Coffee: French Press Style

So I decided that I would dedicate this post to coffee as it is something that is dear to my heart as well as something that I crave nearly every day of the week. It is also something that just allows you to ease into the morning and your lesson plans for the day. However, as it is a precious commodity here in China it must be used sparingly. Thus, my teammate Shannon and I have it about twice a week (Monday and Wednesday).

If you look at the picture to the right you will see our French press and the little pastries we have found to accompany them when we go to work. I must admit that finding pastries to go with your coffee is not entirely something that is easily done in China. Thankfully, we have found two good little snacks to pair with our coffee: Muffins and Chocolate Egg Rolls. I would say that we tend to buy the muffins more often as they are a little healthier and filling, especially when drinking coffee on an empty stomach.

I actually sent my French press and 3 lbs of coffee from Starbucks before I left for training back in August so that it would be in Nanchang by the time I arrived mid-September. I had thought for sure that I a few individuals on my team would like to drink coffee for sure, but I was mistaken. Upon arriving at training I was quick to realize that only two people - including myself - liked coffee. Moreover, of the two people that liked coffee both of them had worked at Starbucks. At first I was kind of shocked, but then I was like well that just means more coffee for Shannon and I.

I keep a stash of all the little goods that are needed for coffee mornings at work. However, I only bring our coffee supplies in on Monday and take them home on Thursday or Friday. It actually requires forethought and preparation to bring all this in as I have forgotten and slightly felt the wrath of Shannon :)
What you are looking at is actually the lower left-hand side of my desk. In it - as you can see - is a box of Nescafe (used only in emergencies), half a pound of Sumatra from Starbucks, a water boiler, a grinder, and the top to our French press. What you do not see that is usually in here is: the rest of our French press, cups, muffins, and whatever chocolate we have at the time. What does it bring: Joy to me every week!

To be sincere though, I would actually say one of the coolest things about having coffee at our office is our ability to share it with our fellow Japanese teachers from time to time as well as get to know them better. Besides having Shannon to drink coffee with, I would say that building relationships with our Japanese friends has been a really blessing.

Today, I told them that I would make them some coffee as Tecao (I am sure I spelling this absurdly wrong)is always hinting at Starbucks and having a real cup of coffee. However, I didn't get back as soon as I thought I would from lunch and only got back to catch them leaving for class. So I asked Temocha (this too...) and Tecao what rooms they were teaching in and begin making a French press as quickly as I could. I don't really think they thought I would make and bring them coffee, but in 10 minutes or so I had steaming hot coffee ready and I set about getting coffee to take it to everybody. I took coffee to Shannon first - she wasn't surprised - and then went and delievered coffee to Tecao and Temocha who were both surprised that I brought them coffee. Tecao was so happy he grabbed me and introduced me to his class, all the while wearing that great smile of his.

I have invited him up for coffee this weekend and I am looking forward to hearing more about Japan and anything else.

Well, to end this post I thought I would finish it with a picture of my friend Shannon telling me that I needed to be quiet and get back to work. Too much coffee aparently keeps me jabbering a little more than is pc appropriate - what can say? Shannon is trying to teach me time management, but it is a little slow catching. Then again, it was never really something that I could say that I specialized in, let alone had. In the end, I don't think that coffee and time management go together....or something like that....yeah.

Sports Meet: The Mini Olmpics

(Me and the Olympic Bear)

Good story: So I have told some people that being white and being in China kind of makes you a "mini celebrity". It is hard to explain, but I thought I would take a moment to explain this picture. When my friends and I tried to get a picture with one of the Olympic bears that we have all seen advertised as a part of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing we ran into some problems. As we started to take the picture, the Chinese students realized that the foreigners were going to take a picture and they wanted to be a part of it, which caused some problems for us and our photographer. Christina - our photographer was quickly pushed out of the way and she barely got a picture with my camera...that is why this picture looks so crazy...

Closing Ceremony

So today our university was performing the Closing Ceremony for its Sports Meet, which has been extended over two weeks - due to weather - and has lasted a total of 4 days. It's a pretty big deal to be sure and it is really hard to explain the magnitude with which the Chinese put on an event. Plus, it is just simply too hard to explain without showing pictures how many people can turn out to such an event. Our university claims to have over 50,000 students and I would believe it. On the new campus there is about 30,000 students and on the old campus - where we live - there are about 20,000 students. It is really hard to picture sometimes. After the Sports Meet I am NO LONGER A DOUBTER, I AM BELIEVER : ).

I wanted to include some of my favorite pictures from today since I have some time while I gather energy to write some more lessons - mainly a midterm - for next week.

(Ern Gearing-up the English Students)

(Tecao and Me)


(Sitting VIP: 2nd to the Left is the President)


(Students flooding the Stadium)

If you want to see more is link to my album is on your right and labeled "Sports Meet".

Zhengzhou Train Pictures

Here are some pictures I thought you might enjoy!

Catching Back Up

So much has happened since I last wrote. Our team has been very busy both traveling and trying to catch up with all our work. Since coming back to Nanchang our team has had little time to catch-up and has had to practice being patient with our school. When we left for Zhengzhou, Henan we were told that the classes we were going to miss didn't matter since our school was having their "Sports Meet". Unlike most schools that I know in the United States, Chinese colleges apparently have an event called the "Sports Meet" in which students compete against each other in some kind of 'mini Olympics'. This event can last for one day or up to nearly a week. In our case, the Sports Meet was suppose to last for about 4 days; however, due to the weather it has been postponed several times. So our team has been constantly in a state of uncertainty over the last last two weeks as to whether we were going to teach or not teach on a day to day basis. I must admit such a constant state of unknowing has caused me to be lax at times and/or confused about what I was teaching each class. I would say that only in the last two days have I really caught back-up and have a good idea of where each of my classes are and where they need to be.

Zhengzhou, Henan

Our trip to Zhengzhou was a really nice reprieve from teaching and a nice of change of scenery, even it if was only for three days. It took us about 11 hours by train overnight to get to our destination where we were picked up by another team leader names Aaron. There were actually 2 other teachers at Zheng Da (Zhengzhou University) with the same name as me. Upon arriving in in Zhengzhou, I realized that the quality of the air was much better than that of Nanchang. In addition, Zhengzhou is a much more modern city than Nanchang. It is something that I constantly realize about the differences between living in the North as compared to the Southern China, albeit Guangzhou and Xiamen would be prime examples of the opposite.

(Zhengzhou Team + Our Team: I am in the front)

Zheng Da was located quite a distance from the main part of the city and it appeared that most of it's campus - if not all - was recently built as all the buildings were new and very well kept. Our fellow E.L.I.C teachers each had their own apartment all to themselves; I must it was very impressive, but at the same time I think I don't know if I really want or need 1000 sq. feet to myself. Heck, I haven't really even had my own room for nearly 5 years, except for very short periods of time back in Washington. As soon as we made it to their apartments though, they sat us down to an amazing breakfast in which they served us COFFEE and homemade SCONES! I can't tell you how - to be Chinese - 'delicious' it looked. In addition, the teachers there had aslo made a fruit salad, which was also pretty amazing. Eating breakfast that morning made me feel as if I was back home in Washington just chilling with some pretty cool sisters and brothers.

(The amazing scones are on the left; fruit salad is the upper right; granola is on the lower right)

Most of our time spent there was helping them with their Halloween/Harvest Party that they had put on for all their students - and when I say ALL I mean ALL their STUDENTS. We arrived in Zhengzhou on Friday and begin helping teach their students about Halloween on Saturday. It started at 8 am and went all day until 5 pm. It was crazy! At the same time it was the one of the coolest demonstrations of how to facilitate nearly 400 students and direct them through several activities. The teachers had set up 3 different rooms in which they taught the students and/or had them perform different activities that could be tied to Halloween. The three activities were: Telling Scary Stories, Dressing up as a Scare Crow and racing, and Pinning the Stem on the Pumpkin. Perhaps some of the activities would cause one to raise their eyebrow over since they might not be the most universal activities that we would do (or have done) for Halloween. At any rate, the activities appeared to work well and kept most - if not all the students - entertained and paying attention.

My two favorite parts of this Halloween Party were: telling the students scary stories and watching them race with the scare crow clothes on. I spent a lot of my time helping with telling the students scary stories and enjoyed watching the students jump and scream every time we were able to scare them. I think that Chinese students - especially girls - are more easily frightened than Americans. I mean, we told some pretty silly stories and the students were easily frightened by somebody slamming the door or jumping out from behind a current. The lightening in the room, however, helped to give us a some darkness that was otherwise hard to obtain due to the fact that we were having the party during the middle of the day.

(The Room we used for telling 'scary stories')

On Sunday we traveled into the city to have a small gathering of sisters and brothers so that we could spend time with our Father. Again, we were blessed with some amazing food including homemade muffins. I felt like I hadn't had any pastries that tasted like anything in America for so long that I was surprised to taste things like cinnamon. After having some time of fellowship, we spent the day hanging around the downtown Zhengzhou before we got back on the train to head back to Nanchang. I should note that our train ride there was spent sitting on hard seats for 10 hours, but on our ride home the Zhengzhou team had managed to get beds for us. Word to Wise: Make sure you get beds and not hard seats when traveling by train, especially overnight.

Health: Where did it go?

I am not usually one to get sick and if I do, I am out for quite some time; this year has apparently served to prove the exception. I actually participated on the first day of the Sports Meet at our school. Doing so was probably not the best decision I have made. I had been pretty amazed that I hadn't been getting sick, while most of my team had been getting colds, flu, etc. However, deciding to run 200 meters without being HYDRATED and not eating BREAKFAST quickly changed that for me. Our Foreign Affairs Officer, Billy, had asked that Jonathan and I partcipate on the opening day last week. So we showed up and it wasn't long before Billy asked us to run in a race against the other Chinese teachers. I am not a long distance runner and the 100 meter run is the longest distance that usually ever run as I am a soccer player at heart. So lining up to race the Chinese teachers I knew that after 100 meters I was going to be destroyed and have barely anything left to finish the race. As soon as the gun was fired, I easily passed all the Chinese teachers and my teammate Jonathan to take the lead, but at the 100 meter mark I ran out of energy and started feeling very sick. I can only describe it as feeling as my legs were going to give out, experiencing heart burn, and feeling like I was going to throw-up all at the same time. The moral of my story is that you should drink more water and eat something before running a race, especially if you are out of shape like I am.

The rest of the sports meet I particpated in various activities and was actually stupid enough to run against my FAO and our driver Mr. Lee in the 100 m. After Jonathan and I finally made it back home I just went and fell down on the bed and preceded to get worse as my muscles stiffened and my stomach decided to turn against me for some unknown reason. The next day I went to school to teach, but had to return home as I felt like I was going to throw-up in the middle of class. I was able to return and teach both Thursday and Friday, but felt incredibly weak and I somewhat convinced that I lost 5 pounds in the process. As fate would have it though, I got food poisoning on Friday and was again very sick most of Saturday. I think that between Tuesday and Saturday of last week (Nov. 4th - Nov. 8th) I ate like 6 small bowls of rice and two packages of crackers. All in all, I much better know and have had a lot more energy.


Here are some more pictures of our trip and the Zhengzhou Team:

(Front to Back: Jennifer, Alison, Shannon, Erin, Mark, and Jonathan)

(Eric & Alison)


(Jonathan, Shannon, Jennifer)


(Left to Right: Erin, Shannon, Aaron, and Jonathan at an amazing Korean Restaurant)