My City

My city is a metropolitan area of a population of about 325,000. It is a tightly compact built city where you can walk anywhere important in 10-20 minutes; although, the best hot pot restaurant is on the outskirts and takes maybe 5 minutes by taxi. It is only a 20 minute bike ride to the edge of town where you will see the vast amount of tan, mud-barren, winter farmland that is sprouting its first greenery of spring. The streets are never empty except in the mornings. The city is not an early riser, yet it goes to bed early. At 9 pm the streets feel empty. On Sundays, you can barely move due to the crowds that take to the streets to shop in its many stores. Also, you do not want to do errands when school lets out for lunch. The streets become a critical mass of bikes. There are five bus routes (1 RMB, $0.16) and a ton of green taxis that charge 4 RMB ($0.66). It is a walkable city yet everyone loves to take a taxi. There is a church, a mosque, and a Buddhist temple. There are three fast food chicken places and several western restaurants where the pizzas are terrible.

It is a miniature Chinese city, a shrunken version of the bigger ones. It has all of the same stores, restaurants, and even has the same look. Maybe the uniqueness of my region comes with the homes built within the clay walls of the plateau, but that is the countryside. My city reminds me of all other Chinese cities except it is smaller, yet the number of people doesn't feel any less.

What if I get sick in China?

Today I had a tour of the local hospital.

The inpatient wing is totally new with lots of fancy machines and with a floor full of labs that test for many things even HIV; although, that particular lab was locked and empty of technicians. There is even an MRI; although, that fancy machine is in a half torn down building. The outpatient wing is an old run down building, but right beside it is a new building being built. As soon as the new building is finished, the hospital will ask to be inspected again and hopefully will get the highest ranking that a Chinese hospital can receive.

So I am not nervous about the facilities.

What makes me the most nervous about getting health care in a foreign country are communication, cultural differences, and the psychological effects of not knowing what is going on while in pain.

At least, I am not in Africa anymore where health care was a day or two car trip to the capital.

Spring the Season of Life

Walking home with chocolate covered sponge cake, I heard the chirping of a chick looking for its mother. Around the corner I met its adopted mother, a little girl in a bright pink jacket. Squeezed between both hands she had a bright orange chick and a bright pink one was poking its head out of her left hand pocket. This little girl had gathered a crowd of little boys who all wanted to see her new babies.

I wonder how long the chicks will survive.

Last week I saw a yellow baby chick sprawled dead upon the sidewalk at the bottom of the trash chute. Maybe these freshly born and freshly dyed ones are its replacement.

Wear Pants

The sun has warmed up the city and I wore a long skirt, ankle length to teach in today. It was a maroon skirt that I often would wear in Africa, similar to the khaki skirts that my African female students would wear. In my mind it is a very modest skirt.

Today my Chinese language tutor commented that often in middle and high schools, female teachers are not allowed to wear skirts and dresses. If a teacher wore a skirt to class, the students would love the teacher but the headmaster would scold the teacher. I was shocked.

My African side feels like skirts are the best way to be modest, but then my sitemate pointed out, "ummm... Jennifer have you seen the types of skirts and dresses women in China wear with their knee high boots?"

Teaching ONLY 4 hours a week

This semester I was assigned to teach 12 hours:

American Literature 3 hours Seniors
British Literature 3 hours Seniors
Movie Class 2 hours Seniors
English Speaking Culture 4 hours Freshmen.

Well now I am down to 4 hours a week.

My seniors are doing student teaching and are looking for jobs for like 1-2 months which means that I don't have to teach 8 hours of class.

What am I going to do?

Well I have started looking for Chinese tutors. I hope to have maybe 6 hours a week of Chinese. I am knitting a tank top, my first piece of knitted clothing. I will probably watch movies and TV shows. Do you have any suggestions? I should start biking and doing kung fu again. I heard about a TaeKwonDo class that is given downtown. I might look into that. I have also started reading every book in the Treehouse starting with the author's name beginning with letter A. I start a book, but if I don't like it I put it down. I am not forcing myself to read books I don't like. I am just dipping in them to see if I like them or not.

I lived in Africa. I am good at keeping myself occupied.

Chinese Female Athletes

Last night I went to the PE students' basketball championship.

At my college you can major in physical education. If you do you will study sports and have to play different sports. Each grade in the PE department forms a team, is coached by the their head teacher and plays in a tournament. Last night the girls' championship was between the seniors and juniors.

The girls were quick and strong. They hustled and were very aggressive. There was a lot of physical contact on the floor and a lot of fouls that took girls to the floor. I was shocked.

Their basketball skills though were not that great, a lot of passes going to nobody, a lot of panicked decision making, and a lot of open players who never got the ball. After 3 quarters the score was 24 to 26. The juniors were winning because they were able to score off of fast breaks. Offense was a bit all over the place. On the team of seniors it seemed like there was only one girl who actually ever was able to hit her shots.

Watching the Chinese students play, reminded me of myself, the quickness and hustle, giving it your all even if you lack the skills.

Next week is a teacher's basketball tournament. I wonder how the English department's female team will be. If I play and if Caitlin plays, we might have a chance. Caitlin is like super tall compared to everyone else. The problem is, if the other players aren't good, it will be hard for Caitlin and I to play well.

When I have played with the boys, having a point guard who looks at the court helps me score a lot. I do backdoors all day. But not having such an experienced player who looks makes it harder, coz then I will be the one having to look, passing it to an open player who probably can't shoot.

Oh well, it is about having fun, not about winning.

Tired of Chinese Food

Chinese food is so delicious and I am TIRED of it. My vocabulary is not big enough to get a good variety of food.

The campus is surrounded by the same types of food: various types of noodles, dumplings, and vegetable sandwiches. If I go to a restaurant that serves dishes, my vocabulary is limited to a variety of vegetables, the green ones, potatoes, and eggplant.

Thank goodness I am learning how to speak more Chinese or else I would never eat again. Can you believe that someone who had a 2 year diet of spaghetti and cans of tomato paste along with the bland local food in Africa would complain about Chinese food?

I have recently learned how to order
cucumber pork soup
sweet and sour pork
pork that comes with pancakes to make "burritos"
a crepe like tortilla fried with eggs and filled with lettuce and carrots.

I am eating again.

Plus I got my gas tank refilled and made a pork and green vegetable soup. Yum.

From the US to Home Sweet Home

It took 15 hours to fly from Atlanta to Shanghai.

It is incredible that we could be in the air for that long. Thank goodness the airplane was empty and I had a whole row to myself, a perfect bed for the surrealness of being on a dark airplane for 15 hours, watching personal movies on the screen in the headrest of the seat in front of me, knitting, and in a grogginess waking up for a drink or food.

The trip back to my city of Xifeng took forever.

Plane Huntsville to Atlanta 1 hr
Plane Atlanta to Shanghai 15 hours
Plane Shanghai to Xian 2.5 hours
Bus Xian to Xifeng 6 hrs

And that doesn't include all of the waiting time. I had to spend a night in Xian since I arrived at 8 pm.

Xian to Xifeng can be quick, 3 hours, if you spend $20 or can be slow, 6 hours, if you spend $10.

The cheap way is terrible! My site mate and I got to the bus station at like 9 am. When we asked for tickets, the ticket lady said no tickets and then a long flutter of incomprehensible Chinese.

Caitin and I were like ummm what are we going to do?

She went out the guarded gate where there were security people checking for tickets but because she is white she was able to go through without a ticket. I would have had a lot harder time sneaking through the security check.

When she got to the bus they said no more tickets just like the ticket lady. Then a guy approached her and said he can take her to Xifeng for 100 RMB. She agreed and returned to get me taking me to an empty van. I was like uh oh. We are going to have to wait forever till this 20 passenger van fills up.

At noon after waiting for 3 hours, the van finally got 10 passengers but as we were leaving the police stopped the van and started video taping. The driver gave us back our money and directed us to the previous bus that supposedly had no more tickets. There was plenty of room. It must have been some type of scam where scammers would buy all of the tickets and then try to get you to take the van. A bus ticket is only 65 RMB compared to the van price of 100 RMB.

So we left Xian at noon and got into COLD Xifeng at 4 pm.

I went to sleep which was probably a bad idea. I slept solid till 8 pm and then tried to keep sleeping but around 2 am couldn't sleep anymore. I read one of my books and started another book and then read all of the trashy magazines I brought for my sitemate. Around 5 am I washed all of the floors coz everything was covered with dust.

And now I am back into the swing of things, no longer jet lagged with already two weeks of teaching under my belt: English and American Literature and English Speaking Culture which is basically a history course.

It feels good to be back to China. I just want to learn how to speak more Chinese so I can order a variety of food rather than the boring noodles and dumplings that I eat almost everday.

What kind of knitter am I?

Well when I first started learning how to knit about 3 months ago in China, I knitted 5 ribbed hats and all of them didn't fit.

I gave up on hats and moved onto socks. I guess knitting all of those hats was actually useful since my first pair of socks was perfect, knee highs beautiful and perfect fitting. My second pair of ribbed mid-calf socks were a bit ill-fitting. My third and fourth pair of ribbed socks were perfect, perfect enough to give as a gift.

Next I moved onto felted bags. I knitted 2 in China and tried to felt them but failed. Was it the yarn, the Chinese washing machine? On the Chinese yarn labels it had 100% Chinese words + 5% Chinese words. How can a yarn mix be 100% of wool and 5% of something else? And what was that something else? All I know is there was something that kept my bags from being felted. Instead they were just stretched-out, stupid, useless bags.

On the way back to the US, I started another bag, uncomfortable bringing double pointed metal needles onto a plane to make socks. I was hoping that maybe a US washer would do the trick. Nope. Then I started another bag with the Chinese wool and ran out of yarn so I bought some American wool and used it. Wow. The American wool felted up just fine while the Chinese wool just stretched and was ugly.

So here in the states, I have knitted 5 bags in 3 weeks. Only one of them has turned out somewhat to my liking. I gave the practice bags to little girls who filled them with plastic peas, spoons, plates, bowls, and hamburgers. Now I am working on another one, modifying it to perfection.

So what kind of knitter am I?

In my opinion, I am an industrial knitter who just knits and knits and who doesn't really care about finishing a perfect product. I just want to finish it even if it doesn't turn out well. Then onto the next one. Eventually something turns out beautiful.

Patience Dies in the Land of Boredom

I have been abroad for about 2.5 years now and here I am back in the states for a month home leave.

What have I discovered?

I have absolutely no patience for interstate driving.
It is boring.
It is flat and smooth.

In Africa and China, taking a 6-10 hour bus trip in terrible hot and cramped conditions is fun compared to American interstate driving. Why?

Well because interstate driving is BORING! There is nothing to look at except except nothing: trees whizzing by, ground, cars, another exit full of the same ol same ol.

The only interesting thing I saw on my road trip from Cleveland to DC were the farmhouses and these circle like buildings with tall roofs and no windows.

At least in Africa and China there is always something exciting happening: from a bag of oranges being thrown into the window and then a foot hopping up onto the window and then a hand reaching in to pull the bag of oranges up top to the landscapes and the people. It is like being on an amusmant park ride full of bumps and turns and things to look at.

Misery is made interesting in Africa and China.
Misery is made boring in America.

Beat Down for $5

A Chinese massage is like having the shit beat out of you. It feels like when you wipe out on a surf board and get thrashed about by the waves and currents. It is like being put into a tumbler or placed in a bed with magic fingers except the fingers are going 100 miles per hour. It is like riding in an uncomfortable hard seat car going over a 1000 bumps at full speed.

And then a small pause in the earthquake to find the small pressure point of pain.

I must remember to breathe.

The strange warm glow must mean something right?
good or bad?
Beats me.

The Holidays

Christmas came and went.
New Year's Eve did too.

Having been an expat for 3 years now, the big American holidays have faded. Christmas in Africa felt like the Fourth of July, barbecuing chicken and fish on the outdoor grill and Christmas in China felt like an educational program.

Ever been to one of those talks given by someone who just got back from some exotic foreign country. You sit in the audience learning about another country by listening and looking at a slideshow of pictures and foreign artifacts that are probably just cheap tourist trinkets. At such talks you learn but the heart is far away. The words and pictures have little meaning to one's soul. It is purely curiosity.

Christmas this year was an educational program teaching students about caroling, Santa Claus, decorations, trees, elves, presents, the Christmas spirit. We showed movies, Home Alone and Elf.

We participated in cultural re-enactments by going Christmas caroling unable to sing over the hooting and hollering of the boys' dorms. Apparently in China to show appreciation, cheer while people perform rather than after. Thank goodness someone explained that to me as glass bottles were flying out of the windows. My brain was like, oh no we are going to get into TONS of trouble, organizing a march of students whose presence created such a commotion.

A caroler did say, "Tonight is the most memorable night of my life."

Maybe there was a bit of Christmas spirit, yet it has faded. I spent Christmas day in 4 hours of oral English final exams.

New Year's Eve, I went dancing. Midnight came and went without even a whisper.

It is strange how such important emotional traditions can just fade. I wonder what else will fade, the longer I stay away.

7 am Jams

I went to a Chinese funeral several months ago and now a Chinese funeral is happening right outside my second floor window.

The family mourners are dressed in white hats, sacks, and shoes.

It is a colorful occasion. People bring paper mache animals, towers, houses, cars, DVD players, TV's, clothes, shoes and big round paper floral arrangements that remind me of the flowers they give horses at horse races. They must burn enough goods so that the one in heaven will have a nice comfortable afterlife.

It isn't the gifts that make this particular funeral memorable.

No it is the music. There is a live band of traditional Chinese instruments right outside of my window including a singer with a microphone. Plus every instrument is hooked up to an amp.

At least this morning, the music started out relatively peaceful, a pretty funeral song with lots of somber horns. Umm... but just now the cymbals and the blasting toy like horn just started.

I wonder if this is going to last ALL day.
Today is my day off.

Teaching in China

In Chengdu during summer training, experienced volunteers and staff would tell us scenarios to prepare us to teach Chinese students. I got the impression that students were shy, would not volunteer answers, would not raise their hands, would not understand our American teaching methods of student centered learning rather than the Chinese way of teacher centered lectures.

What did I find?

Well students will not ask questions when I am standing in front of them on the stage at the blackboard. They will ask if I am walking around the classroom.

Students will not volunteer information individually unless I call on them directly and then most of them will answer in low voices. They will answer as a chorus, shouting out their answers when I ask a question. It is impossible to understand the 20 voices all answering the same question in a sporadic manner.

Students love to draw posters! We drew characters from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, from TS Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", and made posters about slavery while studying Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Students have done wonderfully presenting poems to the class explaining the literary terms and the difficult meanings of poetry written in difficult language.

They love role plays and acting!

They had a blast making a board game about Oliver Twist, having a Pride and Prejudice cocktail party where they had to find a suitable fictional husband or wife, learning how to do dance moves from the Jazz age of The Great Gastby, learning poetry by singing the ballads of "Auld Lang Syne", and writing their own stories about why they are in the snowy woods of Robert Frost.

After the Chengdu training, I would have thought teaching Chinese students would be like pulling teeth; however, they are so creative. It is what makes 10 hours of being with them per week bearable. I would have gone crazy if I had to lecture for 10 hours a week.

A Few Days Late

Caitlin created a feast.
I was the errand girl/bus boy.

She cooked a pumpkin pie with a vegan pie crust, stuffing, a chicken, green bean casserole with homemade french onions, gravy, mashed potatoes and coffee. I went shopping for the drinks, the deep fried chickens, and made a cucumber salad. Plus I washed the dishes.

I am stuffed.

It was fun having a very American meal with six Chinese friends. It was the first time for some of them to use a fork. I didn't realize how different we Americans eat a meal. We pass dishes so that each person can serve themselves using a serving spoon instead of eating directly out of the dishes with chopsticks. We fill our plates instead of having a bowl full of rice and a bite size portion of food. We have salt and pepper on the table. We eat bread with our meals. We drink coffee and eat dessert instead of eating a piece of fruit.

The food was very American but it wouldn't have been Thanksgiving if it was just me and Caitlin eating the Western food. What made it like a holiday were the friends. Conversational music is what a holiday is all about. Now don't get me wrong the food also helped.

Turkey Day in China

Today I got a text from my students, "Hello Jen. Is today Thanksgiving Day?"

I knew Thanksgiving was coming up, but I had forgotten that it was today. Caitlin and I are going to cook a traditional Thanksgiving meal on Saturday for a couple of our Chinese friends. Living in another country, it is easy to forget the specific day of a holiday. Since we don't actually get any of our holidays off, holidays turn into weekend celebrations.

Tonight, we decided to go out to eat to celebrate. We went to the all you can eat buffet that is 30 RMB ($5). They have plenty of dishes to choose from, cold vegetable salads, hot dishes, soups, hot pot, plus appetizers like popcorn, dried kiwi, cake with sprinkles. Also, you can drink all the beer you want.

It was a disappointing meal.

My favorite tastes of the evening were the lime juice, the hot coffee, and the 5 different types of green vegetables that I could cook in my hot pot of boiling broth.

Other volunteers are celebrating Thanksgiving together; however, we are FAR from other Peace Corps volunteers (PCVs). The closest volunteer is 8 hours on a grueling bus ride and the PCVs in Gansu aren't even celebrating Thanksgiving there which means we would have to travel even further. It isn't worth it to have two days of hard travel for one day of eating celebration.

It is all right. I don't mind. I have celebrated Thanksgiving in different ways depending on the country. In Guinea I rode 5 hours by bike to Labe to celebrate a feast with the Fouta PCVs in the Peace Corps regional house. It felt more like the Fourth of July than a winter holiday as we barbecued meat on the outside grill. In Burkina Faso, I rode 2 hours by bike to the neighboring city of Kaya to celebrate with some PCVs. We cooked in three different houses and even had a HUGE turkey. Now in China, with Caitlin's microwave sized oven and her two gas burners, we will cook a feast of delicious treats.

It does feel like the holiday season here though. It is cold.

Food

Because of a recent gift, I have realized that I miss cheese and peanut butter. I didn't know I missed American peanut butter with its extra sugar . I knew I missed cheese. Every time I would go into Ouaga or Conakry, I would buy some cheese and my mouth would die from the flavor. Here in China at the nearby big cities that I can travel to, you can only find soft spreadable cheese.

At the end of January I am coming home to the tastes of the USA. I think I will live cheaply on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches along with ham and cheese. I only get like $12 per diem.

Living in China, I get a huge variety of food and don't miss food as much as I did in Africa. Here I can buy like 70 apples for $2. In Africa, one apple cost $1 and you could only buy them in the big city. The apples were imported from South Africa. Here students go out into the country and steal them off the trees.

At home, I hope to make dumplings for everyone. Dumplings are tastier than toe, an African staple.

Weeks without

Internet in my flat has been down.
I don't know when it will be back up.

My Flat

Sit, watch, listen, type
Cold impersonality
Human turned robot

Sleeping in till 8

I am a morning person and feel something is wrong. I am not waking up at 6 am these days.

In Africa I would wake up at the crack of dawn with the sun as it peered through my straw mat walls and mosquito net hung outside. School started at 7 am, so I had to be up. Even on the weekends I was up before 6 am. Sometimes I even had my hand-washed laundry up on the line and a pot of beans cooking on the stove by 7 am.

Here in China though, I am having trouble getting up. There is no sunlight and it is cold. I sleep inside with the morning light shut out by the curtains and anyways the sun doesn't rise very early here. It is only going to get worse. I doubt it will be as bad as Seattle though. And thank goodness the sun does come out everyday.