September in Review

Here's a video compiled from last month's events...or anytime I remembered to bring a camera. Footage includes a trip to a village, Bathing Festival (where all the locals go to the river to bathe or wash their clothes), ultimate frisbee, frisbee golf, soccer, and other random clips. 

A lot of jumpy video this time. Just close your eyes, and the spinning should stop.

the other dorm room - a video tour

Here is the long awaited tour of the other room:

tour of one of our dorm rooms

After a few days of trying and one long night of spades while waiting for it to finish loading, I finally got one of two videos of our dorm rooms loaded onto youtube.

So here it is.

Okay - so it turns out that the video above doesn't always show up.  I shouldn't be surprised - since it took forever to even get it loaded.   If you're looking for the video and you don't have it - here's the link....hopefully this works:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRFWTTNUTO8

ya suspect

We must've been looking a little too long and hard into the neighboring complex causing them to wonder what we would do, because the neighboring complex put up barbed wire around the wall that separates us from them.


Either that, or our complex decided we are in general a danger to society and we may try to escape the complex they have made to contain us.


It makes the gray skies feel even grayer.  Plus - those tree branches up there are next door's delicious fig tree.  How are we supposed to steal figs anymore?

un, dos, tres Esteisi ("stacy" in spanish)

So, there was one point where I was on track to run a half marathon….then i got hit by a car…..then the winter came and it was so cold i didn't want to run outside….then thailand came and i decided i wanted to sleep in, instead of run….then we came back home and it was still cold….

so what's a girl to do when she lit-rally can only run outside for a few feet, before she says "i don't care if i'll eventually warm up, i am so cold right now."  She goes inside and zumba's her little heart out, that's what she does.  and that's what I did.

Zumba is super fun, but you don't ever really want anyone to watch you do Zumba.  and when you live in a small two bedroom apartment like we do, it's inevitable that someone is going to see you doing Zumba. 

Especially true when you have to do the robot part of this Zumba song:

Okay, I coudn't find a clip, so here's the song and a video of someone doing the robot.  now imagine someone doing these two things together.  in fact. mute the video with someone dancing, and play the song.  you'll see what i'm talking about.

dancing:

the song:

Seriously the robot??? It's shakira's HIPS that don't lie.  Not her stiff arms and head movements.  

The weather is starting to warm up, so I'm back to running outside…and still doing Zumba.  me gusta bailar.

I need to pick up the running though because when we go home Aaron's dad is going to dominate me at running - he's still regularly running 5 & 6 milers.  Maybe to even the playing field I'll invite him to Zumba for 50 minutes.  Then we'll see who can keep up with who.


Domo arigato, mr. roboto.

essentials

at least i'm calling them essentials.

These are the things that have so far made the month of December great:

the milk frother i got from ikea to make coffee
and hot chocolate with frothed milk!

egg nog!  thanks danielle for sharing your recipe

the fireplace in our tv 

the gingko trees turned yellow
fall came at Christmas time this year

homemade pizzas

hanging out with Jackie (Asian Kate's son)

It's winter, y'all!

that was said in my best Oprah/Paula Dean/Maya Rudolph being Oprah.

This is how you know it's winter around these parts:

sausage, and other raw meats get hung out to dry.

Merry Christmas, y'all!

Dear Jimmy....

I recently started teaching English at an elementary school here in our city to kids after their regular school hours on Monday and Tuesday afternoons.

My Monday class is a class of 20 kids with mixed levels of English, and an age range of 8 to 12 years old.  My Tuesday class (best class in the world) is a class of 7 year olds, who have only had a year of English.  For the first forty minutes of class each week, I take over and teach the kids something - which is actually really challenging for my Monday class because some of them know how to cuss in English, and some of them can't even spell their English name.  So what do you teach kids on different levels that'll keep them all focused?  I still don't know.

After my forty minutes of teaching, we switch to computer time, where all the kids get a netbook, log onto a website, and do 40 minutes of watching videos and responding to questions about the videos (all in English).  On Mondays, I just sit at a desk waiting for the time to pass.  On Tuesdays, I'm up the whole time helping the kids understand what's being said during the program, and helping them learn how to use computers.

A couple of weeks ago, Aaron and I got an email from Virginia (soon to be Virginia O'Hare), who is a second grade teacher in Memphis, with letters from her second grade class to Aaron and I asking us about ourselves and living in Asia......and the fertile crescent - like half the letters asked about the fertile crescent...they must think we live in Mesopotamia.

Ms. Skelton and Mr. O'Hare

So I had my classes write them letters back.  Here are two favorite letters we received from Ms. Skelton.

Here is a letter from one of my students, who insisted on having a boy to write back.  I gave her a letter from Demarcus, and told her to write him back.  She wrote him, gave it to me and told me not to read it.  So I did, when I got home.  

Who is this Jimmy???  She got a letter from Demarcus!

Pulled noodles

There is a lot of delish-ers (delicious) dishes we enjoy here, that you can't find at Chinese restaurants in America.

One of them is 兰州拉面 (Lan Zhou La Mian, pronounced kinda like Lawn Joe La Me-An) which are noodles made by one of China's minorities (they have 56 people groups in this country).

The noodles are made fresh at the restaurant, thrown into a hot beef broth, and topped with onion, cilantro in some places, soy sauce and chili pepper - though the last two you add yourself to your preference.  They definitely help you warm up on a cold day.

Also, they come with the free entertainment of watching the guys make the noodles.  It's pretty amazing.  In fact I want to learn how to do it.  Forget about pasta makers.

Here are a couple of videos showing how it's done.  I didn't feel like editing them, so hopefully you can tell what's going on.  1st video- stretching out the dough, prepping it for making it into noodles.  2nd video - using his fingers to separate the dough and make noodles.

We are civilized

This was on our door when we got home .
It says that we are a civilized household.

When we got back from visiting our friends, we noticed that almost all of the stores were closed in our neighborhood; no one was sitting at tables along the street (and there were no tables on the street); everything seemed clean and quiet. It was strange. We asked our cab driver if it was a holiday, but he said no.

Then, we learned from Asian Kate that while we were gone the Cheng Guan ("City Manage" as it is translated on the side of their cars) came through and were bribing stores with gifts to close shops for two days. They painted white stripes on the sidewalks, telling people to park their bikes only in those spots. They kicked all of the mah jong tables off of the streets. They put up rods in the sidewalk to prevent cars from driving on it. Officials from Beijing came to town for two days to see if our city is a "civilized" city, so our neighborhood was being forced to clean up.

There were police & "city manage" on every corner for two days. It was amazing. I could walk the streets without dodging boxes, people, bikes, cars, etc. It was quiet and peaceful in the neighborhood. Amazing.

Once those two days were over, it was back to business as usual.

just a bunch of bikes with culture, parking within the white lines.

all restaurants were closed.  there was nowhere to eat.  civilized people don't eat.

Where the uncivilized mah jong playing used to happen.

new civilized trash bins, already slightly cultured.

no driving on the sidewalk.  civilized people use roads.

Business is back to normal.  Four poles have been taken out.
Cars are on the sidewalk, and that guy is shooting snot rockets.

hipsters

The Chinese have a unique sense of style. The ladies in our city wear REALLY short shorts year round, just supplementing them with tights in the winter, & stilettos pretty much all the time. I don't know how they walk around the city like they do or ride a bus for that matter. Little kids here are dressed pretty cute - with the girls always having pigtails. The older kids like to wear shirts with strange sayings in English like "Candy - I gave two lollipops to the kid," or " Szyamcfalj the life." (okay I made that last one up, but there are shirts that just have a random arrangement of letters that I am pretty sure the wearer believes says something awesome).

The examples I listed above are of people who are trying to have style & to dress put together. However about half of the population here, seem to really not care about how things look together - they're just clothes. So unintentionally they make awesome combinations of different prints, hats, and accessories. Aaron and I recently found a website documenting these cool cats - www.accidentalchinesehipsters.tumblr.com

Check out the website to get a little taste of the hipsters we hang out with everyday. I personally enjoy June 23rd & July 31. Aaron's favorite is May 30th.

When it's summertime and the weather is high...

OR is it when the weather is hot? Does anybody even know? Mungo Jerry, solve this - what are you singing? hot or high?

I'm still really missing home. When skyping family and friends I wish I could be there with them, instead of on the other side of a computer in a city as equally muggy as North Carolina in the summer, but without all the perks of a Carolina summer.

So, to combat all this homesickness of late, I have decided to become a little more proactive in my summer plans. Aaron and I have been brainstorming things that we can do to make new summer traditions - things that we can do no matter where we are in the world and that we can look forward to doing every year. I don't want every summer to be hard as I think about all I wish I could be doing at home, but I want there to be things that we do here that I get excited about as well.

Movie matinees once a week was the first thought I had, then I remembered that the movies here are in another language and I don't think I'd really like doing that more than once in a summer. Then Aaron came up with Western Wednesdays. Every Wednesday throughout the summer (which just started for us this week, since Friday was our last day of class) we will watch a Western movie. I'm not talking about Western - like Asians are Eastern and we are Western. But Western like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood.

And I decided that we should come up with a peach drink. Like in America - peaches are only available here during the summer months, so I thought it would be fun to come up with a drink that I know we can only have during one season a year. But, the problem is, I don't know a peach drink recipe - so I've been looking all week for peach drinks. The other trick is - the peach drink has to be something that couldn't be done better in America (like a peach milkshake). Because that will just leave us wanting and comparing it to Chick-fil-a.

Today we watched The Outlaw Josey Wales. No peach drink yet though. I'd love to hear your recommendations on peach drink recipes, westerns, and other ideas for new family summer traditions....just remember we can't drive to the beach here or drink cheerwine slushies.

What Gary Chapman would say....

If all the people of China could sit down with Gary Chapman for a little one on 1.4 billion conversation, I think Gary would quickly observe that their two main love languages are gifts and physical touch.

If you have ever lived here, or have read someone else's blog who lives here you probably at some point have noticed that gifts are bound to be mentioned. The Chinese give gifts for every major holiday (Dragon Boat festival is June 6th, so my teacher gave me sticky rice - which is the gift that you give for this holiday). They also give gifts for birthdays, when you visit someone's house, and other special occasions (like when I left the country last time, I received a lot of gifts). Sometimes you'll receive a gift randomly, like Aaron did this week.

Both Aaron and I received gifts this week - Asian Kate gave me that shirt for my birthday.....and Aaron's teacher gave him a recorder. We're really not sure about that one. It was out of the blue. And it's a recorder. This gift led to an impromptu jam session and playing the game "name that song."

There is an etiquette to gift giving here - like you should give a gift back when someone gives you one on a holiday. You should also probably refuse the gift a few times (although recognizing you're foreign, they'll show you grace if you don't) and expect any gift you give to be denied a few times before being accepted.

sending you a sexy recorder gram

The other thing that is pretty common here is holding hands, hugging, leaning on each other, close physical contact between people of the same sex. It is completely normal to see two girls walking down the street holding hands, or to see two guys walking with their arms on each others shoulders.....I have seen a couple holding hands, while the girl also held hands with one of her friends.

As an American, it can be hard to get used to - when your friend trying to protect you, links arms with you and pulls you close, under her umbrella (protecting you from sun, not rain).

I think probably another love language of theirs that Gary missed is giving unsolicited advice.....but we can talk about that another day, like eventually when I have kids - because that apparently is when you get the most advice.

mini update on the lack of our blog presence in May

After looking at our budget for the past month, I've realized that every two weeks since the last week of April we've had visitors. That's right - ZM, Tan Jovi, Jelly, and Juice Springsteen all came for a visit. It's been a lot of fun to hang out and so what we needed.  Plus there was an added bonus of going to a lot of the best restaurants in town and with one restaurant in particular being visited 6 times in the last month.

Jarred and Shelley came a couple of days ago, on their way back home for the summer so we went out for my birthday while they were here. We tried out this French restaurant that I had been hearing a lot about, and it was as good as I hoped.

Next weekend Aaron and I are going to Hong Kong, then the weekend after that Aaron's mom comes!

That was the mini update -but, I'll be honest. The only reason I posted at all is because while I wanted to show everyone the cupping marks left on my back (in the previous post), I also don't want to get so wrapped up in things we've planned for the next few weeks that I don't blog and that picture of my back stays on the front page of our blog all month long....

from one new experience to another.

So, my head is always tilted to the left. You've probably noticed it. In America you probably saw a CR-V and knew it was me when you saw the silhouette of the driver's head tilted to the left as though lost in thought, or swooning over some romantic event.

I tilt my head because of a weak eye muscle - my head tilts to make it so I can see straight - or so the doctors told me long ago. I bet you feel bad now for laughing at my tilted head.

Well riding a horse for 3 hours (during the modeling trip) while you're head is tilted to the left is pretty hard on the neck. So, since Monday I have been having a lot of neck pain and stiff muscles. As soon as we got back home I decided to go to the Spa around the corner and get a massage to help relax my neck and shoulder muscles. Good idea. Then the lady at the spa recommended I pay just 20 kuai more for a massage that would be better focused on my neck and shoulders. Another good idea.

Mistake.

This is what happened:

I'm not sure if you're familiar with the ancient Chinese medicine treatment of cupping or 拔罐子 (ba guan zi) but it is a treatment where they put cups all over your back, suck the air out of them, sucking your skin into these cups.  They leave the cups on for about 15 minutes, then release them.  This supposedly pulls toxins from within your body and organs to the surface where they can be more easily released.  I had 13 cups put on my back.

I'll tell you what it does do - it hurts. And it bursts the capillaries in your back leaving black bruises all over your skin for what I read on the internet is anywhere from 3-10 days.

I didn't realize I was getting into this when I decided to pay $3 more for the more focused treatment on my neck and shoulders and I wasn't sure how to stop it once it started. After researching though, I have learned that some athletes used this traditional form of medicine during the 2008 Beijing Olympics and apparently so did Gwyneth Paltrow in 2004.

I will say this, it certainly does suck.

Blue steel? Ferrari? La Tigra?

It's official. Aaron is a male model, and I am a female model.

In three weeks we will be hiking up to 13,000 feet to have pictures taken of us in outdoor gear for an outdoor clothing company here in China.

I feel like I am taking crazy pills.

I can't wait.

It's hot here.

Last week the weather jumped from beautiful sunny, 70 degree days to North Carolina summer temperatures.

Here is how we handle the heat:

Men go shirtless. Or just roll their shirts up over their belly. I bet I'll have a similar picture of Aaron before the summer's over.....or maybe before it even begins.

TCKs

Though I don't have kids, living overseas the topic of third culture kids (TCKs) comes up frequently in conversation. TCKs are kids who move from one culture to another culture, and end up having a culture of their own because they don't really identify with either culture. They take things from both cultures and mix them together creating a new thing.

Unlike TCKs since moving to China I would say I identify even more strongly with my birth culture than when I lived there. The friends that we have met since being in this city are from Bulgaria, Australia, New Zealand, the Northwest (practically a different country from the South), Canadians, Chinese, and minorities from China. In my language class, I am the only American, though there are two Canadians. The rest of my classmates are from Korea, Thailand, Mexico, Columbia, Czech Republic, Finland, and Bhutan.

Regine, me, and Megan
(Hong Kong & Australia, The South & Mexico, the Northwest)

When hanging out with friends I tend reinforce my Southern culture by bringing sausage, biscuits, and sweet tea to gatherings (the Aussies and the Kiwis call my biscuits "scones" and my cookies "biscuits". It gets confusing quick). I make wish lists of pretty aprons for hosting and listen to "Song of the South" by Alabama walking to class, which then makes me want to make sweet potato pie immediately. In class, though, I try to break every American stereotype, by reinforcing that Aaron doesn't like to watch NBA and I don't like to go shopping all the time with credit cards.

Living here I also feel the need to bring out my Mexican heritage and so will spend $5 on avocados to make half a cup of guacamole, and bring masa harina and my molcajete to China to make corn tortillas and salsas. I listen to spanish music when I run and speak Spanish in my mind constantly.

Having an Irish last name, I also have a draw to learn more about that, especially since my husband loves that he's Irish. So I make shepherd's pie and learn how to make guinness beef stew and champ.

When I come back to the states I am going to be the most Southern Proper Latina reciting limericks.

my biggest pet peeve

traffic. this is the intersection i walk through every day on my way to class. this was filmed during a less busy part of day, so it's not quite as bad as rush hour. watch the guy carrying some yellow thing. at one point you see him dodging traffic, and in the same shot you can see the green for pedestrians to cross. what you can't see is that those cars also have a green light. the trick to crossing this street, go with the pack. luckily every morning when i go, there is a huge pack to use as protection. so don't worry, mom. and aamee.

where we shop part 2 - chinese Sam's club

Fruits and vegetables are bought in the markets nearby the house, but for imported goods and dairy we have to go elsewhere.

There are a few options in our city for where to buy things like olive oil, pasta, cheese, bacon, cereals, hot chocolate, canned goods, tortilla chips, whipping cream, cream cheese....I could keep going on. Luckily we live close to one of the best options in the city.

It's called Metro, and it is the Chinese version (although I think it's actually German) of a Sam's club. You have to have a membership card to get in, and they sell everything in bulk.

imported pasta

Speaking of, my membership card is from the last Chinese city I lived in 4 years ago and on my card where it states my job description, it simply says that I am an "out of country native" or a "foreign nationality person." That sounds like the best job ever. I wish I could paid just for being a foreigner.


When isolated the last word means scholar, but could also mean warrior or a knight. So maybe my card is really trying to say that my job is to be a foreign knight, foreign scholar, or foreign warrior. I'll take any of those. The picture on the front of my card would indicate something other than a warrior though, since I am cheesin'. I was probably just really happy that I could even get a card at all that day, since I could hardly speak Chinese.

temptations lurking in the dairy section

At the register they scan your card, then scan your receipt to link your purchases with your card. The receipt always has your name printed on it. When they scan my card, even though on my card is my correct name, my receipt always says my name is Hamilton, Jr. and I work for the PetraEnergy Corporation. They never question it. I sometimes wonder if I should start introducing myself as "your friendly neighbor, Hamilton Jr., the foreign petroleum warrior. There were some pretty creative people working the day I filled out my Metro card application.

Metro is in between our house and our school, so pretty much everyday I walk by it, making it a constant temptation to go in and buy some imported product that I never or rarely bought in America, but sounds so good now - like millions of gummi bears or 15 pounds of Mozzarella cheese (I don't even really like cheese that much).

The budget definitely takes a hit when you make a unplanned purchase of a blender and $14 strawberry sorbet because all you want is a smoothie. This is the absolute worst place to go if you are hungry. If you're hungry, go to the meat section of the market. That'll cure your hunger, then go to Metro.