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