A Time to Travel...

Just like in the U.S., China has a winter break in between semesters for colleges and universities. In the U.S., this break is planned around Christmas but in China it is scheduled around Chinese New Year and the Spring Festival (Chunjie in Chinese), two huge festivals for the Chinese. That being said, you can probably guess that I am on winter break!! It started about a week ago and I have four weeks remaining...YAY!
Of course, since it's such a long break, I have some traveling planned and it starts tomorrow! I am heading to Sichuan Province in Southern China...it's the big orange blog on the map to the right. I may also be going to Yunnan Province which is directly below the orange blog. My Chinese friend, Aroma, who I met in Yinchuan nearly 6 years ago has been inviting me to her hometown for well...hmmm...yes, about 6 years and I am finally going to make the trip! She already has a ton planned - we'll be in Chengdu for a few days, then the mountains of Ya'an, then her hometown of Mianyang, and then possibly onto Kunming in Yunnan. I will be there for about 10 days.
When I return to Tianjin, I will be spending some time celebrating the Chinese New Year and Spring Festival with some of my students and their families. This should be a very interesting cultural experience for me as it is such an important festival and there are so many traditions. I am very honored to have been invited by 3 students to spend this holiday with their families.
AND...yep, there's more...in the middle of February I will head to Thailand for my organization's conference and a few extra days to see the sights of Chiang Mai. Yes, yes this is a hard life but I just want to be sure to have the best and most interesting experiences so that you don't get bored with my stories! :)
I will probably not blog while I am in Sichuan Province but I will try to get some pictures and stories up before I leave for Thailand. There should be a lot to write about over the next month!
As always, thanks so much for reading my blog...I hope that you enjoy it; I know that I am comforted by bringing you along with me! :)

Don't Break the Ice!

This past month it has gotten really cold here in Tianjin! Sure, we don't have loads of snow and ice like you have gotten back home but the bodies of water here in the city have frozen over. There is a canal that runs through the city and also a lake that surrounds the TV Tower. I have been out on the lake ice twice now and it is quite a festive place to be!

A group of us headed to the lake yesterday for a friend's birthday party. As you can probably imagine, they have a small ice skating rink and skate rentals but that is only where the fun begins! Also to be rented are these small wooden sleds...well, kind of a mixture between a sled and a boat. They are basically planks of wood with two or three small seats attached to the top of the plank. You are given two wooden sticks with metal pointers on the ends and that is how you "row" around the lake. See the picture below of the sled/boat that Natalie and I rented. Along with the sled/boat there were other other forms of transportation...I really wish I would have gotten a picture but one of them looked like a plastic exercise bike and people were literally pedaling around the lake. Another one looked like one of those three-wheelers that little kids ride...brings a whole new element of fun when it's on the ice! :)


Placed sporadically on the lake are little stands; some of them are set-up for games (see the picture below of the balloon and dart game). If you search hard enough and travel to the middle of the lake you can find the lady who has a little cotton candy cart!


I have really been blessed to find a group of friends here in Tianjin, some are teaching like I am and some are studying Chinese. We have had a lot of fun times and they have been incredibly helpful as I have adjusted to living here! I am so thankful for them. :)

Can We Borrow Your Voice?

As I have mentioned before, life in China is never dull and the opportunities that come knocking on my door continue to baffle me. Take yesterday, for example...I was asked to make a recording for a high school English class. So, I went with another American teacher to a recording studio on campus and there we sat for about 5 hours recording the discs. After some editing and possibly another hour or so of re-recording, the discs will be ready to be used for listening comprehension classes in Chinese high schools! The woman who was helping us record kept saying that I had a beautiful voice...I bet those high school students won't think so after they've had to listen to me for 5 hours! Oh, I can imagine the jokes and imitations already... :) Anyways, I got paid 1,000 RMB for this little gig, which is 1/3 of my monthly salary for teaching!! You could say that I jumped eagerly at this chance. Here is a sample of the conversations we recorded:

W: Hello, Jim. How were your travels to Paris?
M: Very nice. We saw many famous sights and ate a lot of tasty food.

Or, of course the ones about America:

W: I do not think that America should use so much paper.
M: How much paper do they use?
W: Well, enough to kill about 850 million trees.
M: Wow, that is a lot of trees that have to die!

Whether this is true I'm not sure, but just a thought...maybe they shouldn't be criticizing our use of paper until they have a solution for the number of plastic bags they use! We all have our problems, right?

As I mentioned in my last blog, I've been spending a lot of time with my students before they head home for break...here are some pictures!

This first one is with Anya, one of my tiniest students!


Maybe you can see the stuffed rat/mouse that I am holding. My students gave this to me as a Chinese New Year's gift since we are heading into the year of the rat.


With 3 of my boy students...out of 150 students, I had only 22 boys this semester.

How Would YOU Answer Them?

Even though my classes for the term are wrapping up (my last finals were today so now all that's left is grading) I am still hearing from/talking to/meeting with my students quite often before they head home for break. I have been trying to do something special with each class to celebrate the end of the semester! They are such a blessing - I love the time that I get to spend with them.

One of my classes has lovingly given me the nickname, "the walking dictionary" and they think it's just hilarious to refer to me as that - they'd rather ask me what words mean than finding out on their own. Apparently this nickname has spread to my other classes and so now they hound me with the strangest questions! Recently I've had a load of questions come in the form of text messages...how would you answer these!?!?!



"How much is a zillion? There are two zeros between a million and a billion, and so it is with a billion and a trillion. So does it mean there are two zeros between a trillion and a zillion?" ~Sarah

Imagine typing that in a text message!

Also from Sarah, "Do you place an angle (angel) or a star on the top of a Christmas tree? Because I was watching 'Sex and the City' and they placed an angle (angel) but a girl in our class said you place a star. Which one is it?"




"Would you please tell me what rhetorical device is employed in 'more haste, less speed?'" ~Eva

Thank you Google for helping me out with this one!!




And, the most confusing one yet...
"I read an electric panel heater instruction, but I am puzzled by this group of words: spot plus range. What does this mean?" ~Jackle

HUH?

Seafood, More Seafood, Dumplings and Fish

I had another one of those great "cultural experiences" this past day and a half. I was invited to the home of one of my students, Valencia, who lives just a little bit outside of Tianjin. Actually, her family lives in the country so I got to experience the country-life! It's very, very different from my campus life in the city. Country homes are very simple...when I asked for the bathroom I got pointed towards a bucket sitting in the middle of their back courtyard (luckily I soon had access to a real toilet so I didn't mind waiting!) When I laid down on the bed my back and bum were greeted with a traditional Chinese bed - picture sleeping on your box-springs...or a wooden board. When I got to my students' home I was treated like an honored guest and that meant that I immediately had to start eating, so out came the crabs, shrimp, and other unidentified seafood - at 8 o'clock in the morning. It's always interesting to see how others live, and it reminds me to be thankful for some of my comforts - can't wait to get home to that pillow-top mattress! :)
Some of the highlights of going to Valencia's were meeting her family, making dumplings, and seeing her father's factory!
Pictured below are Valencia's twin nephews....


Also, if you have never had dumplings before, they are basically bits of rolled out dough that are wrapped around different kinds of vegetable or meat stuffing and then they are boiled, steamed or fried. There is certainly an art to wrapping them and it is an art that I just didn't master! You can see below Valencia and myself making dumplings and then the finished product!




One of the last things that we did was to go to Valencia's father's factory. He has started a business of raising and growing 4 different kinds of fish that are then sold in restaurants. It was quite interesting to walk through all of his "fish houses" and see the tremendous amount of work that goes into this. I was told that he rarely even sleeps at home...including on the weekends! There are rooms and beds at the factory and most of the workers stay there all of the time because it is necessary to continually feed and check the water temperatures of the fish. Can you imagine? Many of us probably get frustrated with our jobs, but at least we get to leave once in a while! This was a great experience and one that was very meaningful to my student and her family - there is so much to learn in this country!!

Things You Don't See In Iowa....

For this posting, I thought I would include some pictures...some that I took and some that my mom took....of things that you just wouldn't see in Iowa!

The first one is a sweet-n-sour fish that is quite popular in a restaurant that we often go to, some of my friends from Germany are crazy about it! Notice the head and tail...and don't start thinking of Nemo, it'll only make things worse. :)


Next is an open-air market that we saw on the way up to the Great Wall. We didn't have the chance to go exploring but I am sure that we could have found anything we needed out there, and a lot of things that we certainly don't need, too!


To me, this next picture is so common that it doesn't even phase me but the fact that my mom was so insistent on getting this picture makes me remember that it's not so common in the U.S. Bike parking, anyone?


This is a fabric market in Tianjin. Imagine this section of the market, multiply it by about thousand and you've got the entirety of the market!


I just took this picture the other day. Even the freezing weather won't stop these die-hard fishermen from spending their afternoons at the canal that runs through the middle of the city.

Reflections on 2007...

As 2007 began, I was sitting on a plane returning from a week-long trip in Guatemala. While there, I had been sharing some of my dreams with the Fitch family, who I went with. One of the dreams I shared was moving to China to teach English "someday." I had no idea at the time that "someday" was much closer than I had anticipated. Reflecting on a year of surprises, challenges, miracles, deep sadness, strength, and adventure I can see that this will be a year I will never forget. What did 2007 look like for me?

* I experienced the unselfish support of family and friends as I wrestled with the huge decision of uprooting my life and moving to China.
* I stood by one of my best friends who had been thrown into a nightmare and then I witnessed the miracle of healing for her dad.
* I cried so many tears as I said "see you later" to each friend, volunteer, co-worker, sister, and child at FLC who had touched my heart over the past 3 years.
* I looked my fears of moving to a foreign country in the eye and finally said, "Bring it on!"
* I became humbled as I moved from a job that I excelled at into a job that I, well, that I kind of suck at! (All of you teachers back home...the respect I have for you...)
* Through this humbling, I learned that maybe work isn't always about work, maybe it's about the people you are with and through that I experienced JOY from my students - words are too few to express what these college students have come to mean to me.
* I laughed when my mom was here and was trying to practice some Chinese she had learned. She confidently said "Ni Hao!" ("Hello!") to a storekeeper as we walked OUT of the store. :)
* I felt excitement when I heard that new-life will be coming in the form of a baby to someone I love back home.
* And finally, I was reminded that ONE person can make a difference, no matter where we are or what we are doing...I want to be ONE of the ONE.

If you get a chance to reflect on 2007, I would love to hear about your accomplishments, growth, and changes during the year - if you take the time, I think you'll realize just how colorful your life is.

I know that a lot of people (myself included!) say "I hope 2008 is your best year yet" but I truly do wish this for all of you...I hope it is a year of facing fears, standing by your friends, new-life, independence, and JOY. HAPPY NEW YEAR!