September 11, 2009 -- Teachers Day, New Bicycle

Wow, I had no idea it was September 11th until I looked at the date to write this entry. I’ve just finished my first week of classes and things are going pretty well so far. Yesterday was “Teacher’s Day” so I got a lot of messages from students and a gift from one of my classes. The international office is pretty nice to us- we got a huge bouquet of flowers and 200RMB as a gift. That evening, there was a presentation to teachers who were voted as being the best by students last year followed by a choral singing competition. Very elaborate and most of the songs had the word “red” in the song- as the highly anticipated 60 year anniversary of the PRC is coming at the end of this month.

This week, I also got the internet again (although it has been pretty intermittent for the past day.. L). This opens up the possibility of starting my job search for this coming spring. I’m hoping for a multinational company where my Chinese skills will be put to good use, but we’ll see what I find. I think for now my approach will be more a matter of applying to lots and lots of jobs and then seeing where I hear things back.

I am now the proud owner of a “Shanghai Forever” bicycle. It is black with a little basket in the front (sadly, no bell though). I think all the new foreign teachers also have a bicycle now too. We are going to start a biker gang this weekend cruising around Lin’an. Or at least looking for some black spray paint- I’m hoping to spruce up the railing on my porch.

The evenings are starting to get cooler, thankfully. It was actually cool enough in the evening that I had to *gasp* wear pants to bed. Morten and I have started a semi-vigorous exercise routine with weight lifting every other day in the teachers’ free gym and running at 6AM on the days we don’t lift. I think the exercise will help clear my head and make me feel better all around. Morten was also going to inquire about potential tai chi classes which I think would be an amazing way to start my morning. Because I am a traditional old Chinese man.

September 6, 2009

Finally back in Lin’an after a week up in Beijing. The new couple is very friendly and Morten has a slightly more British accent than the last time I talked to him. Last night, Morten and I went to a little restaurant outside of campus. They are completely re-doing the street and apparently replacing the piles of trash that used to rim the school with new businesses to cater to the students. The waitress was so nice, and wrote us a little note in Chinese next to our bill welcoming us to China. The bill was 21RMB, but she refused to take the extra one yuan and said 20 was enough. Then on the way back, an old blue truck was driving up the tiny road that half of is currently a large trench was honking at students to get out of the way. Morten, seemingly, picked the wrong side of the road and afterwards a really annoying, loud boy kept making fun of Morten for not understanding what the driver was saying. As per usual, I came up with a mean comeback about an hour after the event.

The living conditions in my apartment have taken a turn for the better (except for the current lack of internet access). I now have (drum roll) my own water cooler! So I don’t need to buy bottles of water all the time/boil water to drink! It also has a hot water setting! So I can get hot water for tea right out of the tap in the morning. Additionally, with absolutely no notice ahead of time, a carpet man came in to cover my bare, concrete floor, with this linoleum cover that looks like a hard wood floor. Well, the pattern looks like wood, my floor looks like shiny linoleum with a wood design. It’s pretty corny, but it does look nice to have something covering the floor beside the rug I bought. It also inspired me to slightly rearrange my apartment- now my music stand is up so maybe I will be more inspired to practice the ol’ fiddle.

I’m pretty bummed about the lack of internet though- it makes me feel really cut off and disconnected. I keep having bad dreams- that I try to pet my dog but then realize I can’t because she is on the other side of a skype conversation. Or someone close to me has died but I can’t make it to the funeral because I’m so far away… I think all this would be better if I had internet/a way to contact the US at any time. Then I could also start applying for jobs for this spring.

It’s horribly hot here, but last night it was cool enough I didn’t need to run the a/c and there was a nice breeze going through the apartment. Tomorrow I am going bicycle shopping with my Chinese teacher. I think that would make my time here more enjoyable as I could be more independent and mobile. I proofread her thesis for her master degree and she was so grateful she said she would tutor me in Chinese this term, even if I can’t make it to the regular classes. I’m planning on taking the HSK (like the TOEFL- it’s a test that will show my proficiency in Chinese) at the end of the term.

August 24, 2009

I write this on my laptop at the Seattle-Tecoma International Airport. It’s been a bit of an adventure getting this far. My journey began around 10:15PM on the 23rd when I went with my mom to Madison to get dropped off at Brandon and Rachel’s so one of them could give me a ride to catch my bus to Chicago O’hare at 2:30AM this morning. Unfortunately, we did not make it to the union on time – and after trying to catch the bus at the park and ride on the southeast side of town, arrived right when the bus was pulling back on to the highway. Which meant we tailgated the bus all the way to Janesville where I was able to hop on! What a stressful start to my journey back to China!

The flight here was uneventful, sat next to a very friendly woman from Memphis who was involved in Hay sales. Napped a bit. Got a nice view of Rainer and took a few photos from the plane. Now just waiting a few hours for the flight to Beijing.

Yesterday, I went to the steam and gas show back in Baraboo and was considering buying an American flag for decoration back in my apartment in China. Now, I’ve been reading quite a bit about globalization and the economy since I’ve been back… I understand outsourcing and how this can be “beneficial” by giving consumer lower prices. I get it.. But I refuse to buy a Chinese made American flag. Especially when you are selling it at $8 at a flea market and refuse to lower the price to $5. C’mon. Not to mention that all the other flags were some variation of a confederate flag. I guess I just felt like these should be the people who cares about the American worker more than anyone. The whole thing just seemed coated in irony, and I’m glad I decided against buying it- I can make my own “American made” American flag out of paper if I am feeling especially patriotic.

Well, I’m surprisingly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the amount of sleep I got last night.. so perhaps I’ll read a bit, as long as I’m kicking.

Internet Blocks and Computer Crashes

Some very unsorted photos from July, and apologies and updates to follow:

These are all from a trip to southern China at the beginning of July- this buliding is in Hong Kong

We flew into Hainan (large island, near Vietnam) and after 4 days took a train to Guangzhou (followed by a speed train to Shenzhen/Hong Kong). Hainan isn't connected to the mainland by a bridge of any sort- so this train was actually disconnected and put on a boat and then reassembled on the other side. (15 hours on a hard sleeper- saved a night in a hotel!)

View of Hong Kong from Victoria Peak

At the beach in Sanya (Hainan)

My apologies to the consistant readers of this blog that I have no doubt lost to months of inactivity. Let me make a slew of excuses:

As many of you know, this last spring my laptop was fairly "unhappy". At first, this problem seemed to be resolved by taking the computer to the on-campus computer repair and having the most stereotypically nerdy person I've ever met install a pirated version of Windows XP (thankfully in English) on my computer. After losing EVERYTHING on my computer and learning a valuable lesson about what you should save on your C: Drive (answer: NOTHING. If you just save something automatically in your my documents folder, it will instantly disappear if your computer crashes. Anything you don't want to disappear should go in your DATA drive. Please learn from my mistakes) After attempting to piece together the digital ashes of my life, my computer crashed again 2 to 3 weeks later, exactly when I needed to write reports on all my classes and make spreadsheets of all the grades. Back at the electronics market in Shanghai I found out I needed to replace the hard drive, but due to time restraints left the computer in Shanghai while depending on the kindness of Morten (and his Danish computer "Boris") to slowly complete my paperwork.

In addition to the computer being down (it currently has double the amount of storage, but doesn't have any information on it other than Skype and a pirated version of Microsoft Office Suite... and ~10GB of photos from Yang's computer) the Chinese government also decided to block this blogging website. Then, once classes were done, Yang and I took a trip to southern China to Hainan (tropical island- "Hawaii of China") and Hong Kong/Macau (see above). It was nice to be able to swim in the sea- I'd really hoped to snorkle, but the snorkle we bought wouldn't seal to keep out the water and it was nearly impossible. The only sunblock I could find was "skin whitening sunblock". Still have a strong dislike of seafood in China- not helped by the cute little parrot fish I saw on the menu at the restaurants. Good train ride back to the mainland, Hong Kong was awesome. I went a little crazy at the first convient shop I went in to because they sold English Cosmo magazines and tampons. Many of the buses are double decker and cars drive on the left, seeing as it was a British colony and all. In Hong Kong/Guangzhou they speak Cantonese instead of Mandarin (which I've been learning). They also use traditional Chinese characters when I have been learning simplified. Your average mainland Chinese person can read traditional characters- they just might have trouble writing them. But it was nice to be on even footing with Yang because, like me, he cannot speak Cantonese. He could read, but he ended up having to communicate with people in English :P. There was also a beer festival while we were there (which was probably attended by around 70% white people) but I found the little tequilia bar most enjoyable and showed Yang how to take a tequilia shot of "Crazy Armadillo" tequilia. Nothing too crazy, but it was a great night and we really got to enjoy the view of the city from the harbor. Hong Kong has a lot of topography and reminded me a lot of San Francisco.

I am heading back to China to teach at the university one more term on Monday. To deal with the block, I am going to set up a different blog on another site which I will put a link to on here later this week. Even without switching sites, there are ways to get around the blocks in China- they are just slow and sometimes unreliable. Hopefully switching websites will at least temporarily solve this problem so I can keep this updated more regularly.

Suzhou, with some Hangzhou on the side

The heat has arrived. Well, it arrived and then has temporarily left again with some rain. This weekend the temperature topped off near 100. And oh so humid. The air tasted so thick and horrible, like a physical wall when you walked out from the shade. So, of course we took a hot stuffy bus to Hangzhou. There we finally climbed up this hill (later in the afternoon...) next to West Lake and by this really cool tower. This tower is lit up at night and looks really neat- with the huge sprawling city to the north and east. We could look down on the lake like looking at a map view. Its probably my favorite place in Hangzhou! I went with Yang Yang to the train station, but after saying goodbye I needed to make it to the West bus station to get back to Lin'an- which is on the opposite side of town. And unfortunately, I just missed the last bus that ran between the train station and the bus station. So I needed a cab. A few weeks ago, a cab had tried to charge Morten 100RMB to make this trip. I began to chat with a man who asked where I wanted to go- at first I just wanted to connect with another bus that was still running- but I didn't know what other bus went there. A large group of people suddenly surrounded me, all offering prices to get me to the station. "50RMB" was my first offer. The man was simply opperating an illegal 'taxi' using his moped. "For that vehical?" I asked (the other drivers thought that was pretty funny). "Ok, 30!" (this was all in Chinese by the way :) ). "25RMB. Okay?" I say. For an actual taxi- or a car at least, they offered 40RMB- which would be about right to take a metered taxi. A metered cab would be about 35 maybe. So I took the little moped. He scooted the 20 some km to the other side of town, I practiced my Chinese, made a new friend, and eventually got to the station.
These are some photos from the previous long weekend when we went to Suzhou. This photo is from an extremely crowded, overpriced garden we went to. I felt like this was just made so people could randomly take pictures of themselves in front of various pagodas and rocks... not many cool plants... so many people you needed to wait awhile for people to pass before you could take a photo... not very enjoyable.
Suzhou is a city of canals. Cool canals and little boats that go in them. Most of the buildings follow similar architecture with white sides and black, shingled roofs.
This was also the first time I dared to ride a bicycle in China. Here I am in action! Navigating a narrow alleyway.
While in Suzhou I also "mastered the art" of Chinese calligraphy. Most calligraphy says something profound- like boundless sky (what Yang Yang wrote) or something about harmony.. here I am writing the name of my favorite snack- jiao zi! (dumpling)
Behind me in the canal are lots of boats you can take touring trips on. All the lanters came on when we were walking along this little stretch. Cute shops, tea houses. Foreigners really like this part of town :) English everywhere!
After going to the horribly crowded garden, we ended up here later in the day. This is an ancient part of Suzhou which has some of the remaining original city wall and where some of the government buildings were back in the Wu Dynasty (229-280AD, wikipedia.org). We got to climb that really cool pagoda in the background. The stairs were so steep it was like a tiny ladder and you could hit your head on everything if you didn't look out. Basically, there would be no way people would be allowed to go in something like that in the states and I saw someone fall a few steps while I was there- BUT MAN, that was so cool. They found some kind of ancient artifacts in it maybe 15 years ago. There are also really cool koi in this pond too and not thousands of people getting in the way of the picture. Moral of the story? Don't go to the Humble Administrator's Garden if you happen to be in Suzhou. This place was cheaper and also came with a little boat tour- that unfortunately we didn't have time for. Suzhou is also a sister city with Portland Oregon, and Portland donated this weird wooden structure that is in the gardens here that no one understands but takes their picture next to anyway.

Now that I'm back from the recent, hot, weekend, I've been a little under the weather. Apparently if you go to the doctor for any reason people are assuming you have Swine Flu. I felt a little fevery Monday and didn't go to my Chinese class and today I've had a bit of a cough so I've been drinking lots of orange juice and trying to get more rest. Morten was out a lot this weekend too and he thought he got mild sunstroke, but has been feeling poor this week too. We decided we must have piglet flu because that sounds cuter and our symptoms aren't as severe as swine flu :P.

photos up!

Its been a week since my photoshoot for the fashion and design department. Check it out:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2185579&id=59501215&l=990ac3511f

The head teacher (or at least the one who speaks the most English) said I should consider getting a job with a modeling company in Hangzhou. I still really don't know anything about modeling, but it was good for the self-esteem if nothing else (if I ignore the fact that I am too big for almost all the clothing. yep. I'm okay with that).

yi kuai

Now you too can see the image from the island in Hangzhou's West Lake on the 1 yuan....