China--go big or go home!

Besides the large population of people you see everywhere, I am constantly finding these giants in the local markets...

(Regular-sized bottle of Tsingtao beer, squash, and a honey pomelo) 

Sunday Afternoon

On an unusually peaceful Sunday afternoon...

A flute player wandered into our little village.  He wore a backpack, shabby clothing, walked with the aid of 2 crutches... and played such an entrancing strain.  I spied upon him from my window.  What was he doing?  From my observations, I could not tell you.  He simply walked through, playing his flute.
I hope that you enjoy his music as much as I did.

Back in China

      As we crested the hill in our rented Ford Focus, the view of sprawling Los Angeles gave me the impression that we were driving into China.  After weeks spent just getting used to the quiet and slower-moving crowds, we were on our way back.  Back to China. 
     That moment was over a week ago.  I am currently sitting in our sixth-floor apartment (but you have to press "7" on the elevator!), and thinking about this transition.  On the flight over, I did not feel that it was another momentous occasion--just another 12-hour flight that we would be taking to get where we were going.  Only, I didn't really, REALLY take the time to realize where we were going.  I was in autopilot mode---just going.  And we happened to be headed to China at the moment.
   Minus the monsoonal rains that poured down as we waited on the tarmac of Beijing Airport-delaying our midnight flight to Yantai- the trip went off without a hitch.  We were met at the Yantai Airport by our friend's trusty driver, George, who deposited us safely at the doorstep of our apartment building.  We crawled into bed at 2:30 in the morning, and we were officially "back."

     While Zach was very happy to be back, and was handling the transition well, I experienced feelings that I had not been expecting.  I had thought that I would slide right back in to life in China, and be rejoicing all the way that I did not have to figure all this out again.  But it seems that without the distraction of novelty, feelings of displacement, loneliness, and "otherness" crept into my mind...especially in hearing the words for "American," "foreigner," and "them" right and left while walking by.  It was also very difficult, this time, to accept being stared at everywhere we went.  My thoughts became so anxious that I knew I was heading down an unhealthy mental road--especially for expats.  Rather than being holed up at home and holed up in my mind, I needed to get out. 
     Zach and I took a walk down a sleepy, tree-lined street to the beach that afternoon.  We talked about everything I was feeling as we strolled along the sidewalk and the sand.  By the end of the walk, something in my mind had changed, and I finally felt "safely back" in China.  The stares continued as we walked along, but I took them in stride.  I believe that the antidote for what I was feeling was the very cause of my irrational fear.  I needed to get back out there and experience China.  To just allow myself to "be" in China.  And of course I cannot end this conclusion without saying that I also needed my best friend to talk me through it.  Thank you, Zachariah.

   We are both safely back in China,
    and the school year is just about to begin...
...but that is a whole other crazy barrel of monkeys.

P.S.  "...I took them in stride."  Get it?   

7 Weeks Left ...

Its been a long hard road!

Currently, we have only about 6 weeks of instruction left in the semester.  Add to that one week of finals, and one week of extra activities, and we are done soon!

I have been given a gift of 8 extra classes, courtesy of a teacher who left abruptly.  Leaving China can be as difficult as entering China, so some teachers who cannot hack it (or want to leave early because their contract was not renewed for the next year) leave suddenly and without telling anyone.

Leaving suddenly can get you prohibited from working in China again and having to leave a bunch of stuff, not to mention generating a bad reference and wasting 2 years of teaching.

This particular teacher's contract was not renewed, and he left over the weekend.  Some of us subbed for him Monday and Tuesday, and Wednesday it was made official: he has left the country.  So, we have his classes now.  Sigh, this a a lot of work.  But, the 8th and 9th grade ICT classes are pretty good, and I had them last semester so we can just continue what we were working on.


Here is a link to some pictures I have taken around Yew Wah.

Around Yew Wah

Around our Apartment



Enjoy!

The Great Wall

I still cannot believe it. I have grown up seeing pictures of this world wonder—one that was only accessible to me through visual media. But today, that all changed. I walked across the Great Wall.

We hired a tour guide who met us at our hotel with transportation at 9 a.m., and were whisked away one and a half hours outside the city to the Wall. We drove through poor villages, beautiful farmland that reminded us so much of the Central Valley of California. As we got closer to our destination, another area with a poor village on one side of the street, and vacation homes on the other. This really highlighted one truth of China: that while one street can separate the two, the gap between the rich and poor is, in reality, vast. As our van wove through more countryside spotted with Chinese tourist traps, and further up into the mountains, we spotted it. High upon the ridges wove the Great Wall itself.

Due to the amount of traffic (think Grand Canyon National Park), we hopped out of our van as we neared our destination. After short hike up part of the hill, a short pit stop (thank goodness I had brought my own TP…the restroom had run out!), we purchased our tickets for the gondola, which would ferry us the rest of the way up the mountain. You can choose to hike up to the Wall, but today we chose to gondola it in order to save some time, because we planned on visiting the Summer Palace also this day. The mountains here are very steep, and we were definitely grateful for the gondolas! After a short ride--and no incidents--we were there. Touching and walking on the stones of the ancient Great Wall.

I still do not know if I can believe that I was actually there. The view of the Great Wall was extensive and breathtaking…yet I was walking upon its stones, and climbing its guard towers! It seems so surreal…as if the glass surrounding historical artifacts in a museum suddenly melted away, and all the patrons began to handle the artifacts and make use of them. This is a national treasure of China…and I was allowed to dirty it with my shoes and with the corrosive oil from my hands!

Highlights and interesting moments from the day

· Beijing is very different than Shanghai! Even though Shanghai has a denser population, Beijing seems crowded just about everywhere you go. ESPECIALLY in the subways. That has been a shock! Our subway trips have already been an adventure of sorts…an adventure to another place where these things happen…

o …our subway car’s doors cannot close, because a few people are half in, half out, trying to squeeze in. A Beijing Subway staff member, who earlier had been directing people around the platform with a bullhorn, walks over and pushes those people in—packing the whole subway car like a can of sardines. Yes, this was our first experience of professional subway pushers!

o …we begin walking to get into the subway car, but the force of the pushing from the great mass of those behind us half-carries, half-squeezes us into the car. Ai ya!

· We visited the Capital Museum, the architecture of which is astounding! My favorite exhibit of all was the ancient paintings. What struck me about many of these paintings was the level of honesty and reality they were given. Many were portraits of emperors and high-ranking officials, and when I looked into their painted faces, I could see the real person. I saw scraggly beards, one droopy eye, large eyes, almond eyes, and fat cheeks. This honesty really touched me—why exactly, I am not completely sure—but perhaps it was because these paintings portrayed people who were once flesh and blood, and human. Not cold, stone, unmoving statues.

• For dinner, we ate at Peter’s Tex Mex Restaurant. It was the first Mexican food that we have had (not made by ourselves) in a long time now. Eating those burritos, fajitas, enchiladas, chimichangas, tacos, and listening to mariachi music, I think we all found ourselves transported outside of China for the evening. It was a lovely mini-vacation within our vacation, and I think that we might be back for another before returning to Yantai.

Arrival in Beijing!

We are so excited to be here in Beijing! Getting here took longer than we expected (mostly due to the fact that our one-hour flight was delayed for almost an hour), but we are here! We are staying in the lovely Inner Mongolia Grand Hotel that is a stone’s throw from Tian An Men Square and the Forbidden City (okay, that is an exaggeration, but we are CLOSE!) Besides the proximity to these famous locations, our hotel also has soft beds! This is an oddity for China, even for hotels in China. Oh my goodness…we have not slept in a soft bed in 8 months (minus the week in the Philippines), and it is soooooooo comfortable. J We are very happy to be here, and are so excited for all of the amazing sights that we will be seeing.