In the Wake of Nanjing: Inbetween Places

Lily & Marie's Visit / Sick: Round 3
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Coming home from traveling around Xiamen and Nanjing meant a few things to me: (1) Resting, (2) doing preparation work for next semester, and (3) lastly preparing for Lily and Marie's visit from Changchun. As of yet - and I am in Thailand - only 1 of those objectives has been met; and even that one is debatable. The morning that they arrived I managed to oversleep as well as turn off my alarm. I woke up with about 10 minutes to be at the train station to pick them up from Beijing. I got dressed and rushed out the door. I sprinted down the road that leads to our front gate and managed to get a taxi to take me to the train station somehow. It really kind of seemed a miracle that he was able to understand my Chinese despite the fact that I was still waking up in addition to the fact that it was clearly to early for me to be saying things like train station (火车站） in a language that isn't my first, let alone a viable second.

Despite all my shortcomings, I made it to the train station well before the girls arrived and was able to pick them up and make it back safely to my school without any hiccups. Once back we spent the day relaxing and roaming around Nanchang. Lily's visit was a pretty much relaxed and easy going visit which made it nice for me since Nanchang doesn't really have much to offer in the way of sight-seeing like every other place I've been to recently. We visited the park, went to the mall, and played cards.

There was one little difficulty that I ran into during their visit: I managed to get food poisoning for the 3rd time. No worries though I have this down to an art now. Honestly it's sad but I just go through the motions, ignore the pain and inability to eat, and continue on like nothing is really wrong. I wouldn't suggest doing this all the time since such illnesses drain you of most of your physical strength, which, coupled with your inability to eat, really makes you vulnerable to not getting better as quick as you would like. On a lighter note, food poisoning does help you lose weight : ) .

Chinese New Year Celebration: Everything you wouldn't expect
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So a day or so just Lily and Marie left our Foreign Affairs Assistant (FAO), Billy, informed us that school officials would be coming over on Saturday morning to make jiaozi (pot stickers) and help us in preparing to celebrate for the Chinese New Year, which as I write is today (January 26th). So the day came and all of us headed down to our teamleader's apartment to meet up the school officials. However, upon Billy's arrival there were no school officials, but rather news reporters and radio journalist.

Our team was caught off guard and tried to figure out how we could be sensitive to our Chinese guests/hosts. It is really quite awkward, though, when you are being forced to recite sentences in Chinese, make jiaozi, and smile the whole time. At points it was just funny because it was so bizarre socially, but other points you felt like your personal bubble was being violated (or at least that is the vibe I got from some of my friends). I mean, what do you do when 2 television news crews + 1 news radio journalist starts asking you questions and putting the spotlight on you?


The other tricky thing about this visit was that Billy wanted me to do interviews with all three of the news crews I mentioned above, in Chinese that is. To be honest, my Chinese is rather pathetic and is worse than a 1st year Spanish high school student back in the States. The only solution my new found friends with the television crew could figure out was to have me read pinyin off a paper right in front of their faces so it would look like I was talking with them. The whole situation seemed a little ridiculous to me and I was glad when it was over.


Wenzhou (温州）
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I made a trip to Wenzhou, Zhejiang last week to see some Chinese friends of mine. It was a last minute decision as I was unsure such a choice would be a smart one since I still had to fix my syllabus, write lesson plans, and start gearing up for school, but I decided that you don't get to go to Zhejiang everyday and that I should take up this opportunity, especially we had friends who were brothers and sisters and loved our Father.
We took a red-eye bus ride for 9 hours to Wenzhou. It was probably one of the coolest bus rides I have ever been on since all the bus had nothing but beds. Unfortunately for my friend Jonathan who is 6'3 all the beds were designed for people my size 5'4. Our friend and fellow teacher Jodi, on the other hand, fit much better than all of us as she is - of course - Chinese.

Our Chinese hosts were more than nice and practically stuffed us daily, making sure there was no possible way their foreign guests could ever have claimed to be hungry while staying at their houses. Of course, coming near the Chinese New Year could have played into how much we ate and why all the Chinese seemed so happy. We ate fresh seafood everyday and tried a lot of different foods that we had never thought one might eat - like duck tongue. It's not that bad actually; you just have to get over the fact that you are in fact eating it.

(A picture of the moutains we saw on our hike)

We also went hiking which was a nice retreat from the everyday crowed city life that the Chinese compete with daily. Joined by Amy, her family, and her friend Sisi (sp?) we hiked through a mountain next to her mom, which offered us a glimpse at the natural beauty that China has to offer. In addition, it was just nice to hang out with some of Chinese firiends and get to not only know them better, but learn about everyday family life in China. Looking back I would probably have to say that it was the highlight of my break. Living, eating, and hanging out with Chinese friends in their hometown is definitely a unique experience and one I will treasure.

There is so much more I could say, but I will stop here.