6 Things you may or may not know about China/me

1. Dryers and China don't usually appear in the same sentence.
You can buy a dryer, but they are not commonly found, and most people don't use them. Instead, clothes are hung from clothes lines like this:
2. I read this story this week.

It's about Mid-Autumn Festival, when the family gets together, eats moon cakes and watch the moon together, according to the story. If you look closely, apparently, you can see a woman, as well as a little white hare (but no man on the moon)!

3. I very rarely eat jerky, but for some reason when he asked what I wanted him to bring, I was in the mood for jerky. And I was again this afternoon. I'm snacking on beef jerky right now, imported by my brother himself when he came to visit. Thanks Ray!
4. My new apartment is on the 23rd floor. If it's a clear day, I can see mountains. But if it's not, this is what I can see. This view is more common, it seems.

5. It took a month and 4 days for internet to be installed in my current apartment. After calling and promising that somebody would come four times in a row, the internet company told me that there was construction in my building, and they couldn't install it during construction. After the construction finished, I repeatedly called them until they finally came and set it up, a 5 minute process. I'm thankful for internet!

6. Chinese food in China is completely different than Chinese food in America, and authentic Chinese food, at least in my experience, is way better. Not even a comparison.

Normal?

Sometimes just driving down the road in China is an adventure. Last week as I was riding down a somewhat major road (4 lane highway), I saw this pile of rocks in the middle of the outside lane. It didn't phase me until I viewed it through non-Chinese eyes. I've gotten used to so many things here that many things don't seem out of the ordinary at all. But when I actually stop and think about things, I'm reminded that living in China really is an adventure, because I experience things on a daily basis that I never would if I didn't live here!
Here's another classic China picture: the school-aged boys with their arms around each other, the three-wheeled vehicles waiting to give people rides for a couple kuai, the driver with his pink bottle (pink is for guys, too!) of tea, people sitting in the background taking advantage of the shade during the afternoon break before going back to work, another guy in the background (right behind the three wheeled car) selling little trinkets, a little square in the sidewalk with a tree planted in it to add green to the city, the stares at the white foreigner on the bus - me.

And the next few pictures are a story for next time - I'm still waiting for a friend to get me the rest of the pictures.See the telephone pole right in the middle of the picture? Here's another angle (from the other side).

I jumped.

Another Visit and the Olympics

My brother and another friend came a couple weeks ago for a 10 day visit. We packed in four different cities, pandas, the Olympics, the Great Wall, and playing cards. It was a busy week and a half, but lots of good memories!

This guy is writing characters on the sidewalk with water. When he saw us come up and watch him, he let us try!Dana writing "I love China"At the Panda Research Center in Chengdu, Sichuan ProvinceThey are so cute! We got to see some baby pandas, too... they were only 5 days old and still in the incubator. They were about a hand's width long and all pink - no black and white yet.Ray and I with our tickets, waiting to go through security. The Bird's Nest

The other tickets that we got, through a lottery system, was for a session of water polo. I had never watched water polo before, so I learned as we watched. It was pretty interesting! We got to watch Montenegro, Serbia, and Hungary, three of the final four teams.

Security to enter the Olympic grounds was a cultural experience. The first day the lines were long but moved fairly fast. The second day we entered the Olympic grounds at another entry point near the water polo venue, and there weren’t lines at all. When we went to Beijing for just a few days to watch the Olympics, we left everything except the bare necessities in Tianjin, just a half-hour high speed train ride away. When we went through security, the security guard asked if he could look in my purse. He pulled out a stick of deodorant, and asked what it was! I told him it was deodorant, that you put on to help you smell good. My answer seemed to satisfy them, until he pulled out another deodorant (my purse had all of our toothbrushes and deodorant sticks so that the others didn't have to carry a bag), and again, asked what it was! (Something that would be helpful to know is that Chinese don’t wear deodorant. Ever. I think I’ve seen one brand of the tiny travel sticks in one store here, and it cost $7 U.S.)

I responded with the same answer, and told him that I was carrying all four of ours. Then he proceeded to ask me to put it on to show him it was safe! He handed me a guy’s stick, and looking up, I saw one of the guys, and told him to come put on his deodorant! Thinking I was offering him one last application before it was confiscated, he called back that he had already put it on and didn’t need to! I told him that no, they wanted me to put it on to show that it was safe to take into the park! Seeing me hold it up, he realized that it wasn’t his, so I called to Ray and told him to come put on his deodorant! He also thought that they were going to confiscate it, so he told me that it was okay, he didn’t need it. He eventually understood that he needed to apply his deodorant in front of them, so he walked back to the security counter, and with several sets of curious security guards watching, put on his deoderant! After appeasing them, the original security guy told me, “Okay, thank you. Enjoy the games!”

And of course, the Great Wall! This was my third time visiting it, but I've gone to a different part every time, and each one is different, which makes it fun every time. This one was in Tianjin instead of Beijing, so there were not as many people as the other times I've gone.

Another funny cultural experience happened in a little grocery store. The four of us went in to get some snacks. We chose the divide-and-conquer method, so none of us were together. A few minutes later, I heard my brother say, "Um, I think we have a situation, here." As I was turning to see what was going on, I hear a Chinese employee say in very hesitant English, "Do you speak Chinese?" I laughed when I saw three Chinese woman following Ray up to me, the looks on all four of their faces priceless! After asking them what the problem was, they explained that of all the things that you can buy in the store, he had chosen a little tiny box of candy that you pay per weight, so they needed to weigh it for him. I explained it to Ray, and he handed over his precious little candy for them to weigh. A few minutes later, I couldn't help but laugh again when I learned the price: 0.03¥, or the equivalent of $0.0044 U.S.!

You can see more pictures of our time together here.

Hiking

One of the last weekends before the semester finished, I went hiking with some friends. There's a park that you can pay 70 yuan to get into and then hike all around inside. It's pretty neat, but 70 yuan seems a bit high. We had heard that there was a way to start in another valley, hike over the ridge of the mountains (which aren't actually that tall), and enter the park on the back side, so we decided to try it, a challenge to conquer!

A man working in the fields came over to look at our map, which was a rough outline of where we were trying to go printed from google maps

Setting out on a Saturday afternoon, we spent the night at the nongjiale, or literally happy farmer's house, so that we could get an early start the next morning. Leaving at 7:30 the next morning, we hiked along the trail, which surprisingly had more people on it than I had ever seen up there before. By the time we reached a certain fork in the road, the other people had long since stopped hiking on the trail we were on, and the trail itself was clearly not used as often. We continued on our quest, though, enjoying the adventure.

The trail when it was still existent, and there were still people on it!

The path grew smaller and smaller, as well as steeper and steeper. Close to the ridge before going down into the back of the park, the trail was steep enough that I had to hold onto trees as I went up, and just over the ridge, I felt like I was skiing on my shoes, because I just slid from tree to tree, the slope too steep for my shoes to keep any traction! This challenge was compounded by the fact that some of the trees had thorns on them, but they were hard to see before grabbing the tree. Later the wild grass hid the path and the view, since it was taller than me, so I walked along, barely following the small trail, and not able to see in front of me!

where we came from

where we are going

You can see the grass is taller than S, and he's about 7 inches taller than me!

At one point we did meet two other people attempting the same thing as us, so we stuck with them the rest of the way. As it turns out, they saved us quite a bit of time, because when we met them, they were coming back down from a little trail that we were headed up that didn't go through.

Ten hours, 18 kilometers, and a few scratches and bruises later, we made it through the park and back home! (The shower that night ranked in my life's Top 10 Showers, too!)

More Pictures

I just finished uploading more pictures from my trip onto my Picasa album...check it out here!

Summer Trip #1

Summer break arrived (finally) 16 days ago, and I spent the last 14 of them traveling in China. Included among the places I visited were...

Hangzhou, the city Marco Polo said was the finest in the world

Yangshuo, near the Li River in southern China and a very touristy town

Xitang, where the first scene of Mission Impossible 3 was filmed
Anji, the location of the filming of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
a tea village where longjing tea, a specific type of green tea, originated and is grown
Other firsts/accomplishments include...
my longest train ride - 31 hours
most number of buses taken in 1 day - 13
longest amount of time riding a bike in 1 day - 5
funniest taxi ride - The driver was so proud of his English...he said "alright" instead of "okay," and "thank you very much," instead of just "thank you." After saying his English phrases, he started laughing hysterically, then would say another English phrase and start laughing again! I laughed so hard I cried.
learning how to play euchre
eating horse meat...for breakfast
sleeping on a bamboo mat

Here are some other random pictures...
It was incredibly beautiful scenery, and great to travel and see more of China. My favorites were riding the bike through the countryside and observing people's lives out there, hiking near the tea village and seeing bamboo for the first time, and seeing bright blue sky.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures!

Change versus routine

I did a values exercise a few weeks ago, and discovered one of my highest values is structure, while another is change and variety. That was sort of confusing for me, since it seems that those are opposite. I'm finding that it's true, though...I can see those values playing out in my language learning.

For example, I've been in language class since the end of February - 4 1/2 months. I know I learn Chinese best when I have the structure of class to compliment outside learning. When I have some sort of scaffolding, or compartment, to put new words or grammar, I'm able to remember them better. When the structure isn't there, it's a lot harder for me to learn new things in daily life and remember those things. But at the same time, I'm so ready for a break from class! I get super restless sitting in the same room for 3 hours a day, going through a textbook. Summer is here! Why am I still in class? Vacation and travel awaits around the corner, and it seems like it can't come fast enough!

I get organized and create a learning schedule and work on little projects that help me learn Chinese and love that. I get in this rhythm and I'm learning new grammar and reviewing old vocab and reading characters and nobody can stop me...for a while. Then all of a sudden, I reach this point where that drives me crazy, and I scrap it and don't study, I just talk with my tutor instead of doing what I prepared for us to work on together, and have to work really hard to convince myself to go to class.

It's probably a really good thing I studied education in college so someday when I decide to grow up and get a job, it's not a 9-5 desk job doing the same thing day in and day out. I still plan on having summer break for a while, and I hope to make good use of the change in routine!

This is the last week of class (can you tell!?!), and the summer will go by really fast, I'm sure. But I wouldn't be surprised if, when Sept 1 rolls around, I'm ready, or almost ready to get back into the routine of having class again!