Wednesday, April 22, 2009
I forgot
So I kind of forgot that I have this blog. But I remembered now. I know there's a lot to catch up on. But it's coming. I promise. For now, just know that I have Sarah here, and that this is great :)
Monday, April 6, 2009
太累 了! (tai lei le!) ((too tired!))
ok. So this weekend was a big one. On saturday I taught a class, surprise surprise! But on sunday I woke up early, watched the carolina game (YAY!) and went to 天安门 tiananmen square and 故宫 the forbidden city. Don't worry, I took lots of pictures. Then today, Monday, was a holiday. Will and I went to the Summer Palace with two of my other students. It was also very nice and I also took a lot of pictures. But, now I am too tired (太累了） and I can't write much about it. More to come, I promise.
!!
!!
Sunday, March 1, 2009
you can surf the net wineless here!
Today was quite the lovely Sunday. Woke up, cooked some tasty eggs and toast. Then Will and I took our chess board to a park and played a couple of games. I lost both-- I have still failed to beat Will-- but today was my best game so far. It was a nice warm 40 degrees so in the sun I was pretty comfortable. We did attract a crowd. There's a lot of Chinese chess here (I think it's the same thing as the game 'Go') but not as much guo ji xiang qi (International chess)! Little kids really liked to stop and watch, as did the laoshi (elder). Everywhere you go you wll see crowds of people playing chinese chess with big crowds around them. There's a little park that's on my walk from the subway to my house and it took me a while to figure out what the crowds were, but now I know!
Damjan and Annalies came to meet us after a couple of chess games. We walked around the park a little bit and then found a cafe in Nanluo gu xiang to play a different board game called Settlers of Catan. Nanluo Gu Xiang is a little area, near houhai (where we did the ice bikes), made up of cafes, bars, and little craft shops. It's an area of hutongs, meaning it's small little buildings, rather than big big big buildings. They're really cute, but the buildings don't have their own bathrooms so you always have to run outside to the nearest public toilet. This is what Nanluo Gu Xiang looks like:
We sat in a cafe, called xiao xin's, for a few hours with our game. It was quite relaxing. Rest assured that we were able to surf the net wineless-ly there.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Oh yeah, today...
So today, aside from writing a blog entry, reading, and making maps... I watched a LOT of sesame street clips on youtube. I'm going to use this one for one of my classes next week. But aside from that, there are some really great clips on there. This is one of my favorites:
Also, I'm reading John Irving's "A Widow For One Year". It's my 2nd book so far on this trip. Earlier I was reading "The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss.
Will and I are also playing x-box. Daddy! you should get these two games if you think about it: Afro Samuri and Street Fighter 4. They are fun :) I know it hasn't been the most strenuous day... but it has been fun!
Also, I'm reading John Irving's "A Widow For One Year". It's my 2nd book so far on this trip. Earlier I was reading "The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss.
Will and I are also playing x-box. Daddy! you should get these two games if you think about it: Afro Samuri and Street Fighter 4. They are fun :) I know it hasn't been the most strenuous day... but it has been fun!
making a map!!
I have been busy busy busy trying to establish a little bit of a routine.
Also, I have been working on a map! (you should zoom in to see Beijing a little bit better. I couldn't figure out how to get it to stay zoomed in on my blog page!)
View Larger Map
you can get to it in the future and see updates by following this link
I am teaching for a primary school in the West of Beijing. It's called CuiWei, if you look at my map it's icon is green :) I teach here 4 days each week (every day but Wednesday). I am part of a foreign teachers program that is pretty well established there. I have two classes every day, each class is 40 minutes long and has 40 kids. So basically I'm in charge of 8o seven-year-old kids. Don't worry, I have a Chinese assistant! Her name is Daisy, I think she's about the same age as me, and she speaks english-- she's a university student. She helps me when the kids need a little bit of translating (which is hopefully not often). She also helps me translate parent letters and homework slips into Chinese. She is also very helpful in keeping the kids in the back from fighting. And poking, and singing, and drawing, and talking, and whatever else you can imagine them doing. Yes, they stick things up their noses all day long too. I like to call on them when they have something in their nose because then they get really embarassed. Sometimes their head teacher, their normal chinese teacher, is in the classroom. The head teacher for one of my classes has already invited Daisy and me to her house to eat noodles at the end of the semester. I'm definitely excited about that!
Aside from this teaching job, I am also tutoring two children in the north west of the city. I tutor them once a week, on Tuesday nights. They are two 12-year old kids, one named jenny and one named jerry. I will take a picture of them next week when I tutor them. I go to Jenny's house and teach them. Jenny's mom doesn't speak English, but she's really nice to me. Jenny translates for her and I try to speak Chinese a little bit. I definitely like teaching my big classes, but I think I like tutoring these two kids a little bit more.
In addition to teaching, I have Chinese class three times per week. Each class is about two hours. I like Chinese class a lot. It's slow going but I am definitely making progress!! I have done some more things in Chinese now (in addition to talking to taxi drivers and ordering food). For example, the other day I changed money at the bank in Chinese. I also added more money to my transportation card (the card you use for the subways and busses). I even ordered a pineapple off of the street! Pretty sweet.
Also, I have been working on a map! (you should zoom in to see Beijing a little bit better. I couldn't figure out how to get it to stay zoomed in on my blog page!)
View Larger Map
you can get to it in the future and see updates by following this link
I am teaching for a primary school in the West of Beijing. It's called CuiWei, if you look at my map it's icon is green :) I teach here 4 days each week (every day but Wednesday). I am part of a foreign teachers program that is pretty well established there. I have two classes every day, each class is 40 minutes long and has 40 kids. So basically I'm in charge of 8o seven-year-old kids. Don't worry, I have a Chinese assistant! Her name is Daisy, I think she's about the same age as me, and she speaks english-- she's a university student. She helps me when the kids need a little bit of translating (which is hopefully not often). She also helps me translate parent letters and homework slips into Chinese. She is also very helpful in keeping the kids in the back from fighting. And poking, and singing, and drawing, and talking, and whatever else you can imagine them doing. Yes, they stick things up their noses all day long too. I like to call on them when they have something in their nose because then they get really embarassed. Sometimes their head teacher, their normal chinese teacher, is in the classroom. The head teacher for one of my classes has already invited Daisy and me to her house to eat noodles at the end of the semester. I'm definitely excited about that!
Aside from this teaching job, I am also tutoring two children in the north west of the city. I tutor them once a week, on Tuesday nights. They are two 12-year old kids, one named jenny and one named jerry. I will take a picture of them next week when I tutor them. I go to Jenny's house and teach them. Jenny's mom doesn't speak English, but she's really nice to me. Jenny translates for her and I try to speak Chinese a little bit. I definitely like teaching my big classes, but I think I like tutoring these two kids a little bit more.
In addition to teaching, I have Chinese class three times per week. Each class is about two hours. I like Chinese class a lot. It's slow going but I am definitely making progress!! I have done some more things in Chinese now (in addition to talking to taxi drivers and ordering food). For example, the other day I changed money at the bank in Chinese. I also added more money to my transportation card (the card you use for the subways and busses). I even ordered a pineapple off of the street! Pretty sweet.
Monday, February 9, 2009
moon festival
Ok. So. There are tons of fireworks going off tonight... I'm not exactly sure why but I know it has something to do with the full moon. We've seen a LOT of good ones. But the real news is that the building next to the CCTV tower is BURNING DOWN. If you don't know what the CCTV tower is, but you watched the olympics, then you are wrong, you actually do know what the CCTV tower is. But in any case, here is a site with some pictures:
http://chineseye.com/path-users-usr_center&option=blog_show&blogid=559&userid=5.html
rumors abound about this fire.
Also, I got a job. I'm most likely signing a contract with FESCO on wednesday. yayyyyyy for having a job!!
http://chineseye.com/path-users-usr_center&option=blog_show&blogid=559&userid=5.html
rumors abound about this fire.
Also, I got a job. I'm most likely signing a contract with FESCO on wednesday. yayyyyyy for having a job!!
Friday, February 6, 2009
I can't belive I'm still writing about Chengdu...
Ok. So I know that I said I would be back a lot sooner than this, but I’ve been doing big things! I will get back to the rest of the Chengdu trip in a bit. But first I want to recap my tiny victories from today.
I had my first demo class. After an interview with a woman at FESCO (more on FESCO in a minute) she asked me to prepare a short (10 min) demo class. I had to ‘teach’ 4 grown people (3 women, 1 man) a lesson on the subject matter of my choosing. I interviewed for a job teaching 8 year olds so I had to pretend they were 8. This was a daunting task at first… how am I supposed to talk to these grown, educated individuals like they are 8? I thought I would feel like a huge idiot, but really it was not that hard. I taught them about animals… I drew a land scene with a tiger, a fish, and a bird. I taught them words like stripes, feathers, fur, scales, fins, wings. We worked on pronunciation and structures for sentences: “A bird has wings.” “A fish has scales.” “A tiger does not have feathers.” I think that they enjoyed it. In any case, I will hear back from them on Monday. I am really hoping that it works out because it would be really steady, reliable work. I would be working in a school, 2 40-minute lessons per day, 4 days per week. The only downside to this is that it would require about an hour commute (on the subway). Not that bad, considering the pay, but not ideal.
On the way to my demo class I had another tiny victory: I chatted with the taxi driver (in Chinese of course!!). Even getting to the interview was a little victory… I didn’t have enough time to get lunch and make the trip via subway after my Chinese lesson. So, I had lunch and planned my demo lesson at a café near my house called the Bookworm. The problem is, I didn’t know how to tell the taxi driver where to take me. There are two solutions to this problem: one solution is to call someone who speaks Chinese and can tell the driver where to go and hand the phone to the driver. The other solution would be to show the driver the address or a map. So, I opened an email from the school with the address (which was in characters) and asked one of the servers at the café to copy the address for me. I handed the driver the address and said “please take me to this place” and “do you know it?” IN CHINESE. The drivers often like to chat so he was asking me how long I had been in Beijing, how long I had studied Chinese, why I was going to the place he was taking me. He asked me about jobs in America, he pointed out the embassies that we were passing, he told me what neighborhood he lived in, asked me what neighborhood I lived in. I told him that I like Chinese food and my new favorite dish is “Yu xiang rou si” (鱼香肉丝). Literally this means “fragrant fish pork strip” which is funny because it’s really a pork dish. It is pork strips in a sort of spicy sweet-ish sauce with strips of bell peppers. I was so happy with myself!! There were definitely times that I didn’t know what he was saying but it’s ok.
Also: I learned how to type on my computer in Chinese character. Google can teach you so much!
Ok, so that’s what I did today. Now more about the Chengdu trip!
After the big night of CNY we took it easy the next day. We hung out with our new friends at their house and played a lot of texas hold ‘em and apples to apples. Naps were had and beers were enjoyed. The day was pretty lazy, the main event was HOT POT. We went to a hot pot restaurant with 8 people. A hot pot is when your whole group sits around a big table with a stove in the middle. The stove keeps two kinds of broth hot: one spicy and one mild. The group orders all kinds of meats and veggies and you cook them in the broth. We ate various kinds of beef and pork (I couldn’t name them if you wanted me to), potatoes, mushrooms. The things were new: tofu skin. This is exactly what it sounds like… it looks like a long strip, maybe kind of like bacon, but it is obviously made out of tofu. My new favorite thing for hot pot is lotus root. It’s kind of starchy and super tasty. As I said, we took it easy on this day, hot pot was definitely the highlight. That and not much is open over CNY.
Good thing we took it easy because the next day we visited the Luoshan Da Fo, meaning the Great Buddha (Da Fo), located in Luoshan. We had to ride in a van for about 3 hrs to get from Chengdu to Luoshan. But it was definitely worth the drive. The Buddha is built into the side of a mountain and is 71 meters tall. Yes. 71 METERS. The Buddha’s TOE is 26 feet tall. Sooooooo big. To view the Buddha you can either take a boat and view it from a river or climb up a mountain. We climbed the mountain. When you get to the top of the mountain you’re at the Buddha’s head-level. You then stand in a line that snakes back and forth waiting to get to stairs that you go down, eventually ending up at the Buddha’s feet, looking up. Now, Luoshan is a much smaller town than Beijing. When we were at the Buddha we were almost as much of an attraction to the Chinese tourists as the Buddha! The whole time we were standing in line people were staring at us, talking to us, taking pictures of us… I guess it was kind of a weird mix of interesting and entertaining. I really really liked seeing the Buddha, it was incredibly big and set into the mountain which was really cool. But I think the stairs to the feet of the Buddha may have been one of the most amazing parts. Sadly, as I said, my camera was broken…I took some pictures of the stairs but Katie didn’t post them on facebook and I haven’t gotten a cd yet from her. I was trying to get some pictures from google but it looks like China is blocking my access to them… for some reason. If you want to catch the stairs you can go to google and do an image search for “Leshan Great Buddha Stairs”. Happy exploring…!
I am working on getting pictures from the Buddha but right now I only have tiny thumbnails... I saved them from facebook (I used Will's account) but for some reason they are tiny tiny. I will try to get Katie to burn me a CD. Pictures soon I promise!!
Ok, I need to go socialize and make some friends now so more to come later. Just so everyone knows—I picked up my camera, it’s fixed, so more pictures soon!!
I had my first demo class. After an interview with a woman at FESCO (more on FESCO in a minute) she asked me to prepare a short (10 min) demo class. I had to ‘teach’ 4 grown people (3 women, 1 man) a lesson on the subject matter of my choosing. I interviewed for a job teaching 8 year olds so I had to pretend they were 8. This was a daunting task at first… how am I supposed to talk to these grown, educated individuals like they are 8? I thought I would feel like a huge idiot, but really it was not that hard. I taught them about animals… I drew a land scene with a tiger, a fish, and a bird. I taught them words like stripes, feathers, fur, scales, fins, wings. We worked on pronunciation and structures for sentences: “A bird has wings.” “A fish has scales.” “A tiger does not have feathers.” I think that they enjoyed it. In any case, I will hear back from them on Monday. I am really hoping that it works out because it would be really steady, reliable work. I would be working in a school, 2 40-minute lessons per day, 4 days per week. The only downside to this is that it would require about an hour commute (on the subway). Not that bad, considering the pay, but not ideal.
On the way to my demo class I had another tiny victory: I chatted with the taxi driver (in Chinese of course!!). Even getting to the interview was a little victory… I didn’t have enough time to get lunch and make the trip via subway after my Chinese lesson. So, I had lunch and planned my demo lesson at a café near my house called the Bookworm. The problem is, I didn’t know how to tell the taxi driver where to take me. There are two solutions to this problem: one solution is to call someone who speaks Chinese and can tell the driver where to go and hand the phone to the driver. The other solution would be to show the driver the address or a map. So, I opened an email from the school with the address (which was in characters) and asked one of the servers at the café to copy the address for me. I handed the driver the address and said “please take me to this place” and “do you know it?” IN CHINESE. The drivers often like to chat so he was asking me how long I had been in Beijing, how long I had studied Chinese, why I was going to the place he was taking me. He asked me about jobs in America, he pointed out the embassies that we were passing, he told me what neighborhood he lived in, asked me what neighborhood I lived in. I told him that I like Chinese food and my new favorite dish is “Yu xiang rou si” (鱼香肉丝). Literally this means “fragrant fish pork strip” which is funny because it’s really a pork dish. It is pork strips in a sort of spicy sweet-ish sauce with strips of bell peppers. I was so happy with myself!! There were definitely times that I didn’t know what he was saying but it’s ok.
Also: I learned how to type on my computer in Chinese character. Google can teach you so much!
Ok, so that’s what I did today. Now more about the Chengdu trip!
After the big night of CNY we took it easy the next day. We hung out with our new friends at their house and played a lot of texas hold ‘em and apples to apples. Naps were had and beers were enjoyed. The day was pretty lazy, the main event was HOT POT. We went to a hot pot restaurant with 8 people. A hot pot is when your whole group sits around a big table with a stove in the middle. The stove keeps two kinds of broth hot: one spicy and one mild. The group orders all kinds of meats and veggies and you cook them in the broth. We ate various kinds of beef and pork (I couldn’t name them if you wanted me to), potatoes, mushrooms. The things were new: tofu skin. This is exactly what it sounds like… it looks like a long strip, maybe kind of like bacon, but it is obviously made out of tofu. My new favorite thing for hot pot is lotus root. It’s kind of starchy and super tasty. As I said, we took it easy on this day, hot pot was definitely the highlight. That and not much is open over CNY.
Good thing we took it easy because the next day we visited the Luoshan Da Fo, meaning the Great Buddha (Da Fo), located in Luoshan. We had to ride in a van for about 3 hrs to get from Chengdu to Luoshan. But it was definitely worth the drive. The Buddha is built into the side of a mountain and is 71 meters tall. Yes. 71 METERS. The Buddha’s TOE is 26 feet tall. Sooooooo big. To view the Buddha you can either take a boat and view it from a river or climb up a mountain. We climbed the mountain. When you get to the top of the mountain you’re at the Buddha’s head-level. You then stand in a line that snakes back and forth waiting to get to stairs that you go down, eventually ending up at the Buddha’s feet, looking up. Now, Luoshan is a much smaller town than Beijing. When we were at the Buddha we were almost as much of an attraction to the Chinese tourists as the Buddha! The whole time we were standing in line people were staring at us, talking to us, taking pictures of us… I guess it was kind of a weird mix of interesting and entertaining. I really really liked seeing the Buddha, it was incredibly big and set into the mountain which was really cool. But I think the stairs to the feet of the Buddha may have been one of the most amazing parts. Sadly, as I said, my camera was broken…I took some pictures of the stairs but Katie didn’t post them on facebook and I haven’t gotten a cd yet from her. I was trying to get some pictures from google but it looks like China is blocking my access to them… for some reason. If you want to catch the stairs you can go to google and do an image search for “Leshan Great Buddha Stairs”. Happy exploring…!
I am working on getting pictures from the Buddha but right now I only have tiny thumbnails... I saved them from facebook (I used Will's account) but for some reason they are tiny tiny. I will try to get Katie to burn me a CD. Pictures soon I promise!!
Ok, I need to go socialize and make some friends now so more to come later. Just so everyone knows—I picked up my camera, it’s fixed, so more pictures soon!!
Saturday, January 31, 2009
"Can we deep fry that?"
So! We're back from Chengdu. I know I haven't really written anything about the Chinese New Year festivities but I will attempt to do so shortly. While I was there I dropped my camera. Sad, yes, but I am getting it repaired right now and it's only going to cost maybe 50 bucks. So pictures will have to be attached later.
But first, let me say this: when the ambassador's family left Beijing some of Will's roommates got to take some stuff the house that they were leaving. These acquisitions included a deep fryer. Will and I were going to make chicken and bake some sweet potatoes and broccoli. These plans were thwarted when we walked in and the other roommates were preparing for fried chicken. We commenced frying everything that we could find. Here is a list of what we fried:
One thing you should know about Chinese New Year is that it lasts from January 25th to February 15. There are several days of celebration that happen. I'm not really sure what they all are or if there are more than I know about... but I haven't read any wikipedia on it yet. I do know these things:
Jan 25th:
We were pretty lazy during the day. We drank some beers, ate cheese and crackers, made brownies, played cards, ate oranges, played apples to apples, and snacked. This, apparantly (eating and gambling and drinking), is how CNY is supposed to go down. We also went shopping for fireworks. Fireworks were going off all day long (yes, even during the daylight). As it got darker and while we were decorating the roof for the party we could watch fireworks going off sporadically all around the city. The whole night people who had been around years beffore us were telling me that it was "nothing compared to what midnight will be like" but I had a hard time understanding because it seemed like a lot of fireworks were going off.
Finally around 7 we went to a restaurant called Blue Chair. Actually, it has a chinese name but Megan said they never really knew what it was. But it has really prominent blue chairs. So it's just known as Blue Chair to them, and now to us. The food in Sichuan is really spicey but it's soooooo good! I can't remember everything we had, nor did I ever really know all of the names or what they were. But I did have some spicey bullfrog. Honestly I did not think I would enjoy frog. But, I am so glad that I tried it because it's actually really tender and delicious. In the middle of dinner we all got up because there were some awesome fireworks going off (IN THE STREET!!) right outside of the restaurant. It was great! These fireworks that I'm talking about are NOT SMALL. So that was fun and we returned to finish our food and get back to the house to greet the party guests.
When we got back to the apartment we all got dressed in costumes. Eoin wore a red apron with an ox on it and a panda hat. Megan had a bathrobe and a blue curly wig. Will wore a thai chi outfit with a huge afro wig. I wore a fish hat (think finding nemo) and a lifepreserver. katie had some devil horns... there were some others and I'm sure there were pictures but I can't remember what they were. When the pictures come out I will of course post them. So now the party is starting... eventually there are about 30 people there. At 11:30 we all headed up to the roof to start blowing stuff up. We had music going which made it extra festive until we couldn't hear anymore because there were fireworks everywhere. And when I say everywhere I mean EVERYWHERE. I don't even know how I would begin to describe the intensity of this hour. But, luckily, Adam posted a youtube video that includes some pictures and some video of the night. It's amazing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiGALS-u2Fg if for some reason you can't see this link just search for RedChina66 on youtube and the video is called CNY2009.
Ok, that's all I can write for today, I'm tired and I need to drink some water or some tea after all of that fried food. More on the rest of the Chengdu trip, including the temple fair and the giant buddha coming soon!!
But first, let me say this: when the ambassador's family left Beijing some of Will's roommates got to take some stuff the house that they were leaving. These acquisitions included a deep fryer. Will and I were going to make chicken and bake some sweet potatoes and broccoli. These plans were thwarted when we walked in and the other roommates were preparing for fried chicken. We commenced frying everything that we could find. Here is a list of what we fried:
- chicken wings/legs
- chicken strips
- beer battered onion rings
- sweet potato chips
- french fries
- dumplings
- oreo wafer bars!
- snickers
- Toblerone
- bananas
One thing you should know about Chinese New Year is that it lasts from January 25th to February 15. There are several days of celebration that happen. I'm not really sure what they all are or if there are more than I know about... but I haven't read any wikipedia on it yet. I do know these things:
- Everyone gets off from work for at least a few days. People go home. This is a time to be with family and eat and bring in the new year. This year we are leaving the year of the rat and entering the year of the ox. I am an ox, so this is supposed to be a good year for me! I'm supposed to always have something red on this year.
- The first big night of CNY is Jan 25th. This is what I was in Chengdu for.
- The night of the 30th is the dumpling night. more on this later.
- The last big night is the 15th, I'm not sure what we do on the 15th but I guess I will find out and have a whole separate blog entry.
- And potentially the most important thing: Fireworks are legal during this time period. I think the fireworks are supposed to scare off the bad demons and bring prosperity. This is probably in wikipedia too. In any case, it's good luck to set off fireworks, you are supposed to do it.
Jan 25th:
We were pretty lazy during the day. We drank some beers, ate cheese and crackers, made brownies, played cards, ate oranges, played apples to apples, and snacked. This, apparantly (eating and gambling and drinking), is how CNY is supposed to go down. We also went shopping for fireworks. Fireworks were going off all day long (yes, even during the daylight). As it got darker and while we were decorating the roof for the party we could watch fireworks going off sporadically all around the city. The whole night people who had been around years beffore us were telling me that it was "nothing compared to what midnight will be like" but I had a hard time understanding because it seemed like a lot of fireworks were going off.
Finally around 7 we went to a restaurant called Blue Chair. Actually, it has a chinese name but Megan said they never really knew what it was. But it has really prominent blue chairs. So it's just known as Blue Chair to them, and now to us. The food in Sichuan is really spicey but it's soooooo good! I can't remember everything we had, nor did I ever really know all of the names or what they were. But I did have some spicey bullfrog. Honestly I did not think I would enjoy frog. But, I am so glad that I tried it because it's actually really tender and delicious. In the middle of dinner we all got up because there were some awesome fireworks going off (IN THE STREET!!) right outside of the restaurant. It was great! These fireworks that I'm talking about are NOT SMALL. So that was fun and we returned to finish our food and get back to the house to greet the party guests.
When we got back to the apartment we all got dressed in costumes. Eoin wore a red apron with an ox on it and a panda hat. Megan had a bathrobe and a blue curly wig. Will wore a thai chi outfit with a huge afro wig. I wore a fish hat (think finding nemo) and a lifepreserver. katie had some devil horns... there were some others and I'm sure there were pictures but I can't remember what they were. When the pictures come out I will of course post them. So now the party is starting... eventually there are about 30 people there. At 11:30 we all headed up to the roof to start blowing stuff up. We had music going which made it extra festive until we couldn't hear anymore because there were fireworks everywhere. And when I say everywhere I mean EVERYWHERE. I don't even know how I would begin to describe the intensity of this hour. But, luckily, Adam posted a youtube video that includes some pictures and some video of the night. It's amazing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiGALS-u2Fg if for some reason you can't see this link just search for RedChina66 on youtube and the video is called CNY2009.
Ok, that's all I can write for today, I'm tired and I need to drink some water or some tea after all of that fried food. More on the rest of the Chengdu trip, including the temple fair and the giant buddha coming soon!!
Friday, January 23, 2009
worst blogger ever...
So... yeah, I have realized that I'm sort of terrible at blogging. I never thought I would describe myself as "a blogger" but what're you gonna do. I'm going to try to be better. I also have realized that I'm not very good at taking pictures (well once I take them they're alright but the actual act of taking them is something I don't do very often). So here's an update of some things that have happened in the last week-ish:
On Jan 15th I went to a party at the American Embassy Residence! Crazy? Yes. The Ambassador to China has a son that's our age and Will is friends with him. Will, me, all of his roommates went to this party at the residence. The ambassador is changing with the administration change so they had one last party. It was fun, I met lots of people! Other than that I've been busy bouncing around and getting things like bed sheets, towels, food so that I can stay at my apartment. Things take longer than you think to get done and it's so cold that it's good to minimize the time outside.
Other than staying warm and running around things have been kept to a minimum a little bit. Partly because will has been sick and it's like 1 degree outside so I've been happy to hole up inside a bit. Resting up for the Chinese New Year! It's going to be fun. There's only one week (this week) where fireworks are legal (in Beijing at least) and this is the week. So people have been shooting them off and it's pretty fun.
For the New Year I am headed to Chengdu, a town in Sichuan. I had only heard of it before because it was where all of the news broadcasts came from when the Earthquake happened. Will hasn't been there either. We are going with a couple of his friends who know people down there. Supposedly it's really fun! I will get to see some Pandas and perhaps even hug one. At least there's rumors that I could hug a panda. I am trying not to get my hopes up too much. I've held a koala before so hugging a panda seems like next on the list, right? I mean, I don't want to make little kitty too jealous or anything but pandas are so damn cute. Except when they bite your face off.
I miss home... I miss my sis, and I miss driade and margarets and sage and bagels and barbeque and so much other food. but here I can get kungpao chicken that's so spicey it will melt your face off if you're not careful... and it's only 2 bucks. The dumplings that I promised I would eat every day have proven to be much more elusive than the kungpao chicken. Sad, but true. but when I get them they are soooooo tastyyyyyy...
On Jan 15th I went to a party at the American Embassy Residence! Crazy? Yes. The Ambassador to China has a son that's our age and Will is friends with him. Will, me, all of his roommates went to this party at the residence. The ambassador is changing with the administration change so they had one last party. It was fun, I met lots of people! Other than that I've been busy bouncing around and getting things like bed sheets, towels, food so that I can stay at my apartment. Things take longer than you think to get done and it's so cold that it's good to minimize the time outside.
Other than staying warm and running around things have been kept to a minimum a little bit. Partly because will has been sick and it's like 1 degree outside so I've been happy to hole up inside a bit. Resting up for the Chinese New Year! It's going to be fun. There's only one week (this week) where fireworks are legal (in Beijing at least) and this is the week. So people have been shooting them off and it's pretty fun.
For the New Year I am headed to Chengdu, a town in Sichuan. I had only heard of it before because it was where all of the news broadcasts came from when the Earthquake happened. Will hasn't been there either. We are going with a couple of his friends who know people down there. Supposedly it's really fun! I will get to see some Pandas and perhaps even hug one. At least there's rumors that I could hug a panda. I am trying not to get my hopes up too much. I've held a koala before so hugging a panda seems like next on the list, right? I mean, I don't want to make little kitty too jealous or anything but pandas are so damn cute. Except when they bite your face off.
I miss home... I miss my sis, and I miss driade and margarets and sage and bagels and barbeque and so much other food. but here I can get kungpao chicken that's so spicey it will melt your face off if you're not careful... and it's only 2 bucks. The dumplings that I promised I would eat every day have proven to be much more elusive than the kungpao chicken. Sad, but true. but when I get them they are soooooo tastyyyyyy...
Sunday, January 11, 2009
ICE BIKES-PS
PS- that is indeed a sheep pulling a sled on the ice. Little blurry because I was in motion when that was taken, but I felt it should be documented.
Question: Why call it "a series of near disasters?"
Answer: Because it seems to me that everything here in china is kind of like a near disaster. People are running around all over the place, cars are honking, construction is going down, taxis are cutting across traffic to pick you up... but somehow things work out. I have not yet seen a single accident.
Yesterday, Will and I went to a part of Beijing, not far from Will’s place—maybe 25 min walk? We tried to take a taxi but the traffic sucked—called Hou Hai. It’s kind of like a little lake district. Will was talking about renting a paddleboat but when we got there we realized that (of COURSE!) the lakes were frozen over. So instead of a boat we rented ICE BIKES. That was fun, we biked around for a little bit. Then we walked around the hutongs (old architecture instead of the new big crazy buildings) and went into a tea shop and played pool, ate tea and popcorn and stayed warm for a while. Then we took the subway to Tiananmen square at night. It was all lit up… we thought we would be able to go inside the gates but we couldn’t ☹ Sorry daddy, no good pictures of that yet since we couldn’t get very close. It was SOOOO Cold that night so we only walked around the government buildings for a little bit before getting dinner at this place called QuanJude which is the most famous place to get Beijing (or Peking) duck. Pretty much the only things on the menu are duck related. You can get pretty much any and all parts of the duck. But we got the whole duck, which they bring to your table and slice up for you. So rich. We also had some really tasty mushrooms and bamboo shoots, as well as some sort of eggplant. A bit pricey, but the best of the best… supposedly. It was really really good, but not something I would eat every day. I think our meal cost 300 Kuai, which is about 45 bucks. Compare that to the noodles that we had a couple of days ago: 8 Kuai, $1.15.
We have been outside doing various errands and sightseeing, but it’s SO cold that a lot of the sights I think will be a lot more enjoyable in a couple of months. We also go out to meet some of will’s friends: we have had dinner at his best friends’ house, they cooked soup for us. Damjan and his fiancé Annalies (Damjan went to ECHHS with me) made us brunch this morning. I think tomorrow I am going to talk to the Chinese girl I met about moving in with her. I like staying with will but I don’t like being dependent on him to come and go. I also think that if I wasn’t with him all the time I would go exploring a little bit more. I have to walk to do that though since I’m not quite sure I could handle a taxi yet. This girl seems like a good roommate… she used to work at the restaurant that Will was running (but before he worked there). Will and I went to have dinner with her to meet her and stuff and he said that as far as a Chinese roommate goes, she would be a good one because she seemed pretty open to western culture—a lot of her friends were foreign, she wanted to practice English with me, could help me with my Chinese, wants to go to school in DC.
Tomorrow I am going to go to a school, www.frontiers.com to take a placement test and get these Chinese classes under way so that hopefully I CAN take a taxi by myself! I did an interview at an English school the other day also… they said they would pay me 130kuai/hr (about 20 bucks) to just sit and CHAT with someone. No lesson plans, no books really, just talking. Sounded pretty good to me. They said people pretty much just want to practice speaking English, not so many people are worried about passing tests.
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