Pictures

street vendor with her snack on a bike cart

I decided to post more pictures than just those that I have on this blog, so when you have some extra time, check out more pictures here. Enjoy!

Culture of Chinese Children

I found a little park near my apartment this week where I could study and enjoy being outside. Because the heat was turned off a couple weeks ago, my apartment is often cooler than outdoors, so I go out to warm up! Every day that I went to study there, there were 10-15 kids under the age of 3, and it was fun to people-watch as I studied Chinese.
For each child, there was at least one caretaker, often a grandma, it seemed. If it wasn't the grandma watching the child, it seemed to be the mom, though it wasn't uncommon to see a grandpa, either. Many brought little stools down from their apartments to sit at eye-level with their baby in the stroller, or to have a place to sit other than the cement benches surrounding the area. Clothing usually doesn't show the sex of the child, so a common question was, "Is it a boy or a girl?" Sometimes the question wasn't necessary, if the baby was sitting in a position with the split pants open enough for the observer to tell! In the picture below, you can kind of see the split pants of the baby that is lying down.The adults talked amongst themselves, not shy at all (they seemed to know each other from that same setting, and I did notice many of the same people the days that I went), and often the topic of conversation was the child. I read in a Chinese newspaper today (written in English, my Chinese characters aren't that good...yet!) that the average family in China has 2.9 members, which means that if one set of grandparents live with the family, which seems to be common, there are 4 adults for each child! This factor causes Chinese family dynamics to be very different than American family dynamics, I think.

Picture of the Week

This intersection is just down the street from my apartment - I cross it every day on my way to class. Big intersections have stoplights, and a few round-abouts exist as well, but this one (2 lanes crossing 4 lanes), along with many others, is small enough it doesn't 'need' any traffic signals. No stoplights, so cars, bikes, people all just squeeze their way through, often with a little laying on the horn. When riding my bike, I've learned how to use "blockers" - the cars, trucks, or buses, often taxis, that aggresively drive through the intersection, allowing me to ride with the oncoming traffic on the other side of the blocker. At this particular intersection, and many others, most of the time I am able to cross without ever having to stop or put my foot down!

Inflatable Water Balls

Spring is here! With the last few weeks have come some beautiful spring days, and I couldn't help but take advantage of the warmer weather. Last week, I went on a bike ride, ending up at a city park. As we were walking around the park, I saw inflatable balls, like plastic bubbles, out on the lake, tethered to a pole on the land. Inside each bubble was a kid, most of them under the age of 10, running in circles and falling as they lost their balance on the water. After making sure it wasn't just for small children, I waited for my turn to climb in my water ball. Slipping inside the opening, I was zipped in and the bubble blown up around me, then sealed shut. Completely waterproof except for the condensation from my breath, I walked/rolled/was pushed onto the water, where I tried to stand, run, balance, and do cartwheels in this inflated ball on the lake!

Filling up the bubble


Ready to join all the Chinese kids

Trying to stand...

success! (for a split-second)...

...and failing

I loved it - such a strange sensation of being enclosed in a ball - on the water! I felt like I was the 10 year old again, giggling when I fell and trying unsuccessfully just to stand.

The last two months in pictures

Sometimes, words just don't come together in the way that I want them to. After trying to force them to cooperate many times, I gave up and decided to instead use pictures and the captions to show you January and February.This was just the beginning of 14 straight days of snow here. The snowfall didn't amount to too much, but certainly made things interesting, especially when they sent out the street-washing trucks to spray the snow off the streets after the first day of snow. The temperature dropped that night, and the next day, the streets were a solid sheet of ice. I couldn't turn down the chance to ride my bike in it, since I saw other bikers out, but after fishtailing (I didn't even know it was possible to fishtail on a bike), I decided there might be better options of transportation!My parents came for a visit right after I finished my first semester of classes. I met them in Beijing, and we played the tourist role (here on the Great Wall, which was beautiful - and cold, as you can tell!), visiting the Temple of Heaven, Great Wall, and Forbidden City. We came back to my home after a couple days, and spent the rest of the time here. It was so fun to see them in my world and show them my life here!
An hour after I sent my parents off on their plane back home, I boarded a plane as well, headed first to Kunming, a southern city of China, and then down to Thailand for a vacation! Kunming, pictured above, had a completely different feel than any of the other Chinese cities I've been to.From there, I headed further south to the beaches of Thailand! It was so nice to be on the beach in February and take a break from normal "going to school and studying" life here. We stayed in bungalows right on the beach, dividing our days between relaxing and doing nothing on the beach, and action-filled days of snorkeling, riding motorbikes, and other activities.The beaches were beautiful, and the water so clear and bright. The scenery everywhere was incredible! This pictures was taken during a boat ride one morning.the sunset on the beach
...and more scenery
I had never snorkeled before this, but I think this would be hard to beat - there was a huge variety of fish, bright, colorful, and numerous, in perfectly clear water. I got to snorkel during two days.The day that we went snorkeling, we had lunch on a little island, where some Thai people were playing this game. It's kind of like volleyball, only you can use everything except your hands. A combination of soccer and volleyball...doesn't get much better! They let me join in for a game - here's me serving as the other guy tosses the ball to my foot.
This is the bike that I rented and drove around the island (Koh Lanta) for a day. I haven't driven since July, and it felt so good to be in control of a motor-powered vehicle! I miss driving here, but I'll have to settle for riding my bike here in China.A couple days in Bangkok wrapped up the vacation before coming back home to China. Notice the center solid yellow line doesn't mean too much, since cars and buses are on the right side, reserving only one lane for oncoming traffic!

The Birthday Trash Truck

I woke up on my birthday looking forward to singing Happy Birthday to myself, with the accompaniment of the obnoxious garbage trucks that play the tune as they drive around the city. A small fear lurked deep down in my heart, the fear that I wouldn't encounter any of these trucks on my birthday, only adding to the sounds of the city 364 days of the year, but not on January 6th. Dismissing the fear as highly improbable, I celebrated my birthday with phone calls from home, an ice cream cake, Indian food for dinner, going to the elementary school, and some jewelry from my family. Soon after I set foot outside to go to a friend's apartment, my ears perked up as I heard the familiar song I had hoped to hear that day! I think I might even have sung out loud, because hearing that song so often has made me look forward to my birthday since I arrived in August!

Check out that cake! The candle is pretty awesome too!

Elementary Teacher...I can't help it!

After just finishing a semester of student teaching, spending 35 hours a week with 21 10-year-olds, just seeing all the cute kids running around my apartment complex wasn't meeting my "kid time quota." Just when I was thinking that I really missed interacting with younger people and trying to figure out how to solve this problem, I met a friend of a friend, who teaches English to 8 and 9 year olds on the the weekends. She invited the two of us to watch her teach that weekend, and it didn't take too much convincing for me! During the time that she was actually teaching, we just sat in the back and watched her, but during the breaks and afterwards I was able to interact with some of the kids!

(racing to hit the word the teacher called out)

(The whole class. The girl in the back center is the teacher, and the other two adults are friends that came)

(The poor kid in the blue coat apparently is about to get punched in the face and attacked from behind!)

(The "scholar" of the class, stroking his beard. Somehow this kid managed to make it into almost every picture I took!)

After watching, we got to meet the secretary and headmaster of the school, pictured below.

(L to R: me, headmaster, Linda, Yang(teacher))

Later that same day, I was with some other friends, and we found a bookstore. Usually the bookstores are small and of course just have Chinese books, but this one was quite the find! Besides a few books written in (or translated into) English, the children's section had a few English books translated into Chinese! A few had pinyin (romanization to represent the Chinese sounds) as well as characters, which I convinced myself would be good language practice.

my purchasesThis book doesn't have pinyin, so it'll take me a while to read, but I love the illustrations, and books about the Holocaust have always intrigued me(Janette Oke wrote this one...you can see the pinyin above the characters)