Tuesday, December 2, 2008

“The mines are no place for a pony, even one so brave as Bill. Bye-bye Bill.”

You know what makes China so great?

Harold bought me a little cake today at the bakery down the street. It's one of the sweetest cakes I've eaten in a while and, at the very middle of this almost too-sweet cake, is a tomato. A little cherry tomato.

Srsly? A tomato? in the middle of strawberry cake?

It makes me smile.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by frost.

Oi! I was really productive today, even though I've been dog-sick since Sunday!



Look, this is me being productive. (Or just stupid with the camera, go figure.)


No, in all seriousness, I'm really quite proud of my ability to go off on my own around here and get things done. I'll admit, part of my culture-shock has been the fear of exploring on my own. Want to stay in the comfort zone, ya know. I mean, it's not like I lock myself in my apartment all the time. I go out a lot! But...I've shied away a little from going out alone. However, I've been gradually reaching out, doing things without calling people first, and practicing my chinese. It's horribly awkward of course, and terribly embarrassing, but...fun! (in a strange masochistic kinda way...)

So, tonight I went to grab some dinner (ran into Andy, said hello, traded some english and chinese and agreed to eat lunch together tomorrow). Then, I went to the store to buy some candy for my morning class tomorrow. I ran out of candy on them last week (for Halloween), so I'd promised to get more. Buying candy here is a little weird usually, because often they just have big buckets of it that you throw into a bag and have measured by the...umm..jing? jin? Not sure how it's pronounced....but it's a weight unit. I managed to have whole conversations over this candy tonight and bought way more than I needed. (I wanted some for myself of course!)

Next, I went to the phone shop to recharge my minutes again. Okay, family. Get skype. Seriously? I can't afford to waste anymore minutes on you people! If Grandma can get a computer when she doesn't even have CABLE, then Mom - you can get a damn microphone! Do it!

I also bought some oranges on my way home. This prompted another conversation about fruit, where I learned how to say "orange", "apple", "kiwi" and "pear" with a changsha accent!

...

Is that a good thing? *shrug* Who knows.


Now, I'm going to take some of this chinese medicine and watch Dr. Who before bed, because I think my fever has returned. Great.

Saturday, November 1, 2008

A wizard is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to.


(Part of Team Journey East! Harold, Shane, Lisa and my silly red face. Too bad the rest of the gang couldn't make it!)

Halloween!

Obviously, this post is a little late coming, but Happy Halloween anyway!

In celebration of my favorite holiday, a bunch of us got together and threw a party in the teacher's office of the library (the building where we have most of our classes). Several teachers attended, as did some of our students and friends!


I wish I knew how to get rid of red-eye...hmm...I'll probably start playing with picture-editing one day....



This is Beth in front of the group performing "The Telltale Heart" by Edgar Allen Poe. She's a great scary story teller! We all told some stories of our own as well. Even some of the students! Jane, one of the local teachers, did a few jokes and taught us some excercises!



This party was a really great chance for so many people to come together and get to know each other! Claire and Michelle, of course, already know each other from the competition, but they also got to meet my friends from different universities, and they got to hang out with the other foreign teachers here at CMU.






Pat, aka Father Christmas, is the best addition to any party! I mean...look at that beard! Gotta love papa!






Shane and Lisa's crew were big hits. Those guys are great! Here, Viviane and Shane pose for a picture.








Soon the costumes broke out of the bags and attacked the innocent party-goers! Lisa, here, was one of the first victims. We will forever remember her monstrous sacrifice. ^_^






This is hard to see, but...somewhere in the shadows...many of the boys succombed to the evil rabbit ears and were subject to numerous flashing cameras.






Not even I was spared! Boy, that hat got around. And please, ignore the small stick in my hand. It's not a chopstick, I promise. It's a magic wand. Simply add another to make a pair, and you can eat dumplings!



No one, it seems, could defeat the Hat'o'Witches.


Or the Phantom Mardi Gras Mask.



After numerous futile attempts at victory, we all fell, one by one, on the battlefield that was the CMU 2008 Halloween Party.


Harold was the last remaining survivor.


HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Friday, October 24, 2008

The quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail. But hope remains, if friends stay true.

K-TV.

It was a blast. The english songs were quite cheesy (Can we say "Baby hit me one more time?"), but the chinese songs were pretty cool.

We might have acted a little crazy too (Especially the ones of Himbo singing! Classic!)

I don't feel well, I think. I'm going to relax today. I even slept in late and didn't go running like I usually do. Oh well. ^_^



Oh man, I look so bad in these pictures hahaha....my baggy clothes aren't doing much for me, huh? Neither is my incredibly red face. wtf is up with that? LOL. Whatever. If I'm fat, I'm fat. At least we had fun! XD




This is one of our group shots. From left to right, Michelle, Claire, Me, then Himbo. Man this was so much fun!







Viviane looking adorable!









Claire and my silly red face. Bah. ^_^







This is all Himbo. I'm just the unlucky bystander lol. XD










More Viviane!







And I love this picture as goofy as it is.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Fool of a Took! Throw yourself in next time, and rid us of your stupidity!

Ah...it's almost the weekend.

Fortuna's wheel is just that: a wheel. For every up there is a down.

I've had some great downs, lemme tell ya.

Yesterday (Wednesday for you state-side readers), I got a little overwhelmed by...well China. Typical, I know. Fun? Absolutely not.

Let's recap though. When I returned from my fantastic trip. I found out that my toilet was no longer functioning properly. I'd been told that we'd have no water when we returned, so when I got to my apartment, I tested the toilet to check for water. There was water. An incredible amount of it, in fact, that flooded my bathroom. The toilet was not draining.

So, I called my foreign advisor about it. She sent 4 old guys to come look at it on Wednesday after I got out of my class.

For the record, I don't understand plumbing talk in English. Why the hell would I understand it in Chinese? *sigh* So these guys were yelling about the shower first, thinking that was my problem. I said No, it's my toilet! It's broken! I can say that much. They laughed. They always laugh when I try to speak Chinese. That's fine. But then they started motioning at the toilet and me and saying stuff that I honestly didn't get at all. So I called Mike who lives right downstairs and begged him to come help because he's fluent in Chinese.

Now, to understand this next part, you have to know how my bathroom is set up. There is a traditional toilet in the floor (a "Stooper"), and the Western toilet is placed directly above it. Brilliant right? Can you feel the sarcasm? And, by the time these people arrived the fix the toilet, the water really was cut off because a pipe had busted somewhere in the vicinity. Awesome.

So Mike tells me they want to get rid of the western toilet permanently, and I'll just use the extremely disgusting traditional toilet underneath. Okay. I do know how to use them, but this particular one is...well let's just say it's not pretty. Mike was angry about this on my behalf so he started yelling that we should be able to have western toilets. Every tenant in the apartments has a Western toilet. The guys responded to that by saying that Foreigners can't use traditional toilets because we're too fat. They told Mike that about us two specifically complete with hand gestures.

**sigh** Okay, gang. I understand that China is made up of small people. Not just skinny people. But small people. My bone structure is roughly twice the size of a chinese person's. And yes, I'm a chunky girl. I get it. No big, right? I also understand that people say "fat" the way they say "Foreigner". It's not so much an insult as just something they say. And I've been called fat enough times since I've gotten here that I just don't care.

But these four old guys, surrounding me in my own apartment, telling me that I can't use a toilet because I'm too fat was really a little much. And *everyone* heard this, because by this time, my foreign advisor and her husband had gotten there, and my neighbors Pat and Beth had walked outside (the door to my apartment was open). So everyone was just standing there yelling about my ability to use which toilet!

Ugh. Eventually, they fixed the damn toilet, and this morning I was able to use it because the water was turned back on. Great. That was the big Toilet Incident. I also had some major trouble with my formerly best-behaved class yesterday. The Nursing Majors. God, they must have been on drugs or something, because it was absolute torture for three hours. They said nothing. Did nothing. They were all completely unresponsive. It was ridiculous!

*sigh* So that evening, I got back and ranted to a couple people before I cooled down a little. I admit I wanted to cry a bit, but I didn't. These things just happen, I know. Fortuna's wheel, remember? And put into perspective, the day's events really weren't all that bad. Just overwhelming in an emotional way.

Today was better, I think. My chinese medicine majors were eager and interested. My lecture was the same today as it was yesterday, because I teach College English to all of them, and each class is roughly in the same places in the books. I talked about Halloween, and gave them an easy Ghost Story that they really liked. Next week I'll adapt trick-or-treating to the lesson, because we're discussing likes and dislikes in the book. I'm working on dialogue practices and writing exercises right now for that. Well, the kids loved it! Completely different from yesterday (thank God)

I took a nap in the middle of the day to recharge. That's one of the perks of having early morning classes. Then, Mike and I grabbed dinner at our favorite place, and it was good. He ranted about his less-than-ideal day, and I felt very glad my bad day was over.

I feel better now. Hopefully, tomorrow will follow the same trend. Then, Saturday, Mike wants to go find shoes that fit, and I'll probably tag along. Then Sunday, he's going to go into town to help some kids, and he said I could go too. Things to do! Awesome!


On a different note, Nim's Island is a beautiful little movie. I absolutely adored it. Now...I'm a writer. I may not be famous, or even largely published yet (I have a few silly poems in some anthologies...somewhere...and does publishing on online journals count? LOL), but this movie really struck home in my heart, because...well...like Alex Rover, my characters come alive in my head too. I talk to them, argue with them, and yes, they are like dear dear friends to me that I hope I'll never lose.

This movie was not a "Girl's version of Peter Pan" as some reviews stated. It was much more real than that, and yet so perfectly childlike in fantasy. I loved it and will probably watch it again.

Okay Lady Fortuna. I'm strapped into this Ferris Wheel, you call fate. Stall at the top for a while, won't ya? Thanks.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Home is behind, the world ahead

Chenzhou was fabulous, but it wasn't because of the dusty scenery or the noodles.

Viviane


Michelle
Claire


It was because of my great

friends.

Himbo
Beth


The trip from Changsha to Chenzhou began early in the AM on Friday (Oct. 17th). Like...6:30 in the morning early. The girls, Beth and I met Himbo at the train station. Himbo is another english teacher at Changsha Medical University. He's 23 and was the reigning youngest teacher on campus until I came on board. I stole the title ^___^. I feel honored in a "Drat, I'm the baby again" kinda way.

The train ride was roughly 5 hours long. We passed the time well enough by listening to music, talking and generally getting to know each other. Honestly, we'd basically just met Himbo that morning, and Beth and I hadn't spent much time with the girls outside of practice until now though I had had dinner with them once. It was an enjoyable trip, but we were all very ready to get off the train once we arrived in Chenzhou. Very ready. Ugh.

For the record, hard seats aren't so bad, but I wouldn't recommend booking hard seats on a train for a ride more than 5 hours or so.


Once we got out of the Chenzhou train station, we immediately looked for a place to have lunch. After much searching and the occasional wrong turn, we found a little shop and got some hot pot Then we went about finding our way to the university.











Xiangnan University is quite pretty. In this picture, it honestly looks like a fake backdrop. By the way, Himbo, the picture looks a little blurry. Maybe next time you should hold the camera a bit steadier! ^__^ I kid I kid. So, the place has a music building! I was in love with it. We spent the majority of our time at the university somewhere in the vicinity of the music building. The conest itself was held in the concert auditorium, and I was quite proud to realize I could read some of the posters on the walls about past concerts. Yay! The campus also has a nice looking lake (entirely manmade it looks like), with a little walking bridge and everything. Really cute. The biggest plus was that it was all...ya know...fully built. Nice change from the fact that all of China is under construction. (No joke, I swear)

(Urgh...I hate having pictures taken of me, but Viviane looks adorable!)








The competition took all of Saturday and all of Sunday morning. The only topic these kids had was "1+1=2". Not kidding. They had to write speeches and answer questions about this topic. Our girls had fabulous speeches, in my opinion, and they did so well! I have clips of all of their speeches. Unfortunately, I don't have enough room to post all three speeches here, so I'm posting Viviane's for now because it fits in the limited space I have. I also don't have their speeches in full, but you guys still get the point. I'm so proud of them for getting on that stage and doing so great! The judges were crackpots, in all seriousness. The questions for the speeches were ridiculous, and everyone agrees that the judging system was rigged. I was told by some Chinese teachers from other universities in Hunan, that the judging is always stupid every year. No one understands how the final grades can be given. Whatever. Although our team didn't win, they did a fabulous job, and should be commended!




Another plus of this trip was the nice hotel and 3 free meals a day! Although it's not in my habit to eat very much, I still appreciate food I don't have to pay for! And it was tasty too! It was also fun to have group meals for a change. Usually I've been eating/cooking for myself, and well let's face it. That gets really lame and boring and lonely really fast. I mean I go out with friends frequently, but sometimes people are busy, or I'm busy or too tired(lazy) to go out anywhere.



(From left to right: Himbo at top, Beth, Viviane, Michelle, Claire. I'm taking the picture obviously.) XD

Poor Viviane thought most of the food was too spicy. She doesn't really care for spicy food unlike...well...the rest of us! ^___^


The weekend was of full of speeches, food and attempts to stay awake in the auditorium (everyone had issues with this!).




One of our joint attempts resulted in this portrait of me surrounded by random flowers. I had started doodling flowers in my notebook and Michelle decided to draw a picture of me. I was smiling the whole time, but she didn't draw a smile! Oh well ^___^ She's a very talented artist! My flowers are hideously kindergartener-ish LOL. Also, forgive the bad scan. I don't know how to use scanners?







The return trip was hilariously entertaining. We got on the train, Claire and Himbo were going to sit across the aisle from the rest of us, but there were people in their (assigned) seats. One man was sitting in Himbo's seat, while another man was sitting in some random lady's seat across from the 1st man. Himbo and Claire argued a bit, but the men pretended they didn't hear them! They sat there and acted like nobody was talking to them!


Then the guards came and argued a bit, and the men did the same thing to them! Oh then there was screaming, and commentary from the other passengers. The men finally said something like "we just wanted to sit for 10 minutes". What? Lamest excuse ever! Finally, the guards kicked them out of the seats so that
our people could sit down. After that the ride was rather peaceful. Himbo got sandwhiched between Claire and another nameless girl...






While Viviane, Michelle and I shared music and played the language game! The language game involves translating random things from english to chinese and back again. Then we started in on Japanese and it was chaos after that. Heh.)



To say the least, we were dog tired by the time we got back to Changsha. We left Himbo and Viviane in town, because they were going in other directions. So, Claire, Michelle, Beth and I met the driver from our school, and he drove us back to the university. We all promptly crashed after that.

So, my little weekend getaway was hectic, exhausting and a whole bunch'a crazy fun. I even practiced some Chinese. XD woot.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

"It is in Men that we must place our hope"

This post is a little disjointed. I've actually been working on it for a couple days now, but I get tired or distracted so it's been sitting open and ignored on my computer for a while. If it doesn't make sense, I apologize. I'm not very good at writing in a journal at regular intervals. ^___^


So what are my classes, you ask?
Well. I teach two subjects (two very similar subjects XD). College English and English Listening. I have one textbook for English Listening, which I'm told I need in order to teach my section of 1st year English Majors. The class itself is about 70 students large, but for the most part, the kids are quite bright and eager to learn. I do have a lot of fun in that class as the textbook gives me a bit of freedom to add other things to my lesson plans. Games, for example, like tongue twister contests (they LOVE this) or races to see who can draw the best maps from someone else's directions (This practices communication skills). The games are always class vs. teacher, and my english majors really get a kick out of me losing the map game. And I always lose the stupid map game. I suppose I just have to learn my way around the university a little bit better ^___^. I have 4 other classes during the week. Each class is 3 hours long. Whew. These are all my 1st year non-English Majors, and I teach them all College English using two textbooks: One for reading and writing, one for listening and speaking. As I mentioned before in my previous post, I'm required to finish both of these books within this semester. That's a tough order, let me tell you, when each class is 70 students large and only half of them understand what's coming out of my mouth. Let's just say the comprehension levels of the students are extremely varied within each class.

The List:

On Tuesdays, I teach English Majors in the morning (my only "English Listening" class) and my Stomatology Majors (those kids who want to be dentists when they grow up)
Wednesday = Nursing Majors
Thursday = Chinese Medicine Majors
Friday = Business Majors


On a the average, my stomatology class is the worst behaved (and the class with the lowest levels in english comprehension), while my Nursing class is the best behaved. My english majors are fantastic.

I share some of these students with the other foreign teachers (mainly Harold). In fact, our english majors started a study group that Harold visits sometimes. I think I'll start visiting too if I can.

~

Did I mention that I'm a coach for the English Speaking team here? Yes a team. This weekend (tomorrow-through Sunday) is the regional CCTV9 English Speaking competition where our team of three girls will compete against the other universities in the region. If they win, they'll go to Nationals in Beijing. There are three coaches: Pat, Beth and myself. Pat and Beth work on the impromptu and question portions of the match as well as general tips for competing. My main job is editing, revising the speeches as well as coaching on pronunciation and performance. I love coaching this team. The girls are quite talented, and I've always loved working with speeches and performances on stage. I absolutely adore public speaking and am thrilled to be able to help coach our team this year. ^___^

So, I leave tomorrow morning at 6:20am for Chenzhou where the competition will be. We're taking a train! I love trains. (Flash back to Final Fantasy VIII, and if you don't understand the reference all the more power to you.)

Beware! Below there be emotion and sappyness!

As I was writing this post, I started having flashbacks of my favorite English teacher at LSU, and I realized that I miss her very much. I didn't get a chance to talk to her over the summer after graduation, what with work and all the hurricane issues that complicated my departure from the states, but...she's a really amazing person. A lot of my teaching strategies stem from my experience as her student, and I wanted her to know (if she reads this journal) that I give her most of the credit for whatever success I may happen to achieve in the classroom.

I'm a relatively new addition to the teaching game. The idea of working through cultural and communication barriers is intimidating and sometimes terrifying in my opinion. Most of us, as native-english speakers, take our language for granted. I know I sure have. And so, if we become teachers ourselves, we make take the written courses to show us what techniques work best (of course I did this), but...I think I really didn't understand what being a "teacher" meant until I met Nolde. She thought she was simply the one editing my grammar and cutting my commas and run on sentences, but she did a lot more. I think she may be the reason I warmed up to the idea of being a language instructor in the first place.

So, sometimes...when I'm working with my students, and I get bogged down by stupid details of "Is it Tomato or Toma(h)to????", I think of the lady who was once my teacher and is now my friend, and I feel better. I feel more relaxed, I suppose. More confident. And I know that, even though I'm the baby of the group...and even though I still have so much to learn, I can definitely do this crazy thing called "teaching".

I wonder what it would be like to teach anthropology in China...?

Ponderings for the future, I suppose. ^__^

Saturday, October 11, 2008

The Long Road

The beginning was this.

Just kidding, I swear. (Though, he does possess a striking resemblence to one of my neighbors....)

My real beginning....is here. Hunan Province, China.




Somehow, I found myself outside the states, and across some random body of water to boot. Suddenly before I quite realized what was happening, I was teaching English at Changsha Medical University. This is where I am now.

The rest is what happened next.


When Harold and I arrived at this university, there were four foreign teachers already living here:

Mike, the cultural anthropologist interested in Chinese Ethnohistory
Pat, the "Father Time" look-a-like. Resident Chainsmoker, gift-giver, guide and friend.
Beth, Pat's keeper (aka, his wife XD). Wonderful lady, my new mother, and baker of delicious Banana Nut Bread.
Joris, the Dutchman who teaches "Proper British English" and who is married to a lovely, if not overly talktative, Changsha lady named Xu. She helps me buy the freshest vegetables at the market in the mornings. Joris, on the other hand, scares me a bit with his love of 'Nurses' (The nursing majors at the school). Hm.

I live on the third floor of the 1st Teacher's Dorm, located in a great big hole near the back of the university. I don't joke when I say, "hole". Two days before Harold and I arrived, the area flooded to the point where the teachers had to crawl out of windows from the second story onto the edge of a hill in order to get to class. It's an interesting story to hear, but I have to say, I'm glad I was wasn't there to witness it.



The apartment is nice. Much nicer and more spacious than I originally imagined when I signed up to come to China.

I have snazzy furniture, a huge bed in one room and another completely extra room, just for my belongings or guests if I have any.





The shower is in my bathroom, not in my kitchen as some other foreign teachers have, and I've even got brand new appliances like a new washing machine, microwave, rice cooker, TV, DVD player and computer. Quite luxurious. I especially like the computer as my laptop runs Vista (unfortunately), so our logistics person couldn't seem to hook it up to the internet properly.


Ah, the internet. Much like our phones and many other services, the university seems to be defaulting on payments. Our phones are still disconnected, and our internet is less than stable. Also, the water company has threatened now to stop delivering water as the university continues not to pay them. Also, inside our language labs (which serve as our main classrooms much to my displeasure), the computer systems rarely ever work and the companies that the university bought the equipment from won't fix any of it, because apparently they have not been paid in full.

It's a little shady around these parts. For a private university, this place seems to be in the pits.

The students range from good to bad, normal for any university, and in general, it's pretty peaceful. I love walking along the Back Street, the popular hang-out street for students, because it's very different from being in the city. The ground isn't paved, and the place is usually overrun by the smell of Stinky Doufu (Tofu). If you hold your nose, it tastes very good, I think. Not my favorite dish, however. Early in the morning, farmers lay out their straw mats for their vegetables and fruit, always fresh and tasty before 8:00am. I bought some chicken too. The definition of "fresh" here is that it was killed and defeathered in front of me. Pretty interesting, I'd say. My mother was appalled, but I simply thought, "I wonder if it'll taste different from the frozen stuff at Wal Mart?" Not too much difference except in price. Wal Mart in general is expensive and I hate it. I hated it in the states, and I hate it here. Bleh.


The town, here, which people call Wang Cheng, is totally under construction. We regularly have timed power and water outages which can make life rather inconvenient, but these are the quirks one must expect when moving to an entirely new place. Although there is mud, dust and unused building materials everywhere, the area has a certain charm about it. The people are nice, for the most part, and the food is wonderful. (from an American southerner's perspective of course XD) I personally think some good ol' Red Beans and rice with andouille sausage and some of Patrick's corn bread win, but the cabbage here is fantastic.

Mmmm....

So, the school is a little beyond underdeveloped. We had upwards of 5,000 incoming freshmen this semester, but nowhere near enough student dormitories. We have almost 1,500 students living in the one library on campus, while the majority of the school funds are sent to the building of a new hospital in front of the university. The cafeteria frequently makes large groups of students and faculty sick to the point of needing to go to the clinic, and the recreational facilities amounts to a circle of semi-dry dirt (the track), and a parking lot with hoops (basketball court). All in all, it feels like home. :) We fondly use the term, "Ghetto" which Harold and I, much to our great amusement, explained to Chessy, our very stressed-out FAO. She's the most wonderful person alive, and it was fabulous. It's like this entire area has been slapped together with duct tape.

Ah, duct tape....life's most precious resource....*sigh* So glad China has it...

Since, I've already used it to fix my showerhead. XD


Moving along. I must use this time to update the world on the past month! I will do it in a series of 15 points. Hopefully concise. If not, read someone else's blog.

1. I arrived.

2. I moved in.

3. I didn't have class until September 22nd (Hurray for Mandatory Military Training for Freshmen!!!!!!!!!) I have class now, though, and I teach everything BUT Oral English. Crap. Textbooks?! What?! I also have 500+ students, ranging from English majors to random kids off the street who barely know "Hello". Oh, and I have two textbooks for each class. And I am supposed to finish both textbooks this semester.

4. I discovered Metro (and then discovered all the cheaper stores closerto me after I'd blown 500 kuai)

5. I despaired over our foreign residency problem (which wasn't a problem for very long thanks to monetary 'connections' between school and police.) I didn't waste a lot of time despairing though, else I wouldn't have had much fun at the Changsha Museum...



or the....


Martyr's Park.











(That guy there is Mike, by the way. We call 'im Doc. Just because.)

6. I made friends on Busses (Maria, her brother, Sally, Maxine, Wu Fang, Wang Jiexing etc...)

7. I celebrated the Mid Autumn Festival, outside, in a circle with Baijiu (oh god). Someone had a guitar. I also played pool in an arcade with Maria and her brother.

8. I messed with my camera during some downtime.

9. I went to the Foriegn Experts' Banquet to celebrate the National Holiday, and now I want a traditional Chinese Bamboo flute. I want I want!

10. During the National Holiday, I went hiking around a luxury hotel that was prettier on the outside than it was on the inside.

11. I learned the Changsha Bus system part with a friend and part by myself. In this way, I discovered the fabric market!

12. I ate Sushi in China (What? Srsly?)

13. I ordered a meal for 6, in Chinese, on Walking Street.

(Note: That lovely Foreigner in my picture is Heidi, Pat and Beth's daughter. She's quite the cool chick.)

14. I bought a scarf with Suekoilya, Lisa and Shane.

15. I insulted a group of girls in a scarf store. In Chinese. XD Oh the things we learn on the street.


That scarf incident happened last night. Today, I've busied myself with lesson plans, making copies, and playing with this blog. Fun, right? Loads of fun.


Well, as far as adventures go, this is turning out pretty crazy cool. I'm a month into it now, and I have had my fair share of ups and downs. I know there is more to come. Much much more.

Oh bring it on already, so I can go get more dumplings.