Weekly Events to keep you amused.

Hello everyone! I just got back from another rousing night of Quizzing. We didn't do half bad this time, 5th place out of 10 or so teams, especially considering there were just four of us and we are all under 25. Do you know what three horse races make up the Triple Crown? I know Alex does. It was also a beautiful day today, the best weather we've had since winter. 65 and sunny, but it made me a little afraid for what's in store this summer since its supposed to get into the 80's this week and its still only March. I'll just start living at the pool.
Not much else has been going on here in Chengdu. This is a picture I took of Laura in front of one of the many weird European style buildings they have here. They are so over the top and just look so out of place. There is even a "European Street" that is done all in this style. Its like European Disney Land in China.
Saturday night we also went to a fancy tea house that is located on top of a hot pot restaurant. The building is beautiful and it has all these statues and relics from old Chengdu, which is pretty cool. But the best part is they brew their own beer, which is delicious. They have a dark beer that is Guinness-y and a lighter beer that is a very tasty approximation of a Hefeweizen. Definitely best Chinese beer I've had so far.
Sunny's boyfriend also just bought her a new puppy, which Deborah was puppy-sitting and brought to the restaurant in a little bag. The puppy's name is Shuai Ge, which means handsome boy. He is so small and so cute. Very well behaved also, Sunny brings him to class with her and he just sleeps in her desk. She'll give him back to Kayo (her Chinese boyfriend) when she goes back to the States.


On Sunday I played a bit of rugby, did homework, and played Scrabble. I even won at Scrabble, my best word was riddled.
Monday Laura, Deborah, and I went to a Korean restaurant near school for lunch. We had rice with all sorts of sauteed things and a flavored paste and a sunny-side up egg on top. After lunch they gave us little coupons for a cup of coffee across the street as a promotion for a little Korean convenience store they just opened. The coffee was OK, just like bad gas station coffee in the States. The most exciting thing was all the other Korean things. My favorite was this "CRUNKY" bar, which I had to buy and try. It tasted just like Nestle CRUNCH, but was named "CRUNKY" which made it infinitely more hilarious.
That afternoon when I went to the pool I also received some interesting gifts from Huangjie that I thought I'd share with you. She said her friend gave her all this stuff and she didn't want it. One was a Nescafe coffee set, complete with instant coffee, instant creamer, cup, saucer, and gold-plated spoon. The other thing was a set of belts with 4 belt buckles from China Southwest Airlines. I really didn't know what to make of either of them, but I guess they will be useful.

Kids are loud in every language

I arranged to meet someone at a hotel in Chengdu so they could accompany me to the school (location still unknown). I arrived at 7:40am and met the guy and we drove ONE HOUR to Deyang (德阳） Primary School. I was told the school was in the outskirts of Chengdu, but this was stretching outskirts a little far I think. As I saw when we finally arrived, the school is not just a school, it is a complex. There are about 8 or so huge 6 story red brick buildings all over the place. Apparently 2000 children attend class here, grades 1-6, and 1500 live there on campus, so some of the buildings are housing. I was handed my class schedule for the day and learned that I was to be teaching 5 classes of 6th graders for 40 minutes each. I walked in to the first class of 40 students and just went with it. I had been thinking about what I was going to do for the past few days and was really nervous about it, but once you get there you just do it and it all works out. And it did. I started out by introducing myself and then having each student introduce themselves by saying "My name is....., I have # people in my family, and I like......". Then I had them name off some of the things people had said they liked and then do that exercise where you find one person who likes each activity and write their name down. Then we played pictionary where I divided the class into two teams and picked a drawer from each team and then whoever said the word first won. After playing with the first class I realized that with 40 kids this way was WAY too loud and also the kids didn't really get the game, they would draw some scribble as fast as they could and then run back and tell their classmates what to say, no matter how many times I said they couldn't. So the nice thing about teaching 5 of the same class in a row is you can work on it and get better each time. So then I tried one person from each team drawing and then when someone knew the word running up to the black board and writing the word down, but that was still loud because people would yell out the word to the person who ran up to write and then everyone would just stand by the blackboard and the person drawing was STILL telling the person writing what to write. So the next class I decided I would draw and would pick one person from each team to write and whoever wrote it first got a point, still a little noisy because the rest of the team could help, but it worked much better. Finally I settled on me starting as drawer with two pre-selected writers for each round and the person who won that round would get to draw the next time. I guess 5th time is the charm, or maybe each group of kids is just different. Probably some of both.
The weirdest thing was that at the end of class all the kids ran up to the front with their English books and wanted my autograph. I still don't understand it, but almost every class did it.
There was also this woman teacher who asked me to call her Judy who doted on me so much it was almost annoying. When I would come into the office between classes, she would tell me to sit down and if I would say I didn't want to she would stand there insisting that I sit until I did. Whenever my water bottle got low she would ask to fill it up and I would say "No that's ok" or "I still have a little left" or "I can do it myself" she would just say "No, I will help you" and take it away and fill it up. Then at the end of the day she walked with me all the way to where the other guy was waiting with the car to take me to Chengdu at one of the gates of the school grounds even though I assured her many times I knew where it was and that I would be fine. She was scared I would get lost (hard to do).
But everyone was really nice and the kids were all really fun and I am excited to come back next time, when I have a day full of 1st graders. Through this experience I did learn that I do not want to be a teacher, but I am having a good time right now and I am really glad I decided to do it. Plus I made 500 kuai in a day which I can live off of for a good couple weeks.
That's all the exciting news for now. School is still school. We started some more classes this week; another, different, History and Culture class with a really good professor and a really interesting book ("Understanding China" by John Bryan Starr; much better, easier read than the last "Governing China" book for those of you who didn't make it through...ahem) and a News Listening class that will just be really helpful because of all the vocabulary. Alot of the things they talk about on the news are very patterned and they use alot of fancy, non-colloquial words that you just have to learn in order to understand what is going on at all, so hopefully the class will be really helpful too. Next week we also start our Women in China class with Pang Laoshi (one of the woman teachers of the SU-UW exchange program) which I am really excited about and should be really interesting. Plus Pang Laoshi is a really cool lady and I think she will be a really good teacher.
Have a happy weekend and I'll talk to you all again soon. Cheers!

我当英文老师

So I don't have alot of pictures, but alot of interesting stuff has happened to me in the past day so I'll try to catch you guys up to speed. I should have known something was up when I woke up and it was sunny, or as close to sunny as it gets in Chengdu. I decided to wear the new red sweater that I bought yesterday for 59 kuai (like 6 dollars). It looks hand made. During the break between classes a teacher who works in the foreign office called me to see if I would like a job teaching English. She said it was for one day every two weeks in a school a little outside of Chengdu. I would teach kids from ages 7-12 English conversation and each day I would get 500 kuai. I decided that I could not pass this up, it's not that big of a commitment and it's alot of money. Plus it will be fun! So then another woman called me that afternoon to arrange a time and I will be teaching my first classes on this Friday. Then we will decide the next time on a day by day basis, based on my schedule. So I have now joined the rank of thousands of foreigners in China who teach conversational English, but I'm okay with that.
Then this afternoon I went to attempt to calibrate my equipment in the lab, but it didn't work like I had hoped. The burette was there and was exactly what I needed. There was just the problem of getting the burette to be in-line with the sampler and having that be air tight. My solution was to stick the sampler and the end of the tube going to the burette in a nalgene and tape a plastic bag to the top of the Nalgene and to both the tubes to make it air tight. Turns out it wasn't really air tight, but by then it was getting late and I couldn't really think of a better idea so I decided to pack it all up and go home and think it over. So if you have any suggestions, let me know.
Then I went swimming, since that is the place I think best, especially when I'm frustrated. I swam 3000m and when I got out I felt much better and even have a few ideas for the burette-sampler connection problem.
After swimming I went to with Huangjie to eat fish head hot pot. The name of the restaurant was 三只耳(three ears) which I thought was ironic because fish don't really have ears. The restaurant was actually named that because the owner's name is a character that looks like 3 ears (耳）together. The fish head hot pot was actually really good, much better than regular hot pot I thought. And the one we ordered wasn't all fish heads, it was just a half a fish including the half a head. The fish meat was delicious and picked up the spice rally nicely. The flaky, delicate meat was a really nice contrast to the strong mala flavor. Huangjie said I could have the head if I wanted because she had eaten it tons of times before, so I decided to go for it. I ate the whole head (or all the not-bone parts), even the eye. There was some weird gelatinous-y parts and the eye had an interesting shell-like covering on it, but all in all not as bad as I expected, not that I'll be rushing to eat it again anytime soon. The worst part was the intestines, which I also tried out of posterity and to say that I tried everything. It was rubbery and chewy and I couldn't eat it. So I just tucked in my check so it looked like I swallowed it and went to the bathroom and spit it out. It was one of the grossest things I've had in China, and that's saying alot. So that was my exciting day. Beat that, new sweater, new job, and new food all in the same day.

The Commonwealth Games

This weekend was spent in other foreign cultures, besides China. On Saturday I went to play rugby again, which is always fun. There were alot of people who came out this weekend too. For those of you who don't know, rugby is like weird football. You have an olive shaped rugby ball and two teams and the goal is to score goals, or "tri"s by running into the endzone. The main difference is you can only run the ball forward, there is no forward passing, only lateral or backward, and play never stops like in football, you just keep going until someone scores a tri. We play touch rugby (which is much different than tackle) because there are all sorts of people of all different ages and levels playing together so it's just easier and less dangerous and more fun this way. In touch rugby the only other important rules are that when you get touched you have to roll the ball through your legs (like I am doing in the picture) and someone else, called the "dummy" picks it up and has to toss it off to another player right away before getting tagged or its a turn over. You get 6 touches to score a tri or it's a turn over and it's also a turn over if someone drops the ball. That night was St. Patrick's Day. Everyone met at an Irish bar in town called Shamrock's and a great time was had by all, need I say more? This is a picture of one of the guys dressed up like the pope, obviously. Johnny, a guy I play rugby with, also dressed up like a Leprechaun.
Sunday I went with a guy named Dan, who helps organize rugby, to play cricket. Cricket is another crazy Commonwealth game that is like baseball, but much lazier. The ball is kind of like a baseball, but there are no gloves and the bat is just a flat stick that you swing more like a golf club. I'm not as clear on the rules of cricket yet because I only played that once, but here is the jist of it: there are two teams, one batting and one in the field. The pitcher is called the "bowler" and the ball is "bowled", which is like over hand pitching, but has to be done with a straight arm. If you bend at the elbow it is called "chucking" and it is against the rules. You, as the bowler, are standing beside a set of three orange sticks that are one set of wickets and the batter is standing in front of the other set about 50 feet away. The ideal pitch goes straight down the middle and bounces on the ground once before reaching the batter who then can hit the ball anywhere, including behind them. There is also another person from the batting team standing next to the pitcher at the other set of wickets. To score points you and your partner (the other batter) run back and forth between the wickets. Once down is one point. Once you hit the ball in play, you can decide whether you want to run or not, it's not forced like in baseball. If you don't think you are going to make it to the other set of wickets, you don't have to run and you are not out. The only way you can get out is (1) if you run and someone fields the ball and hits the wickets with the ball before you get to the other side; or (2) if the pitch hits the wickets or (3) if the ball is a pop fly and is caught. One bowler bowls for an "over" which is I think like 6 bowls and the game is played for a certain number of overs. We played 10 overs for each side, all in a row. Which took like an hour and a half. Then we played another game of the same length. Our games both had scores into the 70's and 80's. I still have not figured out the scoring AT ALL, but I figure one thing at a time. But here is a picture of the score board and Pedro, who is from New Zealand, sitting next to it. A regulation cricket game is 5 days long. One of the guys told me "cricket is like going to the beach", meaning people just go to hang out, not necessarily to watch the whole time. Cricket was fun too, but there was alot of standing around. It's not exactly that active of a sport. I played for 4 hours without breaking a sweat. I got to play with a bunch of people I hadn't met before, although they were all older men. There were 4 Pakistani guys who were really good and this guy from Canada who reminded me of George Risch-Boody. That night Laura and I made this Mexican Tomato-shrimp soup that her brother in law (who is Mexican) taught her how to make and it was delicious! I miss Mexican alot. We had chips and salsa to accompany it, yum. We had it again for lunch today and I made grilled cheese sandwiches (with real cheese!!) too. Well, it's Monday again so another week of class. But I know it's going to fly by and soon it will be the weekend again. If anything else interesting happens, I'll keep you posted. Cheers!

Back to School

Hello everyone!
Sorry I have been MIA for the past week. I have been without Internet and it just got turned back on today. Yea! I started school again on Monday and it feels good. I really like all my classes and teachers and I am happy to be learning Chinese again. I am in class with Laura and Deborah now, so that's fun too. Other than that I have been working on my research. I weighed all my filters again so am now starting to accumulate data and will be calibrating my equipment (post-sampling...oh well!) hopefully next Monday or Tuesday before sending it all on its merry way back to the UW. The reason I had to wait to calibrate it is because they had to make me a special burette. It's not really that special, but SU didn't have one, so I had to pay for the supplier to make one special and it was supposed to be delivered today (Friday) but was not, so hopefully it will be here early next week.
Laura and I have been craving Western food this week, so we made ourselves fried egg sandwiches for dinner, which were delicious.
Not alot going on, except Li Juan trying to make us eat weird food and us covertly throwing it away when she is not home. Although, we did meat a vacuum-packed duck the other day which wasn't that bad.
In other news, Laura got hit by a little yellow mini car while she was riding her bike one day. Thankfully she wasn't hurt, but she was thrown off her bike and onto the ground. The guy who hit her just waved and drove away. I wish he would have rolled down his window and said "Hellooooo" in the sing-song-y way only Chinese non-English speakers can. That would have really completed the hilarity of the whole thing. Best be careful. I can tell I am not used to riding my bike because all the dodging seems alot more perilous again.
Above are two pictures I just got from Deborah from Xilinxue Shan (the ski mountain) when we went during Christmas. The top is the ski map, professing lots of beautiful runs and snow. The bottom in the "real" scenario, where there is this little patch of man made snow/ice that is not even worthy of the description "bunny hill" and alot of brown, dead grass. They say pictures are worth a thousand words, well these are worth about a million each. No, there are no words.

I will also leave you with the Serenity Prayer from Alcoholics Anonymous, which was originally written by Reinhold Niebuhr, a pastor of an Evangelical & Reformed Church in Detroit in the 1920's, and seems especially fitting to China:
God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Back to and from Yangjuan

Hello everyone! I just got back from Yangjuan yesterday morning and it was a wonderful trip. I had a lovely group to go with this time. I went with Barbara Grub who is a PhD student at the UW here researching livestock in Yangjuan, Fagun who is a girl from Yangjuan who traveled back from Chengdu with us because she had to start school in Xichang that week, and Andrea who decided to come along for fun. We got on the train on Friday night and arrived safely in Xichang the next morning. Then we took the bus to Yanyuan and Fagun’s brother picked us up in Baiwu to drive us and all our luggage to Yangjuan. This time when we arrived at the school all the teachers were back from break and it was much livelier than last time. There were baby animals everywhere too; water buffalo, pigs, horses, sheep, goats, dogs.

The first day I woke up early and did my test in the school kitchen. Then Barbara, Andrea, Fagun, and I hiked around to grazing areas where Barbara had set up enclosures to see what effect grazing was having on the grasslands. We sat around and chatted a little too and it was really nice to be able to hang out and talk to Fagun, who is one of the nicest and most inquisitive people I have ever known. That afternoon it was a little quieter at the school and I finished my outdoor air test. Then we went to Fagun’s for dinner because she was, unfortunately, leaving the next day for Xichang to go back to school.

The next day we accompanied Apu again herding sheep because Barbara wanted to see where he went. There was a lot of sitting involved again and I wandered around a lot which was nice. I climbed down into two sink holes (bigger ones, so I didn’t need rope or anything) and Apu got a real kick out of it. There seem to be more and more sink holes forming all the time. I think it is a combination of the limestone rock eroding underneath and the top soil eroding on top. We talked a little about the caves Matt and I had explored on our previous trip and I told them I would take them all there tomorrow if they wanted. I invited Apu too, but I couldn’t tell if he wanted to go or not.

Sometime in the afternoon, we all got a little restless from all the sitting around and decided to hike off on our own. So we left Apu and Ama and their sheep and hiked across the valley to HeiShan, the little mountain right behind the school. Apu told us there was a grove of sacred trees on the mountain that were not allowed to be cut. We found the grove easily enough, as the rest of the area is horribly deforested because of all the agriculture and over-grazing. Andrea kept saying “I just wish I could see it when it was completely forested.” The deforestation was even more noticeable now because the climate was so dry and dust was flying everywhere. The view from HeiShan was still beautiful though.

That evening we arrived back to find that Ma Erzi, a Yi man who is Apu’s son but also helped to build the school and is a colleague of Steve’s, had come to Yangjuan for a few days, which is cause for celebration. He had also brought new clothes for all the teachers and students. To celebrate, they killed a young pig and we had rice, soup, and pig meat for dinner. We, as guests, had to eat with Ma Erzi and the other important cadre men he had brought along, but at least the three of us were together. Barbara helped me get a much better picture of the Ma Clan family tree. The Ma Clan is the family clan that is centered in Yangjuan and almost half the people at the school are related in some way to the clan. The clan system is very important in Yi culture and is the main way people relate to one another within and outside of their clans. Apu is the senior member of the Ma Clan, along with his second (I think) wife Ama. He had nine children, ZheZhe, Ma Zipo, Ma Ahja, Ma Erzi, and some others that I do not know. Many of his children now have children but I don’t think he is a great grandfather, yet. Barbara told me Steve was thinking of buying Mormon genealogy software to be able to map out the complicated links everyone has to each other. It would be very interesting to get it all down on paper.

The next day Andrea, Barbara, and I left early after breakfast to check out the caves. We climbed around in them and it was really cool again, though not as fun as the first time. But it was really nice to be around some girls that weren’t afraid to get dirty. In China, I feel more of a tomboy than I ever have in the States. Then we walked to Baiwu to pick up some oranges, tea, and sugar. We also got some beautiful tin ware that Barbara is going to use in her house. I got a pretty bowl that has fruit and vegetables stenciled on it.

That afternoon we left again and hiked up the mountains on the north side of Abilada (the alluvial plain of the Gangu river that flows south through Yangjuan) and along a ridge path that Barbara had discovered before. The path led to a wonderful meadow between two mountain peaks where we sat and read books and looked out over the surrounding mountains, enjoying the sunshine.

When we got back that evening we went to Apu’s house after dinner to hang out with everyone. We found out that Apu really had planned on going to the caves with us and had waited in his house and not gone herding that day. Although he had been before and just wanted to accompany us, we all felt terrible and apologized effusively. I think everyone else just thought it was kind of funny. Aside from that, the mood at Apu’s was very jovial and there was one guy who was a little drunker than everyone else who would sing us Yi song’s and then want us to sing an English song in return. We sang “You are my Sunshine”, “Yesterday” (on request), “California Dreamin’”, and “the Star Spangled Banner”, among parts of other songs we could not remember all the words to. We decided next time we have to bring a song book. Even the little kids sang songs and it was a really fun evening.

The next day Andrea, Barbara, and I hiked again out Abilada and then followed a stream up the mountains south of the Abilada valley. We found another ridge path on the top of those mountains that led us back to HeiShan where we climbed down back to the school. That afternoon I walked back to Baiwu to pick up some more oranges and walked back along the palisades along the river instead of the road, which was really interesting.

I got back just in time for dinner, which I was actually hungry for. This trip we all backed each other up and refused food as strongly as we could while still being polite. We were often gone for lunch and would bring fruit and little snacks along on our hikes instead. For once in Yangjuan I was hungry for food every time I ate and it was nice to not feel so overly stuffed all the time.

The last day in Yangjuan ZheZhe accompanied us to Zala Shan, the mountains far behind the school that Steve, Matt, Fagun, and I had hiked to the first time I came to Yangjuan. We didn’t hike as far as we had gone the first time, but still hiked almost 1000m up to Yak pastures where we found some people herding sheep who invited us in for lunch. They had chickens, pigs, a dog and her two puppies running around the farm. Andrea and I kept trying to pet them but they were all scared of us and would run away. They are probably not that used to people being nice to them. They people who lived at the farm were ZheZhe’s husband’s older brother and his wife (as well as another older man, I don’t know who he was). ZheZhe used to live up in Zala Shan before she moved down below the school. Her husband, Lili, still goes up there regularly to tend the school’s Yaks. The hike was beautiful again and we got back to the school just before dark. We had eaten a late lunch and tried adamantly to refuse dinner, but they would not have it so we ate a little something before reading and going to bed.

The next day we drove into Yanyuan with Ma Ahja, Vuguo (ZheZhe’s daughter), and Liu Laoshi (another teacher from the school) because they had the day off. The previous day had been “Women’s Day”, March 8^th, but they had waited until Friday the 9^th to take the holiday so they could take a long weekend and come to Yanyuan. We took a new road into Yanyuan that none of us had been on before (I don’t know why). It was interesting to see the new scenery; we even passed a place where they were growing grapes, which I didn’t know they grew there.

When we got into Yanyuan we bought bus tickets to Xichang and then had about an hour to walk around before our bus left. I bought a woven backpack/basket that everyone wears hear (I’m going to give it to Virginia) and a really cool cow bell that has a really pretty sound and I thought would be fun for ski races. It seemed like a longer than usual bus ride back because there were three men in front of us chain smoking and a woman behind us who was car sick and started throwing up 2 hours into the 5 hour trip. I was happy to get off in Xichang. There we went to the hotel Deborah, Matt, and I had stayed at before and walked next door to pick up our tickets from Liu Ayi. We had decided to fly back because train tickets were IMPOSSIBLE to buy and in order to take the train we would have had to wait a few more days, which we couldn’t do. It ended up being pretty expensive to buy tickets for the next morning, but we didn’t really have a choice and it was fun to have the evening to hang out in Xichang.

I had paid for all three of the tickets because I had the cash, so our first destination after leaving Liu Ayi’s office was the bank. However, Barbara’s card wouldn’t work and may have been shut off by her bank and Andrea’s work hadn’t deposited her pay check yet even though her pay day should always be the 9^th. Oh, China. So after a frustrating hour of going to different banks and China Mobile to recharge Andrea’s phone, we decided to treat ourselves to a nice, relaxing, Western cup of coffee. We stepped into a really nice coffee shop where Barbara and I each had a cup of coffee and split a Banana Split. Andrea had a good Mohito and slightly more disappointing egg sandwich. I am always disappointed by Western food here, which is why I usually never order it. We sat and talked and it was really nice to recharge. Then we walked back to our hotel and met Fagun and a friend of hers for dinner.

We flew out of the miniature Xichang airport (one terminal) the next morning and arrived in Chengdu at about 10am. After about an hour cab ride home (the taxi driver got lost) I arrived home to find that my Internet doesn’t work, but it is still nice to be home. I went and played rugby in the afternoon and I feel like I’m getting better all the time. It was a lot of fun. I wore my Favre jersey in honor of him deciding to come back for another season.

Now it’s Sunday morning and I am getting ready to go get some things done before starting school again tomorrow. Among them, buy a new bike because my bike broke completely yesterday and I am sick of fixing it, if it can even be fixed. Plus go to the store, buy books for school, go to the Bookworm to use Internet so I can post this, and other regular stuff.

Keep me updated on news from the States, I’ve been thinking about you all a lot. Also, this is Andrew. I tried to take a picture of all three of us, but obviously it didn't work.
till next time… …