, veggies and what were at the time mystery meats. The meats turned out to be bamboo and mountain rats...can you say YIKES!!! Mom and I were stunned, but we did try a bit of each, but we filled up on bamboo and carrots mostly. Feifei was out translator during the 2 hours we were there and it was really fun. The family was so warm, that we got on great despite the language barrier. Feifei made a comment though that really stuck with me. I don’t know what the topic of conversation was but she said "We are rich. We have enough food to eat and houses to keep us warm." I was stunned, and then was surprised that I felt stunned. But this girl, the same age as me, was saying how happy and rich they are living in the freezing mountain town, which few people ever leave. It really stuck with me and made me see how happy people can be with so little if they just allow themselves to be. During Mao's Culture Revolution 1000's starved to death and millions more nearly did, even the people working these terraces because all of the grain was taken. So now, just 50 years later they see themselves as rich because no one is starving or freezing out in the cold. It's that perspective that just amazes me.
We travelled from Guilin to Guiyang with our tour guides visiting all the mountain towns. Most of the mountain people celebrate their weddings during the holidays, since they can take time off work. So we same a ton of wedding processions and even got to sort of join in on one. All the people were taking gifts to the bride in her house and we jumped out of the van with our camera and the tour guide and walked on into the wood, 2 story house. As soon as we entered we were greeted with 100 smiles and then quickly force fed rice wine. I am not a fan of it, but it is rude to turn down so when a woman walked over and poured an entire glass of it down my throat I smiled, bowed and quickly backed away, from then on I could politely refuse anymore. Mom was luckier and only had to take a sip of the wine....not sure why I had to take the whole glass. But after the burn of the wine subsided in my throat I turned around to see quite the site....an entire pig hanging on a stick over the tiniest fire I’ve ever seen, in the middle of the house! The bride was dressed in traditional Dong (the tribe) marriage attire. She was very nice and we smiled at each other and I found out she was 20 years old.

From Guiyang we flew to Chengdu. We spent one day in Chengdu and it was amazing! We had the best hotel so mom and I stayed up late drinking a cup of tea and reading about the Pandas. The morning of the 27th we got to visit the Panda reserve!!! I was unbelievably excited that the complete lack of sleep barely fazed me. We arrived right when it opened and got into the first group of people that were able to hangout with the Pandas. This was what I was most excited about when I decided to come to China, and so was bouncing all over the place. It’s an extra payment, about $200, to sit with a panda, but so worth it! Mom and I were dressed in surgical gowns, booties and gloves before being allowed to touch the pandas. After getting all dressed up we waited anxiously with 4 other visitors as the caretakers brought out the cutest 1 year old Panda I've ever seen. He jumped up onto the bench and waited happily to be given his apple. Mom was the first one to sit with the Panda. She just lit up when she sat with him; it was so fun to watch. The photographer let me sit on the other side of the Panda to take a picture with the both of us together. After a few minutes I was able to trade with mom and sit next to the beautiful bear. He happily ate his apple, not really caring what was going on. I sat down and scooted right next to him, feeling the fur. It's really different than I expected, thicker and coarser. I got a great picture when the panda started me by moving his paw and placing it in mine, it was amazing!! After a few minutes we had to leave, but we were both bouncing around like little kids for the rest of the day. We walked all around the reserve seeing the different pandas and the red pandas which aren't really pandas at all. After the reserve we drove further out of the city to the Sichuan Cooking Museum. I wasn't sure if I would like this but it was really interesting. We learned how they make the special Sichuan chili paste. They leave it outdoors for 1-2 years, uncovered to allow the flavor to deepen. Since it gets really hot and muggy in the summer we asked if bugs land on the paste, but honestly if I were a bug Sichuan chili paste is not where I would want to land. After the tour we got to be chefs!! We had chef outfits and hats and cooked alongside the head chef, learning to make kung pao chicken and spicy tofu. We had a wonderful meal!! Before our flight we did some walking around the Chengdu center and then boarded our last in-country flight to Shanghai.

Shanghai was wonderful!!! It was nice to be back in a big city, but also one that is so different than Beijing. It is more westernized and doesn’t seem as crowded as Beijing. I expected it to feel more like Manhattan, since people compare those 2 cities, but it felt more like Chicago, or LA. My favorite thing about Shanghai was having dinner on the Bund, the river that runs through the middle of the city. We went to 'M on the Bund' and it was amazing! We got all dressed up and walked the 10 min down the road and were transported back to a 20's bar lounge overlooking the lights of the Bund. The food was amazing, and I had the first cocktail I’ve ever truly loved...and it was French haha. We had such a wonderful time there that we came back the next night just for the cocktails and view after dinner at another restaurant. We were hooked up with a friend of a friend who took us around the city with her driver. She's lived in Shanghai for a while so she took out for delicious dumplings, showed us the insect market and took for amazing massages. The insect market was a trip! People carefully select crickets and grasshoppers like we would a cute little puppy or kitten. It was bizarre, but really entertaining. It’s really busy with hundreds of insect and bird vendors and then people hanging out playing cards.   On the 30th Mom and I split, her flying back to LA and me taking the train back to Cangzhou. The whole time we were together mom kept comment on how much of a little family Abi, Edi, Ali and I were and it is totally true. Abi called me as soon as she got back to China from Japan and then when she got her train tickets to Cangzhou. And I did the same as soon as I got my train ticket back to Cangzhou. It was a relaxing train ride though, 4 hours of watching iPod sized movies.

After returning I had 2 weeks in Cangzhou before flying to Phuket. I thought I would be working, but after my visa issues I couldn’t so I got to hang out in exciting Cangzhou haha. Abi's friend Chris who went to Japan was there for a week so I just hung out with him, going to the store and what not. On Feb 6 the 4 of us and Chris made a last group trip to Beijing. We of course stayed at Happy Dragon. We had some fun going back to the silk market and spending lots of money on pretty scarves and I got a new pearl necklace at the pearl market. We spent the evening playing a really fun and way too loud game of Articulate. Edi & Ali and brought it back with them from Australia and we had such a fun time. Abi and I were fabulous teammates. It was nice that no one else in the hostel common area minded that we were there, but we did invite them if they wanted. It was just a really fun night, one of my favorite in China!! Life back in Cangzhou was pretty normal for the next 6 days before I left. Abi and I hung out, had movie nights and we would go over to Edi and Ali's.
Edwina asked me what my favorite memories of China were and I had a difficult time choosing, but now I’ve had 3 weeks to think on it and this is what I’ve come up with (in no particular order):
New Years (all 4 of us were in agreement that the party was awesome)
Pandas
Meeting Edwina, Alistair and Abigael
Explaining "Jizz in my Pants" to Tina
Hiking the Great Wall
Sharing the experience with my Mom
Our wonderful noodle place
Movie nights

Coming to China was the most spontaneous thing I’ve ever done and it has been some of the most memorable months of my life. Like anything there are frustrating times but the rewards were so much greater than those frustrations. I love that I go to live there and meet the amazing people I met.

tissues please

Friday, January 6
This week has been going so well and then tonight happened! Things have been going really well at the school, even though we've not gotten a day off since New Years.  My classes have been really nice (basically because in the beginning of the week, all my trouble makers were absent).  I've been a little sniffily but it hasn't been affecting my week too much...I just spent yesterday lying in bed surrounded by tissues watching episodes of How I Met Your Mother and NCIS.
Last month Vicky (the TA) & I went to Passport Office and we were told to come back later when it was 2 months from the time I had to leave (Feb 12).  So we went back today, and I was was unpleasantly not surprised.  I have become used to the fact that nothing in China occurs the way it should.  So even though I've been told at least 4 times that I will be able to extend the visa until February.  But of course, when we went in today we were told that the system was down to allow me to extend for 2 months, since it is more than one month until I leave.
Thursday, January 12
Ugh, cold is still here in full effect.  As with every Chinese person I've been told to drink tea & hot water.  Shishi gave me some tea over the weekend which she and the TA's told me would cure my cold.  So I took the tea over the weekend and spent the whole night up coughing...well more like hacking up a lung.  So after 2 days, and my cold getting way worse I stopped taking at and have switched to drinking tons of water and have continued to sit with tissues near me at all times.  It is getting better but I am hoping to be less congested by the time I have to board a plane next week.  So excited that mom is landing on Sunday!! So excited to see her.  Buying train tickets to Beijing to pick her up was an experience.  It was the first time i'd done anything like this totally by myself in China.  I took the bus down to the train station during my lunch break on Saturday, but when i got there they said I could buy a ticket more than 8 days in advance.  So I went back on my Sunday lunch break and after a few snafus I purchased my ticket to Beijing and then mom's and my tickets back to Cangzhou! I had my TA, Carol, write a few sentences for my in Chinese to make purchasing tickets easier.  But still they weren't going to let me buy mom's tickets because I didn't have her passport.  So I stood their frantically saying "no, no she's in mei guo (America)" and then promptly waved my Ipod with mom's passport number on it.  After a few moments they let me buy her ticket.  The next day I had to do the same thing on Monday morning and again they told me no because I didn't have mom's passport but I worked it all out and successfully purchased tickets to take me and mom back to Beijing on Monday!
Aside from getting ready for vacation and Mom coming I've been dealing with my visa.  Shishi has been telling for the past 2 months that it will be easy to get extended. But in the last 2 months I have felt like a ping pong ball being smacked around by the Chinese officials in the passport office.  I've been told to come back, that the computer system wont allow me to extend for 2 months and then today I was finally told that they can't extend an American visa for more than a month.  So they have my passport to extend for the next month.  I am very happy to be getting it extended, but there is a bigger back story about how I am getting it extended but not for the internet.
Well as with 90% of the days in Cangzhou it is nice and smoggy....and really cold! Sitting cozy at the table watching NCIS and doing some scrap booking.

New Years 2012...Beijing Style

New Years Eve was EPIC!!! We'd been planning and re-planning new years for a month or 2 and plans kept being forced to be changed, but i'm so glad it did! We had a absolutely amazing time in Beijing.  When we couldn't get tickets to Shanghai we decided to do an all-nighter in Beijing and I found a list of the top parties.  We emailed the top 3 about buying pre-sale tickets and times and only one party got back to me, NOVA.  I had been emailing one of the coordinators for a week about buying tickets and logistics and stuff.  He said he would set aside 4 tickets at pre-sale prices!!  So we got all excited about going to an actual party and getting all dressed up!!  Edwina and I had been talking outfits for almost 2 weeks lol.
Abi, Edi and Ali had to work Saturday night so I met them at school and we took the 8:53pm train to Beijing.  We had a fun train ride playing 'ring of fire' to pre-game.  We must have been so loud from laughing but no one minded.  We got into Beijing around 9:30pm and caught a taxi to the party location.  On the drive there we were having fun driving through different parts of Beijing and seeing all the lights, and all of a sudden it hit me....I am in China haha..it was the weirdest thing.  But the taxi ride was fun, we were all so giddy that there was lots of talking...i even tried out my Scottish accents by saying "my cow needs a mirror for Hogmany"  just the way Abigael does...rolling the 'r's and everything....I first asked if Edwina wanted to use my mirror to put on lipstick and it led to a 5 min convo with all of us saying mirror in our various accents...so funny.
When we got to the party, first we were totally excited about the location.  It was in an old oil tanker in the art/industrial district.  When we got in and I gave my name and told them I had been talking with Dion...they just let us in!!!! No payment, nothing.....we were so excited haha.  I felt like such a VIP.  Abigael and Edwina got in fine when I said they were with me, but Alistair got stopped and so I ran back and said he's with me and they let him through, haha...it was so fun!! We got in at about 11pm so we got on the dance floor right away...and didn't stop until 3 am!!  It was all techno music with many DJ's and ton of westerners!! It was wonderful!! One topic of conversation here in China is always the bathrooms and we got a kick out of the fact that the toilets here were port-a-potties that were... squatters!! haha, only in China would they make squat port-a-potties.  But since we were just there to have fun and not get trashed the squatters made no difference to us.  We danced and danced and danced... 12 hours after leaving my feet are still sore haha.
We left the party around 3:30/4 and then had a little adventure trying to hail a taxi.  It was so cold outside and no taxis were stopping....so we had to walk down the block and cross the street and catch a taxi going the other way...by this time all of our fingers were frozen.  When we got the the train station at 4:30am we were dissapointed to see that the station didn't open until 5:30, so we joined the rest of the freezing Chinese crowd in waiting.  It was the coldest hour of my life....I half expect for my toes to freeze and fall off they hurt so bad.  As you can imagine, after being awake for 18 hours on little sleep and then dancing for 3-4 hours straight...we were exhausted so the next few hours were not the best.  We were freezing..even when we got into the train station.  We sat in KFC till 8am just because it was the warmest.  We had an 8:20 train ride and all of us sat down and crashed for the hour train ride to Cangzhou.  When we got back (6 hours ago) at 10am and found I couldn't go to sleep.  My body was exhausted, but apparently coffee at KFC is very strong.  I finally got an hour nap from 1-2 but until then, NCIS & photo editing kept me entertained.  It'll be good though that I didn't nap..I will sleep better tonight and be refreshed for my 10am classes tomorrow morning.  Even with the freezing and being totally exhausted in a train station it was the best New Years eve! Such a fitting way to start 2012 and end 2011, a year that has been so exciting for me.  Hopefully 2012 will be just has amazing as the start of it has been.