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