Days 1-3: Kunming, Yunnan Province

Day 1 – The Beginning, where there are dinosaurs

…did not consist of much. But really, it wouldn’t, since our flight landed us in Kunming at 2:30pm. We’d already booked the Hump hostel, and so we just had to navigate the buses to get us there. Quickly we found that the hostel directions were… slightly off, and would continue to be so for our entire stay. (Sigh!) Marlie and I wandered the afternoon around Brilliant Plaza and other sparkly named Plazas. The first obvious difference between Kunming and Kaifeng was the sky. We could actually see BLUE and clouds. It’s sad that smog has become the norm for us.

Besides plazas, there are dinosaurs EVERYWHERE. I asked Josh later about it (since he was in Kunming two years ago) and he said it was because a lot of fossils were found in the area. There’s even a portion of the city dedicated to it, and I didn’t learn that until we were *leaving* Kunming, sadly. I really wanted to go to the Zoology museum, but we never got the chance.

While we walked we also found a strange temple but it was closed and we never did return to see what it was like. There was also a DQ nearby, and so I had to indulge myself.

We received two tickets for a free beer and the other for a free coffee/tea, but once we returned to the hostel after our wandering, it was already the hostel’s happy hour, and so we took advantage of that instead of using our tickets. The Hump had a really nice décor, but the other groups felt very closed off to interruption, so we never tried to talk to anyone. It was a a little intimidating. We got a bit bored in our corner of the Hump, so we wandered out again and stumbled upon what HAD to be the club district. Neither of us were particularly in the mood (and we never were, honestly), but it was amusing nonetheless. Our wandering took us in a large-ish circle all the way back to the Hump. A decent if not particularly eventful first day!

Day 2 – Hitchcock

We needed to have PLANS for our second day in Kunming. It would still be a lot of walking, but we were okay with that after only one day of our holiday started. We wanted to be prepared for anything, and we’d both forgotten to grab umbrellas from our room. Our key wasn’t working, so we tried to ask the workers at the counter, but we caught them at a bad time and we got impatient waiting, so we figured we’d take our chances. Our key cards for our door at the Hump NEVER worked. We always had to ask to get our room unlocked. It was a mild irritation.

But we left, sans umbrellas, and took a bus to a north-western part of the Kunming downtown and made our way walking to Green Lake Park. We knew we weren’t really that close, and it took us about an hour or more to get to the park, but that was fine. We found puppies being sold in boxes (sad), a Doctor Who magazine in Chinese (which I was stupid and did not buy), a Snoopy store, some freaky bearded mannequins, and a library that we thought was the entrance to the park. It was not.

The park was full of birds. Scary scary birds.

Beyond that, Green Lake Park didn’t offer us much. There were some nicely painted pagodas and walkways, but the birds were definitely the selling point. We found some ducks eventually, and that was nice to just have a change from all the white pigeon/gulls.

Escaping from the birds, we headed to Yuantong Temple. There was no water in the pool surrounding, so it was a bit dismal though we tried to make the best of it. At least the entrance fee was only a few kuai, so we didn’t feel we lost much. There were some great Chinglish signs, like “Danger Zone” and “Please Don’t be Crowded”. We had a vague notion to visit the area near the zoo, and it was nearing the time we could hit up some happy hours, so we tried to find either a bar to settle into, or another park. We ended up circling northward around the zoo (with a rollercoaster inside!), though we decided that a zoo in China would definitely be depressing (and Josh later confirmed this idea after visiting the Beijing Zoo) and continued on what turned into the electronics district. We passed shop after shop selling every electronic, camera, and digital appliance you could think of. A park was soon within our grasp, but when we reached Lotus “Pund” (as the sign said) it had begun raining. The park didn’t look very interesting, especially since we were getting drenched, so we decided it was DEFINITELY time for dinner and drinks.

Wet and hungry, we reached Salvador’s. It was warm and really fantastic looking inside, and we ended up staying there for at least three hours eating (fried goat cheese sticks [see left] and a quesadilla for me) and having beer. We rotated our seats inward because we wanted to use the internet, and at some point Marlie stood up, revealing her Beloit hoodie. Two guys across the bar from us asked if we were actually from Beloit. Turns out, they were two graduates of 2003/4 and they run a coffee shop in Dali called the Flying Turtle. Unfortunately, we never got their names, but one of them looked REAAALLY familiar for some reason.

Marlie and I got a little weary of Salvador’s and set out for some other bars. It took us FAR too long to find a very Chinese-feeling bar called the Halfway Bar. And it sadly wasn’t really worth it. It was really really smoky and we felt a little unwelcome, being the only obvious foreigners in the bar. So that day ended on a slight disappointment, but at least we found Salvador’s! (Which I recommend if anyone visits Kunming).

Day 3 – Stone Forest

石林, Shi Lin or the Stone Forest was our goal for the day. We went through a lot of crazy bus times to get there and to get back into Kunming, but I think it was definitely worth it. The traffic in Kunming is horrendous since they don’t have a subway system, but it’s being built, so there are roads blocked off all over the city and the buses are jammed full of people. Not the most pleasant experience. But we got out of the city, albeit taking longer than we wanted, and on our way to Stone Forest.

Stone Forest is what it sounds like—huge stone and rock formations like.. a forest. We met two Americans on the bus, Ben and Kara, husband and wife, but they were living in Shanghai and on vacation like we were. Ben was essentially fluent, and very helpful and not putout when we asked if we could stick with them while exploring the forest.

We ate lunch with locals, with Ben’s help, and got some interesting new fruit that tasted slightly like a citrus-y banana. I want to know what they were, because I really liked them.

Otherwise, Stone Forest isn’t much of a place to talk about, but to show, so here are a bunch of photos. It’s hard to capture the magnitude of the place and how small you feel, but… I tried. We traversed the paths in an attempt to escape the Chinese tourist groups, because they were loud, took up too much space, and very slow.

After the absurdly long bus ride back to the Hump we didn’t want to travel any more that day, so we had dinner and drinks at the Hump. They advertised Kunming’s famous “Over the Bridge Noodles”, so we got those and pizza bread. The noodles were crazy spicy, but very good. And then it was watching a bit of How I Met Your Mother and an early bedtime.

...Coming up! Li Jiang, Yunnan Province!

P90X and the Eternal Dreariness

Josh has decided to make P90X an extreme (pardon the pun) part of his day. He’s trying to convince the rest of us to exercise with him, but I personally find it too… much. And I really doubt my commitment to something that, well, extreme. I know I am NOT an athletic or well-exercised in the least, but… this doesn’t seem like an option that meshes well with me.

He’s started cooking as well, which I will commend him for his efforts. With no kitchen and only half-functioning hot plates, he seems to be doing alright thus far. Today was the “protein phase” and so we went to a “steakhouse” for dinner. It was the same one I went to with Jackie and Nastaya (sp?) after the hellish movie experience.

His cooking seems to be going fine so far, but the semester hasn’t even started, so we all have a lot more time on our hands. I’m trying to use mine to blog and upload photos as I’m sure most people (at least on facebook, since I haven’t uploaded any here yet—I am actually in the process of writing them! I already have 8 pages in Word!) have noticed.

Kaifeng is probably the dreariest place to return to after vacationing for 29 days. Everywhere we went, even in the bigger cities, had at least clearer skies, more interesting scenery, or more foreigners. Kaifeng lacks all of that. At the least, it puts a nicer shine on my memories of the holiday, so that’s something?

I woke up dizzy today, and I definitely slept too much. Though with my alarm clock waking me every 10 minutes it was enough to drop me straight back into some really crazy dreams, so I didn’t want to get up. I’m only now feeling better and it’s past midnight. I’ll chalk it off to needed sleep after the sleep-deprived vacation we took. Yes, that’s it.

I’m also not going to think (attempt) about classes until at least Saturday when I should probably start planning for my first Tuesday class, and so I can focus my energy on solely blogging and uploading photos. It’s working so far!

The vacation blogs will be up as soon as possible! Each day has a title, but I’m not sure how they’ll be grouped yet. (Or if they will be.) We’ll see!

Oh, and I broke my spoon today. :( I can’t have yogurt or oatmeal without extreme difficulty. And I haven't vacuumed yet even though I have nerds on the floor (though to be fair, my vacuum is really sucky- and not in the way it should be). I have strange priorities sometimes, I think.

Student Quotes

Since it’s the end of the semester, I’m going to type up a few of the quotes I jotted down in my book during classes. There are a lot where I can’t remember the context, so they don’t make sense to me anymore, but at least these two sketch days do. I also sometimes didn't write anything down or I couldn't write quickly or clearly enough. Hopefully you’ll get an idea of the way my students talk, and some of the unintended humor I get from class discussion and skits.

The first is from the very beginning. I gave them a Calvin & Hobbes comic- if you scroll back enough in the blog, you can see the comic.

• Oh my god, it’s too terrible!
• Tiger, you eat a lot of food, but I’m a good boy.
• What is it in me?!
• I promise it is the best food in the world.
• Are you sure it can be eaten?
• Oh My Lady Gaga! (They used this phrase a lot at the beginning.)
• Have it gone bad? 3 days ago!

The second set of quotes are from Halloween week and were some of the funniest skits in the semester. I gave them a phrase and a Halloween-themed picture, and they had to make a short skit using both. The pictures were: skull, ghost, candy, pumpkin, vampire, witch, mummy, werewolf, bat, zombie, haunted house.

• Hey man, I’m the greatest ghost.
• Oh come on, as a witch I have magic powers.
• It’s a toy bat, and I fix it up.
• No I’m fantastic- and the most beautiful candy in world.
• Humans are so selfish and I want to eat you!
  
• Why are you just having a head?
  
• This plan is a “playing down” me! (play down was one of the phrases)
• Hi everybody, give me all your toys or I’ll turn you into PIIIIG. (She kind of yelled the end of it.)
• I was injected by horrible disease!
• I’m Mr. Pumpkin. I hate this color. (talking about himself being orange.)
• Even for cat, this pumpkin is not big enough! Oh goddamnit.
• I haven’t taken a bath for one year. (I do not remember the context for this one at all.)
• We are skulls now, but want to love. (It was a skull… love story. Very strange.)
• You are the fattest skeleton I’ve ever seen. (How???)
• I’m so bored with you. Get as far away as you can!
• I’m a ghost, don’t you know?

Banquets

We've had our fair share of banquets here. They follow the same basic set-up: the dean of whichever college (they use the word college to mean 'department') is hosting will be there, maybe a party member or "spiritual leader", various teachers of the department, and us. Because we're foreign teachers, we're special. So we're not ignored. The other teachers often are, and left to their own discussions. Everyone is expected to drink and participate in the numerous toasts to the college, our teaching, our futures, thanks, etc. The dean or highest honored guest will make the regular three toasts, and then it moves down by rank. The next highest person can either make a toast to everyone, or begin walking around the table (usually literally a round table) and drinking with each person in turn. Normally this includes finishing the drink you have already, and they fill it with bai jiu. Though by this point, I've learned to ask if they have hong jiu, red wine, instead. This has worked out SO much better for me, because red wine is actually drinkable and somewhat ENJOYABLE. Sometimes they make you finish the full glass (especially if it's a man), and then you both clink glasses, seeing who can clink with their glass lower. I forget what it means to have the lower glass, but it's what you want. Sometimes I try, sometimes I don't care. Then you usually say "ganbei" which is the same as "Bottom's Up" and you should finish your glass. (Gan bei means dry cup, if it's the "gan" I think it is.) They'll fill your glass once more, and you can sit down and they move to the next person.

So this process can be repeated AT LEAST 6 times, so it's a lot of alcohol drank among everyone at these banquets. And sometimes KTV/karaoke will follow. But that's only happened to me twice. We never have to pay for anything, and we're not expected to.

These banquets don't happen randomly. The first round was at the beginning, welcoming us to Henan University. I suppose there could have been some around National Days, but we were traveling. And we had our most recent around Christmas for both the Winter Solstice and the end of the semester nearing.

I've had more fun at the banquets hosted by my own department, the college English department (for non-English majors). My dean is female, her name is Patricia, and she's a lot of fun to be around. There are also more people in my department since it includes EVERYONE else at the school involved in English, and it's more lively. Puppy is also always there too, whereas Jackie is not always invited to the other since he's part of the International Affairs Office, and not the foreign language department (what the other teachers are part of).

These are just a few pictures from the Solstice Banquet with my department. I'd just gotten a haircut (very little off- I just wanted to get rid of split ends) so my hair was straight because of that. They tried to brush and dry it into a very Chinese looking do, which I don't think suited me well. But I wasn't going to do anything with it cause I'm lazy. The older man you see was the retired president of the department... I think? I've forgotten now, but he was a lot of fun to talk to. And he was a tank-- he had more glasses of bai jiu than I could count and he was still going. That night ended in KTV.









I'll add more as I can-- uploading photos takes longer than writing the entries...

New Years

For New Year's we decided going to Zhengzhou would be fun, and possibly, there would be more happening for the Gregorian Ne Year's celebration, since Zhengzhou is the capital of Henan Province and thus, bigger and more urban than Kaifeng. I've only been to Zhengzhou once, and that was the fated hospital visit which was awful, and so really, anything would be better than that.

I had to finish up my oral examination finals on Friday, so I had to take a train, alone, to Zhengzhou and then get a taxi to the hotel we were staying at. Marlie and Josh, with Jackie's help, had booked a hotel for approximately $20 for the night. Woo!

I was not thrilled about going on the train alone (since I had been thinking about going to Zhengzhou for New Years and the others left without me six hours earlier), and actually, that was the first major traveling (and not actually that major since it was only 45 minutes) I've done alone so I was a bit apprehensive. The train was late by 20 minutes, but even so I arrived in Zhengzhou around 9:50pm. I pretended to look like I knew where I was going and that worked pretty well until I had to get a taxi. I followed the signs of 出租车 and it brought me... outside and onto a street. I tried flagging a cab but he sorta kept driving away and gestured in another direction. I finally figured out after walking the same general direction that there were gated lines to get a cab. I felt better (but also freezing) and got in line. Just as I did, a man came up to me and asked where I was going (in Chinese) I told him and he tried to GIVE me 50 yuan. I was already in line and that was not an offer to drive me somewhere so I ignored him and moved forward in line. I'm pretty sure I was propositioned for sex.. in a very nonthreatening manner. It was just strange. Especially since there were at least 40 people waiting in line right there as well.

I got to the hotel to meet the other two, and they showed me our "optional accouterments" that could be purchased between the beds. Condoms, underwear, and other sex-related objects in tiny wrapped packages. We were staying in a love hotel. Probably why it was so cheap! I found it more funny than anything, and nothing else was particularly amiss, so I didn't care beyond that.

We set off for a bar in a hotel that Eric and Mike were at. He gave Josh terrible terrible directions. I don't think I'll trust Eric with directions ever again, because they've led us horribly astray twice now. They sound fine to begin with, and then we lose our way at some point because of some sort of assumption or saying West is South. This is why I prefer maps myself. Either way, we go to the bar which was really just a converted room in the hotel at 11:45pm. I was afraid we wouldn't arrive before midnight, but it really didn't matter since the only sort of recognition of the New Year was a countdown (at least there was that!) from the television (set to a weird celebration on Chinese tv), cheers, and that was it. So... rather anti-climactic. I found out that I actually DO know Mike- I met him freshman year since he also lived in Aldrich. It was cool to talk to someone else I recognized and to other foreigners. There were two other Americans in the bar, an older man from DC who was very nice (but tried to hit on me), and another younger guy from Boston chatting up the female bartender. It was a good night, and we were able to buy real cocktails for the first time since we'd arrived, and I was extremely pleased about that. Mixers and mixed drinks seem to be a strange concept for the Chinese... at least in Kaifeng. It seems all anyone drinks is beer and baijiu.

So we had the New Year start in Zhengzhou. The next day we visited the Henan Provincial Museum which turned out to be AMAZING and far better than the museum we visited in Shanghai on the last day (the day I haven't written about- sorry. That was about all we did that day anyway. And visit a Starbucks). After that, we had some time to kill since one of Marlie's students Winifred would ride with us back to Kaifeng (via bus this time, and taking 1.5hrs instead), so we wandered until we found a mall. A mall that was very American. It was really nice, actually, since it didn't feel like we were in China at all. We had "pizza cones" for lunch. A dough cone with pizza toppings shoved inside with cheese and sauce on top. Mine would have been much more tasty, but it was INSANELY spicy and I had to buy a drink (that wasn't water since water does nothing for spice) to help. My mouth was on fire UNTIL we went to a DAIRY QUEEN. I got a Georgia Mud Fudge blizzard and Josh got a Moolatte. My mouth was happy and I was happy.

There was an H&M in the mall and I think I may return to Zhengzhou at some point to do some shopping since the prices were about the same, or a little bit cheaper (after conversion). And if I could use my American debit card, it'd be all the same anyway. But I'll see.

We visited another mall called Dennis which was far more Chinese in nature. Everything was very crowded together and a lot of the same thing over and over. Make-up, scarves, purses, the same sort of sweaters and such. There were at least 6 floors of it before we decided to return to the bottom floor. By then we were tired of wandering and waited, leaning on a wall for Winifred to arrive. Traffic was bad so she was late (in her mom's car). Eventually we hopped in the car on the side of the road and off to the bus stop.

Nothing exciting about the bus, except that we had to wait about 25 minutes in very cold weather (I should really buy a winter jacket since my trench is starting to not cut it, even with layers...) and we got to be first on the third bus that arrived (we were too far back in line for the first two). It was a double-decker so we sat on the second floor in the very front, which made for a fun view and it felt we were going to crash into everything (not that driving in China feels much different from that NORMALLY but...). I fell asleep briefly, and we got a taxi home.

It's the next day today, and I don't have much left to do except finalize grades for all classes but the Nursing school, give the Nursing students their listening exam (already made), grade it, and send off their grades as well. Then I AM DONE. The listening exam is on the 6th, so I have one last day to visit the new campus.

It was cold enough and the air felt right for snow, and a lot of people said it would... but it still didn't. Dammit.

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.