Thanksgiving in Kaifeng

Last week was Thanksgiving. And even here in China, we had a real one-- we'd been preparing for about a week, deciding what food we should (attempt) to make and what we needed to buy online. None of us have made Thanksgiving dinner, or HAD a real Thanksgiving away from our families (I did miss it when I was abroad in Japan), so this was a new thing for us all.

We agreed that the courses would be: turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole, cranberries, corn, rolls, and pumpkin pie w/ whipped cream. We knew immediately that the turkey would HAVE to be bought online, and for a wild few days we actually considered getting a LIVE turkey. That was obviously voted down and we purchased a frozen one off taobao (a Chinese site kind of like ebay). Along with the turkey, we also got cranberries, and brownie mix. Josh added the brownie mix at the end, and we didn't actually make brownies, we just ate the mixed batter throughout the day as we cooked. Yum.
[picture = Ben with our turkey from taobao! It was still frozen when it arrived.]


Everything else we tried to find at "biggest Sam's ever Sam's" our name for, well, the biggest San Mao Shopping Center that we've seen in Kaifeng. We got potatoes, what we thought were sweet potatoes, beans, canned corn, bread, green onions, crackers (for casserole), and other random ingredients.

Cooking began the day before, and I wasn't able to participate because I was planning for classes, but they made the pumpkin pie and the green bean hot dish. We had one little microwave-sized oven (that Ben purchased) and two hot plates with pots and pans to cook with. Thankfully, the turkey we got (an 8lb I believe) *just* fit into the mini-oven.
[Josh and Marlie cooking the day before.]


The next day (Thanksgiving Day!) we started as soon as I returned from new campus after classes. I almost did all the stuffing myself, while the others took care of the turkey and peeling, cleaning, and cutting potatoes. (About 7 pounds/20 or so potatoes.) We guessed on a LOT of things, like the amount of potatoes we needed, or in some cases, the amount of ingredients we needed in each dish, because we were lacking in a few things.

The stuffing I hoped would be good, because I was trying to counteract the bread that we used. The loaves of bread here seem to be a LOT sweeter (which is strange), and as far as I've seen, is almost exclusively white bread. So a lot of salt and onion and celery was needed. (plus chicken broth and garlic- that made up the stuffing)


My hands smelled like garlic and onion for about three days, even though I washed them quite a few times to try to get the smell off.

We knew the turkey would take a while to cook, at least three hours, so Josh went to get the turkey from Marlie's fridge. It was still a tiny bit frozen in the middle, so we stuck it in the shower... That's a sad looking turkey in there. And the stuffing got to cook quickly before the turkey went in.
The sad sad turkey...


Potatoes were next, and Ben and I helped mash them. We didn't have any containers large enough for all the potatoes, so Josh found a bucket of his, cleaned it out, and we mashed away...


When we came to the sweet potatoes, Ben noted they seemed a bit... wet. I thought they seemed a bit funny too, and I remembered that we were unsure that they really WERE sweet potatoes when we bought them, but they were the only things around that looked REMOTELY like sweet potatoes. I looked up the characters, and we'd actually gotten "snow lotus fruit". Definitely not sweet potatoes. But I remembered that I'd seen a vendor selling some outside west gate, and so Josh and I went to purchase some so we could still have some for dinner.

Almost everything was ready at this point, so we cleaned up, set the table, and I took a nap (because I was running on very little sleep) and came back upstairs to find everyone playing Scrabble.
Our delicious meal!


The dinner itself was Marlie, Josh, Ben, and I and we invited Jackie and Puppy (she couldn't come), Jeff, Emily, a female student (not mine, forgot her name), and a woman who came with Jackie to help film our Thanksgiving extravaganza.

All in all, the dinner was amazingly successful. The only hiccup being the sweet potatoes, and our inability to find whipped cream (or cream of ANY sort), and then at the end of the meal, testing out our homemade pumpkin pie... it was pretty terrible. Far too pumpkin-y, which I was thinking might happen since we had no nutmeg, and it was still a semi-radioactive orange color. But the TURKEY was delicious, and obviously the most important thing to get right, which we did. And the best part for me was finally finding REAL milk that wasn't yogurt, but drinkable milk. It tastes somewhere between 2% and 1%, but I will take what I can get.

My family doesn't have any real traditions for Thanksgiving, but Marlie read a poem and we went around the room saying what we were thankful for.

It was a great Thanksgiving, even if it wasn't with my real family.

Portrait

(This is a back-post that I couldn't get up until now. It was written on Nov 8 2010)

I had a student ask me last week, "what's your favorite color?" I said green. Then she asked, "what's your favorite clothes?" I was a little confused by this question and it took a little bit more conversation for her to admit that she wanted to DRAW me. She was gathering information to draw me in "pretty clothes and dress". I laughed and said, sure you can do that. Well, this week she came up to me after class and handed me FOUR drawings of me in various outfits. She said to pick my favorites. I picked the "Princess Marija" and the Halloween-version. Here they are for your viewing pleasure:




My students are weird. But clearly some of them like me enough to draw me. And I'm still occasionally getting a few of them asking for photos after class.... by that time I'm covered in chalk. A few have said they wanted a photo to send to their parents, who have never seen a foreigner before. They've only seen them from movies.

But they're all still pretty shy. I think their overall confidence has grown a bit since the beginning, and I know the ones who will speak up in each class, but I still don't know names. I tallied it a few weeks ago, and I have just around 400 students total. So I definitely don't know their names. I suppose if I had thought of a good system ahead of time, I may have more memorized by now, but I definitely don't know that many. And I probably won't know them at the end of the semester. That's one aspect of being a teacher that I really suck at-- remembering names and faces. I feel a little bad about that, but at this moment, I think it's more important I can give them a taste of America and what I have to offer them than to remember 400 names and faces.

Shanghai - Day Three, World EXPO

Day 3 of Shanghai - I apologize for bad photo formatting, but internet has been crappy on my end, and I just wanted to get this up ASAP.



It was Monday, and we got up at 5:40am, got ready, and hopped on a train to meet Angela at one of the many EXPO gates at about 7. She was quite late, and didn't get there until 7:30 or so. Then to get in line for tickets (That began selling at 7:30, but there was already a large-ish line.) The Chinese and lines do not go together well. It's always a headache to be in a large (even small ones sometimes) with the Chinese, because every time there has inevitably been pushing by impatient people, or the "fake" moving, of everyone squeezing together closer when everyone should KNOW that tickets aren't sold until 7:30am, or that the park doesn't open until 9am. There's no need to be closer to each other than we already are if we're not actually GOING anywhere. But clearly, we're in the minority of that thought. :/

As we were waiting for a bathroom break, we decided to buy some of the tiny tiny fold-up stools that some people were selling. They ended up (for me) being reallly worth it (10 kuai) because there were a lot of lines, and a lot of walking, and a lot of waiting.

Anyway, after getting our tickets and stools, we had to go through some very quick security, then into the massive line of people at the gate. We were probably in that line for an hour or less. As you can see, it kinda goes on forever...


But once we got IN the EXPO, it was a lot better. We'd decided we would avoid any pavilions with extra extra long lines, and only attempt a really long line maybe at the end of the day, when we would probably be tired (we didn't actually end up doing that). So we wanted to hit (or at least I was of this mindset) as many pavilions as possible in the only day we could be there. Most people, it seemed, spent two days at the EXPO, but we had not planned or wanted to do that since we'd only be in Shanghai for a few days. And the money issue too, of course.

This meant, definitely no going in the China, Japan, or Taiwan pavilions. China's (and Taiwan's) needed reservations, and they were already out of reservations when Angela asked a worker at 7:45am.

So we took photos next to the outsides of pavilions, so at least we could get the sense of how many countries were represented. (A TON, THAT'S HOW MANY) They were also selling fake passports because each country (or at least each country was SUPPOSED to have one) had a stamp that you could get stamped in your passport. They were 40 or 50 kuai, and that was way too much for a piece of paper, so I used the back of my notebook, and they would still stamp that. Hooray for being frugal!


I felt a bit overwhelmed with all the choices, but we'd decided to walk further out to the European edge. We'd walked for at least 15 minutes, and we needed to get in line for SOMETHING quickly while the lines were still somewhat short, so we picked Sweden. Sweden had Dala horses outside, which made me very happy.

The theme of the EXPO was "Better City, Better Life" so a lot of the pavilions exhibited their green technology, or recent developments to improve their cities. I think Sweden's had the most of all the ones we went into.


I also noticed that if it was possible, a country would try to have a semi-mascot. For Sweden, this was Pippi Longstocking. Good thing I didn't wear my hair in braids that day! Sweden's had the most gadgets and such inside, and they of course had an IKEA-centerpiece. And swings!! I love swings, and I had no idea why they were there, but I was happy to swing on one for a bit.

Our second was Ireland, which was honestly a bit dull, as it was mostly just pictures so you could pretend you were there. The only non-photo exhibitions in Ireland were the examples of houses from different decades. Neat, but it didn't quite make up for it. Sorry Ireland, I guess you didn't have as much to offer.


We wandered for quite a bit after Ireland, noticed that Germany's line was INSANELY long (probably at the three or four hour mark at that point) and so we finally chose the Netherlands for our next stop.


The Netherlands had a bunch of movable sheep, and had what I think was the most visually interesting pavilion-- it looked like a bunch of floating rooms connected by a swirly walkway. Great Britain's by comparison looked terrifying with it's porcupine-outside.


The Netherlands reminded me most of what old World Fairs were meant to do-- display new inventions, innovations, and anything interesting to come out of the country. Each "room" or "house" contained something that the Dutch had helped create.

Van Gogh, a neato toy clock carousel, a terrifying bear that's eyes would follow you, a floating rock, a square car, a solar car, some very strange art (one was supposed to be like a bar?), a wind-turbine car, and a telescope... those were just a few of the neat things there. I felt that I was the only one who cared about the rooms, since I was quite far behind the others while roaming this pavilion.

We picked Lithuania next, since Josh has ancestry there. There wasn't much to offer inside, but apparently they invented hot air balloons and basketballs. (Didn't know that.)

We'd have liked to go inside Canada, but that was another that the line was reaaallly long at. We did an awful lot of walking up to pavilions and seeing how long the lines were, then walking away because we didn't want to waste so much time waiting.


At this point, we came upon the USA, and we had noticed that if you had a valid passport for the country pavilion (excepting China of course) you could take a super short VIP line. So we did this for the USA, even though we'd heard it wasn't the best one. USA's was three movies in three theaters that were shuffled to, and then a final advertisement room with all of the sponsors for the pavilion. Not... really inspiring. The movies themselves were alright. The first bothered me the most, since it was mostly showing how Americans can't speak Chinese (thanks a lot) and then a bit with Kobe Bryant, because the Chinese love him. The woman introducing was American, and she mentioned she was from Minnesota, and I yelled and jumped and she heard me. I went up to her for a minute afterward and she said she was from Edina and I told her where I was from, and she said she was working for the EXPO for the time, but then she got swamped by other Chinese, so I didn't get to talk to her any more than that.

The second movie was mostly forgettable, something with keeping children as our future, nurturing their creative progress, and that they'll make the world better. And then a little message from Barack Obama (though most of it was narrated by Hillary).

The third was an actual movie (no talking, however, just music) starring a girl of 12 or so (with WAAAAAY too much make-up on. It was really distracting for me.) wanting to start a garden in a broken-down alley. No one helps her at first, then she starts asking for help, and the neighbors finally pitch in. It rains, and she's sad their work has gone to waste, but everyone else fixes it up the next day. And lala oh it's so heartwarming. It was pretty, but... it was essentially just a "let's work together" message.

And then ads. So I can see why some people were not so impressed with the USA. I wasn't. I feel we could have done something much different than what was displayed, but... I suppose there was no initiative for that.


Next was the Africa Pavilion-- not many countries in Africa could afford the huge pavilions of the US or Sweden, so there was a larger hall for all the other countries in Africa. I got more stamps here. Some of the countries we walked past or through: Cameroon, Republic of Congo, Chad, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Benin, Niger, Kenya, Republic of Togo, Senegal (where I had a guy from Senegal try to talk to me in French), and Ghana.


I think at this point we took a little rest, since we'd been walking around for hours. Found some more Haibao illustrations in the ground, and we took the ferry across to the other side of the EXPO. We weren't sure what this side was for, exactly. We wanted to go into the pavilion labeled simply, "OIL". But it was far too long, and so we ended up just going into one for a Chinese company named something about jade (I cannot remember their name now) that was sort of interesting, and had a lot of history and a strange movie about jade (it used a song from Batman Begins, without permission, I'm sure), and we headed back over the river.


The South Korean exhibit looked crazy awesome from the outside, but alas, it was another on the warnings they would broadcast that had "exceeded a wait of 5 hours", sooo no. We weren't going there. (It was maybe 4pm at this point?)



We wanted to hit a few more, and we wanted to stay until it at least got a little dark to see what it was like at night. Nepal and India were close, and really gorgeous looking. Nepal's line appeared short, and we went in only to realize it had a fake "entrance" line, and then another line for the inside. So we just looked at what was in the inner ring and got out again.


We'd looped our way back to the Chinese pavilion, so we got a few photos in front of it. China's pavilion was really beautiful and by far the largest, and it would have been nice to see inside, but I reasoned that we're already IN China, we can explore China for real later in the year. And possibly Taiwan too (I have yet to decide what I'm doing for Winter Break).

The sun was beginning to set, and we saw that New Zealand's line was short, so we entered. It was short for a reason-- it was similar to Ireland, and they mostly showed pictures, and had a tree on display that had been created for Lord of the Rings.

Our last stop was the Philippines, which was kind of empty of anything but food and a Beatles cover band. We got some yummy banana fritter-type things (forgot their name) and headed out. We walked past a few pavilions we'd missed, and figured out where the nearest train stop was to our location in the park. Angela had already left us at this point, because she had to meet some other friends around 7pm.

We stayed in the park JUST long enough to see some of the lights turn on. We exited the gates at 6pm. We'd been there for almost 12 hours. We returned to our hostel, and we all kinda collapsed for a while, then realized we needed food and we still had some time to kill before we would let ourselves go to bed. I honestly don't remember what I ate that day, but we did decide to test out the bar scene. Of course, it was still a MONDAY night, so there wasn't much happening. But we found the area according to Marlie's travel guide that was the "bar street". We wandered a little and entered a bar and we all decided to get Guinness. The bottles proclaimed it was the "foreign extra Guinness". Sadly, it was not Guinness. It didn't taste like it at all other than being a dark beer. But we drank it, since it was our one real splurge on the trip. (None of us bought anything in the way of souvenirs while we were in Shanghai.)

We returned to the hostel, a bit silly over our non-Guinness experience, and decided we would sleep in a bit for Tuesday (since we'd gotten very little sleep the past two days) and do anything we had left tomorrow. Angela sent us more information about places to visit, and with another Jet Li action movie playing, a little bit of 90s Spider-Man, and the realization that I'd burned myself that day, we went to bed.

Here are a few extra photos of the EXPO:
[Jade carving - An exhibit in the Sweden pavilion - Russian Pavilion]




[Turkey Pavilion - Brazil's - Poland's - Malaysia's]

Song Contest

Tonight Josh, Ben, and I made some work on our song entries.

Um what? Many of you may ask. Well, a few weeks ago, Puppy told me about a singing competition among teachers that would take place in a month or so. I said I might be interested, and if I could sing with others. I could, so I asked Josh and Ben if they were interested.

We didn't do anything until tonight (since we kinda forgot about it). We thought we had to participate in some kind of "tryout" round, which we didn't learn of until the NIGHT before, so we sorta gave up on it. But Puppy texted me again this morning saying that a few teachers didn't go to the tryout, and we could still do it if we're ready by the end of this week. So we went searching after dinner tonight.

We have to have two songs prepared, apparently, so the first we picked is a hymn called "The Day is Past and Gone" or "Evening Darkness". Josh found it and decided we should do it. It's basically a round for three parts, I do a semi soprano/alto (since I don't quite have the range for soprano, but I'm the only girl), Josh is tenor, and Ben is bass.

Fun fact: Josh can't read music. And he's never sung before. But! He can match his voice very well to the audio we found of the music, so we're not terribly worried. And I can tell he's going to really work on his part. I just have to work on my high notes, and Ben on a few of his lowest notes.

So singing and Halloween will engulf this week!

Shanghai - Day One/Two

[The trip was from Saturday October 2 - Wednesday October 6]

The first day was really just the traveling day. Our train was supposed to leave at 5:15pm or so, but it was an HOUR late (ugh). Apparently that's the norm, however... sadly.

It was an overnight train, and we were able to exchange our tickets from hard seats to hard BEDS at the last minute (as in, three hours before our train left). Which was completely worth the approximate 100 kuai difference, because the train was 1) 5 hours faster and 2) BEDS instead of seats, thank god. There are four types of train options: hard seat (the worst), soft seat (I think?), hard bed, and soft bed.

I was still quite unwell, and I was without my voice the entire trip, and with a hacking/gross cough as well. But I tried not to let that keep me from having a good time.

I personally was unable to sleep very well on the train. I think it was my coughing, probably.


As you can see, the bunks were very close together, and this train was made to fit a LOT of people, even in the more comfortable hard bed area. Six beds to each portion. There was only separation between train cars. I had an undercurrent of nerdy excitement the entire time because I felt like I was on the Hogwarts Express... but not as fast, or going to learn magic.


The best bunk was definitely the bottom bunk, since you could still sit up on the bed without slouching, and you had space for storage under your bed and the small nightstand AND the window. But only top bunks were left, so we had a row of three top bunks. Middle supposedly is the next best choice, but I personally felt the top was the second best, since you could pretend there was no one else around, being so high up. And I could throw my purse up top and feel fairly secure that it would be safe.

We were, as we often are, the stupid foreigners. We had bought a few snacks for the train, and for some reason believed that to be enough. It wasn't. Ramen would have been the SMART thing. But we were able to purchase (with inflation) some fruit to tide us over. And then I slept/tried to sleep the entire way.

We arrived in Shanghai finally at 5:30am (on Sunday now), a bit tired and gross. But no there was rest for us! We waited until we met Angela, Ben's friend who is now attending Tonji University. She graduated from Henan last year, and she was an amazing tour guide and super helpful.

Our first task was to purchase return tickets to Kaifeng. We were only able to find 16 hour daytime hard seats. I was very un-pleased about that, and I hoped we could find better ones closer to our return.

We also hadn't actually GOTTEN hotel reservations, and it took at least two hours for Angela to find us a place to stay. This was our first encounter with foreign discrimination, as we weren't allowed to stay at a cheap hostel (that we reassured Angela we would be fine with staying at even if it was sort of crappy) because we were foreigners and some BS policy that it'd be dangerous if we stayed there. What.

So Angela finally found a hostel, the Koala International Youth Hostel. And reassuring her again, that yes, three beds in one room is FINE, and it was exactly what were expecting anyway, we got our place. The price was jacked up because of the EXPO, but we were just grateful we didn't have to go to an insanely priced foreign hotel, and that we now had somewhere to sleep.

We left our bags at her dormitory at Tongji, and while we were there we saw a cat family. This is one of the kittens, pondering the Dao.

But we were hardly done with the day. We still went on ahead to visit the Oriental Pearl and other tall things (Josh likes tall things), and the Bund (I thought she was saying "the Band" or the "the Bond" for quite a while before I clarified with Josh), an area similar in feel to the Mall in DC. Lots of sightseeing and such.

We gave Angela a lot of firsts-- her first time on the subway (which I bet she loves now, since she was only using the bus up until that point) and her first time EATING at a Subway. We found one, and I would have eaten there too, but all I wanted was a turkey sandwich and they were OUT OF TURKEY. I was very upset so I didn't get anything.

This consumed the rest of our day, and so we returned with our bags, exhausted, to the hostel. We found that there was a baozi (dumpling) vendor RIGHT outside, so we planned to have baozi for breakfast every morning (possibly one of my favorite street foods).

We scanned the tv channels and found what must have been a Jet Li channel, since every night it had old Jet Li movies. The first night I think it was a Western (as in the type of movie, with cowboys) kung fu movie, and it had some American actors (none recognizable), which made for an entertaining period just before bed.

The next day's plan? To tackle the World Expo. Angela texted us that night with directions to get to one of the Expo gates, where we'd meet her at 7:30am. We would have to get up at 5:20am the next day...

Names

I have to name all of my freshmen students (which is 5 of my 7 classes, so.... a lot.) Some of them had English names, but not many. In all, it's probably around 200 names I need to think up, and most of them female.

I've kind of started running out of good, normal names, so there are a few named "Athena" or "Artemis". But I figure this is okay, since they'd find some crazy names on their own if I let them. (Some new discoveries among all our classes: Ted Mosby, Hrothgar, Jack Evette, Cookie, Clytze, Bells, Assassin.)

But I'm also hoping with all these strange names that I'll be able to remember their faces/names together. I'm terrible at it, and I have over 300 students. I've resigned myself that I probably won't know them all by the end of the semester, still. But I'll try.

Dogs

Okay, I'm going to do bite-sized chunks of blogging to make up for not blogging in a while.

I'll get around to talking about the Shanghai trip I just took, but... not quite yet.

This one will be about dogs.

There are a lot of dogs in China. And they're mostly outside. Well really, everyone is outside, and that includes the dogs. But they seem to prefer the small, "ankle-biter demon dogs" (as Josh says- I do not agree). A lot of them have underbites, so they're probably shitzus/mutts of some kind. Not the prettiest dogs, but they're all friendly. None of them bite or bark. They just dawdle around (usually without a leash) and sniff things.

If they're not small white fluffy things, they're German Shepherds. But their attitudes are the same. They walk around and sniff, and wag their tail if people come near. We've seen a handful of other big dogs (like labs) but it's usually only German Shepherds and tiny underbite dogs.

We nicknamed one of the drink lady's dogs.. Underbite, of course. But two days ago we learned the dog's real name: Niu Niu. [nee-yo nee-yo] Niu Niu can do a "hand-shake" sort of trick. If you lift your foot near her foot, she'll put her paw on it. It's really adorable, and I think even Josh has softened to Niu Niu and her awful underbite.

(I'll try to take a picture of her in the future.)