From Simplicity to Modern Living

I imagined dark boxcars, the wall made of wood, the windows little slits at the top of the car, the toilets open holes where you can see the ground speeding by. Instead I found myself inside of an enjoyable air conditioned, big windowed train car that reminded me of a hostel. There were three bunk beds stacked on top of each other, 6 total beds in one cubicle. There were sinks, squat toilets, and all you can drink hot water. The views from the bay windows were breathtaking. The 15 hour train ride passed peacefully. I fell asleep for 8 hours. Thank goodness I am used to hard beds, and the Dramamine probably helped.

Arriving in Xian, we were instantly met by two people from the university, one from the foreign affairs office and the driver. It took us 6-7 hours to get to my new home in Gansu as we stopped for lunch, watermelon, and the traffic jams of two lane narrow highways where cars pass across solid yellow lines. The roads between my city and Xian are quite bad with bad drivers too. The combination doesn't make for timely travel. A new expressway is rumored to open in October possibly making the trip only 3 hours. We drove up and down plateaus into valleys admiring the beautiful views of farmland, corn and wheat, seeing the goats and sheep, the stacks of hay, and the rosy cheeked farmers.

My new home is absolutely decked out, fully furnished each room full of furniture including all of the electronics: computer, printer, TV, DVD player, stereo, Internet, scanner plus a fridge, microwave, and washing machine. There are two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, and a dining area. It is absolutely luxurious!

The campus is small about 10,000 students split between two campuses. The English department has about 1,000 students. I will be teaching English and American literature about 10 hours a week. I am excited about using the extra time to play piano, to play basketball, to start a knitting group, and to learn a martial art. At the back gate of the campus is a block long market full of gorgeous fruits and vegetables plus stores and restaurants galore. The town is small (population 200,000) but feels like a big city because it isn't spread out.

Thursday I will be heading back to Chengdu, the two day trip. I do have a site mate who is also from Peace Corps, but we are pretty isolated from other volunteers. During winter it gets cold and may get lonely. I am not worried though. I survived the isolation of Africa.

Community

Every weekend morning since arriving in China, as I wash my laundry, I have listened to the beat of drums and the crash of cymbals. When I peer over the wall of the outdoor patio of the 6th floor roof, I see a group of women marching, drumming, and shouting at the next door government building.

One of my friends Renee has a goal of wanting to have a meaningful conversation with older people. I thought to myself, the drumming group of women would be a perfect place to practice. I invited Renee and we went yesterday.

We were a bit worried because we didn't hear any drums but when we arrived a group of older women had gathered. One big red drum was on wheels. Hanging from the tree were bright colorful silk bags that the round snare drum shaped drums were pulled from. Other women were holding bright red velvet bags that carried golden cymbals tied with bright yellow cloth.

The women welcomed us with bright smiles and handshakes. There was such a warm feeling as women laughed, played, sung and danced, teasing each other and showing off, and we hadn't even started yet. Slowly women gathered their drums strapping them to their bodies with bright red silk straps, helping each other untwist and arrange the silk pulling out thick wooden drum sticks with bright yellow strips of long cloth tied to them.

Women lined up and I was feeling, "hmm... can we actually join in? We don't have any drums or cymbals." But then I noticed two women didn't have them either. One only had fans which she used as drum sticks upon an air drum, and the other used her hands imitating the cymbals. Renee and I would be cymbal players.

I thought it would be easy, and the first action was. One line of drums and cymbals rushed another line of drums and cymbals like two armies meeting on a battle field. But from there it got more elaborate as drums circled cymbals, as cymbals circled drums, as drums and cymbals looped and ran around in organized patterns, arranging themselves into set formations just like marching band. But with a smile, I just ran along.

After the first set, we rested and yes I was sweating. We were surrounded by smiling women all very interested in why I couldn't speak Chinese and where I was from. Everyone tells me that I am Chinese and there is no way I can convince them that I am American. I just nod and say "I am Chinese and I live in America." My limited language is not strong enough to explain the diversity of America especially to women who speak a Sichuan dialect while I am learning Mandarin. They asked if Renee was from France. They asked her age and when she told them they smiled happy to welcome her rejoicing her age and their ages, a joy of being older.

The leader of the group was gorgeous with a glow to her and a smile that showed an unforgettable spirit of joy. Her inner beauty shined through the glow of her face. The way she moved and danced while directing the band of similar glowing women is the type of essence I seek.

In my older years, I want to live in such a community where women get together every weekend to drum, a community where you can walk to the local farmer's market where the possibility of running into your friends is easy.

I want to find the love and touch of people rather than the TV babysitter and the walls of cars.

Individual Responsibility Toward the Environment

Many individuals in China do their part in helping the environment.

The apartments have squat toilets which use less water.
Many reuse water, saving it for other uses.
Many don't use disposable diapers.
Many recycle anything that is recyclable.
Many use electric motor bikes.

Life in China Tidbits

Model school ended on Friday. It was a three week model school but I only taught for 7 days. My teaching partner taught for the other 7 days. On the last day of school, our students did presentations and since our theme was Summer, we had a summer picnic and played Frisbee. We had started out with 32 but on the last day only had about 10. I think summer is a busy time for students and they want to go home to visit their parents.

What were the highlights of model school?

The biggest highlight for me was all of the laughter and noise. Noise meant that the students were speaking English which was one of our teaching objectives. My students did interviews for a summer job, did speed dating, and played taboo like games. It was a good learning experience.

My computer crashed which made it slightly inconvenient to prepare lesson plans. The nice thing though is that one of my students is going to help me fix it.

I had to take two buses to where my student lives. The first bus was easy. The second bus was a bit more difficult.

Where do I get off? Which direction do I go?

My limited Chinese was understood by the bus driver and he told me where to get off. My limited Chinese was mispronounced and confused the 5 people I asked at the new bus stop. I didn't know which direction to take the new bus. I had to cross the busy 8 lane street 5 times as each person told me something different. Finally one man corrected my Chinese, not shi da, but shi fan. Since he finally got what I was saying, I trusted his directions and ended safely at my destination.

Now I have 3 hours to spare, waiting to meet my student. Cyber cafes are everywhere. Plus I can go window shopping; although, I don't have a lot of money. We get $5 a day. Food is cheap only $1 a meal, but clothes are more expensive maybe $10 for a really nice skirt. I like the skirt. Shall I splurge?

The other day I got a haircut, boy short (very few young women here have boy short hair). It only cost $2 and it took like an hour. The hair washing and head massage lasted like 20 minutes.

Life is China is wonderful.

In a couple of days I will learn where I am going to be living for the next two years and then will all by myself go visit either taking a train or a long distance bus. Hopefully my Chinese will be correctly pronounced and understood.

Living in Luxury

Living in campus university apartments for staff and teachers, is a step up from living outside with the frogs, stars, mosquitoes, and scorpions of Africa. My host family is pretty well-off. The father is a retired Chinese language teacher. He was the vice-president of a university.

Our apartment is on the fifth floor, the top floor and is a huge living space. There are two floors with the top floor having an outdoor patio with a lot of plants and where the washing machine is kept. There are 4 bedrooms, 2 sitting rooms, a small kitchen, and 3 small rooms plus two bathrooms. I still have a squat toilet though. It is a nice one. It flushes.

The living room probably will indicate to you just how luxurious my life is at the moment. Notice the pears on the table. My family always has fruit sitting out for me. We never use the tall air conditioner.

My bedroom is lovely. I have a hard bed which reminds me of sleeping on the rope cot in Africa, a taste of home. Back in the states I didn’t have time to get used to the soft beds. I have a nice desk where I spend most of my evenings learning Chinese or working on lesson plans. During practice school, I will be teaching English for 7 days on the theme of Summer. My teaching partner and I came up with the theme.

My bedroom has a clothes rack and I have the bottom cabinets of a bookshelf to put my clothes. There is a lovely big window which brings in a cooling breeze. The one bad thing about my room are the mosquitoes. I thought by moving to China I would escape from those tiny insects. I do have water though, so I don’t have to worry about staph which basically ruined my skin. My room has a guess what, air conditioner. I don’t find China to be too hot so I never use it. My host family noticed and gave me a fan which is nice. The fan is all that I need.

Life is good. I have no complaints. My biggest challenge is learning Chinese.

Daily Life in China

What is my school week in China like?

I wake up at 4 am and study Chinese.

6 am I go for a 30 minute run then eat a breakfast of yogurt sucked through a straw, a piece of bread and fruit.

7:30 I head to school, a 7 minute walk. (I am living on Chengdu University's campus in teacher's housing.)

8:30-10:15 Chinese language class

10:30-12:00 General session on cross culture, teaching English, safety security, or health

12-1:30 Lunch on your own

1:30-3:15 Chinese language class

3:30-5:00 Another general session

6:30 Dinner with host family

9:00 Bedtime

Food

As a young girl, my favorite food was Chinese dumplings called jiaozi.

Here in China, it is one of the first words Americans learn, an easy dish to order at a restaurant. We only soon realize that restaurants don't serve jiaozi. You have to find the special hole in the wall places that sell dumplings and noodles.

Today, my family left the house early to go to the market to find the freshest vegetables on the day when veggies disappear quick, a Sunday full of thousands of shoppers. The market is such an interesting lively place full of wriggling eels, huge frogs, plucked geese being blow torched, peaches, and watermelon and hundreds of other food goods. We bought bak choy, dried tofu, green onions, eggs, thousand year old duck eggs, ground pork, cucumbers, and jiaozi wraps.

Freshly made jiaozi wraps! Yay! Dumplings for lunch.

It was super fun watching my Chinese host mother make dumplings and helping her stuff and squeeze them shut. I did a good job coz none of mine broke open when placed in the boiling water. I was proud and was rewarded with a tummy full of the most delicious things ever.

For dinner the ingredients we bought became a cucumber and thousand year old duck egg soup, a bak choy stir fry, a dried tofu and green onions stir fry, and jiaozi leftover from today's lunch that was rewarmed by deep frying. Yum yum!!!

I am excited about learning how to cook Chinese food.
I shall invite you to Chinese meal when I get back to the states.

Things Seen

The veggie market is gorgeous! It reminds me of West Africa's food markets except there are a lot more greens and other veggies.

Girls are very feminine here, not sure how I will adapt to that. Will I change into a femme who wears high heels and cute little dresses? My host family has already commented that I don't wear lipstick and I shouldn't eat too much. They don't want me to get fat.

The food is simple and delicious. The flavor is the vegetable itself. My host mother cooks about 5 veggie dishes each evening. It takes her two hours. We don't eat much meat, maybe a bite or too. The meals suit me just fine.

The family is very close. The first Sunday I was here, the father, the mother, the daughter and me all went to a clothing store and helped her pick out the best dress that everyone liked. She changed 4 times allowing us to see the two different dresses several times to help her make a decision. It took us about an hour to make the decision.

Men here walk around with their bellies showing. They hike up their shirts coz it is so hot.

I do not find Chengdu hot. Africa was A LOT hotter. I have no complaints about the weather. The other day we had a rain storm, lightening bolts from ground to infinite sky, tremendously powerful strikes seen from the glass wall of our language class.

When a little kid who hasn't been totally potty trained yet, has to go, his parents hold him out in the street and make sounds, "Shh, shhh, sway.. shhh..." I guess to help the child go. Children who are not potty trained yet wear clothes that have a slit in the crotch.

Gender roles are different here than in Africa. I see both men and women going shopping for veggies. In this household the mother cooks and the father and daughter clean up. There seems to be more equality. In West Africa most of the Peace Corps staff were men. In China, most of the Peace Corps staff are women.

My most difficult challenge so far is learning Chinese. It is hard.

Don't let Jennifer order if you are a picky eater

China is very different than Africa and is an exciting new place.

One of the main reasons I wanted to live in China though was to experience my ethnic heritage as an adult; however, being Taiwanese American in China has its challenges. I have heard about these challenges and yes they did scare me a bit, but I know that I am strong and can overcome difficulties proven by my two years of living in West Africa.

One major challenge is looking like I should be able to speak Chinese and not really knowing a word.

Tonight I went out to eat with three other Peace Corps trainees and felt the attention right away.

We walked through the alleyways between tall concrete polluted black coated buildings. We passed people sitting at hole in the wall quick eats looking for the noodle dumpling place we had gone to at lunch. Lunch was easy because our host country national trainers ordered for us. Instead of an opened restaurant, we saw the doors were drawn with the mom and pop preparing the dough for the next day. We continued down the alleyway that was just big enough for one car and walked into a noisy restaurant.

As soon as we sat down I was the person who all Mandarin was directed toward. All I could do was say, "I don't understand. I don't understand," in Chinese.

A crowd of 10 waiters surrounded our table. It was like being in a full bar with the music blaring except this place was only half full with no music. People know how to have a good time when going out to eat. There was so much noise and everyone was shouting at us. I was the only one smart enough to bring the menu that Peace Corps provided us that had Chinese dishes written in characters and explained in English. Since all of the shouting was directed at me, I had to make the decisions.

I got up and went to a table full of good food and pointed at the green vegetable dish that looked inviting. Then a waiter who spoke a little English pointed at various items on my Peace Corps provided menu and we picked two items: a pork vermicelli dish and a hot spicy tofu dish. Then the main waiter said something which I understood to mean that we had four dishes coming our way. We thought we had only ordered three.

So our three dishes came and then a HUGE pot filled with hundred of dried peppers and licorice like peppercorns filled with red oil and big chunks of fish arrived, our mystery dish finally making an appearance. But then another dish arrived, a HUGE bowl of clear broth with cabbage and a HUGE fish head. Lucky for me Africa taught me all about fish heads.

It was a meal to remember, savory, tasty, and cheap only $14 for the whole meal.

Plus I survived my first challenge, the challenge of being in a confusing atmosphere of language barriers where the locals can't understand why I can't speak Chinese and where I feel the stress of having to communicate somehow. It was intimidating but I survived. Lucky for me my dinner partners were not picky eaters.

China Bound 2008

Letters from Burkina Faso will soon become Letters from China

I have been medically cleared to go to China as a Peace Corps volunteer. I will be serving another two years along with 3 months of training. I will be teaching English at a university living most likely in a city with an apartment.

I leave Burkina Faso June 13th and on June 28th will leave Alabama for Washington D.C. where the Peace Corps volunteers will meet up before heading for China.

I am super excited!

April 19

The Peace Corps hostel in Ouaga has about 20 beds in the form of metal bunk beds; however, it is too hot to sleep indoors.

Still it is luxurious sleeping in Ouaga. I pull a good firm mattress off of the bunk beds and take it to the screen enclosed porch and place it right under the ceiling fan. It is a step up from village where I sleep under a mosquito net hanging from the rafters of my straw covered porch, sleeping on a rough, firm nylon strung cot.

Yet last night I was unable to sleep.

Why? Was it the lack of the braying donkeys, dogs, and guinea fowl? Was it that I was too cold from the cooling fan?

No.

Ants

Not your ordinary ants, like the little black ones that will quickly cover a chocolate chip cookie.
No, these were those big ones where you don't need a magnifying glass to see the different balloon parts of the scurrying creature.
Scurry here, scurry there, scurry all over my bed, and all over me.

It was like a dream, but not.

April 14

The UN is calling for international support for the World Food Bank. A food shortage is foreseen for the future. The rising cost of food will create famine.

The people of Burkina Faso are protesting the rising cost of goods demanding the government to do something. Little did I know that this is a global problem, one that is complicated. I am a chemist not an economist.

April 13

Last summer a group of us dug up dirt, mud, clay-like earth and moved it by the bucketful to raise the front porch in front of my door. We had a tapping fest packing the earth into a hardened floor, no need for cement.

This is the floor I live on. It is the floor of my living room, my kitchen, and my bedroom. Each day it fills with trash onion skins, mango skins, the stems of the wild eggplant plants from which we tore the leaves, peanut shells, candy wrappers, and bones from a goat stew. Trash is thrown onto my living space ground. Each evening before dark, I sweep the dirt using brooms made out of dried grass. Amazing how clean dirt can become and how dirty I become in the dust cloud.

Today one of my 2 year old visitors announced, "I have to pee."

But before she could get her underwear down and off to the latrine she peed right on the spot where I lay my head each night to sleep. Dirt is easier to clean than carpet. Is potty training easier in a life lived outside?

December 18

I love giving candy to my kids. They love receiving it too! It is a rare treat. 3 pieces cost 25 FCFA (4 cents), rarely does a kid have 25 FCFA. Plus they'd rather buy a boiled sweet potato or a gateau, something a little more filling than sweets.

On Monday, a day of no classes except calculating student averages some of my kids were all about working for candy.

We had a fraction fest with parentheses and brackets galore. It was fun and I liked it coz I could individualize the problem depending on the student's skill level as well as show each student what was wrong.

Sometimes the kids make me frown when they work on other homework from other classes or start gabbing when I'm talking.

And sometimes they make me smile at their enthusiasm to learn, hands stretched as high as they can go hoping to be the hand that catches my eye to be called upon.

December 16

Computers are nice.

Calculating the first trimester's grades for 260 students, weighting each subject differently, math and French valued more than the other subjects, plus having to have each student verify their averages by hand is time consuming. Time consuming! At least I have a calculator. I am thankful for my portable solar powered piece of technology.

December 15

Coming from the supermarket culture of the states, it feels weird being given raw peanuts and then boiling them in salted water.

Homegrown tomatoes and cucumbers are nothing new.

But peanuts, homegrown peanuts are new to me. Peanuts come on shelves in cans with a seal of freshness.

Washing off the dirt that provided the nutrients for my peanuts and then boiling them, or shelling them, or grilling them, or pounding them into peanut butter really puts you into the ground level of processing, a processing by the human hand instead of by an idea out of the human head that mass processes peanuts.

I don't know what I really want to say about this. All I know is that it feels different than picking a tomato, washing it, and eating it.

December 14

Nothing seems special anymore.
I have adapted and my world has equilibrated into normal:

the latrine
the bucket baths
the stars

I remember my first days learning how to squat. My muscles complained and my aim was a bit off.

My first bucket bath wasn't very cleansing or conserving. Most of the water missed me washing the floor quite well, taking twice as much water as was necessary.

Star gazing used to be a favorite pastime, now I just fall asleep.

December 13

I can tell the morning time by the color of the sky.

Instead of looking over at an alarm clock with big read numbers sitting on a nightstand, I peer out into the morning sky:

gray = not yet 6 am
orange = 6 am
back to gray = time to get up and get ready for school (6:10)

December 12

I never though in my life that I would have ever said the following:

I wish I had been a cheerleader.

It is the last week of classes at the middle school and the kids have organized a football tournament between the different grades.

The kids would love to cheer their team on with cheers. I don't know any cheers. They never stuck in my head while playing basketball or going to football games and pep rallies.

Man, I wish I had been a cheerleader.

December 11

My village in Burkina has a lot more than my village in Guinea: rice ladies, a daily taxi to Ouaga, many people who'll take your portrait for a fee, a catholic and protestant church, stores stacked high of goods, an ambulance, a cell tower, a dance club, fridges and freezers run on a bottle of gas, a movie shack.

My village in Guinea had oranges and avocados galore, a water faucet right outside my door, freshly baked French bread, and two kids who sold a table full of goods for their parents.

My Burkina village has a lot more amenities. It is a bigger village. Just like how a city has a certain coldness due to the number of strangers, my Burkina village has a certain coldness. Just like how it is harder to make friends, to find community in a big city, I also find this difficulty in my Burkina village.

My Guinea village was small and I was quickly absorbed into the community becoming an active participant, trekking 5 km by foot to attend funerals and fetes.

Sunday my Burkina village left for a big fete in a neighboring village. No one told me.