Sitting in Seattle

We are getting close to our departure time for our flight to Atlanta.  So far today has lasted a little over thirty hours.  We went to bed really early on the 21st and got up even earlier on the 22nd, about 1 am to be exact.  My theory was if we get up early enough we'll be more tired for our flight from Beijing to Seattle.  That flight took off at 4:20 PM Beijing time.  By the time our flight took off we'd been up for 15 hours and figured that should help us sleep. Well we both slept some but not as much as we'd been hoping for.  Our review of that plan  is that it just ain't worth it.

We got into Seattle on June 22nd (same day) at 12 PM, which equaled 2 AM on the 23rd Beijing time.  So doing that math our June 22nd had lasted about 25 hours and it was still only noon.  We muddled our way through customs and got our bags switched over from Hainan Airlines to Alaska Airlines then made our way towards the light rail into the city center.  On the way we found a store that had cheerios, cold milk and diet mountain dew.  That necessitated an immediate pit stop.

Julie only let me include her hand in the picture.  Then complained I was taking to long and her Cheerios were getting soggy.

We made it into the city and headed to Pike Place where we had a nice late lunch of salmon and crab cakes.  We strolled through the market and down along the riverfront before the long day started to overcome our adrenaline and my caffeine.  It was about six o'clock by that time so we stopped to get sandwiches - Julie wants you to know hers was awesome and mine was alright - and then headed back to the airport to await our connecting flight to Atlanta and hopefully wind to a successful close what has been, with out a doubt the longest day of the year.

Last few days

It's currently Friday afternoon and if Julie and I hadn't been given today off I would be walking to my last class.  As things stand, we have had a relaxing day to say the least.  We got up early because that is what we do.  We went down to breakfast and then decided since we didn't have anything better to do to go get something better for breakfast aka McDonald's.  That trip included a quick run into the Wu-Mart to stock up on some snacks for our flights tomorrow.  Then we came back and went to the office for a few minutes and then got to watch some of the kindergarten graduation before heading to the room to watch game 7.  After that, it was lunchtime and then we have been oscillating back and forth between packing and 'playing' in the office.

Our last blog we told you that we had gone to the 'country' school on Tuesday and they took us on a field trip to the Double Dragon Gorge.  The gorge has a spectacular waterfall about a kilometer hike from a mini-train that takes you into the gorge.  In addition to hiking to the waterfall we also got to go on paddle boats!  Following our hiking and paddling we were ready for lunch and in China we've never gone hungry for very long.  An administrator from the country school was waiting for us a local restaurant and we feasted, as you've probably heard, on such appetizing courses as donkey and pig intestine.  The donkey was good, but I should have known from the smell that the pig intestine was not.

We had our normal Wednesday schedule which is just a real shame for me as I had a rough day of two whole classes.  When we arrived at dinner on Wednesday we found many more place settings than normal and glasses.  We never have glasses at dinner.  Most people don't drink anything with dinner or if you call it drinking then they drink soup out of a bowl.  We've even heard and occasionally seen that some people will drink beer out of a bowl.  Well it turns out our friend, Mr. Wang, had planned to eat with us and made sure to have some 啤酒 (Píjiǔ / beer) on hand.  Not only that but he had requested the kitchen to make quite a large spread.  Normally we have rice or noodles, a couple vegetable and maybe meat dishes and soup for dinner.  We had well over ten dishes including some 包子 (Bāozi)which are steamed buns filled with pork and are incredible.  We were very full. In Chinese to say you've eaten enough you say 吃饱啦 (Chī bǎo la) which is pronounced: cher bow la.  From what I can tell this translates to "I've eaten" or "I've eaten enough", but it is about the only effective way to get a your host to stop trying to shovel more food into you.

Thursday came and we were off to our branch schools for the last time.  Thursday was hot and the branch schools don't have air conditioning.  It wasn't pretty.  In addition to lacking air conditioning as the water supply isn't drinkable from the tap all water must be boiled.  Furthermore, these large thermos's are very popular for holding the boiled water and keep it very hot for a very long time.  All this adds up to the only drinkable water available at the branch school was even hotter than we already were.  Julie sat down to teach her 4th grade class.  Don't worry we survived.  During my last class of the day (grade 1) all the variables added up to me becoming even more convinced I was not meant to spend this much time with young children, but again don't worry we ALL survived.  

We had to get back to the center school early was there was a farewell party planned for Julie and  I.  Julie got back on time and I came in a little late, but a bunch of the students from all our classes and all the English teachers were there to wish us well.  Each of the teachers said some kind words to us and one (Mina whose wedding we attended) sang us a song during which Julie started crying and that cause Mina to start crying but she did a great job through it all (Mina that is, Julie just had to sit there and listen, but she sat and listened very well). After that all the students had little presents for us.  They had me and Julie stand up front then all the students came by giving us gifts.  Quickly it dawned on the lady running the show that there were too many gifts for us to hold and the line was halted and it was decided the rest of the presents could be given to us after picture time.  It's China, you knew there would be picture time.

After the party, all the English teachers and a couple administrators took us out to dinner.  At Chinese banquet style dinners it customary for people to give toasts throughout the dinner.  Many teachers came up to us and wished us well and that we would have a baby soon.  We know a couple of people back in the US would agree with those sentiments but please don't hold your breath.  Julie wants me to get a v ... I can't write that here.

We have one more night in China and takeoff tomorrow at 4:20 pm and then we land in Seattle at 12:00 pm on the same day!  Is it ironic I am planning to read the Time Machine on the flight?

-Ryan

If it flies, it dies.

As summer is just around the corner Julie's great nemesis in China has  reappeared, the mosquito.  The poor girl has been viciously attacked by the little miscreants for the past week.  This AM she had had enough.

We were starting our Tuesday morning, this is our last Tuesday before we fly back to the USA.  This already was no regular but the powers that be decided to switch things up and send us on a 'field-trip'.  Apparently our school has a sister school that is out in the Beijing countryside.  As we were leaving they decided it'd be nice for the students at this school to experience all that is Julie and Ryan attempting to teach English.  We were told the school has around 100 students and Julie and I would each teach a class simultaneously.  One of us would get 1, 2, and 3 and you guessed it the other would get 4, 5, and 6.  We agreed Julie could have the older students so we were ready.  Additionally, we were told we were going to be shown around the area after our lesson.  As you can see we are sticklers for getting all the details.

Back to this morning.  The mosquito's had crossed that line and Julie had decided it was time to fight back.  What she wasn't aware of was that our mosquito population was quite entrenched.  It turns out they were entrenched in her closet.  Now understand that our closets sit right next to each other and are identical in all aspects expect their contents.  Julie's closet was infested and mine didn't have a single solitary mosquito, I guess we know now why I hadn't gotten any bites so far.  The rampage began shortly after I had exited the shower and Julie was lamenting all her wounds and beginning to formulate our assault.  This corresponded with getting clothes out of her closet and finding a host of the little buggers.  Soon their were mosquito's flying out of her closet and Julie and I were viciously attacking anything with wings.  After about five straight minutes of savagery we took solace that the battle had gone our way.  We cleaned up and headed down to breakfast as if nothing had happened at all.

Upon returning to the room we made plans to do our best attempt at fumigating once we left but before we could get to far into it we noticed a group of the English teachers was congregating near the van in the parking lot.  It turns out we hadn't been told we needed to leave at 7:20.  We rushed through our fumigation and made our way out the door.  Upon returning this evening it appears we still hold the upper hand but thank God we are leaving because the numbers just aren't on our side.   

The beginning of the end

This past weekend we headed down to Shangdong province with all the Communist party members at our school.  We were told we were going to see a museum recounting the Sino-Japanese War (Japanese invasion during WWII).  What could go wrong? 

Well nothing did so I won't hold you in suspense. We headed out after our afternoon classes and the school had a bus to take us all the the train station where we caught a bullet train that dropped us off in Zaozhuang around 9 pm.  As it was a Chinese trip we had to be done with breakfast and in the bus by 7 head for who knows where.  After riding the bus over some nice road, some barely existent roads and seeing a good deal of farm landed we arrived at a river town that turned out to be on the Grand Canal.  The name of the town was Tai'erzhuang and it had recently been renovated from the ruins the previously mentioned war left it in.  This town was the site of one of Chinese victories is said war and the museum we went to afterwards recounted that battle.

At the museum, Julie and I were left free to roam around as all the Party members were busy taking pictures and then they did some sort of ritual chant that reminded me a little of when in church some reads and the congregation replies, but this one involved holding your right arm up and making a fist.  The museum was air-conditioned so we took advantage.  It was interesting how all the translations were very personalized.  Any reference to Chinese troops was written as 'us' or 'we'.  I can't remember if this is done in US museum but I don't think so.

After the museum we head to the Wei Shan Lake wetlands.  This lake is also connected to the Grand Canal and we were able to take a boat ride out on the lake (or canal, it's hard to tell) and visit an island.  They ferried us back to the buses.  Once Julie and I got our seat we were drawn to a vendor who was selling, let me call them sandwiches.  The sandwiches looked and smelled pretty good and I had been tempted to buy one but the copious crowd of flies won my better judgement.  Once on the bus my better judgement was reward as Julie and I got to watch the vendor accidentally knock one of the sandwiches on the ground, pick it up look at it and then put back in spot with all the other sandwiches for sale.  It only took a few minutes and it was bought.  It's amazing what little things can be so fascinating.  In addition to the sandwiches and duck eggs, which the area is famous for but duck eggs taste horrible so we passed, there were baby ducks and turtles for sale.  Most of the turtles were small but one vendor ran us down to show off the full grown turtle she would let us buy. 

I'm still not sure what people do with these turtles.  On previous adventures Julie and I have seen people standing on the side of the road holding up a turtle.  They are clearly advertising that they have turtle so they must want to entire into some sort of commercial activity.  Julie and I decided that turtles must be the preferred currency of taxi drivers.  As you may know we have found using a taxi in Beijing and most place in China quite difficult and now have realized they wouldn't pick us up because we didn't have turtle to pay them.  Glad to have the head-scratcher behind us.

After the wetlands we made it back to the hotel for a big dinner.  We were allowed to sleep in as we didn't have to leave for the train station until 7:30 and made it aboard uneventfully.  It was three hours on the train and another hour on the bus then we were back at school for our last Sunday in China.

Chinese Wedding

We have just finished up our Dragon Boat festival vacation.  We had 3 days of vacation.  The first two days we went to eat hamburgers.  They were the best hamburgers we have ever ever eaten. Ok, we have not had a really good hamburger in 10 months so maybe that's it.  I was so sad when I got full and couldn't finish.

The wedding today started at 10:38. Our guess is that all important things start at something ending in an 8 because that is a lucky number in China.  When we got to the wedding, fireworks were going off.  They were super loud so I'm glad we missed the most of the firework show which I think started before 10:38.  Then we ran into some of my students who are also in Mina's (the bride's) class.  We tried to talk to the students and we think they wanted us to sit with them.  We were whisked away to sit with the other teachers though so we just went with the flow.

When we got to the table there was food, cigarettes, and liquor on the table.  After about another hour the wedding started with some break dancers.  Then Mina came down the isle and she was singing a song.  She was in a new dress from the fireworks show.  After that, I don't really know what happened.  I was playing peek-a-boo with the little boy in front of us.  There was music playing the whole times and it was completely acceptable to be talking the whole time.  The little boy was wowed by me singing the Taylor Swift song when it came on. 

After that it was time to eat.  We ate lots of food and were not sure what some of the things were but for the most part everything was good.  The newly married couple came around to every table. She had on a red dress this time so there were at least 3 wardrobe changes.   At this point, guests give the couple a red envelope with money in it.  Mina seemed surprised that we knew this tradition.  After about another 30 minutes, someone said goodbye to us. After that, everyone seemed to leave pretty quickly.  We thought about going to DQ to get icecream because there was no wedding cake but we decided we were full.

On a side note, I feel like I need to share this.  We were in a really nice building in a nice part of town.  There were restrooms in the building.  During the wedding event, I saw a boy go pee pee in the potted plant in the corner of the room.  This sounds surprising but we saw at least 4 more little children go pee pee outside of restrooms before the end of the day each time knowing where the closest restroom was.

There was another incident this weekend where we "saw it all."  I won't go into detail, I'll just let you use your imagination.





This is being our last free day in China, we took the bus half way into the city to eat at my favorite hot pot restaurant.  It was as awesome as always and I will be teaching myself how to cook that when I get home.

I am now done my "homework."  Ryan said it was my turn to write the blog post.

I hope everyone enjoys the rest of the week.

Julie

Misty

During the entirety of our time in China we have not seen much rain and had grown accustom to dry weather, well all that changed about a week ago.  It almost seemed as if the turning of the calendar also flipped our ecosystem.  Back home people say April showers bring May flowers, but we had the flowers but not the showers.  It turns out they just come a little later in this little corner of the Earth. With the beginning of June the clouds rolled-in, which in fairness is a little difficult to decipher through the smog, and the humidity has gone through the roof.  I could give some physical descriptions of how that has affected us physiologically but that just doesn't seem to be in good taste.  Good taste, I must be maturing!

The other big events of the past week have included the booking of our flight and the beginning of preparations for our return.  I previously lamented the amount of time we had spent tracking flight but finally we found a flight that will get us home and it'll do so on the 22nd of June.  If you count the days you can see we are just under the two week mark.  Hard to believe. 

Given we have been working all this weekend and are off on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday for the Dragon Boat Festival we only have eight days of work left. (It's currently 7:30 on Sunday morning, so that eight days is counting today and we are serious about our counting.)  We had five days off until we were invited to go a trip with some of the teachers to Shandong province over the 14th, 15th and 16th.  So that leaves us with three days and we have a wedding to attend on one of those days.

Now this trip came out of nowhere last Thursday, but almost everything that has happened to us over here has seemed to come out of nowhere.  I was in between classes at my branch and one of the English teachers asked if I wanted to go to Shandong province over the specified days.  As I couldn't recollect where that was but in general if someone asks me do I want to go on a trip somewhere my policy is to say, so I said that sounds great but we better find out if Julie wants to go.  I was told they would have some ask her and that was all I heard of it until I returned to the center school.  Upon returning Mr. Wang (he taught us the English song for the long-term reader) tracked me down and let me know he need my passport number to book the trip (apparently Julie did want to go, I had to assume as I hadn't seen her yet).  We were also informed that, "not all the teachers got to go on the trip, only party members were allowed to go" ... "and foreigners" I had to add.  So it appears we are off on a Communist party junket.

Oh, back to the title.  It has actually been misty the past week or so, but as we have found in Beijing the smog will always persist.  The two combine to make one gray and borderline depressing vale over the world.  Yesterday I was reading an article reliving a departing journalist time in China and he recounted how when he first arrived in Beijing in 2007 they didn't have smog it was just misty all year round.

Hope this finds you well,
Ryan

The long week

We're putting the finishing touches on Monday and it marks the beginning of the end, if you will.  This will be our last month in China so we will not see another page in the calendar turn over in Asia, for a while at least.  It also was the first day of a seven day work week.  Next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are a national holiday for the Dragon Boat Festival, so we are working Monday through Sunday.  I haven't done much research on what goes on here but I'm pretty sure some people race dragon boats.  Julie and I are going to celebrate by going to a Chinese wedding. 

If you remember those pictures of me getting "arrested", then you remember Jack.  In addition to being a police officer, Jack is also the fiance to a fellow English teacher, Mina.  Today Mina was excitedly handing out the invitations to their wedding, which is on June 12th.  That's right nine days notice.  Things are a little different over here.  Another diversion from what Julie and I are used to is that the wedding starts at 10:34 AM.  Get in, get out and get on with your day?  I don't know, but we'll let you know.

Back to the this working seven days in a row thing.  It may be a stretch for me to complain as I believe I work some of the shortest hours of anyone in my demographic, at least according to that Atlantic article I read this morning.  Did you know that US men with less that 12 years of education have never worked less in the last 50 years than they do now, single mothers have never worked more which is also true for men with 16+ years of education ... glad to be fighting the stereotype.

What has been taking up most of our time is figuring out how we are going to get back to the states.  Okay we have figured out we'll take an airplane, even though Julie keeps talking about taking a boat or swimming.  The big issue is figuring out how to minimize the amount of RMB we want to carry back.  The Chinese government will allow you to carry 20,000 per person (that's a little over three grand) without declaring anything at customs.  Given a good chunk of our salary is back-end loaded in the form of bonus and reimbursements this adds some complexity in making our arrangements.  If we could buy our tickets with RMB then we should be able slide under the limit, however if we buy them with a credit card it'll be close.  So in order to avoid declaring anything I've been trying to work on the logistics to purchase the tickets with cash.  During that time the tickets decide to jump about $500 so we now have cleared all the logistics and are hopeful the middle of the week will give us a little better pricing and we can finally stop watching ticket prices.

Day seven is behind us and we are looking forward to day six.  Hope your week is off to a good start.
-Ryan

National Aviation Museum

After our Saturday trip to Cuandixia we got up early on Sunday (out the door by 7) on our way to the National Aviation Museum.  This is a former air force base about 30 miles north of downtown Beijing.  This is what necessitated our early departure.  We walked the kilometer to the bus stop just in time to watch the good bus pull away and waited for the slow bus to take us to Wu-mart and our breakfast date at McDonalds. Then hopped onto the express bus to the subway station.  Made two subway transfers onto another bus and in a short three hours we'd gotten breakfast and we walking the kilometer from the bus stop to the museum.   

A line of F-6 and variants greeted us as we walked towards the former hanger that is buried in a mountain and now serves as a museum.

F-6 (China's first 'homemade' supersonic aircraft)

This a model of the plane designed by Chinese national Feng Ru 馮如 who was living in California when he raised some money and designed his own plane kickstarting the Chinese dive into aviation.

 Unfortunately the museum was too dark for many good pictures, but it was a great exhibit containing planes that chronicled the history of aviation in China and included a plane used to scatter Zhou Enlai's ashes.  Not sure why I found that so interesting.  They also had a huge exhibit on engines which Julie just didn't enjoy as much as I did, weird?

Here is the exit from the museum.

Walking away from the museum was this line of aircraft.

Which led to this line of planes.

All told there were well over 300 aircraft strewn around the grounds and this one was one of my favorite.

Chairman Mao's plane.

What is he so happy about?

Yeah, I'm not sure either.

Cuandixia

On Saturday we visited the mountain village of Cuandixia (爨底下).  As Julie and my time is wrapping up our school has been more eager to show off a few of the cultural treasure in our part of China and on Monday informed us they would send us out to this village on the weekend if we were interested.  Julie and I jump at any opportunity to travel without the use of a bus and made plans to visit on Saturday along with a couple of our fellow teachers. 

This a symbolic character for the village of Cuandixia

Here is a pictoral breakdown of the character

This is what a dog house looked like in China, 500 years ago.  Other than the plant it doesn't seem that bad.

However, the cat got to live inside.  We talk about doggie doors but this was the cats door and went straight through the wall into the living room.

Can you guess what animals the two mountain tops are said to resemble?

There is one additional animal mountain top (on the right), what do you think?

For lunch the restauranteur let us eat in one of the hotel rooms.  This was the bed.  Yes it was huge but you may be sharing it with five of your new best friends.  It does only cost 20RMB (a little over $3/spot) so that's something.

Mmmhh, lunch time.  I thought there was plenty of good food but Julie just didn't seem to enjoy it as much as I did.  We have found that the Chinese just don't have the same need for their food to be aesthetically pleasing to the eyes or sometimes the nose either.  Julie was asked why we didn't eat the fish and said it was because we didn't like too because picking out all the bones was too difficult.  This confused our friend who quickly informed us that we could just eat the bones because the fish had been cooked long enough that the bones were now so soft they were edible.  We decided to agree to disagree.

Nap time.

Julie's favorite part of the day was after we finished touring the village we were take to see some mountains just up the road from the village.  This turned out to be the mountains.  We have no idea how this was formed all we are told is that it's Chinese name is a saying that is translated into "one line sky."

Sleeping dragon and tree hugging

As you may have heard there was bit of a disturbance in Beijing this past week that was kicked off by the possible assault of a young woman from the Anhui province - to the southeast of Beijing - in a shopping center in Beijing.  The young woman fell to her death and it was reported by the authorities that she had committed suicide and nothing else was said. 

The twitter of China - Weibo (way bwoh) - quickly disseminated the story and a report that she had been raped by security guards at the mall and then been thrown (or possible jumped out of shame) by her attackers and the local police were covering up the story.  A large scale protest materialized and the authorities called out the riot police in mass.  The mouthpiece of the government reported that 100 individuals had gathered and they were mainly from the young woman's hometown.  The pictures on Weibo clearly showed that 100 wasn't even close.  The riot police had amassed and were preventing the crowed from moving out the area outside the shopping center where the incident took place.  Reports stated that it had been place to march to Tian'anmen Square but this was successfully blocked.

After reading about all this activity on Thursday Julie and I decided it seemed like a good weekend to stay in Mentougou.  Of the many attractions in Mentougou there are two famous Buddhist temples that are just a short bus ride away from our home.  In spite of the projected high temps (95 on Saturday) I decided we should take advantage of our close proximity and visit a temple on Saturday.  Adding to our plans, while I was at kindergarten on Friday morning the teacher - she referred to herself as Snow in her email as she doesn't have an English name and that is the literal translation of her given name - there that speaks the best English asked if Julie and I would like to play basketball with her and her boyfriend on Saturday.

It had been well over a month since I made it to play basketball on the weekends and we planned to meet Snow and her boyfriend at 8:30, so I decided to go warm-up with the guys at 7.  After an hour with the guys I went back to the room to get some breakfast and see if Julie was ready.  We made it back down to the school gate to meet Snow and Sharon (her boyfriend's English name) and we headed into the gym for some HORSE and a Chinese version of around the world.  The highlight was probably when I popped one of the rubber basketballs while attempting a trick shot over the back of the backboard.  I really am special.

After basketball time we got cleaned up and relaxed for a bit before we headed out to the bus stop to make our way up the mountain to a temple.  We hadn't decided which temple just yet.  The road made me feel like I was back in the WNC mountains and the bus driver didn't want to waste any brakes on silly things like curves.  The ride wasn't long and we had reached the Jietai temple; that's how we picked, the one we came to first.  This temple has some of the oldest known pine trees in northern China and well who doesn't like old oddly shaped pine trees?

This is the pagoda hugging pine.  The pine is over a thousand years old and while only a couple of the main limbs have survived the centuries that's still pretty impressive.  It is hugging the tomb pagoda which I'm sure has an interesting story but I was much more interested in the tree.

 

At the bottom of the picture you can see a row of umbrellas.  Unfortunately our old camera couldn't really show off the details but Julie was a big fan.  You can also see the massive flower candles.

A common feature at parks, garden's and temples throughout china are stone steles.  The one in front of you has a tortoise for the base, which was very common of man of the steles at Jietai, and dragons tangled at the top.  On the face of the stele are carved writings, poems and stories.

Here is another one.  More dragons.

Speaking of dragons.  This is the sleeping dragon pine.  I don't really see it but behind Julie the tree is growing out of the bank and the trunk appears to be dropping towards the ground. I've never seen a trunk in quite that disposition.

Speaking of unique trees here's one that couldn't be denied to reach for the sky.

I couldn't pass up this photo op.  How often do you see a 'dragish' or should it be called a 'figon'?

 Julie found a few flowers:

 And then she had a visitor.  Can you spot it?

Well after all that talk about staying out of the city we hadn't heard much news of any other issues and well we hadn't had Italian food it quite sometime so on Sunday we followed our cravings into the city.  While I haven't had lasagna in a long time and might not be the best judge, but it was really good.  We've made it back to Mentougou and are settling in for the night before we head back to work in the AM.

Hope this finds you well.
Ryan

Wednesday is Thursday and other random musings

It is currently lunch break at my branch school (Shimenying) on a Wednesday.  This is being mentioned because as those who've followed us over the past eight months are aware, I shouldn't be here until tomorrow.  Julie and I have therefore declared that Wednesday is Thursday and we are still trying to figure out just why this came to pass.

To get to the bottom of this mystery I ask one of my fellow English teachers if she knew the reason and what I was told was that there maybe a meeting that necessitates the schedule change (this is clearly my paraphrase, which includes some guesswork).  What makes this theory seem possible is that school ends early on Wednesdays. The students only have six class as opposed to seven or eight (depending on grade).  Theoretically there could be a meeting that the leaders want all the teachers to attend on a Thursday but the Wednesday schedule is needed to ensure everyone can be there without cancelling class.  If this is at all confusing, please know, I sincerely empathize.

After eight months of trial and error Julie and I are starting to feel a little more confident about our abilities in the classroom or we have lowered our expectations.  The jury's still out and may remain so indefinitely.  This week and in the past several it seems we haven't had those classes where everything blows up and you get that feeling similar to herding cats.  Although we are now under two months until our contract is up it's better late than never right?  (I'll advise if that was premature.)

-Ryan

Back from QingDao (Ching Dow)

Hello All,

Hope all is well in the states.

Last Sunday morning was the sports meet at school.  Each grade of students preformed a dance or show. It was very interesting to see all of them perform.  As soon as the performance was over, Ryan and I headed out for our May Day vacation.  Since May Day was on a Wednesday, we worked Saturday and Sunday and had Monday - Wednesday off of work. 

We had a driver take us to the train station and then we took a high speed train to QingDao.  It took us over 4 hours by high speed train to get there.  Once we got off the train, we found our hotel with little trouble.  It was across the street.  We walked through a tunnel underground to find out it doesn't come out across the street.  The street was a round about so we had to cross the street multiple times to actually get across the street.

Highlights from the trip:

There is a beer, wine and liquor street.  We went to the wine street and beer street.

At the wine street, we found a wine museum, which was very nice and had most things translated into English.   We did found NC wineries on one map but the USA is mostly known for the wineries in CA.  In the middle of the tour, we had a wine tasting.  The most interesting part were the "crackers." The crackers came in a little bag with a hamburger on it.  I think they were supposed to taste like hamburgers.  The did not taste like hamburgers but they were pretty tasty.

After the wine museum, we needed to eat lunch.  We walked toward beer street.  We found many restaurants but no picture menus.  They all had seafood (still alive)  in glass containers and you just would point at what you wanted.  This made me pretty nervous about orders/eating.  I have standards about eating.  We found a place with nice looking table clothes (one of my standards) and a guy who spoke pretty good English.  Ryan order clams and "squid."  Ryan says it was "squid." I say it was octopus.  There were octopi heads on the plate! Ryan would say they were squid heads... If anyone is an underwater food expert, please help Ryan and I settle our dispute. 

Next we were off to the beer museum.  I'm pretty sure this is the reason we decided to go to QingDao.  They are famous for their beer making.  The beer has been around since 1903.  The beer they served there was actually cold! This was a nice since we often drink room temperature beer because refrigerators aren't very common around here.   

Ryan found map of QingDao that shows the bus routes.  We took the buses several times.  They are building a subway system in the city and are expected the finish it in 2014.  We think it will be easier to get around once the subway opens.

To get a view of the city, we took a ride on chair lifts. 

My favorite part of the the trip was taking a ride on the traveling beer bar.  There was a bar set up on the back of the truck and we sat on bicycle seats and could pedal.   I don't think the bicycle pedals actually helped the truck move any faster.  It was nice to have a seat and a drink in my hand as we got a tour of the shopping street.  Much better than shopping. 

If a teacher goes on a trip, it is common for her to bring back a treat or little gift for the other teachers.  Ryan and I had much discussion about what should buy them.  Sometimes they bring me things like a little mirror for my purse or a bracelet.  But more often they bring us food.  Things like vacuumed sealed meat packages or candy made with donkey hide.  One idea was to find the thing we thought was a grossest and buy them that because they would probably love it.  We just couldn't bring ourselves to do that.  At the beer tasting they gave us peanuts and we thought they were good so we decided to buy them peanuts.  They teachers liked them so much, they ordered themselves more on the internet.  And we got to use a coupon.  When I was sitting at the table waiting for Ryan, an old man came and sat in his seat.  He kept talking to me in Chinese as if I understood.  He had a tour guide that helped translate a little.  I believe he was from outside the city and had not seen many foreigners before so he was excited to see me.  He forced me to eat some of his peanuts and gave me a coupon. 

When it was time to leave, we took 3 buses, a train, 2 subway lines, 3 more buses (it was 2 bus lines but we stopped to eat dinner) and a walk back to the school.  Nothing like traveling in China. 


Well, that's all for now.  Better get back to lesson planning or job hunting.

Julie

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Wednesday is winding down in our little corner of the planet and we decided to make a Wu-mart run before dinner to stock up on some essentials (snacks and beer) for the rest of the week and our upcoming trip to Qingdao over the May Day holiday.  On Thursdays we go to our branch schools and while Julie does have, her words, little angels for students there she has never been all that impressed with the lunch offering.  While I've never used the term angels to describe my Thursday students I do have one incredible cook.  Tradeoffs, get used to 'em.  Julie is taking matters into her own hands and stocking up on bowls of ramen noodles to take with her.  Lucky girl, it's not like I can bring substitute children to teach (or the kids could sub in another teacher for that matter).

Back to our trip.  We left the school building and as it was about quarter till five there was still a big crowd milling around the street in front of our school but we did notice a larger than usual crowd congregating around what appeared to be a new sign about 50m from the entrance to our school (and home).  What was on this sign?  A bus number!

Beijing city bus signs are in green and white with a dash of red thrown in.  The first and last stops of the line are written in Pin Yin (Chinese words spelled out with the Roman alphabet) and the beginning and ending hours are listed just below.  Running horizontally the entire route is written, but only in Chinese with the characters falling vertically in white on a green field.  Why all this fuss about a bus stop?  Well, we spend a lot of time on buses and we spend a lot of time walking to buses.  The next closest bus stop is just under a KM from our school gates and while we appreciate the exercise after eight months the route has become less than thrilling. 

As you may have deciphered, Julie and I have no clue where this bus actually goes and therefore, whether it will have any grand benefit to us.  We do have hope that it will and Andy Dufresne taught me over and over "hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things."

Seems like a good place to call it a day.
-Ryan

The week that was.

Field trips, birthday parties and sports meeting practice.  They all add up to one busy week.  The long work week has taken on a new meaning since we came to China.  Julie and I definitely were not expecting how the school schedule adapts to vacations.  This adaptation involves shifting the school days from the week to the weekend.  Next week we will have a seven day school week then get Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off for May Day.  While a seven day week sounds bad, the seventh day will consist of the students sports meeting.  I'm not sure if actual sports will take place or if each class will just perform.  What I do know is that Julie and I have had at least a handful of classes cancelled so that students could practice for their class performance. 

In addition to our lessened week due to the practice we also found out that on Wednesday the entire school would be going on the Spring field trip.  So at 7:40 on Wednesday we all piled onto buses and first we were headed to the Beijing Capital Museum:

This is a replica of the city gate from Jingde which was the 'Mecca' of porcelain making for the royalty living in Beijing.  The museum had an incredible collection of Empress Dowager Cixi's - the Emelda Marcos of porcelain - collection.  The skill level is quite amazing and so this is why all those dishes we eat off of are called china.

One of my favorite displays were this 2 foot tall replica's of 'Hutong' - alley's that used to make up the streets of Beijing - life at the turn of the century, the 20th century that is.

I did get several pictures of Julie.  Some with some camels, but our camera wasn't in a very good mood  and this is the only one where she doesn't look like she is dissolving.

The second half of the field trip took us to a botanical garden.  We visited an impressive garden in Thailand but this one clearly had a much bigger budget and was quite impressive.  Then we were told there is a much better one if we have time to visit it.  Julie took a ton of flower pictures and I'll her decide if she wants to post any, but here are a few of my selections:

So this is how I should have planted my zucchini.

I wasn't expecting to see these craving and clearly I got distracted about where I was placing my hand.

What animal is this?

 Now to the pretty pictures:

Julie couldn't pass up a chance to get a photo with Minnie.

Ahh ... Spring is here.

Thursday we actually had to work again and were off to our branch schools.  Julie got a surprise and a unique opportunity to teach without power.  She said the lights came back on just as she was finishing her final class.  Electricity, who needs it?

Friday mornings mean it's time for kindergarten.  Kindergarten is of course a bit more chaotic than the rest of our week but the last two weeks it seems like the teachers are taking a queue from the students.  The last two weeks it seems like no is sure what classes we are supposed to teach and Julie and I walk around aimlessly until we finally arrive a class that seems to say, "sure, let's do English now."  After our customary stroll around the building we both found classes and even then found second classes. I got lucky and found a birthday party.  It was quite interesting as me and teacher Snow improvised a class based around singing happy birthday and eating birthday cake.  Take a look:

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Here is the birthday girl making her wish. The candle was amazing.  I have been to many kid's birthday parties in the last several years but this candle was in the shape of a flower.  Then it would open up and each petal had a candle on it and a candle in the center.  The petals would spin around the center and the candle would play happy birthday.

Some of us couldn't stop eating our cake to take a picture.

That's all for now.
-Ryan