Really BUSY!

Hey everyone, I've been super super busy lately, working a whopping 27 hours a week!!! Haha, to most this sounds like nothing, however you have to take into consideration three things; 1. I work at a "Design Institute" as a college level English teacher, so I have to prepare exams, grade homework, essays, etc go to meetings (lol like a real job), 2. I have to travel for work IN BEIJING, some of my commutes lasting up to an hour one-way, and 3. I have to prepare for three different work places and then extra tutoring on the side. Needless to say, I'm a busy busy girl.

I actually did get a moment to relax when I found out that there was a holiday this weekend from May 1-2 so I have been off work and doing work for the past three days. Yesterday I went to Chaoyang Park, the largest park in Beijing for a day of relaxing and eating out with the friends. Anywho, I will keep you more posted when I have something that is actually interesting to report.

Tantalizing...A blog is the only setting where I can rightfully use this word...

Word of the Day: Tantalize : to tease or make frustrated, as by tormenting with the sight of something greatly desired but inaccessible.


I don't know why this word popped into my head just now, but I realized that I never use this word even though it is sooo much fun to say. One could say that my blog tantalizes the readers by showing my adventures in China.... ahaha

One Tantalizing tale after the next...

Anywho, this tale is anything but tantalizing, I'm going to talk about my New Years (Chinese and Western). The Western New Years came first. It was HORRIBLE. I was separated from my friends, the club I had paid good money to go to was boring, cold and played bad music, my buzz wore off, I left with out seeing anyone on the countdown to the new year, I paid for an overpriced taxi ride back, I was really cold, and the icing on the cake....I left my keys inside my apartment so I was stuck sitting in a bar hoping that my roommate would come back soon while an annoying barfly chattered on about some kind of nonsensical subject. The start of the night was OK, one might even say 'just so-so' as the Chinese English speakers are taught to say. It just went downhill from there. :(

Chinese New Years--Now thats what I call a new years "Nian Kuai Le!!!" Even though most of my friends weren't here for the new years I still had a great time. I relaxed during the day and in the evening went down to a Hutong called Ho Hai (hope I spelled that right). This was fun because the entire city was in a festive mood. Fireworks and firecrackers could be heard from every direction. Ho Hai is also the home of somewhat a karaoke (KTV) and bar central. There is a lake in the middle of it all and on one side is the Ancient Bell Tower and the other is the Ancient Drum Tower. It was kind of cool to be celebrating a Chinese holiday in china in the shadow of these ancient buildings. I turned in early, in bed by 1pm but while out I met some new people and gained a new group of friends which was the nicest thing that had happened to me all winter.

February- Mother and Father Visit.
So my mom and dad decided to visit me and go to a few other places while they were over here. They started in the Philippines, visiting the Reinosos, went to Hong Kong to visit my sister Nicole, then came to Beijing. Of course, seeing as I'm known as their "Best Daughter", I know they had the best time while visiting me. I was finishing up work so I had their full and undivided attention, They stayed in Beijing for about 4 days and then we visited Xi'an and Shanghai

BJ- They went to the great wall and the Ming Tombs while I was at work, but I went to the Tian'an'men and the Forbidden City with them. The last day was some kind of cultural tour where we saw the bird's nest (Olympic Stadium), went to a Tea House and toured a Hutong (a traditional Chinese neighborhood) where someone actually cooked us lunch! It was the best Chinese of the whole tour, in my opinion. *Pictures below in order: Temple of Heaven (Tian'tan), Llama Temple (Yonghegong), part of Tian'an'men?, my mother and I at the Bird's Nest (Olympic stadium)

Xi'an - This was a good t"rip, we saw the terracotta warriors and some other random things including a cool night market in the center of town. We were in Xi'an for all of two days, whereupon my dad had decided it was the most dusty city that he had ever seen in his entire life! LOL! You should have heard him after we finished the trip, in the elevator (excited look on his face) "You just wait, when we get to the room, we are gonna have a conference to talk about what we just saw today" ahah I had no idea what my father was just about dying to express to us and as soon as we were settled in the room...."I wanna tell ya that Xi'an is SO DANG DUSTY! I mean WOW, it's gotta be the most dusty place I have Ever seen!" For those of you that know my father, picture him saying this with the most incredulous look on his face LOL! When I came back to Beijing, I was talking about him saying that to a lady who works for one of my companies (of course I imitated my father) and she could not stop giggling, she definitely got a kick out of it! (Below are terracotta warriors, and Xi'an drum tower lit up at night with the wall on the far right)

      Personally I loved Xi'an I didn't think it was that dusty and dirty, I think that Beijing is a bit worse. It was a charming little city, little being 9 million people. It had an ancient outer wall that encased downtown and central Xi'an and also is the city closest to the site where the Terracotta Warriors were discovered. That was really cool, I might even venture to say cooler than the Great Wall.

Shanghai - Shanghai was really amazing, it seemed like an upper-class New York style Beijing. What amazed me when I got there was the simple fact that many more people in Shanghai have a sufficient grasp of the English language. You could try to ask someone something on the street but more often than not, they will answer you in English. Kinda nice, kinda strange. It was interesting to see the different styles in architecture because the history of Shanghai is much shorter than that of Beijing and Xi'an. Xi'an was the site of the first capital of China, and because of beliefs in Feng Shui, (Fung Shway? for literal pronunciation), the capital was moved to Beijing because it was believed to have more Feng Shui than Xi'an. Shanghai is only about 200+ years old, whereas BJ and Xi'an are many centuries older. I would say that Shanghai is a cool place to visit, but is wayyy too western and english oriented for my liking. I would much rather a more unique Chinese culture experience like in cities similar to Beijing. (Pictures below: Downtown Shanghai, the other two are pictures of a rich person's parent's summer relaxation palace/home)

[What also comes to mind is the fact that Nicole traveled to Sth America before I did but she stayed in the boring European Buenos Aires. I HATED Buenos Aires but loved the authentic South American feel of Santiago albeit a very different and strange hispanic feel. The same rings true for our current situation. She is loving the really western Hong Kong while I love the very Chinese Beijing. -She can be given the benefit of the doubt though because I have yet to visit HK]

Anywho, this is about all that I need to update you on except the minor happenings here in Beijing like: I just got a new job at a Design Institute as an English teacher (the entire school program teaches classes in English), my boyfriend should be due to visit, and OH YEA! I'm not coming anytime soon! See you around X-mas! Zaijian! Ending on a bad Chinglish sign, this was a sign in the Bathroom of a Ramada Inn in Shanghai, a How-To-Operate-The-Faucet Guide LOL WHA?

Long Time No See =0

 Hey Everybody..... LONG TIME NO SEE! right?


Anywhoo, I was talking to my roommate Erin and she was talking about her friend's impressive blog and her lack of motivation to create one of her own when I remembered.... OH YEA! I have a blog too! I haven't been extremely motivated and the reason why can be summarized in about 3 main points (lol plus I really want to make a list...)

1. My computer broke so I had to wait for the new one to come and this was a big hassle where I was really bored.. Extremely bored.
2. I was ending the regular school season and I was beginning to transfer into my winter schedule (it was intense... talk about going from working 10 hours a week to working about 50). The first session ended. I had a few days off and then I started the second session. Each lasted about 11/12 days.
3. My mother and father came into Beijing and we also traveled to Xi'an and Shanghai. So I've only been back in the BJ for about a half a week.

So for these reasons plus a hint of laziness I have not blogged in a while.. I apologize and I know that I've lost valuable time and important thoughts/insights.

Here's an attempt at a detailed Recap (...I always recap)

CHRISTMAS
        Obviously we know the date of Christmas (December 25th if you could not remember). This was the most depressing Christmas that I have ever had in my life and I vow to never miss a Christmas ever again in my life, no matter where I was. Initially I thought I could handle it seeing as I only had only minor heartache from missing my second Thanksgiving earlier that year. It was particularly horrible because I didn't have my computer and the fact that I was surrounded by Chinese and English folk. I didn't expect too much as far as the Chinese perception of Xmas but was surprised to find out that it is celebrated but obviously not for its religious tradition. What you might like to call a 'fashion holiday'. Everyone likes to decorate and play Christmas music but of course it cannot be the same as home.
         What blew my mind and appalled me at the same time was the British folk. THEY SERVE TURKEY ON XMAS!!! WHAT? That's called Thanksgiving. It dawned on me suddenly when she mentioned that she was excited to have Christmas dinner at our friend Brendan's because he had an oven and they were cooking two turkeys.I then had an intense discussion with my roommate where I swore I had never seen a turkey served on X-mas and that if I ever saw one served at my Christmas table I would take a picture of it and admit defeat.  She swore it was abnormal for anyone to have anything other than turkey for Christmas. She was blowing my mind. I can only picture a Christmas ham... YUM! I did later have to admit defeat because I polled several friends and family to see if it was OK to have turkey on Christmas and they deemed it acceptable.

The Girls: Erin and Cady at the Dinner table

             Anyway, I proceeded to have a strange Christmas dinner that consisted of a very European Christmas meal (that I thank God will never be served anywhere near my future Christmas meals) of Turkey, Roasted potatoes? wha?, roasted vegetables, stuffing, and cranberry sauce..... Might as well have been my missed Thanksgiving meal..... very inappropriate. I felt like I was in bland/backwards times at the European Christmas. However I will have to admit that everything was pretty good minus the potatoes which should have most definitely been mashed not roasted....(I love home!)

Turkey, Stuffing, Roasted Potatoes and Veggies

         So you see how much I've just talked about the irritation this subject caused me in December...It is February and I still think about how silly it sounds to eat turkey on Christmas. So, from hereon out, I vow to never be away for Christmas and to NEVER eat turkey on Christmas again. :)


WINTER CAMPS
           All in all. I taught about six different winter camp classes. The sessions were from January 18th-29th and from February 7th-18th. Four classes for the first winter camp and two for the second. I worked many more hours during the first one so I was essentially exhausted. My mother and father came around during the second session so the second one was almost equally exhausting (no offense mom and dad :))  The first session of winter camp was definitely the most interesting because most of the children/kids were not from Beijing. This means that I was essentially one of the first foreigners they had ever seen in their lives or one of the first they knew on a more personal basis (not seeing one in a park or something).
            The most amusing classes were my Beginner and Intermediate Interchange Students who were in classes that focused on LSRW (Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing). I obviously was the coordinator for the speaking session. The first class was smaller and a bit harder to conduct due to the actual English capabilities of the students. The second class was a lot more interesting because of the higher English level and interest in the subject. Below is a picture of the second class

The intermediate 

             The BEST class of the session was the last class that was focused on simply oral communication with a focus on student output rather than teacher output. Therefore this means that I had to talk less. The kids in this class were about 16-17. They were hilarious because they had the highest English skills of all of my classes and they were very interested in my life. The best question I heard was 'Gabi, please tell us about "American Culture"', yea I can describe that in a few words. :/  There was one girl in particulary named Emily who wanted to know everything about my life and was dying, in every single class, to take pictures of me. I told her to wait and she sighed in despair. She also begged me to do a song and dance for the last class which she claimed was a "New Oriental" (the company that held the class) Tradition. The last thing she did almost killed me. She wanted to see the pictures that I had on my computer and she watched as the slides changed never ceasing to be enraptured by the subject of "my life". Finally I showed them a picture of my boyfriend. I swear she nearly lost it, she made sure that she had a picture of the picture of my boyfriend. Hahaha I almost fell off my chair in laughter!

Rain shaking my hand

Winter camp above: Leo

           The second winter camp was a bit less interesting. As I mentioned earlier they were all from Beijing, so a foreign teacher didn't phase them. The first class was large and some of the students were a bit stubborn and unwilling to participate in the class, but in the end it ended up working out and the class was enjoyable. The second class was the oral communication class so they again did most of the talking. Usually I posed interesting questions and they were discussed in depth during the length of the class. One such subject was "Superpowers". We brainstormed for different super powers, explained what they were, etc. Then I had them each think of a superpower they would like to have and they had to analyze it by the following prompts 1. was it a power they would use for good or for evil thus making them a superhero or a super-villain. 2.What are the problems that would arise from having this power 3. What exactly would you do with the power ..... etc Very fun and interesting class. The last class was spent discussing music tastes/genres, current artists and an instructional slideshow on beat-boxing. (The kids in the picture to the right are from the inter camp above in order William, Cici, Emily)

Tell-tale signs of a winter camp [p.s. these all happened to me]:

1. The kids are amazed and stare directly at the foreigner in the room, in my case, myself. 
2. The disregard of the idea of good English names and choosing to use words like Voice, Rain, Sunshine...etc.
3. Sign autographs in the course books with a 'nice message' along with it. 
4. Pictures taken of the foreigner when they think the foreigner is not looking (happened to me in class), Pictures are taken in a frenzy and continuously for about 10 minutes during the last class, pictures are taken while signing autographs, pictures taken of the pictures of foreigners. 
5. Asked to give a parting song and dance. 
6. Asked to put every single piece of information about yourself (the foreigner) on the board so everyone can have your; phone number, full name, e-mail address, QQ/Facebook, msn messenger name, Skype username
7. A whole-class-escort to the vehicle by which you came to the winter camp for the day.
8. Strange and unique sensation and feeling of stardom or of being some sort of celebrity (I was sure made to feel as such) lol

OK sidenote: <make sure the next post includes New Years, Chinese New Years, Parents' Visit> ....toodles, zaijian!

I have recovered!

Sooo the evident lapse in writing was due to a major computer failure. All is well now. I just received my new computer (soooo tiny) from China Post and finally have all of my files transferred. So now I am free to take up as much time as I feel like with random bloggings. Look forward to them folks!

January 20th
       January 6th was my last official day of work with my Primary School Shi You (prounounced like Shur Yo). It was sad to say goodbye to all my little kiddies, but at the same time I could easily say good riddance! Anywho, Since then I've been putzing around trying to keep myself busy while I had essentially no work for a week. Good thing I made sure that I had a winter camp to work at for January and February or I would be flat broke! My winter camp started on the 18th and generally I have older middle school students and college aged students.
             This is a very amusing job because of the amount of time I spend in one day with the same class. My first class was really awkward. There were four students (all of who did not want to speak) and it was like pulling teeth to get any information out of them. Finally I just ended up relating all of the information to myself.
My second class was amazing. They were intermediate students and the class was very large. We had a good time making dating adds for Lady Gaga and talking about Rude Behavior in China. The most amusing thing is the fact that students constantly are trying to sneak pictures of me. Evidently I'm the first foreign teacher they've had because these students come from outside of Beijing. My favorite quote was the following:

"Teacher you look like Ashley Tisdale...." Me: Is that a good thing? "Yes you have a very beautiful face" lol what?

ahaha, anyway on that note I'm going to bid you adieu, zaijian!

Brrrr, it's cold in Beijing

Salutations from the Great city of Beijing where the Red Mao reigns over all. I keep on reading all

 

these articles about China in the news on The NY Times and the Economist about China. Essentially I think the media has hooked onto a newly developed fear of Chinese domination. However this isn't something new the concept has been around for ages. What happens to world order when the hegemon (US) is no longer a hegemon? The most commonly perceived country is China, due to its economic capacity in the wealth of its population size. Whether or not China could mobilize these masses to the work force was another story . Now whether that be politically, economically or most undoubtedly culturally, the media is amid a feeding frenzy on the possibilities for the future, as China's economy skyrockets past that of the United States, the most recent economic power. Reading about all of this can get a bit depressing, seeing as I am from the U.S. and currently I'm in China.

The most recent article to catch my eye was about the internationalization of the "Redback" Mao into the world economy, having the Chinese yuan set as the standard for monetary values, a position the US Greenback currently holds. I scream a silent (No!) in my head while merely reading the article. It would be strange to have some other standard than that of my beloved Greenback. The same as it would be strange to think of anything inherently Chinese in culture and values as the accepted Standard.

I feel like I'm a walking product of classes with Lorenzini and Lomperis (Political Thought of Asia). I think about this stuff tooo much! Ok, here we go. I've always heard that China is a society based on harmony. The most valued thing in Asian society is Harmony, the most valued thing in Western Society is freedom...there by ipso facto Colombo Calypso--haha--Asian societies are community driven while Western societies are intrinsically individually driven. Of course there are the exceptions in both societies but anyway....

Let's take the idea of responses toward the recent North Korea conundrum, the west (particularly the Obama Administration) is/was mystified and agitated about the talks with China on the matter. They couldn't understand whyyyy China took so long to respond, was so hard to get a hold of, and didn't want to sharply reprimand the North Koreans (essentially the western approach). What was China's method in all of this? To Assure the North Koreans that their security was not going to be affected--a unique harmony-based Asian approach. Is this absurd? No, when you think about it, China's not being stubborn they are just thinking about things in a different manner.

Now relating all of this mumbo jumbo to my class room is interesting. When I first arrived I took a training course in which I had a nutty/cool teacher named Chuck who forewarned us that Chinese are very competitive and individualistically based in the classroom. He said this because students would deliberately hold questions until after the class so that they could gain an upper edge against all the other students. However on the less mature level, I think this concept still holds true. I like my primary school kids, and competition is always a way to keep them engaged while learning new concepts. Every day, I divide my class into 3 groups and those groups compete against each other to get rewards from their TA in the end. Generally there is a certain level of cheating by whispering answers that goes on in the classroom. I would never give kids on the other team the right answer so that they could get a point. This is precisely what happens in all of my classes, there is inter-team/group cheating even when it could hamper one of the teams. A whispers to B and B's team wins. This isn't just cases of friendship its whole groups. haha I don't know how to explain it much better than that but it makes me laugh and I enjoy it.

...On a much darker note, its getting very close to Christmas and surprisingly it is not completely uncommon to see Christmas decorations sold and already put up. My friends an I are planning on a X-mas day meal or "X'mas" as was so fondly displayed in a prominently western shopping area. I've started listening to TSO (Trans-Siberian Orchestra for all you newbies) and thinking about the lack of Christmas cookies I will be able to eat. Note to self, NEVER miss Christmas again. I want some Orange Tea Cookies...yum! Another note to self; please take many pictures of Xmas decorations this weekend. Oh, and p.s. I might begin work for a Chinese movie star if everything pans out.

Soo lets talk about China

Sooo everybody I would like to talk about China, the country and statistics....and then a homey touch of my favorite food baozi

Anywho, moving on soooo China, Modern day China, that is. China is an up and coming economic superpower that rivals and surpasses even the former hegemonic power of the United States. Boasting a population of about 1,330,141,256 people.....lets take a look at the U.S.'s population at a staggering 310,232,862. Essentially China has a good BILLION plus people on us. Now that statistically we've settled that China has an enormous population, just image on 1 Billion plus people is dispersed about a region, even one as large as the landmass of China. In China, the cities are very important bustling centers of the country. When people living in rural areas were allowed to migrate to the cities after the reign of Mao, the cities began to double and triple in size. Cities could be considered small countries.

Take for instance Beijing, home of 20 million plus people (according to the Chinese -recently the census happened so this could be reliable). Try to picture living in a city that large. For me, it is still a bit un-imagineable to think that that many people live in one city. The largest city I had ever lived in was Santiago, population of around 7 million people. Beijing trumps Santiago times 3! No matter how extensive the subway system is, it still cannot compensate for how long travel will take. For me to travel from West Beijing to East Beijing, it would easily take me over an hour and a half. This is with me living a 5 minute walk from my apartment to the subway station. My old apartment was a 15-25 minute bus ride TO the subway. Driving in a taxi (chuzu qiche 出租车) during rush hour could easily take you about 2 hours to get to your destination, even if it wasn't very far away.

Now, Beijing isn't even the largest city in the country, the city that holds that title is Shanghai. Navigation in Beijing is a nightmare, so navigation in Shanghai can only be more of a nightmare. So taking this into consideration, just because there is an incident in Beijing, doesn't mean that the incident happened down the street from me. Nor does it mean that I will even hear about the incident in the news until you tell me. Ahaha. case and point, (no offense mom, I love you!) my mother sent me an article about "the world's longest traffic jam" that happened in Beijing where people were in a jam for approximately 9 days. No, I hadn't heard of anything of the sort. This just means that traffic was really really bad for about 9 days. ....Is that unusual? No. Soooo, if you see an article about Wu Dao Kou, or Wudaokou, then I might have heard about it. If not then I don't know what you are talking about. ahaha

China is  such a large country that it has very diverse cuisine, which if you've talked to me much, you would know that it's not really my favorite. There are plenty of dishes of the Northern style that I like, but equally there are plenty that I will not touch. People rave about Peking Duck in China, which is fairly good and appetizing, however this is not what floats my boat. What does is, 包子 or Baozi, essentially they are dumplings filled with meats, vegetables or egg and are the most scrumptious when eaten with soy vinegar.

 

This is a bag of baozi that I used to get at least once a day from my local baozi woman. Seriously I've never had baozi better than hers. It didn't always look like baozi but it always tasted better than baozi. They vary in size and in fillings but generally are always good. Here's a picture of how baozi normally looks... So essentially, I love my baozi (which I can find no good street baozi in Wudaokou) and I really like the strange fruit and juice selections. I've discovered pamelos, what I describe as a cross between a grapefruit and an orange. I buy them whole, peel them and eat it throughout the week. Other big fruits in China include dragonfruit, hawthorn berries and peaches (you can find many different peach juices here. Hawthorn berries are puzzling because I find the actual fruit disgusting but the juice amazingly delicious. The other type of juice that I've only seen here is Sea-Buckthorn juice....yes sea-buckthorn juice. I can't find it everywhere, some random street vendors have it but I think it's delicious. It tricks you though because it looks like orange juice. The 'sea-buckthorn berry' is found on cliff environments and must go through an intense juicing process because it is normally an oily berry. Don't let that throw you off the juice is actually pretty good.

Ok, thats all for now folks BYE!

It's definitely December

So sorry everybody for not writing a whole lot! I've been sick quite a lot, including the majority of November. I recieved medical attention so the worst of it is over and I'm doing much better. By the way, if you are ever in Beijing and need a doctor for any reason, just go to any of the area hospitals. Near me there were at least 3. I chose to go to the Sino-Japanese Friendship hospital near Hepingli. There was a nice International Wing where the majority of the staff spoke English and spoke it well. Even the nurses were able to speak English. I was in and out in about 30 minutes. The most costly thing about the visit was my prescription. Next time I get sick, I will probably choose to go to a cheaper specifically Chinese hospital so I can spend even less. Anywhoooo, enough of the depressing stuff

Moving on, October ended with a BanG! Halloween! Even though many Chinese do not celebrate Halloween, there were plenty of places that sponsored and joined in the festivities! All of my friends and I went out for a night of good fun on Halloween. I was a pirate-ess, along for my good friend Cady. I realized that my roommate Erin has a secret turned not-so-much-a-secret-anymore of a burning love for face paint. She whipped out a picture on her phone of herself earlier this year in full avatar body/face paint. She REALLY looked like an avatar!. So needless to say, face paint was a part of her attire for the evening as she dawned a mime outfit. Other friends included Beethoven, David Bowie, Peter Pan and a Frenchman (James) complete with a baguette. 


So Halloween was a lot of fun, then I was sick for about three weeks, and when I was finally better and I was able to celebrate my birthday! Yes, now officially I'm an old woman at the ripe old age of 23, it's all downhill from here. 23 might as well be 25, which fully qualifies me as an adult and therefore means I might as well be 30...or 40... Anyway, my birthday weekend was fun, my friends and I went out to a club and then on my actual birthday my friends took me out to eat for dinner and for breakfast!

....thats all I got for now....I'm boring.