Some of Christmas

Well for Christmas day, I spent it in the cozy environment of a very lovely British couple that I see usually on a weekly basis. We drank wassail, played very funny games, watched James Bond and ate chocolate all day. Although I didn't have eggnog, it was a very successful Christmas. Here is a few pictures. There was no snow (but we've only had 1 snow so far and it was melted by noon) and perhaps we didn't run into people who had Christmas spirit we had plenty to spare. I got some very wonderful gifts (that also include chocolate). Missed home a bit and the Christmas ham, but I guess I survived another year!

Flag Team

Well quite a few weeks ago I went to my students Flag demonstration. Thinking that they were some kind of color guard, I was wrong. They marched around a bit and that was it. Quite interesting to watch and I'm glad that my students have the opportunity to be involved in an extra curricular activity. But here is the link for the pictures (they are a bit garbled b/c my internet doesn't really let me edit very easily so there's some doubles and not a lot of captions sorry)

http://picasaweb.google.com/cccapper/FlagTeam02

But they look good in there uniforms and were really excited to see I came to watch so I got to be proud right?!

As for the rest of things I've been showing the movie "Love Actually" in class and now that I've seen the same 2 hours 8 times I don't think I ever want to see it again. I also got to play a little volleyball on last Thursday. I had gone to the gym to meet some students for English corner (we just get together for 2 hours and talk English) and the teachers were having a volleyball match. The "just get it over the net however you can" type of v-ball game but still fun. They liked having me so much they invited me to play on Tuesday. So we'll see how long my popularity lasts.

I've also been doing lots of planning for winter holiday and spring festival (no I don't have Christmas off) but I'll be going to Harbin (3 hrs from Russia) to an ice festival. That's really the only for sure plan I have but here's the other options. Thailand, Hong Kong, Macau (China's Vegas), Hainan (China's Hawaii), Xi'an for the terracotta warriors, Shiz, and Beijing, perhaps Qingdao (where the TsingTao beer is from) I'm done with classes from January 18th till around the end of Feb, so we'll see what happens. Which also means I won't be blogging but just wait till I get back.

As for the upcoming holidays, we've (other foreigners and I) have been planning and putting together Christmas parties and secret santas which we are all looking forward to (and yes we know it's a little over half a month away but our time goes by so fast here) I mean I can't believe I've already been here 3 months! But hope all is well with everyone!

Thanksgiving in China

Well, I didn't celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday because Thursdays are my busiest days, I have 2 classes and an English corner at night (english corner is where the students get together and talk english with me and each other) so I had a good chinese dinner with Dan another foreign teacher. But last night, I got to celebrate Thanksgiving with some British Friends and it was fabulous. With some inventive ways to use chinese appliances I made a delicious stuffing and excellent parmesan mashed potatoes. To say the last it was bountiful and I was stuffed with good American food which was an excellent change. You don't realize how much you miss your common food till you eat it (which reminds me: I bought peanut butter this week, it's a bit expensive but I've eaten it for almost every meal!) Jenna and I showed the English the First Thanksgiving play, which they enjoyed since they were also a part of it! Hope everyone made it safe to their destinations. I hear that it was snowing, and I hope everyone had a thankful Thanksgiving!

Many new things!

Well, I've done it. I've ridden a bike in China and didn't cause any accidents! It was a bit pain staking b/c the bike I had borrowed was for a person who might have topped out at 5'2" so my knees were in my chest the whole time, but how exciting! I also had my first Chinese porridge today. Pretty bland but it came with some good fried dumplings. Speaking of food, that leads me to a horrific experience I had last week. Evidently, not knowing it when I was politely choking down at lunch, it looked like liver so I choked it down like liver. I then had a bite of something pale pink...which turned out to taste like pigs smell. So after choking that awful bit down, and almost hurling everywhere while remembering how much that smell had engulfed my childhood, my students informed me that the liver looking pieces might be some kind of solidified pigs blood. Yikes, I've been pretty open minded to foods here and nothing has been really outrageous, accept the dish with all of the odd pieces in it. Wow, I'm still scarred from that. But my next post will be about my students and their "flag" team (no, not color guard) they march around and do army type things and put the flag up and take it down on Monday mornings. I'm so proud of them for being in an extracurricular activity though!

Episode 2

Well, it's happened. I got locked in my bathroom. Tony, the desk guy, warned me about it and for a while I haven't been shutting my bathroom door all the way but on Thursday night the prophecy came true. I was extremely lucky because not only was my apt door open b/c I was talking to Bryan across the hall, I had my cell phone in my pocket (although since I had just talked to Bryan he thought that it was a joke and wasn't going to answer the call) but thank goodness he did and we laughed about it pretty hard after Tony came and literally kicked the door in after a caution able "Caroline, stand back." After the laughing, I told Tony I didn't even want the door fixed since 50% of my doors have malfunctioned but unfortunately I got a new one so we'll see how well this one works for a while. Tony told me he warned me and I responded that I had taken precautions but it still broke on me and he then said "All your knobs are broken." Ha ha, it was quite a funny experience but it could have been a very bad deal had I not had my apt door open or my cell phone. It's all part of the experience right?

A collection of non-sense

Let me introduce you to enemy number one. The squattie. I know what you are thinking, it's a glorified hole in the floor. And you are right, all I can say about this one is thank God I'm a country girl. Although I don't think I'll ever get used to them (not that I would want to) I guess China is saving some dollars on porcelain. Also there is no flushing of wiping materials in these contraptions and most of the time you have to bring your own wiping materials.





Also, my white walls were looking kind of bare so I decide to buy a huge beautiful poster to cover as much China as I could in my apt. Knowing that the wall would be dirty, and I wanted to make sure my tape stuck, I proceeded to wipe the wall down. Little did I know I was fighting a losing battle. Here is a pic of my work and my failure and getting the dirt off the wall. You can see where I just smeared it around abit and decided that trying to wash the rest of the wall would be a bit pointless b/c everything gets dirty so fast. I don't know how many times I've swept my floors and every time I get a whole dustpan of dirt, no matter how often I do it. Mom you would go crazy.

I'm famous!

Had an interesting experience on Friday. After class, some new students wanted to take a picture with me, which is fine, I've taken many pictures with students (many of them snap me with their cell phones during my lectures...) but I agreed and awkwardly waited till they told me they wanted to take it outside. I said "okay, let's go" we get outside and they don't stop walking, we get to the edge of campus and they start walking the opposite direction of my apts campus. Seeing that I'm extremely confused they finally divulge where we are taking a picture. We went to a professional photographers suite to take the picture. With lights, set, and background. I'm not sure how much RMB they spent on getting a professional picture with their foreign teacher but at least I had put a little more work into looking presentable that day! I guess I'm kind of a big deal.

However, it is getting a bit pestering. When I first got here I wasn't used to everyone wanting to say "Hello" to me just to test their English skills. I used to say "Hi" back but now it's just getting annoying. The Chinese have no problem with staring, pointing, and I hear "laowai" (foreigner) and Meiguoren (American) quite often, which would never pass in the states, but here there is no social standard on common courtesy. We (my other foreign friends) and I are getting worse and developing bad habits too. We are so excited when we see a foreigner on the street we do the same thing! We say "laowai" and try to meet them b/c they are so few and far between in Shijiazhuang that we can't afford to not be friends with them. So it's odd how we have turned so Chinese but I'm glad to be here with very open-minded people b/c you have to be very patient and adaptable.

Century Park

Well you have seen my pictures of People's Park (the park with the statue of Mao) so here is Century Park. (There will also be more pictures of this later and of the other well known "water park" I went by it once and there were carnival rides so we'll see how much I feel like risking my life before I go) Wendy (my student), me, Sherly, Jenna, and Yvonne (Jenna's student) (yes, we are standing in that order) just walked around looked at the sites then had an amazing dinner. The students thought we were quite the riot since Jenna and I are extremely sarcastic with each other (which we had to explain to them and tell them we were being sarcastic after each sarcastic phrase) There is a lot of space and some different rides and things to do (we will probably rent a paddle boat one of these days, no skiing or tubing but at least I'll get on the water, not that I would go in the nasty water in China anyway) There is a giant TV tower in the middle, I think it's pretty uncreative that they have this big tower and it's unimportant b/c it's a TV tower, but can't they think of a better name for it? Well, anyway this is the park that I did the bubbles on the water in (see earlier post). When Wendy and I got there we walked into a dating service thing. There were posters hanging on strings that people were writing their phone numbers on and taking information down. We were looking at them (and some information included a picture, name, birthday, and salary!) then I noticed a man video taping me. He turned out to be a reporter for a no name newspaper who wanted me to say a few words, so I said my words and he kept taping! It's so odd how exotic you are seen as.

The restaurant we went to afterwards had amazing food and we got a free beer b/c they were so excited to see foreigners for the first time (they were also over 20) Sometimes I just can't imagine that some Chinese people have never seen a foreigner. I asked my students on one of the first days of class how many of them have never seen a foreigner until me and I had over 10 hands raised!!! How can you live without seeing anyone other then a Chinese person???

There are also 2 pictures of a golf course...what a difference!! Wow, the grass was brown the place was crowded...but I'm sure it was still expensive to golf there. We had to explain to Wendy and Yvonne that in America golf courses always look like paradise. Again, follow the link to the rest of the pics. They're not photographer quality but who else is sending you pictures of China :) http://picasaweb.google.com/cccapper/CenturyPark

Day on the town

Tuesday the people from Drake and the CCEP program came by and gave us a royal lunch
(steak and chicken cordon bleu, and that was after soup and salad) Then we did some bowling (the first I have been since I've been in China and I'm still not good at it on a different continent) While all of us kids were together and most of us didn't have to teach so we got some beers and sat in the park and chatted for a bit. Got some pizza hut (yes they have it here, it's expensive, the pizzas are frozen and pre-made so there's no chance to change it up) but it was a fun night out, we then went and played cards and had some more drinks so it was a very social day but extremely fun! Here are some funny pics I wanted to share with you, and we played 2 games and yes I won one of them!! Probably the only time I've ever won and probably will be the last :)

couple nights ago, myAlso, had a funny experience a door knob broke and wouldn't unlock to let me back in. My desk people thought the best way to fix the problem was to jam screwdrivers in it in all different directions and use a hammer to jam them in farther. Well it worked in a way. After pounding on it for 20-30 minutes, my expertise eye decided to have a go at it. Looking to see if I could some how unscrew the knob from the door I turned it and pushed on the door to get some leverage and much to my surprise my door swings open. My desk guy called me clever and told me to be careful in the bathroom because it might accidentally lock and since we are in our apts no one would be able to hear us... I don't know how worried I should be about that but I don't think I'll ever fully close my bathroom door again, just in case.

This last pic is of a Mongolian guy who didn't know chinese or english very well...you can imagine how hard it is to function when NO ONE knows what you're saying but he had some sweet aviator sunglasses I looked pretty good in!

Xingtai (Shing-tie)

Well our foreign affairs office took a bunch of us foreign teachers out for a day at a canyon It was beautiful but you could tell it had some human touches to it. It was a great escape though since it had been raining in the Shiz for about 3 weeks (thank goodness in the middle of that 3 weeks I was in Shanghai for 5 days) but at the canyon it was absolutely gorgeous. It took 2.5 hours to get there and we took our lunches so that was nice having some quality outdoors time, but for some reason it took 3 hours to get back...and it was still raining in the Shiz. But don't worry all that rain meant that we would have a blue sky for almost a whole week! My school also had a "sports meeting" (They have races and shot put, and yes they were impressed with how far I could throw it, but they also have high jump, long jump, tug-o-war, monkey in the middle, jump rope and an obstacle course) that Thurs and Fri so I didn't have to teach but I couldn't use my 4 day weekend for traveling b/c I wanted to stick around for the canyon. However, the weather has been absolutely wonderful and I spent yesterday at a park yesterday with a student, so I'm slowly starting to make friends with some of the more mature ones. Which brings me to the news I heard today. Evidently chinese children sleep with their parents till they are 7-8...crazy... but follow the links to my picasa album and enjoy!

http://picasaweb.google.com/cccapper/XingtaiCanyons

The Martyr's Cemetery

Well, what an adventure this was. We (Jenna, Sherly, Bryan and I) decided it would be a good idea to do some sightseeing in the Shiz and decided to go to a large Martyr's cemetery that was located on the north end of my road. (at this point I thought I knew my location in relativity to the cemetery)

Unfortunately I lived a bit farther south on the road than I had. First, after about a 2 hr walk we happened upon a very pretty park with very interesting sculptures, ran into a chinese wedding photo and the oh so popular split butt pant baby. We continued on to the cemetery, which as you can imagine, not exciting but hey we've seen it, we can now check if off the list. It had interesting buildings and nice green space but...we could have taken a bus for 1 yuan ($.16) and got there in 20 minutes. But it was a minor adventure with some interesting pics and we spoiled ourselves with ice cream and some beers as a reward for the extremely long workout.

Beginning of National Holiday

National Holiday in China is a BIG deal, there are decorations everywhere for the celebration of the beginning of the People's Republic of China. There are pics in a link at the bottom of the blog including people's square a famous park in the Shiz with a huge statue of Mao Zedong and all the plants are new, we (Jenna, Sherly, and Jeremy) also ran into a animation fair and took some pics of the exhibition hall. It's a pretty big deal but I still found a huge pile of trash at the bottom of some stairs. Which leads me to talk about my living experiences in China, it's dirty, it smells, it's polluted, and it's cheap. There's a lot of getting used to, like not drinking water out of the tap, blowing your nose and seeing black, not seeing the blue sky for days at a time, not being able to speak the language, seeing people peeing on the street at all hours of the day (including babies and adults) yes, a bit...well gross, but it's just what they do. And that's just a scratch on the surface of cultural differences. However let's get back to my National Holiday travel.

http://picasaweb.google.com/cccapper/NationalHoliday Here is the link for many more Shanghai pictures and more National Holiday adventures.

As you can see the train station was very busy. We had a 18 hr train ride hard seat (meaning no reclining, no arm rests, no private leg room, extremely small tables and people constantly moving, bumping into you, and selling things. We had another 18 hr train ride back to the Shiz from Shanghai too which was worse b/c I swear it took longer. There were 9 of us total when we finally got to Shanghai. Kind of a big number and it was hard to fulfill everyone's own agenda but we did pretty well and saw almost everything there is to see. We went to the highest tower in town which I believe is the 4th tallest building in the world and they are building another right next to it that's going to be 10 floors more. I don't know who thought that was a good plan.

Otherwise, after traveling for so long, it was easy to call my little cold apt home. Classes have resumed and my students are warming up to me more and more. They are extremely nervous to talk to me but at least I know that there are some I can ask them for help when I go shopping and need a chinese translator. One of them is going to take me to see a park this weekend and hopefully another will help me get a cell phone (they call it a mobile) next weekend.

Tuesday the drake consulate people are in the Shiz so we will have a big lunch with many toasts and lots of food I'm sure, so I have some busy days ahead, especially b/c I just received a box from my parents with my warm clothes in it! The weather is quite a bit like Iowa's, pleasant in the afternoon, cold at night and in the morning. Unfortunately since everyone here is considerable smaller so are the clothes, so you can imagine the problems I've been having trying to find jackets. But no worries now! I have my favorite sweatpants and sweatshirts!

September catching up...

So yes, I realize that I haven't blogged for a while and I have much to add so bare with me. Class has been going well. My students enjoy my antics and for the most part are well behaved, some classes have very low levels of English comprehension so it's hard to keep their attention and get them to open up. This week I'm going to be starting a much easier based program, so they will hopefully be able to carry on an English conversation or help poor lost foreigners. My classes are 2 50 minute periods and I have 8 classes a week and a student lead 2 hour "student corner" meeting on Thursday nights so I'm only busy 18 hours a week. My students, even though they are college level, have the maturity level of 15 yr olds so that makes for an annoying "oooooohhhhhhhhh" from the class if someone gets into trouble, but otherwise I'll make it through the semester no problem. My students are very bright and I have quite a few good leaders in some of the classes so that makes it easier on me. Here is just one pic of my sophomore Tibetan students. Some of my students names are pretty odd to, Yark, Yoyo, Pig, Design, Happy, but I think it's easier for me to remember these then 10 Jessica's and 10 Heathers.

The 25th of Sept was Mid-Autumn day. It also happened to be a badly needed payday. On mid-autumn day Chinese people give away moon cakes (very odd dense little paste cakes). Some taste better then others but either way I'd rather have a little debbie. My school however gave me not only moon cakes and money, they gave me a beautiful bouquet of flowers and the next day our school took the foreign teachers out for our banquet and gave us a little paper weight.

Otherwise the other photos are of my apt building (I'm the far corner on the first floor behind the tall plants) and the dorm building that faces my apt building










Here is a picture of my main gate of Hebei Normal University
where I live, I don't have any pics of my actually University but that's because they were re-doing the entrance so now that it's completed I'll have some pics soon, also just a pic of what the corners of the streets look like from day to day (lots of venders so I don't think I'll be losing weight anytime soon) :)







So that was my September and I'll have Shanghai and the beginning of October up soon after I organize my pics but first I'm off to dinner with Bryan (guy from Wisconsin that lives across from me that's going to be here for a semester) We're kinda of partners in crime :) Also thank you everyone that's been e-mailing me, although I haven't had time to write back since I've been busy doing things for Shanghai but I really appreciate it! What a support group I have!

Monastery

Here are some pics from a Monastery near the Shiz. It was huge and beautiful but I don't know how the monks could live with so many visitors and tourists all the time? Foreigners get stared at so much just walking around it's uncomfortable sometimes, but to have someone constantly walking around your home/place of worship? Oh well it was very interesting to say the least and probably a first among many monkeries I'll be visiting.

Hamster balls for humans?

Well here we have quite an adventure...We got in these big plastic balls and walked around on the water for a bit. They reminded me of those roundhouse that you run in and is someone falls down then you'll have splitters down the entire front of you. We did it at the very beautiful Century Park and we gathered quite the crowd. All the Chinese wanted to see what the crazy Americans were up to...it got hot in there very fast but was around $1 to do!!! Image the cheapest entertainment sensation of the world!

Hello Everyone! Sorry it took me so long for this to be put up but I had to customize it in Chinese...not easy to do and I made some elaborate guesses on what I just created but here are some photos I'll be adding more next week and will be able to tell you more in detail how classes are going.