fish bones and flower tea

Wrapping up Mel's visit:

temple of heaven

We had another whirlwind weekend in Beijing. Highlights include the Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace,  and Wangfujing street.

hot pot with mel and hannah in beijing

Another week of classes passed uneventfully, and then it was the first weekend in December! A couple weeks ago my favorite co-teacher, Ada (first grade) invited me to visit her hometown with her. We had planned for this weekend, and then I hadn't heard anything further. I was waiting for her to say something, not totally sure if we were still on. Luckily, as I found out Thursday, we were!

So Friday night Ada (whose English is really excellent) and I have a sleep over in  my room, since her accommodations (on campus dorms) were empty, and I'm guessing kind of creepy and cold. Saturday we wake up early and walk to the long distance bus station. At this point I really don't even know exactly where I'm going or what I'm going to be doing. But no worries. So we meet up with one of her college classmates (his English was also great) and the three of us are on a bus by 8am heading to Anguo - the Chinese Medicine capitol of China. She warns me that none of her family (other than her) speaks a word of English. She wasn't exaggerating!

It takes about an hour and a half, and then we are at this huge medicine mall. Ada's mom meets us, and we start wandering the aisles of really crazy stuff. Seahorses, dried cow placentas (when Ada realized what that was she screamed and dropped it and tried to wipe off her hands for like 5 minutes), insects of many varieties, and tons of herbs and plants and flowers. Although her English is good, there was a lot of back and forth with phone translators to explain some things. (Placenta, for example, is not a commonly learned English word). So that was cool.

Ada's mom wouldn't stop buying me things. First she bought me a necklace at the medicine market, and then we went and looked at flower teas. Despite my adamant protests, I left with around 10 packets and containers of a variety of flower teas. She finally decided it was enough, and we went to leave, only for me to do the dumbest thing ever. I was thanking her profusely, and said I couldn't wait for some of my friends back home to try these -- when she goes: "your friends?? this isn't enough for your friends! I'll have to get you more!!" and dashes back into the shop! Oh I was so embarrassed.

Then we met up with Ada's younger brother (20) and his wife and headed to lunch. The restaurant was known for fish, as I discovered when I walked in and saw the giant tanks we were supposed to choose from. I declined to choose my lunch, and let the waitress pick for me. The tables were round and had a big pot in the middle, with a fire being stoked underneath. After we ordered, the waitress filled the pot with broth and added wood to the fire under the table. Then she brought out a plate with four whole, freshly killed fish, which were added into the pot with some vegetables. A short while later, I was informed that the fish were cooked, and I should help myself, being the guest of honor and all. Well, I was kind of hoping I could watch someone else do it first, seeing as I'm not completely aware of how to pull a whole fish out of a boiling pot with chopsticks. No such luck. So I dug around in there and looked hopeless for a while until they really felt sorry for me, and then Ada snagged a fish and plopped it on my plate, so everyone could dig in. Cool.

The meal went on, everything was delicious. I continued to embarrass myself with dropped veggies in laps, splattered tables, and a really insurmountable aversion to tofu. But I tried, and they didn't seem to mind my helplessness. Everyone took pity on me and made sure my plate was full of the best bits, since they knew I wouldn't be able to score them myself. By the end of lunch I was full of, and covered in, some really good food. Ada's mom, however, refused to believe it, and the whole trip was spent plying me with food.

The afternoon was spent watching tv in her brother and sister-in-law's apartment. It was really nice, 3 bedroom, pretty standard place. They kept asking me if it was like apartments in the states. It was. Just sitting on a couch, watching tv was really enjoyable, seeing as I have neither a couch nor a tv. Every now and then we even stumbled on to a channel with English subtitles, so that was cool too. Ada's mom cooked us dinner; rice, green peppers and beef, chicken and some other vegetable. It was delicious, but again she didn't believe I was full.

The next day we get up early and go to her parent's Nongcun (village/countryside farm) house. It was about 15 minutes outside of town. The whole area was made up of many similar one or two room farm houses with yards full of Chinese medicine. Her family has made their living for generations buying different medicines in bulk, and then cutting them up or refining them and reselling at the market, so here I got to see their yard full of a medicinal root looking thing, and how they cut, sort, and dry it. Ada and her mom made dumplings for lunch, and they were delicious! I tried to make a couple, but they pretty forcefully insisted I just go watch tv...

Then we got a bus back into Anguo, and from there took the bus home to Baoding. It was a great weekend!

a Thanksgiving visit!

Thanksgiving went by almost entirely unnoticed, with the exception of a wonderful visit from Mel. I picked her up from the airport (after a couple hours of staring at the arrivals board in frustration -- damn delays!) on Friday night in Beijing. We had a great weekend, starting with dumplings for dinner, a visit to the Great Wall the next morning, and a jam packed Sunday. The wall was freezing! I may have left a couple fingers and toes there. We also crammed in a trip to the forbidden city, street food, shopping, and some hanging out at the hostel.

Monday morning it was back to the excitement of Baoding. Back to lesson planning for me, and an introduction to what I like to call "the real China" for Mel. At least part of the real China. This week has gone by fast, and mostly uneventfully. Highlights include great food like Peking Duck, Korean BBQ, donkey, and much more street food. Other than that, Mel has been sitting around in my dorm waiting for me to get out of class. =[

Now I'm finished and it's time to get back on the train to Beijing, have another busy sight-seeing weekend, and then see Mel off! I loved having her here (and I loved all the goodies she brought from my mom and sister).

I can't believe it's almost December! I can't believe how many exclamation marks I've used! I can't believe I've eaten all my candy! I can't believe Felice just called and made me give directions to the taxi driver so Mel can get back to Dongfang Shuangyu Xue Xiao (my school) -- we'll see if he understood me, I sure didn't understand him, but don't tell Mel! I can't believe how much coffee I've had today! Real coffee! From Bridgitte! made with a french press from Mel! Not instant! Woo!

payday!

The best day of the month is here -- payday. So I'm going to share some of my finances with all of you that are curious (all 2 of you reading my blog that is).

First lets talk about Chinese money. Chinese Yuan (CNY), Renminbi (RMB), Kuai 块 (slang like 'bucks'), it goes by a lot of names. and symbols: ¥ or 元. the exchange rate is about 6.35 CNY to 1 USD, which means that the 4000元 a month I receive is about $ 630 in real money. Which doesn't seem like a lot. But you forget, I'm in China.

No, I'm not living the high life, and no I'm not adding to my savings account, but I'm certainly not slumming it either. My accommodations are included, as are my electricity and water bills, which makes it a lot easier to afford some luxuries on 630 dollars a month.

Groceries:
5 gal. jug of water: 7
5 apples: 10
pack of 5 ramen: 8
veggies (green beans/broccoli/etc): 10
rice: 10
potatoes: 10
oatmeal: 20
nuts: 20
chocolate bar (import): 15
instant coffee: 15 (2-3 weeks worth is 30 or 40)
bread: 10
peanut butter: 10 (a jar is 20)
week total: 150元


eating out:
breakfast (street food -- jianbing, etc) = 5
lunch (noodles, or a plate of some dish with rice) = 10 - 15
dinner (group orders a bunch of dishes, veggies, rice dishes, meat, etc) = 20 - 40
nicer dinner (Western food, fancy restaurant, etc) = 50 -100

misc others:
bathroom scale: 60
cleaning supplies when i moved in (broom, mop, bucket, soap, etc): 200
dvds: 10 each
shampoo: 20
phone credit: 50 for a couple weeks
bike repairs: 50
comforter: 80
bath towel: 90

wireless router: 100
crappy little speakers: 20


Beijing:
round trip fast train: 100
hostel: 35 - 100 a night
eating out: 50 - 150
drinking out: 20 - 50 a drink
shopping at Yashow clothing market:
fake Longchamp bag: 30
small knock off gucci/coach purse: 100 - 200
fake D&G winter coat: 220
fake uggs: 125

During the week, I really don't spend any money. When I head to Beijing, however, all my money disappears on American luxuries. I fall into such a trap by being willing to pay out the wazoo for American comforts like familiar food. Which is why you should mail me some Whataburger. Anyone? Or some American candy?

My address is:
Kelsey Adams
+86 15830844021
中国
河北省
保定市071000
东二环路 166 号

166 Middle of the 2nd east loop RD.
Baoding, Hebei Province
071000 China

If you just copy and paste and print it with the Chinese and the English, it's more likely to arrive. Send me a Christmas present!

China in a nutshell

Ok I can't really put China in a nutshell. It is too big, too crazy, too varied, and I have way too small an understanding... but I can summarize my experiences thus far.

So.

FOOD
pros: It's delicious. Dumplings (Jiaozi or Baozi), Kung Pow Chicken (Gong Bao Ji Ding) and fried green beans to name a few
cons: It's delicious. And oily, fatty, grisly, and most likely filled with gutter grease and sewage. Also very weird at times. I really have a disturbing love for donkey burgers.

LIVING SITUATION
pros: It's free. It's on campus, I don't have far to walk to class (like, it's out my door).
cons: Campus is in the middle of nowhere. To get anywhere I have to bike, taxi or walk. (which takes time, money or is exhausting). There are a lot of stairs.
pros: stairs and biking means working off that gutter grease.
cons: my bike is about one second from exploding at all times

TEACHING
pros: i'm getting better. I think. the kids are so sweet. it's fun sometimes.
cons: I'm really not getting better, that was a lie.
pros: there are only two months left

CHINA ITSELF
pros: it's cheap. it's exciting. it's interesting. people are nice when they aren't pushing and shoving and cutting in line (haha what line).
cons: people are always pushing and shoving and cutting in line. it's smoggy. it smells terrible most of the time.
pros: i can put off showering for weeks and nobody notices. i can (and do) wear the same clothes for days (and days) in a row without washing them

OTHER
con: internet is super slow
pro: at least I have internet in my room

con: teaching 1000 kids is exhausting and I'm always tired because my bed is rock hard.
pro: ?

Is it really november? already? no way.

Other than the first exciting week of October, not much happened last month. No exciting halloween (in fact no halloween, period), no crazy stories, no personal revelations.

So what has happened?

I still stink at teaching. I still haven't mastered Chinese (and never will). I still crave American food like Whoa!

But I have championed the devilish washing machine. I have discovered I do in fact have heat and am kind of a moron. I have made it half way through my China misadventures!

I have been twice to the police station to plead guilty for charges of not notifying the authorities every time I leave the city. I've signed my confessions, accepted my punishments (warnings), and been fingerprinted. The government requires advance notice of any foreign movement. Every hotel, hostel, and fast train requires my passport, and then reports foreigners' whereabouts  to the po-po. If I fail to notify the police in advance again I'll have a 500 rmb per day fine. So I'll be a little more careful next time.

I've started using the electric steamer the Americans that were placed here before left, and have fresh steamed veggies that I buy from the many street vendors all the time.

I've gotten good at navigating Baoding traffic on a rickety old bike without killing myself. I've also gotten good at finding random bike repair guys on the side of the road to fix said rickety old bike.

I've been to Beijing quite a few times, and every time I've splurged on American luxuries like burgers and pizza, and in the process spent way too much money. (but I only paid about 4.50 USD a night for the hostel, so I say it evened out).

I saw Liz Hannah! and hopefully will see her many more times.

And here are some pictures of my kiddos.

the never ending saga of national week

Ok lets see I left off in Chengdu.
Thursday morning I said goodbye to the amazing bed and mom and I cabbed to the airport. Made it back to Beijing no problem, and then found a bus to take us to Beijing West train station (opposite side of the city) to continue on to Baoding. Also no problem. Got dropped off about a 15 min walk from the station, where a crowd of rickshaw drivers were waiting. Before I could say a word they had grabbed our bags and told us they were taking us to the station. We went with it.

We arrived at my school a couple hours later, introduced Mom to the gate guards, made sure everyone had signed off on her being there and we were all set. 

I worked Friday and Saturday, and Mom entertained herself on our thrilling campus. We had a few excursions into town on bikes to eat at local restaurants and see the supermarket, etc. It was a quick trip, however, and Saturday night we got back on the train once more headed for Beijing. We went straight to the hotel near the airport and once again ordered room service and called it a night. 

Sunday morning Mom took off (bummer) and I turned back around and went back to the train station, back to Baoding, back to my school. This short Beijing excursion (about 16 hours all told) resulted much later in a trip to the police station to have some fingerprinting and wrist-slapping done, but that's a story for another day. 

So Mom had left, and I was back in my room, back on my rock hard bed, and back to work. 

i guess i'll start with the pandas

Wow.. it's been a month since I've updated. I don't know where to begin, but I can't put this off anymore or the blog is done. So here goes..

National Week Vacation!
October 1st was China's 62nd birthday, and China celebrates this event annually with a week holiday.

So Fri, Nov 30th, after an hour long train ride with Jesse from Baoding, we grabbed lunch near my hostel. He then headed to his hostel to meet up with some other CIEE-ers, and I headed to mine for wait for mom. Once she checked into the hostel (Sanlitun Youth Hostel aka Wangfujing hostel aka Beijing Sanlitun Hostel), I immediately started unpacking all the goodies she brought. It was like Christmas, not gonna lie, althought probably better since I won't see any family on Christmas this year. Reece's peanut butter cups, candy corn, halloween socks (thanks Martha!), current American magazines (Martha again!), kids books and materials for my classes, and so much more. That was great.

Then it was off to Blue Frog for some amazing American burgers (I hadn't had American food since I got here other than McDonalds once, but I'm sure mom was less than thrilled since she hadn't even had a Chinese meal yet) and to celebrate the births of China and Steve, another CIEE-er placed in Changping. We (Changping crowd: Steve, Mar, Kelly, Emma, Joel and then a couple others including John in Anhui, and Chris somewhere in Hebei, Jesse, Mom and me) had a couple beers, and then the group moved on to a bar. Once again, I managed to catch a cold right before getting to Beijing, so I headed back to the hostel with mom and turned in.

Sat we got up early and decided to be real Beijingers and take the subway to the train station to buy tickets to Baoding for after Chengdu. Note: the Beijing subway is amazing! Clean, fast, efficient, reliable, and easy. I love it! So we get there no problem, and then are faced with mobs of people trying to work out their transportation needs. You can't do anything in China without mobs of people. We succeed after some garbled Chinese from me and a lot of confused "what the hell does this dumb foreigner want" looks. So we looked at a map and decided since we were near the middle of the city, why not check out Tiananmen on this auspicious occasion. BAD IDEA! After a walk substantially longer than the map led us to believe, we found it was an absolute mad house. The line into the forbidden city probably contained the population of Stephenville and College Station combined. So we wandered around, had our pictures taken by countless strangers with and without our permission and moved on. Or tried to. Crowd control wasn't so effective, and we were exhausted and sick of the crowds and the noise and the chaos, but luckily after some navigating we got to a subway station. Unluckily it was closed. I learned later that this was because all subway stations are closed near tiananmen on major days like that. So we tried to get a cab. That was a no go. The few empty, on-duty ones we saw wouldn't pick us up (racism is alive and well), so we walked. And then walked. And then finally got a cab and somehow directed the cabbie where to take us.

After a little relaxing we walked over to YaShow, this giant clothes market. You can bargain for anything there, and we did. Got some sweet fake purses, fake Columbia jacket, and a some other little things. Spent way too much time and money (although spending too much Chinese money, when you look at it back in dollars, doesn't really seem like spending all that much anymore).

Back to the hostel to drop off our haul, and then it was dinner time. We walked to a pizza place to meet up with the crew. They had been there close to an hour, had only just been seated, and hadn't successfully placed an order yet. Once we got there, luckily things had started happening, and we got some delicious pizza pretty quick. After dinner we decided to head to the club (VICS) next door. The cover charge was 50 cny (8 USD), which was steep, but they lured us in with the promise of a free drink ticket with the cover. That was a lie. We weren't thrilled, but no refunds were forthcoming.

Sunday
Woke up and grabbed a cab to the airport, it was time for Chengdu! The airport, like the metro, is also clean and efficient and easy, so there were no difficulties. I did forget about the water bottle in my backpack at security, but they just made me take a sip of it and I was through.

We arrived in Chengdu (Sichuan province) and the adventure began. The cabbies at the taxi stand refused to turn on the meter, and refused to accept anything less than 150 cny for what we believed was only a 10 mile, maybe 20 min drive. So we got a black cab (just a guy and a car) for 100 and got to the Sheraton in about 30 min (I booked the hostel, but mom splurged for the Sheraton.. woohoo!). It was around 330 but our rooms weren't ready. We decided to splurge again and pay hotel prices for a snack and a drink. When we got the rooms and I sank into one of those heavenly beds, I knew instantly the rest of my time in Baoding just got harder. I had gotten so used to the hard as rock bed I have here, it didn't even bother me. Now it sure does. But anyway, we checked in and then headed out to see what we could find nearby.

skulls of something on the snack
street

Chengdu, and Sichuan in general has a ton of these neat little traditional snack streets, kind of similar to Wangfujing in Beijing, but not quite as huge and extravagant. We found one of those, walked around, people watched, and had a beer at a little patio restaurant, where people watched us.

Monday -- PANDA DAY
Got up at the butt crack of dawn (this is my life now, I can't sleep past 7.. what has happened to me??) and took a cab to the Xiongmao Jidi -- or the Giant Panda Research and Breeding Base. It was awesome. I hugged a panda bear. And saw a lot of other panda bears. And learned a lot about panda bears (xiongmao = panda bear). There was also a lot of walking, and we saw some red pandas. Red pandas are more like raccoons than pandas, and are also called "lesser pandas". A little insulting I think, they're very cute. It was raining a little, so I think the place was a little less crowded than it normally would have been on such a huge holiday. The mobs were beginning to arrive as we left.

adorable babies! i wish i had a better pic but we had about
30 seconds to snap a pic without flash from behind a glass
window before the guards were like "move along"

We shared our cab with a nice French couple back to the city center (a little ways away), then it was back out on another adventure.

This time we decided to walk a different direction, towards a canal that goes through the city, and a famous Daoist temple. Once again, the maps were very misleading, being that they were neither to scale nor oriented North (also no compass rose -- wtf people?). So we walked. and walked. and walked. saw some interesting sights. heard some interesting sounds. In fact, we did find a couple city parks and walked through them expecting peace and quiet, maybe some serene tai chi practitioners, but no. It was chaos! Of the deafening, cacophony of sound variety. Every little corner had their own blasting boom box and screaming and yelling and argh! It was enough to drive you crazy.

Then there was more walking and we found Yongqinggong -- a really famous Daoist temple. It was massive. Like acres big. With tons of little temples and incense and statues of daosit deities and lots more walking. We explored and saw as much as we could and then, to my great relief grabbed a cab back to the hotel.

Tuesday
American breakfast in the hotel -- eggs benedict! Yum! Then it was to the bus station for another adventure involving mobs of people, noise, lines, and various modes of transportation.
We got a ticket to Emei (city where Mt. Emei, a sacred Buddhist mountain is located), got on the bus and a few hours later were in Emei city.
Then we taxied to a different bus station, then bused up the mountain where we were told to switch buses to go further up. Got on the next bus, and discovered very quickly it wasn't going further up, it was going back down. That sucked. So we got a black cab up the mountain to our starting point, took a cable car up a little more, and actually got on the trail only shortly before sunset.

We briefly checked out Wannian temple, and with the sun rapidly disappearing, we were approached by multiple people trying to offer "hotel" rooms. We went ahead and agreed to see the room, and were led off the main path, down some stairs, around and into a little building with a kitchen, a living room, and four or so rooms. The room had two beds, the sheets seemed clean-ish, the price was right, and they had beer so we accepted. They offered to cook us dinner, but the thought of being closed in our rooms at 6pm after the somewhat hellish day we had endured was not so appealing. So we went back up to the trail with our phone flashlights leading the way (thank god "there's an app for that") and wandered towards the area we thought we had seen some restaraunty places (this wasn't still in a touristy, populous part of the trail, so there were a few). We started walking in one direction, passed a couple walking the other when we heard English! English! I blurted out "where are you from?" and discovered they were a sweet couple from Singapore, who were staying at a hotel a little ways down the other way. They said there were a few non-vegetarian restaurants that a way, so we turned around and followed them. I'm thrilled we did, we sat and had a beer and a good conversation with them. The way we were originally heading only had vegetarian restaurants, like much of the mountain because of the whole Buddhism thing. Then we didn't want to impose so we left them and got some fried rice and kung pao chicken nearby.

pay no attention to my double chin

Wed -- More Emei Shan and LeShan big Buddha!
Spent the day walking down stairs. Up some too, but mostly down. Good thing we got dropped off decently high so we didn't have to hike up them. Most of the trail is just stairs.
It was a beautiful day, lovely scenery. Saw some crazy monkeys, and even more signs warning us in chinglish about the monkeys. They are very clearly trained by the vendors to harass you unless you buy their "monkey food" and walking sticks.

After we had our fill we walked to a bus station at the bottom and took a bus into the city. We were going to buy a ticket to Leshan to see the biggest Buddha in the world, but were quickly approached by black cab drivers and instead agreed on a super cheap price to be dropped off right at the Buddha (about 30 min to an hour depending on traffic). Way more efficient than bussing to Leshan, and then taxiing to the buddha, and cheaper too. So we follow her to her car, which turns out to be a van with 6 chinese tourists who look about my age already crammed in. She stuffs us and our bags in the bag and we take off.

We get to the big buddha, buy tickets and head in. Once again, mobs and mobs of people. We walk around, have some super expensive tea, and realize that to actually walk down the stairs from the Buddha's head to his feet involves waiting in a 5 hour line. So we veto that. We see the giant head, and then decide to walk over to where we can get a boat ride to see the full Buddha from the water. Then its time to try and find our way back to Chengdu, which means getting back to the bus station. The thought of hours and hours more lines, crowds, buses and taxis kind of terrifies me. Instead we head over to a tour guide booth thing and ask if

any of them speak English. No response, nobody looks at us. Protip: This doesn't mean they don't care/don't want to help! Although it seems they are ignoring us and continuing their conversation, they are actually frantically trying to find their colleague with the best English. She appears and asks us how she can help. We inquire about finding a driver to just take us straight to Chengdu (about a 2 to 3 hour drive). After some negotiation, and calling a friend who calls a friend who calls a friend, we have us a driver. We grab some noodles while we wait for him to arrive, and thank our kind middle man. The guy arrives and she tells us to write down his license plate number if we're worried. She then also tries her best to explain that he needs to fill up with gas before leaving, so we will have to get out of the car and wait a little ways away while he does this. She does a good job, but we were a little confused.
 Everything worked out though, we got to Chengdu, got back to our room, got in bed, and ordered room service.

cutest baby ever. love the traditional hair cut

And that is more than enough for today. Tune in next time (hopefully less than a month from now) to hear the rest of my adventures from holiday, and getting back in to the swing of it in good ole Baoding.