Yurt Home

October 3:  After a long day of riding horses and basking in the sun, we rode up a hill and arrived at a yurt where we would be staying for two nights.  Half of the yurt was the kitchen with a pile of dried yak dung in one corner.  The other half of the yurt was used as the living room, eating area, and bedroom.  It was a big empty floor space covered with a canvas that could be changed according to need.   They had a solar panel on top of the roof, a battery, and a light bulb.  Even nomadic yak herders have to have have a way to charge their cell phones.   The were no wells.  The mother had to walk down the hill to the somewhat empty river and haul water back up, not on her head but strapped with a cord to her back while holding two smaller containers in both hands.  There were no pit latrines, just vast grassland.   In the unheated tent, we were tightly bound into sleeping bags and heavy blankets weighed our bodies down.  I could not move.  It wasn't the hard floor that was difficult, but the constricted prison of a bed I was in.  I felt like I had been swallowed by a snake and couldn't escape.  Seven us filled the empty space and we looked like a can of sardines, all packed in neatly. One of my travel companions took a video of my fall off a horse and posted it to youtube.

My Fall off a Horse

This is why I fell.  My horse like the one in the picture DID NOT want to cross this dangerous sink hole of mud.  The land was like the swamp of sadness in the Neverending Story.  My horse was the first to go across but absolutely refused while two other horses pushed forward to successfully reach the other side.  The third horse also made it across with a rider in a fit of laughter falling to one side being caught by our guide.  The straps of his saddle broke from the bucking that the horses had to do to jump out of the knee high dangerous leg breaking mud. My horse was being forced across when my attention was drawn to the laughing rider ahead and the next thing I knew my horse bucked several times and I was eating dirt.  Luckily since the horse sunk to his knees, I was already close to the ground, didn't have a very long distance to fall.  Plus mud is soft.   For some reason, I just love hitting the ground, tackling people, being hit back, doing physical feats of BAM.  Maybe I should have been a stunt woman. If you want to watch a video, I can send it to you.  It is a 1.9 MB file. The other two riders made the wise decision to dismount and walk across while their riderless horses were forced across.

1st Day Second Stop

October 3:  After lunch we climbed back on the horses and rode to a new gorgeous spot that had a natural spring coming out of the rocks.  While the horses munched on tall grass, we enjoyed the sunshine and beauty of the landscape.  We filled our water bottles and added iodine tablets. When I was twelve, I received a brown pony with white splashes for Christmas.  Her name was Lady and she loved water.  Whenever we came to a puddle, she would lie down and start rolling.  Since I didn't want to get wet, I would lose the reins, hop off and find dry land.  Then Lady would hop up and run home with me chasing after her, me having to walk the rest of the way.   That wasn't the only time that Lady would have me off her back when I wanted to be on her back.  One time we were galloping on wet asphalt.  She went down and I went up and over her head landing on the black crash pad breaking two fingers.  I guess I was never good at staying on a horse. Would I be able to stay on a horse while riding in the grasslands of the Tibetan region in Gansu? As late afternoon approached, we climbed back on the horses, rode from empty fields to yak filled fields and I had my first "fall."  My horse suddenly stopped, bent down, started scratching its knee with its head and then proceeded to lie down and start rolling in some black dirt.  Not wanting to be crushed, I quickly found a way off.   Stay tuned.  That roll in the dirt was just a warm up "fall."

First Stop Lunch

Morning of October 3:  As usual I got up early and took a walk in the misty city running into a massive dead dog in a trash pile then a dead orange kitten under a tall prayer wheel.  Death was not a good sign.  At 10 am we would be getting on horses.   We had a very quick horse riding lesson, loaded up the ponies with handmade saddlebags made out of rice bags that were filled with sleeping bags, rain ponchos, and fresh vegetables.  Then we started out into the grasslands of Langmusi riding through town like cowboys.  By lunchtime the misty gray cloud cover had burned off and we were eating rice covered with egg and tomatoes in a tent under blue skies. After lunch, we hiked up a small hill before riding off again. Photo:  In the left hand distance below you can barely see you the horses and the tent.  Because my body was trying to feel comfortable and confident on a horse, during the first day it was hard for me to take photos while riding a pony.

Yak Burger

Oct 2:  After checking into the hotel of dorm rooms with beds, we went to the horse trek office to fill out paperwork where we signed our lives away.  If we were injured, they would get us to a hospital, but we would have to pay the bills.  We received a 2 minute culture class.  Do not comb your hair in the tent.  Because there are no tables, the floor will be the table; therefore, do not step over people's food.  Do not hang and dry your wet socks near the fire.  The guides will find a more suitable place. With a couple hours of daylight left, we explored the city.  The guys paid 20 RMB to visit the monastery and we gals explored the surrounding hills.  My favorite thing to do in a new city is to walk and explore rather than pay and explore.  Just being in a new city is good enough for me.  The town is a mix of tourist shops and hotels plus worn down houses with large sun windows warming enclosed front porches and houses with wooden roofs that have survived the brute force of winter. When the sun set, we went to Leisha's Restaurant on the main street because it was advertising a Yak Big Mac.  In China, people share dishes.  In America, we want our own, so we debated a bit whether or not to order the large 20 RMB yak burger or the extra-large one.  The owner made the decision for us and said get the large one.  We ordered four and a plate of delicious thick french fries.  Each yak burger was HUGE.  Only two of us finished.  Yes I was one of them.  The other two probably ate about a 1/4th of their sandwich.  If you are a group, I would recommend ordering one and trying the other dishes.  Order family style.  As we were working our way through the burgers, more and more delicious food was being brought out to the packed house of diners.

Langmusi

Photoblog Theme:  4 day Langmusi Tibetan Horse Trek (Because I can't edit my blogs to create a large photo post about this year's National holiday trip, this week's blog theme will be about my trip to the Gannan Tibetan Automonous Prefecture in Gansu.) October 1:  At 6:00 am, I walked to the bus station with a pack full of knitted goods and a newly bought jacket with a warm sleeping bag strapped to the back.  I caught a bus to Lanzhou and endured seven hours of Hong Kong gangster movies, sound at full blast. October 2:  Four of us boarded a full bus to Langmusi.  We were wary of the 10 hour trip; however, only after 7 hours in a daze of confusion, we were thrown off the bus in the middle of nowhere, and received finger gestures of which direction we should start walking.  After two miles under a bright blue sky and warm sunshine surrounded by rolling hills and open green, golden plains, we arrived at a one lane town surrounded by houses, mountains and Tibetan monasteries.   Our reserved 60 RMB/bed had already been given away, but we were thankfully led to a much cheaper place.  The thin hard beds were only 25 RMB and the latrine was on a floor between the first and the second, an open balcony with a view of the town along with two concrete troughs opening into the river below.  A bucket with a spigot was hanging on the wall as the faucet to wash one's hands.

National Day Holiday

I am on vacation. Check back in a week for pictures.

Teaching News

I am teaching an English Short Story class to juniors and after three weeks of teaching, I have realized that my content level is too high.  I get really excited about teaching content classes because I have this great desire to get the students thinking about diverse ideas and hear their opinions.  I want to have an intellectual exchange of ideas.  I want to stop talking about the weather, food, dreams, daily activities, etc...  But I forget that English is their second language, and it is hard to express more complicated ideas in a second language.   Today I taught a three paragraph essay written by a Chinese scholar about the different way Chinese people and American people feel and think about home.  It had a lot of implied information rather than directly stated information.  The students said, "They did not understand the article at all.  It was too hard."  When the level of a class is too high, it becomes frustrating for both the students and the teacher.  I need to pick easier material.   In my other junior Short Story class, I gave them a choice between two teaching methods.  Because the class is so big, the first method I decided to implement focused on writing, reading and thinking.  The second method I could implement would be focused on reading and oral English activities, if the students' promised to ONLY speak English.  If they really want the second method I guess I can endure the noise that 70 students talking out loud would create.   I told the class,  "We will take a vote.  If you agree say aye in a normal voice.  Do not shout."   I stood in front of them and said, "If you want teaching method one please say aye now."  A loud thunderous aye resulted.   I then asked, "If you want teaching method two please say aye now."  A loud thunderous aye resulted. I asked, "How many of you voted twice?  You have to choose one and only say aye once for the one you want."   I took the vote again and had the same result, two loud thunderous ayes.   Finally, we did it by a show of hands.  About 40 students wanted the first teaching method and only 10 wanted the second.  Why did the voice vote not work?  (Check out this blog posting from a former China PCV about choice in the classroom.) In my second class the voice vote worked fine. Tonight in the Tree House, one of the discussion questions was If you could change one thing about yourself, what would you change? The girls answered, "I want less oily hair.  I want a slimmer figure.  I want a prettier face.  I want to be more outgoing.  I don't want to change anything.  I like myself the way I am." The boys answered, "I want to change my major.  I want to be successful so my parents can work less.  I want to have more of my parent's good qualities."

Chinese Burrito

After a morning of lesson planning, for brunch I had black bean, peanut, and rice porridge along with this greasy, spicy yumminess.  I got a care package full of books and sat and read for a couple of hours.  I started reading Asian Americans by Joann Faung Jean Lee.  It is a book of profiles and interviews.  Reading about other Asian American experiences made me realize that the reason I have so many identity questions isn't a result of being adopted but is because I am Asian (Chinese) in America.  I am not the only one who asks these identity and culture questions about how and where do I belong, but many other Asian Americans wonder about it too.

Corn Cake

How does one translate names of Chinese dishes into English?  You don't?  This is a corn cake topped with sprinkles.  I personally did not like it very much, too oily and flaky. Today was a quiet Saturday. I spent the morning lesson planning, washing two loads of laundry, mopping the floor with the laundry rinse water, packing for a trip to Gannan, knitting a glove, and eating chicken noodle soup.   Then my sitemate, a visiting friend of hers, and I rode a bus to the South lake full of dead fish and ate at a restaurant that claims to cook countryside food. I had a Chinese lesson, ate ice cream and then felt the sole of my shoe flop off.  I have worn these shoes for over six years and China is the perfect place for them to fall apart.  I walked to the back gate, sat down, and a guy glued everything back together and put on new heels all for $1.

Chicken Noodle Soup

Here is a chicken noodle soup that I prepared yesterday and got to enjoy today.  Those are tofu pillows floating on top.  Bird soup reminds me of Thanksgiving leftovers and the Christmas in Guinea when visitors traveled to my village.  My friend killed a couple of chickens that were given to us by the chief.  As I was scrubbing chicken pieces with soap and water, grabbing a chicken head scared me half to death just like the time I put a ladle into a Chinese banquet soup suppressing a scream when I pulled out a whole dead turtle- head, shell, feet, and all.     It was a perfect day for soup, cold and rainy.  Now that I have become a sweater knitter, I appreciate cold weather.  Today I pulled on a warm sweater, dug out a cowl, and stuck my wool sock covered feet into a sleeping bag.  As a knitting addict, I am not sure hot climates are for me anymore.   Tonight was the second night I got to go to a live concert of Polish and Western music.  Four voice harmony is so beautiful.  Showy contrasting dynamics played on a piano are wonderful.  Acapella blues make us all smile and tap our feet.  The intense, room-filling weeping of the erhu touches the soul. I realized that the bigger the audience, the louder the music has to be.  Pop and rock music play for crowds of thousands at full blast.  Classical music is meant for smaller audiences.  It feels like a music for the privileged few who has the money to purchase the limited expensive seats.  In China, the audiences are HUGE and audience noise is loud.  To drown out the cell phones, the kids, the commentary, and the conversations, the performance volume is turned up.  This is why I need ear plugs whenever I go to a Chinese concert, whether it be a dance performance, opera, a play, singing or traditional instruments.  Tonight's choir of twenty foreign guests was hard to hear.

Mutton Stew

Today I woke up late around 9 am to a runny nose and thought it would be a perfect day to make a chicken noodle soup with Chinese characteristics- a chicken's head, feet, tofu, and bean sprouts.  As the stock was simmering, I got a message that my waiban (foreign affairs officer) had invited us to lunch.  We spent 3 hours eating a mutton stew.  It reminded me of one of my last meals in Africa, a mutton head stew which I tried to carefully maneuver as not to pull out the eye socket with an eyeball still attached.  I didn't mind the brains, but an eyeball?  It just seemed so squishy and round making my mouth shudder at the thought of popping one with my teeth.  In today's stew though there were no brains and no eyeballs.  It had large chunks of bones from the leg.  Too big to eat with chopsticks, we were given plastic gloves to keep our hands clean and plastic straws to suck out the marrow. Tonight there is a concert being performed by a visiting choir from Poland.  I wonder what kind of music they will sing.  The Chinese choirs that I have listened to often perform traditional and politically patriotic songs.

Mid-Autumn Festival

This is a mooncake.  Today is Mid-Autumn Festival and people gather to eat mooncakes and look at the moon while remembering family and friends. Tonight we had a party in the garden under the moonlight.  We sang Chinese and English songs.  We played games like tag except you can't be tagged if you can say a three character Chinese phrase before they tag you.  We also played a game where the mother hen has to protect the baby chicken from the eagle where the eagle has to try to tag one person while the other person tries to keep the eagle away.  We ate mooncakes and watched the moon against the moving clouds.

Noodles

I live in a part of China where the staple is noodles instead of rice.  When I first arrived in this town, I loved noodles, ate them all the time, but now I am tired of noodles because there is nothing nutritional in them except for whatever nutrients come from white flour.  Very little meat or vegetables are added to the noodles here.

Envy

Eric Weiner, author of The Geography of Bliss, made a sweeping generalization about the nature of happiness, "Envy is toxic." I first found this to be true after site visits in Africa.  Envy sabotaged Peace Corps trainees' happiness.  Before seeing our future homes that we would be living in for the next two years, we were naive optimists excited about every little thing, every little difference, writing letters home about all the amazing differences and how we were surviving them, the heat and massive thunderstorms drumming on aluminum roofs, the squat toilets, the markets, the people, the lack of electricity and water, hand washing our clothes, taking bucket baths, eating wild porcupine.  We had no idea what to expect about our future homes.   When asked during our site placement interviews, what kind of place do you want to live in, our lack of experience and knowledge about African villages and Peace Corps homes in those villages, made our answers meaningless.  I remember saying, "I want a place with as few mosquitoes as possible."  What else could I ask for?  a place with electricity, running water, Internet, a host family,  vegetables and fruit, a close by Peace Corps neighbor, a hut with a grass roof, a house, a city apartment, an indoor bathroom? After site visits, trainees returned to the training site excited and ready to describe their new homes in great detail.  This is when a shift happened in the overall mood of the group.  A few people started feeling envious.... What?  You have a tiled bathroom, 20 couches, and 10 empty rooms in a mansion?  Really?  You have electricity?  I didn't even know that was a possibility.  What?  You have a western toilet?  Serious?  Woah!!  You have an internet bar in your city?  Hmm... I've got bats and poop covering the floors of my house.  My walls are dirty and horrible.  My village only has onions.  I have no latrine.  I have to walk a kilometer down a hill to fetch water to carry back up the hill to my house.   The envious few turned the initial optimism of the group into complaint sessions and no longer was there an overall positive mood anymore.  Instead things became more stressful and people started thinking about going back home to the USA.  For a few, happiness was replaced by envy through comparing what they had to what others had.   How do we prevent envy from entering our lives?  For some reason, I just don't care what others have, find that what I do have is great and often wish I had even less; however, envy doesn't always enter the picture though materialism.  There are other ways envy can rear its ugly head like when you start comparing your personality and looks to others, or when you are single and start comparing yourself to so many happy couples.  For me, I stop envy by trying my best to stop comparing with a judgement of better or worse.  I look around me and just say "Wow.  They're different.  They have different things, have different personalities and talents, and different lives.  Cool.  Neato."

Community Leads to Happiness

While reading Eric Weiner's The Geography of Bliss, I identified with a lot of his sweeping generalizations about happiness, lessons that I too have learned while living abroad in Africa and China.  These past four years have been good to me on the happiness scale. I have learned that even though I believe that I am happiest as an isolated loner, the reality is I've always been surrounded by community and that is a source of my happiness.  Through his travels Weiner realized that the nature of happiness comes from family and friends.  I learned this recently while traveling in Seattle then to Colorado.  During the first few days I barely spoke to anyone, biking everywhere, isolating myself in lonerville, and felt like I didn't belong to America anymore, felt that my travels abroad had somehow changed me so much that America was no longer comfortable or familiar.  Then slowly I started meeting up with old friends.  Then I went to Colorado where I was completely surrounded by friends and family without a moment to be alone.   By the end of the month of home leave, I was once again feeling like an American who belongs, not some expat strange alien who was visiting a weird planet for a month. Both in Africa and China, I have spent large amounts of time alone; however, I am never completely alone.  Community always seems to find me.  In Africa, there were the tea guys, the fruit and rice ladies, the students, the four wives of a compound where I lived, the tree where people gathered, the accused witch who lived next door, the kids who would play games, sing, and color on my front porch.  In China, there are the back gate street food vendors, the students and teachers, the knitting ladies, the tea guy at the Baijia supermarket, the grandparents with babies and children, the cafeteria workers.  I often think I am an introverted science geek, but actually reality shows that I know how to be likable allowing a community to surround me.  My genuine curiosity about people with different life experiences and from other cultures is probably one of the reasons why I am always surrounded by community and thus happy. There are times when I think I want to join a Buddhist monastery, isolate myself even further from the outside world, find peace within meditation, silent retreats, and simple living.  Or go to Antarctica or find a job on a fishing boat and learn about the isolation of being surrounded by ice or water.  The truth of the matter is that even with this belief that I thrive best alone, I never escape people or community.  Why would I want to anyways?  Life has taught me that I am happiest surrounded by community.   Where does this desire for isolation come from?  Aren't we all seeking happiness?  I have found it so why do I seek a life in the opposite direction?

Chinese Muffin

Photoblog theme for a few days:  Food eaten in China I am not exactly sure where this muffin is baked.  I rarely see ovens.  It is not a soft, doughy type of bread like Southern yeast rolls, nor is it muffin like.  It is kind of crispy and dry somehow.  Reminds me of crackers or maybe a type of flat bread.  It crumbles quite easily.  There will be no cutting this bread into slices. Today has been hmm...  just one of those days.  Teaching was tough.  Sometimes lesson plans just don't work.  Chinese corner was tough.  Other than shopping and ordering food I haven't had to really communicate in Chinese for a while, so my head was slow with the language.  This week though I have scheduled Chinese tutor interviews.  It is time to get back to improving my language skills.  After 6 hours of teaching and Chinese corner, I crashed and took a nap.  I wonder if I am getting sick.  Then the Tree House was full of students, a good time, something nice for such a tough day.

Breakfast

With an 8 am successful class on a Sunday morning, my body reacts funny to the day of rest being a work day.  Tree House was hopping busy tonight, first meeting of writing club and tons of new students just wanting to visit.

Grandmother's Jacket

Here it is the jacket I bought yesterday.  Do I look like a Chinese grandmother?  I like the jacket because of the buttons and the high collar.  I decided to buy this jacket rather than the male jackets because it would hopefully be easy to give away to a student.  Plus it was the cheapest warm jacket I could find at 120 RMB ($17). I had a conversation with my favorite yarn shop's boss lady and asked her if she could teach me how to crochet the sturdy house slippers that everyone wears here.  You have to first buy a plastic thick rubber like sole to attach the yarn to.  Unfortunately she doesn't know how to crochet, and said I should go next door where the lady will teach me for free.  Hmm... The next door lady isn't as nice to me as this lady though, but if I want to learn a new craft I don't have to like my teacher right?  Right...  Maybe we will grow to like each other through the experience.

Mini Olympics

We were given free tickets to tonight's rehearsal performance of the opening ceremony of the Gansu Province Sports Meet.  The ceremony was modeled after an Olympics opening ceremony except there weren't many athletes in attendance.  I hope they arrive tomorrow otherwise it seems like an incredible waste of money and time to build a new stadium and to spend the summer rehearsing.  The mass number of performers, probably over 5,000 people, were all students from my city. Wednesday I spent the day trying on jackets.  Women's coats, the XXXL size, are too small in the shoulders and arms.  I would not be able to wear many layers underneath except maybe one long sleeve shirt.  Men's coats fit well and look great; however, after the dean of my department commenting twice on my boy's haircut and how it makes me look like a boy, I am not sure it would be wise to even look more male by wearing a man's coat.  So then I tried on grandmother's coats, and they fit fine with plenty of room for lots of layers.  I think I will buy a cheap grandmother's coat at 130 RMB compared to the more expensive men's coats 160-300 RMB.