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!!