VenusChung's Xanga

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 13:15:48 GMT

Interesting, yes. Amazing, no.

With snow completely covering buildings, trees and the flat terrain, Heilongjiang, from an airplane window, looked like a snow globe that hadn’t been shaken up in a while.Contrastingly, my next destination Yunnan, which is in the southern part of China, looked like a giant broccoli farm, so lush and dense were the rolling hills.Bordering Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam, Yunnan (South of the Clouds), is known for its great variety of people, terrain, flora and fauna.

The first city I visited in Yunnan was Kunming, where I discovered beautifully landscaped streets, tons of cafes and the most delicious food.My first stop was the Stone Forest, which I had imagined to be a Grand Canyon of limestone pillars where you could take the rock version of the Rorshach inkblot test.Rock formations here have names like Rhinoceros Looking at the Moon, Wife Waiting for her Husband, and Phoenix Combing its Wings.Though the individual rock formations were pretty fascinating, the park—with its manicured lawns and paved walkways—was not the geographical wonder I had in mind. Maybe I've been spoiled with views of Bryce Canyon and Yosemite Valley. Still, I had to try to take shots that made the park look like the best rock formation park in the world.

This natural wonder is cleverly entitled Elephant Standing on a Platform.

After reading an intriguing description in the Lonely Planet, my friend Allison and I decided to visit the Bamboo Temple, which features these realistic life-size clay figures of noblemen.The Lonely Planet reports that these figures’ expressions include an impressive range of human emotion: joy upon seeing an old friend, anticipation before clapping two symbols together in a musical performance, conviction while emphasizing a discussion point.

I had imagined the figures to be like the great terracotta soldiers of Xi’an taking part in day-to-day activities.After visiting this temple and seeing the rather commonplace figures, I marveled at the power of words to create interest in something I would have otherwise easily disregarded.

Eureka! Despite our disappointment at not seeing the grandest sculptures of the 19th century,
Allison and I--after having carefully inspected every expression of every figure--were inspired to capture some of our own emotions while in our self-named Garden of Contemplation.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 11:14:38 GMT

Surviving Subzero

During the Spring Festival holiday, I traveled from the coldest part of China to the warmest, shedding my layers as I made my way south.I visited the following cities: Harbin, Kunming, Lijiang, Zhongdian, and the Xishuangbanna Region.

I started my travels in Heilongjiang (Black Dragon River) which, sharing a border with Russia, is China’s northernmost province.With subzero temperatures, Heilongjiang’s most famous attraction is the Ice Lantern Festival, found in the city of Harbin.I spent a week in Harbin with my friend Barbara skiing, ice skating and touring attractions like the Ice Lantern Festival and the Siberian Tiger Park.

Drinking pearl milk tea and eating roasted chestnuts at the Harbin Institute of Technology with
(from right to left) Barbara, her roommate Wei Wei and Wei Wei's boyfriend, Tom.

To train for the Harbin cold while in Qingdao, I often did not turn on my heater.While in Harbin, I survived the cold by wearing two layers of wool thermals under a ski bib and a down jacket.To complete the snowman look, I wore earmuffs, a SARS-type face mask, a hat and a scarf.

So how cold is cold?

Forget trying to describe what cold feels like.After a certain point, the body is too numb to be able to register degrees of coldness.Let me describe what cold looks like:

- Nose hairs and eyelashes become icicles.

-Squishy fruit like persimmons and pears roll around like marbles in boxes and have to be thawed out in warm water before they can be eaten.

-Soda sold on the street is rock solid.

-Ungloved fingers lose all sensation. I found if I took too long composing a photo, my fingers became so numb that I could not press the trigger button.

-Ice cream is sold directly out of boxes, not freezers.Why would anyone want ice cream in this weather, you ask?The locals say that the central heating is so warm that they need to cool off once they get indoors.

- Huge—no, gargantuan—ice and snow sculptures grace the whole city.Think sandcastles.Now, think snow and ice instead of sand.Next, think big—as big as a life-sized building with rooms and staircases.Finally, think of a city filled with these buildings all lit up.That’s the
Ice Lantern Festival:

For the record, temperatures ranged from –20°C to –30°C (-4°F to -22°F).

Also famous in Harbin are the Siberian Tigers, which are the largest of all tigers and are listed by the World Wide Fund for Nature as one of the world’s 10 most endangered animals.

I had expected to see the tigers in a fairly natural habitat, roaming freely through trees and caves.But instead of entering the wildlife preserve I had in mind, I felt like—as my minibus made its way through double security gates to get to each section of the park—I was visiting inmates in a prison.

For the most part, the tigers lounged around, either sleeping or preening.The one time they showed themselves to be the powerful predators I expected to see was at feeding time.Visitors can buy live animals, ranging from chickens Y40 (US $5) to cattle Y1,500 (US $187.50), to feed the tigers. A truck with caged windows rolls out into the field, the driver throws out whatever the visitors bought and within seconds, the tigers pounce.

Saturday, February 04, 2006

Sat, 04 Feb 2006 10:07:25 GMT

Where in the World is Venus Chung?

This semester, that's been a really hard question to answer. At the beginning of the semester, though my body was in Qingdao, China, my heart was in San Francisco (see previous entry). Then, when I realized that my heart had grown to include Qingdao, my body took off for a countless other places.

Almost every other weekend, I visited a different city in my province: Rizhao, to visit a friend's family in a farming village; Liaocheng, to celebrate Thanksgiving with other foreign teachers; Zibo, to visit another friend's mother in an urban community built around an oil company...

Now that I'm on a seven-week break for Spring Festival, it's still a bit hard to tell you exactly where in the world I am. Well, I can tell you where I am right this second--Lijiang, Yunnan, an ancient canal town with winding cobblestone roads--but I won't be here in the morning. In the morning, I'm catching a flight to Xishuangbanna, the Thailand of China, where I hope to finally shed my many layers.

Here I am at the Carnation Inn in Lijiang, Yunnan with the Yu Family, whom I met while traveling to Shangri-la. The parents met and fell in love through their jobs. She's a TV host; he's a cameraman.

As I've traveled, I've found that though many of the places I've visited are what I've seen in travel magazines or heard about from fellow travelers, the breathtaking views are not what I keep thinking about. What has left the greatest impression is the people. These impressions have come from the old friends that I've visited, the new ones that I've made along the way and from the different ethnic and cultural minority groups that I've stayed with.

Over the next couple weeks, I hope to fill you in on some of these details and, of course, I'll include some of my favorite shots of those awesome views. The next time I write, I hope to be writing in a T-shirt rather than a sweater and a down jacket. See you then!

Friday, October 21, 2005

Fri, 21 Oct 2005 13:06:34 GMT

In my Heart’s Eye

After a wonderful summer in the States with some of my favorite American people, foods and hangouts, I found it a bit hard to leave. Once back on campus though, since I was already familiar with the environment, customs and people here at Laiyang Agricultural College (LYAC), I thought that settling back in to my China routine would be easy. During my first few weeks back in Qingdao, however, my mind kept flashing back to some of my favorite moments during the summer and I found that I was not able to pick up from where I left off before the summer. As much as I love my home here and as truly excited as I was to see my Chinese friends again, I found that my heart was really back in San Francisco. Though slightly aware that I was not all here in Qingdao, I was feeling too blah to figure some way to ship the rest of me over. With the help of some of my favorite people here at LYAC, I saw that my heart was not really as far away as I thought.

Old Eyes

One of the people I most looked forward to reconnecting with was Margaret, my good friend and language partner. A junior English major who humorously speaks her mind and loves reading classical Chinese literature, Margaret is unlike any Chinese girl I know. In fact, Margaret is unlike anyone I know. When the campus boiler broke down a couple weeks ago, all the students went without any drinking water for five days. Thirsty, she came knocking on my door for a cup of water. Since I was not home, she knocked on the door of my neighbor, also an English teacher. Seeing that he was not home, she moved to the next floor to knock on the door of another teacher. Disappointed yet again, she continued knocking on the doors of the rest of the English teachers. When she received no response from any of the doors, she proceeded to knock on the Japanese teacher’s door, all the while straining to recall any Japanese words she knew. When she found that even he was not home, Margaret became desperate. She decided to go to a restaurant that she knew would serve tea upon seating. While she skimmed the menu, she gulped down the tea as quickly as she possible could. Once she emptied the tea pot, she quickly glanced around the room and seeing that no one was watching her, grabbed her bag and furtively ran out of the restaurant!

While many Chinese girls are preoccupied with losing weight and straightening their hair to appear more womanly, Margaret has decided that she would much rather look like a girl than bother so much with appearances. While most spend all their time studying for a qualifying graduate school exam (to get into a good graduate school to get a good job to attract a good husband to—hey, who imported that dream?), Margaret has declared that she finds such an existence boring and meaningless. Her dream is to teach English to children in the undeveloped areas in western China where the conditions are harsh and the resources limited. In these areas, water is so limited that people wash their faces only after they have already used the water to cool their parched throats. After reading a recent article that described in detail these conditions as well as the needs of the people there, Margaret wept and determined that she would do all she could to make her dream come true.

When I first saw Margaret this semester, I noticed that instead of the chipped round black glasses she used to wear, she wore a pair with a silver frame. Finding this serious pair completely unlike her bold, spontaneous personality, I asked her what happened to her old pair.

“It broke so I found this old pair from junior high school,” she answered matter-of-factly.

“What do you mean, it broke?”

“I dunno,” she responded, emphasizing the second syllable of dunno as she always does. “I took off my glasses and reached to put them on the counter without looking and I guess I missed.”

I had to laugh. Now that sounded like the old Margaret that I know.

New Eyes

With hair that occasionally flops in his eyes and a gentle smile, Victor, a fourth-year Foreign Trade major, can pass for a model. When I first saw Victor again, I was struck by how cool he looked in his new trendy black, rectangular frames. When I commented on Victor’s cool frames to his roommate Forrest, Forrest chuckled. “He got those because he loves Supergirl.” Literally translated, Supergirl is China’s American Idol with female competitors and Victor’s favorite singer wears the same pair of unisex frames. Forrest added that Victor announced to his dormmates that one day, when there is one, he would be on Superboy.

While I have always known that Victor possessed an inner coolness, I was shocked that he would so publicly display it. While I have always known of his interest in music—the first time I met him, he was playing guitar—I never would have guessed that he would dare to perform on national TV. You see, Victor is painfully shy around unfamiliar people and speaks so softly that no one can ever hear him, whether in person or on the phone. One of his classmates told me of one of her first encounters with him during their freshman year. While boarding a bus and carrying a ton of packages, she recognized Victor and waited for him to greet her and possibly offer her a seat. Since he had seen and recognized her but had not even acknowledged her, she thought he was rude and standoffish. When they both got off the bus and walked separately toward the campus—she struggling with her packages and he avoiding her eye—she decided that she hated him and would never forgive him for his rudeness. Eventually she got to know Victor and learned that the reason he did not even look at her was not that he was too cool for her, but that he was so shy that he did not know what to say to her.

So this semester, when I saw him sporting his new frames and later, standing on a stage singing in a group that he recently joined, I was completely amazed by the new Victor.

Different Eyes

Just this week I had lunch with a former student, a second-year graduate Veterinary Science student named Ralph who used to spend up to ten hours a night playing Counterstrike, an online video game. As we walked into a Korean restaurant, I thought back to one of our first meals together.

“How are you, Ralph?” As we walked through the dining hall selecting our dishes, I threw out a general question, not expecting much more than the small talk responses we had previously studied in class.

“Oh, I’ve been really busy and I’m so tired,” Ralph said wearily.

Like I had taught my students to do to show interest and further the conversation, I asked a follow-up question, “Really? What have you been busy doing?”
“Nothing.”

“Huh?” Shocked at his use of the word that typically kills conversation—which I had mentioned in class—I could not come up with a better response.

“I’ve been busy doing nothing. Every day I go to the lab and do experiments all day. It’s so boring and meaningless! This is what I’ll be doing for the rest of my life. What’s the point?”

The frustration in his voice indicated that he had spent a lot of time prior to this conversation thinking about the answer to that question and was thirsty for a whole lot more than small talk. Since then, every encounter with Ralph has been filled with intentional questions and sincere exploration of answers.

Our last meal together was no different. After about two sentences of small talk, Ralph declared that he had specific topics that he wanted to discuss concerning the purpose of his life and how that affects the way he spends his time. As we worked on our dolsot bibimbap (vegetables, meat and rice cooked in a clay pot), Ralph remarked, “It’s so different.”

“What’s so different?”

“This meal and the meal that I had with my old friend last night. Last night we talked about the things that we always talk about. You know, money, jobs, girls. But today, the topics are so different.”

“Well, Ralph, that’s because you’re different now.”

“Yeah. And I found that those topics are not as interesting to me anymore. Actually, a lot of things are not that interesting to me anymore. I haven’t played video games in so long that I’ve lost my skill.”

That fact alone confirmed that I was looking at a totally different Ralph.

People like Margaret, Victor and Ralph are the reasons that I am living in China. I am blessed because I know them and even more blessed because I am able to share in their lives. Being with them reminded me that my heart is here after all, just as it is also in San Francisco. I did not have to ship my heart over, but I did have to grow that part that has been here all along. While my friends will see the world with a variety of eyes, I hope to always see them with the eyes of my heart.

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Wed, 09 Mar 2005 19:40:55 GMT

1/27/05

Korean Travel Tips

· Strengthen your fingers. The steel chopsticks are so thin and
heavy that, on many occasions, I’ve had to resort to a spoon.

To avoid numb taste buds, learn to pronounce the following sentence:
Ahn my eep jang ay heh jew say oh (Please don’t make it spicy).
Wear socks without holes. At all homes and many restaurants, you
must take off your shoes and sit on the floor, which is usually heated.
Bow at all times for almost all reasons: hello, goodbye, thank you.

2/14/05

Top 5 Questions to Ask a Foreigner During
Chinese New Year

How old are you?
Are you married?
How much do you weigh?
How much money do you make?
What do you think of President Bush?

Yes, in that order.

12/28/05

Bike Mafan

No stay in China would be complete without bike mafan, or bike trouble. Though my silver bike with the handy basket and friendly bell gave me my first view of the city square, allowed me to stock up at the weekly farmer’s market, and endured bumpy paths in the neighboring corn fields, it also led to more headaches than I care to completely recount. Here are only the high- uh, lowlights:

Dominoes

There are about a million bikes on campus. In order to find room for their bikes, which are usually parked so tightly that you can barely see the sidewalk beneath, people usually have to make room, squeezing their bikes between others, practically stacking them. This leads to two problems. First, short of flying a flag above my handles, it’s nearly impossible for me to find my bike. Second, my bike is usually buried so deep in the pile that I have to dig it out. On one such excavation attempt, I accidentally tipped over the bike next to mine, which tipped over the one next to it, which tipped over the next bike . . . With dread, I knew that every bike in that row would go toppling down like a life-sized domino game. Fortunately, my bike was parked fairly close to the end so I only had to reset about five bikes. Whew!

Hide and Seek

In order to later easily find my bike among the hundreds of others at the library parking lot, I parked it near the farthest building window. When I was ready to leave, I headed to the farthest window but could not find my bike. For me, this was not an uncommon occurrence. Since my light-colored bike was so easy to overlook, especially under the other bikes that had since parked, I often had to check two or three times for my bike. After checking the area very carefully, I thought that perhaps I had remembered the wrong window so I checked the area around the other windows several times as well. Finally, after about 10 minutes of very careful searching, I found my bike in a different area. Apparently, when necessary, lot attendants reorganize the bikes—sometimes even moving bikes from one end of the lot to the other.

Gone Forever

At the local market, I wrapped my bike lock around the frame and front tire of my bike and set about shopping for the party that I had planned later that night. Later, with about ten pounds of groceries in hand, I found that my bike was nowhere to be seen. I described my bike to the nearest vendor and asked if he had seen it.

“Did you lock it?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said.

“No, did you lock it?” he repeated.

“Yes!” I replied, a little impatiently.

“Show me how.”

Feeling like he was treating me condescendingly for being a foreigner, I briskly made the motions of wrapping a lock around the frame and tires.

“No,” he said, “that’s not locking it.” Grabbing ahold of a water pipe and circling it with his other arm, he said, “You have to lock it.”

I later found out that bike theft is rampant in my city. Some people have had up to three bikes stolen in the last year—even from right outside their businesses in broad daylight. It is so bad that one person even suggested that if I cannot park in a paid lot with an attendant, I should not even stop.

Saturday, December 18, 2004

Sat, 18 Dec 2004 15:53:40 GMT

Watch Without a Face

Although I wear my trusty watch everyday, I could easily get along without it. Distinctive sounds that accompany the routines of each day serve as markers of time whether I’m sitting in my apartment preparing for classes, visiting friends in their dorms or hanging from the monkey bars at the outdoor workout station.

6:00 am The campus officially wakes to the call of the PA system’s military bugle, though most are actually up at 5:00 am.

6:15 am Military shouts of “One, Two!” by classes of students running around the track have been partially replaced by whistle blows . . . perhaps the air is now too cold and dry for the leaders to shout.

6:30 am Sounds to me like the campus receives its daily news report from the PA system, which is attached to streetlights throughout the whole campus.

7:00 am On the PA system, the old hymn with the lyrics “Freely, freely I have received / Freely, freely give…” starts off a set of rousing military music. During this time, students scatter around campus reciting passages in English with exaggerated pronunciation.

8:00 am First bell of the day: During class hours, the bell rings to signal the start

and end of each 45-minute period.

11:40 am Greatest commute of the day: Over 15,000 students and teachers chat as they all head in the direction of the dining halls for lunch

1:00 pm Quite possibly the quietest hour of the day as all activity—even construction, which even goes on through the night—stops and the campus tries to squeeze in a half-hour nap. Sadly, under the winter schedule, nap time is no longer two hours.

1:30 pm Regular hub-bub of class commute includes mostly casual conversations and bike tires screeching to a halt inches from pedestrians.

1:40 pm Class bell for afternoon classes

5:00 pm On the PA system, the same “Freely, free” hymn starts off the evening news programs and radio talk shows about topics like how to keep from catching colds during the winter.

5:30 pm Dinner Commute

6:00 pm PA system entertains the campus with music from pop stars around the world—past and present—including the Beatles, Michael Jackson, and Andy Lau.

9:00 pm At the beginning of the semester, the campus band would begin rehearsal at this time in the multi-purpose room across the road from my apartment. Over and over again, night after night they practiced their jazzed-up version of one song: “Joyful,Joyful, We Adore Thee.”

10:45 pm Lights out: A short gasp resounds throughout the 14 dorms--which contain about 1,000 students each—as students grasp for things in the dark. This initial gasp is followed by pleasant chirping as students have nothing to do but lay in their bunks and chat with their seven other roommates about topics like who’s dating whom and whether or not their teachers looked good in that day’s outfits.

Got a Spare Bag?

You know those plastic vegetable bags you get from Albertson’s? Yeah, that’s right, the ones that collect on your kitchen tables and clutter your drawers because you don’t know what to do with them. Well, imagine a bag even smaller and thinner than that with a handle and you would have one of the most useful containers in China. Here are some suggested uses:

Shopping bags (good for purchases that range from stationary to cleaning supplies to pastries)
Take-out bags for anything from saucy spare ribs to hot, scalding soup (no need for Styrofoam, Tupperware or Ziploc here)
Foot protectors for rollerskates (In America, skating rinks and bowling alleys disinfect rented footware with some sort of spray. In China, renters slip on a plastic bag before putting on the shoes.)

Talking Mirrors

Last weekend I went shopping in a nearby city called Jimo with four of my graduate students. Since I’d forgotten to pack a single sweater and desperately needed to buy warmer clothing, I was undaunted by the fact that my students planned to bike an hour each way. We arrived safely and I immediately found an earthy-colored sweater that I liked. I didn’t buy that particular sweater, however, because the girls that I was with insisted that I look around further before making any purchases. One of the students, Thomas, told me that I should buy brightly colored sweaters because he thought it made girls more beautiful. I told him that I liked neutral colors like blue and brown and jokingly told him that, if he liked brightly colored sweaters so much, he could buy one for his wife.

Thomas, who at 29 is one of my older students, was looking for a casual jacket that made him look more like a student than a teacher, which was his occupation before he decided to return to school. Even though I knew what look Thomas wanted, I thought he looked better in sophisticated styles so whenever he asked me which jackets I liked, I consistently picked out clean-cut jackets for him to try on. After trying on each jacket, he would model it for the group and take a poll of our opinions. At one store, when the shop owner directed him to a mirror, Thomas wittily responded that he already had four standing right next him. Despite the growing number of votes for professional-looking jackets, Thomas insisted on sticking with his preferences and kept trying on scruffy college-boy jackets.

After walking around for almost three hours and trying on different sweaters, I realized that brightly colored sweaters looked pretty good and definitely added cheer to gloomy days. Despite my initial insistence on my preference for neutral colors, at the end of the day, I came home with sweaters of colors—striped green and lavender—that I wouldn’t have considered without Thomas’ suggestions. Thomas, on the other hand, came home without buying anything because he got tired of trying on jackets that inevitably didn’t look right on him.

Yesterday, Thomas came to class looking extra sharp in a shirt, tie and—what do you know—new, very professional blazer.

There’s Always Hope

But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

The Apostle Paul

A few weeks ago, a student Linda and I wanted to watch a movie in the campus multimedia language lab. Movies there are free and seating is first come-first served so students usually wait in line up to half an hour before show time. Since Linda and I made a last-minute decision to watch the movie, we didn’t think it was too likely that we’d get in. When the last seat was given to the person right in front of me, I sighed but wasn’t completely disappointed. Linda and I decided that next week, we would meet in line half an hour earlier.

The following week I arrived at the language lab extra early, when there was only a handful of people. I saw a couple students that I knew and chatted with them, planning to move to the end of the line when Linda arrived. Time passed, the line grew longer and Linda had not yet arrived. I looked to the end of the line and got a little anxious but figured that we would still make the cut. When Linda finally arrived, she slid in line next to me and breathlessly apologized for being late. I told her that it was okay and proceeded to move to the back of the line. By this point, the line had snaked more than halfway down the hallway into the open air and looked like it contained more than 80 people, the maximum capacity.

   “Where are you going?” Linda asked.
             “We should go to the back,” I said.
             “If we go to the back, there will be no hope.” Linda proceeded to take a rough count of the people in line and repeated, “If we go to the back, we will have no hope.”
             “C’mon. There’s always hope.”
             ”If we go to the back, we won’t get to see the movie,” Linda emphasized. “It’ll be just like last week.” The students that I had been talking to agreed that there wasn’t much hope at the end of the line and invited us to stay in line with them. I was incredibly tempted to accept their offer, but remembered all the times I got frustrated with line jumpers in China, where it’s considered pretty standard procedure, and decided that I didn’t want someone to get that frustrated with me.

Linda reluctantly followed me to the end of the line, the whole way counting heads and muttering, “Mei you xiwang le. There’s no hope now.” So we stood at the end of the line where, without the shield of people behind us, it was much colder and windier. Several other late comers walked to our section of the line, said “Mei you xiwang” and proceeded to either leave or look for friends in other parts of the line. This discouraged Linda even further and she started to put her lab shoe covers, which keep dirt from tracking into the lab, away in her bag.

             “We’re gonna get in; I know it,” I said. “Wouldn’t it be ironic if we just make it—if the exact opposite of what happened last week happens? That would prove to you that there’s always hope, wouldn’t it?”
             “Yeah, sure,” Linda unenthusiastically replied.
             As we neared the front of the moving line, Linda’s spirits lifted and she commented that there might be some hope after all. I agreed with her and started to put my shoe covers on.
             “There’s hope, Linda. Put them on.”
             “Not that much.”
             “We’re gonna get in! You gotta show your faith by your actions!”
             “I’m gonna wait awhile.”

When there were only two guys in line ahead of us and four seats left in the room, I started to rejoice. Despite the number of people who had continuously pushed their way up to the front of the line, it looked like we were going to get in after all. Just then, two girls shamelessly cut right in front of us, waving their student IDs to the teacher who was assigning seats. I asked them to please wait in line, but they ignored me and continued to put pressure on the teacher to let them sign in. Thankfully, the teacher looked up out of the crowd that was closing in on him and saw that Linda and I were the next people rightfully in line.

Linda bounced with joy as the teacher led Linda and me to our seats, and I could see amazement not only in her eyes but also in the eyes of those who, when we moved to the end of the line, told us we had no hope. As we walked home after the movie, Linda turned to me and said, “I should have had more faith, Venus. There is always hope.”

Friends and family, as you prepare for and enjoy this Christmas season, may you be filled with amazement, faith and hope. I'm thinking of you all and wishing you moments of complete joy, rest and peace.

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Tue, 16 Nov 2004 10:54:46 GMT

MSG a Must

I decided to try something new at the dining hall: made-to-order noodles. I watched the customer in line before me select the ingredients that he wanted in his noodles. He went down the food line and pointed to the type of noodles, vegetables and meat that he wanted. A variety of bowls filled with the fixings for sauces sat at the end of the serving line but since the server did not ask what ingredients the customer wanted, I figured there must have been a set type of sauce for that type of noodle.

When it was my turn, I selected the ingredients for my noodles and, out of curiosity, asked what types of ingredients were in the sauce. The server quickly rattled off a list of ingredients. I didn¡¯t catch all that he said, but one word I did recognize was MSG. The last time I lived in China, my teaching partner Melinda broke out in a rash every time she reached her MSG limit, which happened a number of times since the Chinese include a good spoonful in every dish. Once, when my students came over to my apartment to cook and found that I didn¡¯t have a ready supply of MSG, they wanted to stop all progress to go to the corner store to buy what they considered to be the most essential ingredient.

As a result of my prior experiences with MSG, not only did I know the vocabulary word for MSG and its importance in every Chinese kitchen, I knew its side effects. I asked the server to skip the MSG and he complied. He quickly went down the line, spooning in just the right amount of soy sauce, garlic, and salt. Next in line was the MSG. Before I knew it, his hand had gone from the MSG bowl to my noodle bowl! I pointed this out to him; he apologized and proceeded to make another bowl.

The server went back to the start of the line, speedily moving from noodles to vegetables and finally, to the sauce ingredients. I saw his hand heading towards the MSG but before I could stop him, he had already spooned out a good-sized serving of the rash-inducing, phlegm-causing ingredient. Once he saw my reaction, the server himself was astounded that he had made the same mistake! He apologized profusely and explained that reaching for the MSG was an automatic reflex: MSG always comes after salt. He insisted on making me another bowl, and this time, with ever-so intentional movements, he managed to skip over the MSG.

Friday, October 01, 2004

Fri, 01 Oct 2004 06:43:33 GMT

October 1, 2004
Saturday, 3:45 pm

Good Morning, Teacher!

During my first few weeks in Qingdao, I had plenty of time to clean up my apartment, read books I've been meaning to for years, and take leisurely walks. While I still make time to explore different parts of the city (now on bike) and to cook with new friends, my dishes, laundry and stacks of paper are starting to pile up. The last couple weeks have really picked up; I've got a full load of classes now--a total of more than 200 hundred students. Since I only meet with them once a week, it's been a little hard to learn their names. I invited them to come to my apartment to talk and play games and that really helped to break the ice. The graduate students that I teach are older and more mature--some are married with kids--so it took awhile for them to get warmed up to the idea of playing games like the Picnic Game and a version of the Animal Game. Once they realized that the games required speaking in English, fast thinking and, in the case of the Animal Game, rhythm, they decided that the games weren't that childish and started to really get into the games.

Having a connection with the students outside of the classroom has really improved the environment inside the classroom. Last week, the students were shy and barely responsive. This week, they came to class energized and voluntarily spoke out. They're starting to see how having fun actually increases learning (the first week, a couple senior English majors told me that they thought I spent too much of class time having fun with warm-up fluency activities and that they wanted to spend more time listening to lectures, memorizing vocabulary and reading from the text)!

Laiyang Agricultural College is a teacher's paradise. I've got motivated and respectful students, colleagues who are quickly becoming friends and the most beautifully landscaped campus (Would you expect anything less from an agricultural college? Graduate landscaping students told me that they designed the landscaping of the main entrance.). Since I teach multiple sections of two different courses, I only have to plan two different lesson plans each week. I'm able to thoroughly research each teaching point and develop varied activities to convey these points. After teaching the same lesson four times and seeing how each group of students responds, I've pretty much got all the points, examples, and even jokes down!

Friday, September 24, 2004

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 00:38:12 GMT

September 11, 2004

Saturday, 9:11 am

Hello there everyone!

Over my last two weeks in Chengyang, a suburb of the tourist city Qingdao, I¡¯ve settled into comfortable routines, gotten used to some of the sights and sounds around me and spent time with new, and already dear friends. The first night I walked into my apartment, I already felt like I was home. Two foreign affairs assistants had welcomed me at the airport, introduced me to the school and city and showed me my apartment. Seeing that I had a canopy bed and balcony really helped me adjust extra quickly! Later, however, I learned that the canopy bed was actually a regular bed with mosquito netting (soon, I realized how necessary this really was) and that the balcony¡ªwhich, in the dark, I had thought overlooked a park¡ªactually overlooked a soccer field on which the students perform morning exercises¡starting at 6:15 am. This means the students run around the track in packs of 40, hundreds in all, shouting out, ¡°One! Two! One, two, one!¡± Needless to say, my days start pretty early. Fortunately, another routine that I¡¯ve gotten used to is the afternoon xiuxi, or siesta. During this time, nobody in offices picks up phones and street vendors lay their heads down on their produce.

School Life

The face of my school changes daily. One day, construction materials stacked ten-feet high line the streets, trenches four-feet wide encircle my apartment and dirt layers thick surround all construction projects. The next, construction materials are stored away, trenches filled in, and dirt swept away. My senior students tell me that this pattern of rapidly starting and completing projects has been going on since the school moved to this new campus two years ago. When they first moved here from the city Laiyang, which is about an hour away, they did not have the lake, landscaping or even the classrooms and housing complexes that we have now. What they had were holes in the ground and rickety platforms to cross over these holes. When Laiyang Agricultural College started 26 years ago, it had 1, 200 students and 116 faculty and staff members. This year my school has about 18,000 students (6,000 of these are freshmen!) and 1,000 faculty and staff members. The college seeks to be recognized as a liberal arts university and as a result, is quickly beefing up its faculty, facilities and student population.

Home Life

I am still getting used to the humidity of Chengyang, which brings out life that I¡¯m not used to and am not sure I like. Over the course of an hour in my apartment the other night, I layered on the blood of ten on my hands. Ironically, the blood was my own, sucked out of me by mosquitoes fat off of my discomfort. After my first ten swollen, perpetually itchy bug bites, I became a merciless bug-smasher. As I stealthily move around my room, surveying it from corner to corner for mosquitoes, I catch myself muttering threats like ¡°Come any closer and you¡¯re dead¡± and ¡°I¡¯m gonna smash you.¡± Gone are my days of catching bugs in jars and setting them free outside. Now I just use my bare hands and smash them on the spot.

By far, my most memorable moments have been with the people here. Last weekend I discovered one of the best flea markets with one of the Chinese English teachers, Amber, who loves to spice up her class by sandwiching lessons with games and activities. Right now, I¡¯m typing next to Maggie, my enthusiastic language partner, who has not only extended my Chinese conversational abilities, but introduced me to the best desserts on campus! Thrilled that the school has an outdoor rollerskating rink on campus, I invited all my students to go skating only to find that most had never skated before and were too scared to learn. Surprisingly, even after I promised that I would teach them how to skate, most of the students remained outside the fence. After they watched for a bit, the girls bravely decided to give it a try. The boys, however, stayed on the outside the whole night. Maybe next time I¡¯ll offer extra credit to those who are willing to try it out and then write a journal entry about the experience!

I hope that things are going well for all of you. I would love to hear about the regular routines of your days and the quirky people and events that make you laugh or wonder.

Thinking of you,

Venus