Baijiu

Alcohol.

You know me with alcohol.
Or maybe not. Maybe you don't.
OK. In case you don't - I don't really drink. Maybe once in a while, I'd be convinced to have half... of a full drink or something, but I really really don't drink.

I went to school in an environment where there really wasn't a lot of pressure to drink.

Where is this leading to? Let me start at the beginning:

The second or third day in Baoding, Hannah and I went to the Foreign Affairs Office to officially sign our contracts. We got certain rules explained to us, then we were invited to a dinner banquet.

Our "Welcome to China!" dinner was filled with fancy food, really good yams, and... other stuff that I can't quite remember. In front of each of us, though, was a nice little set. There was a plate, a bowl, chopsticks, a teacup, and - here's where I got confused - a little glass pitcher and a very very very small wine glass.

Very small. Miniature.

"What's this for?" I asked.
"Baijiu."

What?
Baijiu.
Urban dictionary calls it "Pure distilled evil in liquid form."


OK. I'll be open-minded. I'll try it.

Not that I had a choice. My boss, the director of the Foreign Affairs Office, looked around and explained the tradition.

"Everyone has the first three cups (aka shots) together. And then you are free to drink with anyone you want."

This stuff tastes like...
I can't really describe it.
Since this was my boss - and since this was a brand-newish.. culture for me - I did my best to keep up. Sometimes, I'd refill my little shot glass only halfway... only to be told off by one of my leaders, who graciously helped me out by filling it up to the rim.

Three shots is a lot.
But, as one of the two guests of honor, everyone else at the table also wanted to share a drink with me. One by one, they'd say- "Felice! Welcome to Baoding!"

And then "Gan bei!"
Gan bei. Empty your glass.

The head director. The deputy director. The Party representative. The other director. The guy who actually did the work.

Fortunately, the other foreign teachers were able to figure out that I probably couldn't drink anymore, so they didn't ask me for a toast.

Still- After all my leaders (aka bosses) toasted us, we still had the... "To all the ladies! To all the foreign teachers!" and on and on....

The good news?
I held it in.
I drank slowly - it was a long dinner - and ate as much as I could. Drank as much water as I could. Then went home that night to a good night's sleep, wondering about my first banquet experience in China.

--
This experience, by the way, brought back one memory from my childhood.
My family and I were at a banquet in China when I was younger. They served everyone baijiu. I took one sip and decided against drinking it.

My little sister wrinkled her face... then finished it all up in one big gulp. She must have been 8 or 9 at that time. When I asked her why she drank it, she said that she thought she had to. Our parents had always stressed the importance of finishing up everything that was on our plate and in our cups.

So she drank it all.
Then skipped dinner.
She curled over and slept the rest of that night.

--
And thus ends my first baijiu experience.

Voices in my Head

After about one month in Baoding, something marvelous happened:

I started talking to myself again.

I mean... non-stop. Like, eh - in a good way. I've never really thought about how often I talk to myself. I just do it. It's kinda like how you (if you're normal and healthy and sane) don't normally think about breathing.

You just do it.

And then, when it's gone, you're dead, so you don't actually know that it's gone.. except for those initial few minutes when you're suffocating and...

Well. This metaphor failed.
Let's forget the metaphor then.

In August of 2010, when I started teaching in Memphis, Tennessee, that little continuous conversation with myself stopped. I just... pretty much stopped talking to myself.

I hope I'm not giving Memphis a bad rep. I don't mean to, if I am. I love Memphis. It's a great city - and, once I stopped teaching there, I fell in love with it. The usually sarcastic "Welcome to Memphis" greeting that people gave me last year.. I would say sincerely. It's completely different from the north, and it's my first experience with the "real world" after college.

Teaching there was really very very very hard.
Yes, some of it had to do with the hard work - but I can work hard. I woke up at 4:00am to get ready for class, I crashed at 8:00pm - exhausted - and I spent my weekends lesson planning.

And while most of my colleagues' problems were with the administration and the school itself (And I agree with them because those problems were... unspeakable), I had another little problem to deal with: I just honestly didn't think very much of myself as a teacher.

I said to a colleague of mine: "I know it's a lot of work, but... I think it'd be a lot easier if I thought my students were actually learning something."

A lot of it was lack of training, yes. Lack of experience. Lack of.. guidance, maybe. But I spent time in the classroom trying very hard to do something that I didn't think I was very good at.

That was hard.
All of that combined together made the voice in my head go... quiet.
And I didn't even realize that it was gone. I was too busy and too tired to notice its absence.

Then BOOM! WHAM! Half a year later, halfway around the world - while I was riding my bike through campus in China - that voice just popped right back in! And I wanted to write again and think and talk to myself.

It was only then that I realized what I had lost, and it was only then that I got excited that I at last had it back.

Part of it's just time. I had time to recover. My life here is pretty relaxed. I can do what I want to do when I want to do it. I've been keeping myself busy, but it's all stuff that I enjoy doing.

Most of it, though, is confidence I think. I actually think I'm... a good teacher here.

And I have my classroom.. wall mate.. in Memphis, who taught me a lot (sometimes overtly, but mostly by example) to thank for that.

So, um... yes. The latest update:
The running conversation in my head has returned!
Huzzah!
If, er, you care. Yep. I'll try and post something more substantial next time.

Until then - Happy Thanksgiving!

The Rest of Day 1

After we saw my place - our first apartment - we were both a little disturbed.

I have to be honest here.
We Americans have a certain image of the world - forgive the generalizations. And when we were confronted with the cloudy skies (It's not always cloudy, but it often is), the dirty streets (Here.. yes. Always is. Almost always is.), and our dark apartments (the flash actually made the apartment look a lot better)... well, we didn't look all that happy.

The part of me that was somewhat imagining a small city in China to look like a smaller version of Hong Kong or Beijing was surprised.

Of course, another part of me - the part that wanted to come to China and the anthropologist part of me - was ecstatic. Yeah. People pour trash into the street gutters?

No problem!

People throw trash everywhere, you see. Leftovers, scrap food, and just... trash... gets dumped onto the sides of the roads by street food vendors. Even some small restaurants dump their trash out in the open. Mostly, they try to pour it down the sewage system, but of course not everything falls through the sewage grates.

Inside restaurants, people throw stuff on the ground. Used napkins, bones, shrimp peels, and whatever it is that people don't want to eat... that gets thrown onto the ground too.

Even at tourist sites, people just casually throw their water bottles over their shoulders into the bush.

One of my students told me that she cried when she first moved to Baoding for university. She took one look - and one sniff - and spent the entire day in tears. "Baoding is really dirty," she said.

Understatement, much?

I get the sense that localers are a little embarrassed by the trash in the streets - at least, when they're talking to foreigners about it. They don't want to say too much... but two months here (that's not a very long time, I know) have shown me that hey! The trash doesn't actually pile up over time. It's always there, but there isn't any more of it.

"I wouldn't throw it on the ground if I didn't know that someone was going to sweep it up," says an American teacher who has taken to heart the When in Rome... thingy.

So yeah. All this trash creates loads and loads and loads and LOADS of jobs, even if it's not particularly efficient.

Just a thought.
AH!
I went on a tangent. Why was I talking about trash?

Right- So that first day, the two people from the foreign affairs office who showed us around noticed the look on our faces (I was grinning maniacally, I think. Why? I don't know). So someone decided to introduce us to one of my neighbors.

Out came Maggie, a 50-some year old American English teacher who has lived and taught in China for the past five (I think?) years. She came out, smiled at us, saw the look on our faces, and immediately proceeded to calm our fears. She's one of those people you get to know without needing to talk to at all - she makes eye contact, smiles a little, and nods in understanding.

Emotional damage control? Check.
Then we needed to move Hannah's luggage up five flight of stairs. Someone made a phone call, and BAM, just like that - we met our second American English teacher.

This really tall expat came into my apartment, where we were all waiting.
He looked around the room.
"We have some new foreign teachers here," one of our leaders said.
And this guy - we'll call him John - looked right past me, extended his hand to shake Hannah's, then relaxed. He was ready to help out with the luggage.

I stood, a little awkwardly. Raised my hand a little bit.

"Oh, uh. Hey. I'm an American teacher," I say.

He looked at me for a second, surprised. And then suddenly - apologetic. OH!

Yeah, that's right. American here! He thought that I was a new employee from the office.

...Yeah.
Actually, all this build-up and introduction of some other American teachers?
I just really wanted to tell that one story.

Hm.
Yeah.
Well.

While I'm at it, I might as well tell you what happened the rest of that day.

John helped with the luggage. We relaxed for a moment. Then Mr. Kou proceeded to take out a cigarette. He offered one each to both Maggie and John (sorry about all these names), and I did a double take. Inside Hannah's new apartment, they were literally taking a smoke break.

INSIDE the apartment.
No questions or permission asked.

It was interesting.
I think Hannah might have been screaming inside, and I wouldn't blame her.

Then our leaders (aka bosses aka people from the foreign affairs office) left. We grabbed dinner with John and Maggie at a nearby restaurant, where we quickly ran into another facet of Chinese culture - and one that I was very familiar with.

When we were done eating, before we were ready to pay the bill, John stood up casually, walked over to the cashier, and paid for all of us.

My response?
"Oh wow. That's very Chinese of him."
And then a quick but failed struggle in which my own cultural background pushed me into the fight to pay the bill.

After dinner - and an awfully long day - we each went home to absorb in the facts and details of our new lives in Baoding, China.

My internet wasn't working, my kitchen was a literal grease field, my bathroom was flooded (I had showered), my couches were moldy, and I didn't have a pillow.

Still, armed with a taste for adventure like the Gryffindor I am (It was nearly a 3 way tie, but the online tests say my Gryffindorness edge out a couple of points ahead of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff!), I was ready.

...Yes. I just ruined a dramatic final sentence with an unnecessary parenthesized thought.
Oh well.

Home Sweet Home

Welcome. Come on in. Let me give you a little tour...

It's daytime in our timeline - just after noon, I think. But because I often get things like this done late at night, these pictures would have you believe that it's night time.

First stop:

The place that I live in is officially named 烛光小区, or “The Candle Neighborhood.” This little plot of land is owned by the university. Its homes are given out to teachers, some retired teachers, and their families.

Mr. Kou pulled his car right up in front of my new home. It's kinda hard to see because it's dark. You couldn't see anything in the original picture, but I used some computer magic so that you can at least see it. Please excuse the fuzziness:



The second set of windows on the right is a part of my house. Just take a couple steps forward and turn right. And please ignore those spooky white spots on the picture. I'm blaming them on bad image quality and trying hard not to think about how the Ghost Hunters of America might tell me that those fuzzy white things are ghosts.

Erm..

So turn right.



Yep. That's the entranceway that I was talking about. That light that you see there? At night, it turns on when I walk in and stomp my feet. It's sound activated. Pretty neat, I think. Turn left.

Unlock and open the door.



When you go in, the first room that you see is my living room.



Yes. The first thing you see is my living room. But the first thing you notice - or, at least, the first thing I noticed - are the concrete floors.

"What happened?" I asked.
"The last teacher messed up the carpet, so we decided to throw it out."
"Oh... I see."

Yeah. So you see. Concrete floors.

Here's another shot of the living room from a different angle:



Yes. The map of China is crooked.
Yes. According to that map, Taiwan is part of China.
And yes. Those are Pringles potato chips on my coffee table. One tastes like black pepper steak. The other tastes like tomatoes.
And those couches? The covers are removable. I washed them before using them... It's very weird. Imagine my phone call to my parents that day:

"Uh... yeah. Give me a sec. I need to go take the couches out of the laundry machine."

Concrete floors aside, my apartment is HUGE for one person. In addition to the living room, I have two bedrooms, an office, a dining room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. Here's the main bedroom (aka my bedroom... aka the messiest room... aka please excuse the unmade bed):



I've attached some hooks onto the wall. And yes. Those are my monkey pajamas on my bed.

Opposite the bed, there's a little closet. I got it about two weeks in... after I had grown tired of living out of my suitcase. I bought the display closet from a nearby supermarket and built the closet with my bare hands.



It's... a closet. You can open it up and put things in it.. and stuff like that.

Yeah.

The curtain on the wall covers the windows to my balcony. I'm on the first floor... so I'm not sure if it's actually a balcony - but it's like a balcony. It's more of a sunroom. Since there aren't really any dryers available in China (not that I know of, at least), most people dry their clothes in the sun. See the clothes that I put for display?



In this particular room, I have a neat pulley system set up. You twist the handle, and one of the hanger things come down into reach. You twist again, and it rises up into the air so that I can reach the other hangers. Neat, eh?




The second bedroom smells kinda musty. There's a closet in it... but I bought a new closet just to avoid going into this moldy-smelling room. Here, you can actually see how hard the mattresses are. There's a picture of Chairman Mao on the inside of that door - I forgot to take a picture of it, unfortunately. I might get to it another time.

For the most part, though, I keep the door to this second bedroom closed. It scares me a little, you see. Because... look at that fuzzy white dot there. Yeah.



*shivers*

Let's get out of that room, yeah? Out of it. Shut the door. And enter my office.



That's my bike. It's blue like my car. I like my bike a lot. You can see the yellow helmet in the basket. There are two desks, a very old desktop, and a book case to the right. I do a lot of my prep work for class in here.

Head back out. Through the living room.
OH! Stop at the door.

I have two main doors. One opens inwards. The other opens outwards... and a little collection of locks and combinations ensures that no thieves can get inside. There's also a chance that I could lock myself outside AND INSIDE the house. You see the combination-looking thing? To open the door, I need to input a combination and use my key. No one knows the correct combination anymore. If I touch it, I will change the setting, and my key will not be able to get me in or out.

So? If I don't ever come home to the US of A, it's probably because I locked myself in my house in Baoding.

...Yeah.
Oh? Picture.
Here:




Across from the main door is my bathroom. The bathroom floor isn't concrete. It looks pretty good, actually. Looks like this:



See the wooden toilet seat there? It's not actually wooden - it's foamy.. ish.. but I wanted to point it out because I put that in myself. The old one had a bend down the middle of the side. I think someone in the past may have used it as a squatter. It also absorbed a lot of moisture so I went out, got a new one, and installed that wooden-looking one there.

Under the sink, you'll see this little tub. In the past, that was used as a place for the mop. You'd do your mopping, wash it in that tub, and let it dry out there. It's not used for that anymore.. mainly because someone built a sink over it.

Then... on the floor, a big drain.

Something seems to be missing, yeah?
Hm.
What's that?

A shower? Oh. Just look to the right.



That is my shower. There's a water heater on the top. I have to turn that on for half an hour before I want to shower, or I don't get any hot water. The other options is to leave it on all day and waste a lot of electricity....

But yes. That's the shower head. And when I turn it on, the shower shoots water right onto the bathroom floor.

Remember that drain?

It's supposed to drain. That's what it's called. That's it's function... but whenever I take a shower, about an inch or so of water covers up the bathroom floor. When I'm not showering - sometimes, water would come up out of that hole in the ground and leave a small puddle in the middle of my bathroom floor.

The good news?
A lot of my colleagues' bathrooms smell really... really bad. That smell usually comes from that drain. In my case, my bathroom normally smells OK.

It doesn't smell bad.
So yeah. I really like my bathroom.

Now, back up out of the bathroom. Back up, turn just a little bit... and BOOYAH!
My dining room and kitchen!






The floor in here is really clean.
I've swept and mopped it. Every time I mess it up, I clean it up. So that means... I can walk around without my shoes in this room. I like that.

...Why am I telling you this?
I just want to stress how.. nice.. it is to have a room where I can pace around in without.. my shoes on.

...Yeah.

See the toaster oven? That is my toaster. My stove is a hot plate. My washing machine is there too. I have to manually adjust the settings to make it go through all the cycles that it would normally go through by itself (in the States).

It drains into a pipe under the sink...
And.. speaking of that pipe (you can see it in the picture above) - a couple of days ago, one of my drains backed up and flooded my kitchen. Water just started guzzling up out of the ground, bring with it tons and tons of sewage... stuff.

I had to call someone from the school. He called a plumber, and everything got fixed up fairly quickly. But still.

...Yeah.

Well. That's my tour.
More to come on Day#1 in the next post.

And then... some more interesting day-to-day stuff.
I've also taken a couple of trips... but it's the day-to-day living stuff that interests me. You'll get to hear about everything later. For now, though-

Signing off.
Talk to y'all later.

Baoding: First Reactions

The bus was a bus ride. Not too much to say there, except for what we could see through its ginormous windows.

The scenery changed gradually:
-In Shijiazhuang, there were loads of tall buildings, huge crowds, and trash everywhere.
-Very quickly, we hit the highway. All around us, we could see fields and fields of farmland, hills of yellow corn, and hills of trash.
-About two hours in, we passed a toll both, and the farmland morphed into small city buildings. Dirt sidewalks lined the edges of the roads. Men sat on low stools - almost as though they were squatting - and guarded empty storefronts with their bellies exposed. (What does that mean? Lift your shirt up. Roll it up above your belly button. Now just keep the shirt right there and walk around town.) Instead of the rectangular patches of grass that organizes American cities, there were little patches of trash here that did the same thing.
-I don't know why my writing voice tone thingy (yeah, deal with my vocab. I'm an English major!) just changed.
-Then the low-roofed run-down buildings got a little taller, the roads became a little (note: little) cleaner, and the streets became more and more crowded.
-Oh neat! Vegetable markets! Everywhere!
-Street food!
-Construction. At this point, Hannah made a comment: "It's like the whole city is under construction."
-Downtown Baoding is busy. It's bustling and city-like... but it's unlike any city that I've ever seen. Pictures to come... but not quite yet. I need to bring my camera around next time I go out.

I was getting more and more excited as I realized that Baoding was going to be very much... unlike Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong.

I was also having an... interesting time watching Hannah's expressions as we got closer and closer to the city. To put it simply, she was not happy.

And if you've ever watched Lie to Me and can figure out what this expression means:



Ahem. We got off the bus. Went into Mr. Kou’s car – it’s a very small car that just barely managed to hold our combined luggage in its trunk and its back seat. He didn’t buckle his seatbelt, so the car beeped at him every five minutes or so…

In other words, there’d be a couple minutes of silence – then BEEEEP BEEEP BEEEP! – or a couple minutes of quiet conversation – then BEEEEP BEEEP BEEEEP! – then maybe a swerve here and a serve there to avoid oncoming traffic – and then… well, you get the picture.

Twenty minutes or so later, we were home.

Home sweet home.

Welcome. Let me give you a little tour...
Stay tuned for the next post!
It'll be only a couple of minutes, trust me.

Some Random Thoughts

Here's a question for anyone who cares about this sort of thing:

Is it cultural imperialism to teach your students about anorexia and bulimia?

Many of my students skip dinner because many of them think that they are overweight. From my perspective, most of these students who are skipping their meals are as skinny as I am. As a teacher, I am worried about their health. They have food available to them, yes - they just want to diet.

I made the decision this past weekend to make my students aware of anorexia and bulimia. Today (Monday), I gave a small lecture on eating disorders in the last twenty minutes of class. I am not used to this kind of lecture... mainly because, well - the class is usually a discussion-based course focused on getting all students speaking English.

So I lectured. And it felt weird.
Any thoughts?

Is it cultural imperialism? Yes, I am just giving knowledge in this case - I'm not directly asking my students to eat all their meals. Still, in a lesson like this one, it's unavoidable that I am at least suggesting that my students eat more food.

---
On a side note, a student today told me that I looked, I quote - "stupid" - riding around on a bicycle with a helmet on. "Stupid" and "funny." I am glad my activities outside of class is... something that they can wonder at. I'm learning how to ride a bike better - and I think I'm getting the hang of it - but I'm still going to keep the helmet on.
---

That's it. Just some side notes for now. I'll jump back into the correct timeline in my next post.

The Flight Experience

Looking back from where I am now, the plane ride over here doesn't seem like a big deal. Not at all - I mean, it was the first time that I had to actually use use my Chinese. It was the first time that it actually mattered... so, at the time, it was actually kinda thrilling.

In the morning after our farewell dinner at Shanghai, CIEE dropped us off at the... plane station.

Plane station?

What?

*thinks*

Airport! AH! I'm losing my English!
Not good - cuz I'm supposed to be teaching English.

So voila! There I was at the plane station with one giant luggage bag thing, a smaller one, a backpack, and two other Americans who didn't know a word of Chinese. I knew the name of my final destination (Baoding), but I didn't know what city we were flying into.

All I had was a piece of paper with my name and the flight number on it. After showing someone that piece of paper, they directed the three of us to a line with a big D.

When it was my turn, the guy at the ticket countered looked up at me.

"Where are you going?"
"I... uh. This is my flight number."
"Blahblahblahblah... Where are you going?"
"Sorry. My Chinese isn't so good. See this piece of paper? That is my flight number."
"Uh... you don't know where you are going?"
*points*
*sighs... takes passport, prints out a ticket, and hands everything to me*

He then weighs my bag, proceeds to tell me that they're too heavy, and points for me to go somewhere else. I nod - I have international luggage after all, and this was a domestic trip - then go to help the other two Americans.

More Chinese. More trouble communicating.
We take care of our baggage.
Rush to our gate.
And, finally, onto the plane to a hard-to-pronounce city called Shijiazhuang!

---

Three of us got on the plane.
Only two of us got off at Shijiazhuang.

May he rest in peace....
Or, eh, may he have a good time traveling to his final destination further out east.

In other news, during this two hour flight, I picked up a plastic spork.
Just in case you don't know what a spork is...

FORK + SPOON =



World's greatest invention since cardboard coffee cup holder thing...
Though I think the spork came before the cardboard coffee cup holder thing. Hm.

What came first? The cardboard cup holder, or the spork?

*thinks*

Yeah... It's just that those things don't exist here. I'm at a coffee shop trying to drink coffee, and... without those little cardboard holder things, the cup's waaaay too hot.

We miss the strangest things, huh?

Anyway, like the good old days in the US of A, flight attendants served entire meals to everyone in short, two-hour flights. Knowing that I'll be using mostly chopsticks this year, I decided that a spork would be an essential addition to my home. So I took it.

And, boy, am I glad I did. We will talk about the adventures of this handy spork another time in the future.

We got off the plane. I really really REALLY needed to go to the bathroom. Right by the baggage claim, there were - like in the States - public restrooms.

I went in.. and very quickly I learned two very important lessons:

1. I need to remember to bring my own toilet paper. I knew this before I came... I had just forgotten.

2. Public toilets in China are, for the most part, squatters.
SQUATTERS! I knew that before coming too. I just forgot. I had just gotten off the plane and I was half-asleep... so.. yeah. Understandable, I think.

And just in case you don't know what a squatter is:



And that is a very nice one. It's very clean, you see, and it flushes automatically. The ground around it is dry and not wet or covered with brown.. stuff... or with toilet paper and...

...You get the picture?

It is, however, supposedly very good for your body to relieve yourself that way - it's easier, I think. Scientifically and all that, whatever that means.

So what happened?

Simply put, I didn't go. Not right then.
I decided to hold it.

Got my bags. Hannah (the other American teacher going to the Agricultural University of Hebei with me from Baoding) and I stepped out and... stood.

And no one came to us.

People stared, yes. Hannah has blond hair. I blend right in, but Hannah has blond hair, you see, so we got a lot of curious glances. Still, we were confused - someone from the University was supposed to pick us up, see... and no one was there.

I asked around for a phone, gesturing just as much as I spoke... before I was directed towards a little convenience type... store-like-thing where they let me use their phone. I called the school up.

It'd be ok, I was told. The person coming to pick us up was stuck in traffic. He'll be there in a few minutes.

Ok. OK. Breathe. Hannah and I sat down at a little coffee/tea shop type thing. We got waters... and JACKPOT! They had a box of tissues on the table. I grabbed a bunch and bailed for the bathrooms.

On the other side of the welcome gate (outside of the baggage claim area), I peeked into each stall, looking for one that didn't smell as bad as the others. All the way to the end and... once again...

JACKPOT! A handicapped stall! And a western toilet!

Then... we'll skip over some details. Back at the coffee shop. We're worried that the guy from the university wouldn't be able to find us, so we decide to step back outside into the main area by the doors. We figure... Hannah's blond hair would make us easy to spot.

Mr. Kou - someone from the university who works at the Foreign Affairs Office there - found us. We hopped onto a bus and headed for Baoding.

The trip from Shijiazhuang (the capital of our province, Hebei) to Baoding (our future home and final destination) was fairly uneventful. I slept. Watched bits of a Chinese movie (it involved intense martial arts, fantasy, and old costumes), noticed that there was a hot water boiler and tea available on the plane, and slept some more.

Next post? Arriving in Baoding and settling in.
Stay tuned until then.

Shanghai: The End

The Walking Tour, the Bund, and a Magical Dinner


After morning classes, we essentially had the afternoon off. The official event was a self-guided walking tour through the Art District. I joined a break-off group to explore the Bund. I had my first bit of street food in Shanghai (a fried pancake-like thing), wandered around a lot, encountered a modeling shoot thingy, and watched the sun rise over Mao Zedong.







The strangest part about this trip?
People kept on staring at us.
Well... not quite at me. People were staring at the white Americans around me and, specifically, at one of the CIEEers who happened to have red hair.

After witnessing this a couple of times, I decided to step away from the group, blend into the crowd, and ready my camera. Watch this:

*whistle whistle* I'm walking along...


DUDE! Look at the laowai (aka white foreigners)! I wanna take a picture with them!



CHEEZE!!



I've gotten a lot more used to this kind of attention by now. And, unlike the other foreigners, I can actually blend in to a certain degree. When I'm out alone or with non-foreigners, I can relax into comfortable anonymity (as long as I'm not on the street that I live on). But... that's a story for another time.

Right now, let's finish up orientation in Shanghai.

After that tour, we grabbed a cab back to the Faculty Club, rested up, then met for dinner at the hotel. There was some magic at dinner. Then I packed and prepared to wake up early in the morning for the flight from Shanghai to Shijiazhuang....

And THERE! Orientation done!
Next to come: The Flight Experience.
Then, at last: Life in Baoding.

Orientation in Shanghai Part III: Old Shanghai Quarter & a River Cruise

Day 3!

Morning: Survival Chinese lessons, followed by a lesson on cultural differences and adapting to life in China.

Lunch.

Afternoon: Free time/casual frisbee throwing in the afternoon. Wandered out to KFC for some egg tarts.

We walked through this really neat area - the Old Shanghai Quarter - on our way to dinner. It would have been nice if we had more time to explore it a little... but, still, I managed to get a few pictures in. By this point, some people in our group had started a little game of "I spy a Starbucks!"

Loads and loads of 'em... sometimes within viewing distance of each other, I think. I might be exaggerating some, but there are definitely more Starbucks in Beijing than I expected.







After dinner, we went on a little river cruise. Pretty pictures. Lots of rain. And gratitude for my raincoat:







After the cruise, we got the chance to explore Shanghai a little bit on our own before returning back to the Faculty Club. Went out with a group of people to a club (took the subway).

If you know me... you know how out of my element I am in a club.
But there I was. The bar manager approached me, wondering about all these foreigners... and I did my best to communicate with him.

Ah- a side note:

Wandering on our own, I got the first taste of something that would happen over and over again in my time here:

People hoping to communicate with the other foreigners would approach me first - despite the fact that a lot of the other CIEE teachers speak better Chinese than I do. When they realize that I'm having difficulty communicating, this conversation would ensue:

"Your Chinese is a little weird... Where are you from?"
"I am American."
"WHAT? Really? How can you be American? You look Chinese."
"I.. uh, well - see, my parents are Chinese, so I am Chinese."
"Ah, I see. What are you doing here?"
"Teaching English."

And so on. If a taxi driver is asking me questions, then.. he (or she) would take this moment to ask me about my salary here. That kind of information is culturally not considered to be private... so it's not considered rude to talk about your salary here. I knew this, growing up as a first generation Chinese American.

More about those little experiences to come.
Let's try and get orientation out of the way first, yeah?

Anyway, after all that... and while some people were dancing, a Chinese guy came up to me. He asked me... to ask another foreign teacher to dance with him.

Think about that for a moment.

"Excuse me, miss. Eh.. can you ask her to dance with me... for me?"
I stared back.
Pointed at the other teacher, who looked at me confused...ly. And shook my head.
"You can ask her yourself. She can speak Chinese."

I thought it was funny, so onto my blog it goes!

After that, of course, back to the hotel for a good night's sleep.

Day 4, here we come!

Orientation in Shanghai Part II: Museums, Vegetarian Cuisine, and Chinese Acrobats

Shanghai orientation: Day 2!

No worries. I’m not giving up on this blog. Not yet, at least. Let’s try and finish up orientation today, yeah?

On the second day of orientation, after early morning Chinese survival lessons, we had a lecture on teaching issues in China. We broke up into groups and proceeded to present our lessons to a “class.” With this one exercise, the four day orientation in Shanghai gave me more “teacher training” than the one month’s worth of training I had at the charter elementary school where I worked last year.

Yeah…
I’m not bitter at all.

That said, my experience last year has helped me loads this year, and I do think that I’m a much better teacher because of it. Anyway – we’re jumping too far ahead into the future. Let’s take a step back to this second day of orientation… because, right after lunch at the Faculty Club, we hopped on a bus to the Shanghai Museum.

The Shanghai Museum had a special Maori exhibit (Think… the indigenous people of New Zealand). I was PSYCHED to see that. All ready to nerd out, and explain all the Maori exhibits to my fellow teachers. The only problem? I couldn’t find it.

Why?

For the first time in my life – first time ever – I walked straight to the stairs and climbed up to the second floor without being coerced to. I didn’t need to go up there. It didn’t even make sense to go up there first. But, still, up I went… missing the Maori exhibit and all the other displays on the first floor.

See? Goes to show you that stairs are bad luck. Simple logic means that I should avoid all stairs in the future.

Anyway - here are some pictures from the Shanghai Museum, from the 2nd floor up.

Pottery: Archaeology isn't archaeology without some good old-fashioned pottery.





The monkey king! I think. Probably not. He's a mythological creature of some sort... but he's in the pottery section too.



And.. a kirin. Definitely mythological. I think it's a part deer/dragon/lion thing. Not quite sure.



A model of a pottery workshop:





Calligraphy. Look at the writing on the rock below... They basically stamped it onto paper so that it'd be easier to see and read the writing.





I loved these stamps. They're really small but very intricate.






Paintings (Or rather, one. One painting.)



Another exhibit that I really liked: Ethnic costumes, with a giant kirin hanging over the displays.







Some neat masks:







And... here's my favorite bit: A Mongolian chess set. I mean - woah! The kings are little Buddhas!






I went down to the Maori exhibit after that and managed to look through all of it. Got really into explaining everything that I remembered from my time in New Zealand... and completely forgot to take pictures. It's probably for the better though. If you're interested in New Zealand, check out my New Zealand blog.

I... will fully update that sometime.
Sometime.
Yep.

When we were done looking through all the exhibits, I headed to the tea room to wait out the last few minutes at the museum. I was waiting so... naturally, I started doing magic.

But, honestly - this time, I was asked!
Really!

I performed for the CIEE crew until the tea shop closed (it was near that time anyway), and it was time for us to meet up with the rest of the crew. From the Shanghai Museum, we took a bus to one of Shanghai's most famous vegetarian restaurants.

I didn't take any pictures here either. I was too busy eating...

After that - exhausted, jet lagged, and ready for bed, CIEE brought us to watch some acrobats perform. When I wasn't asleep (and I was, I think, for a couple of minutes during the show), I was enjoying their performances. It was... really... quite stunning. How so?

Observe:

Two Chinese acrobats swinging on a stick-



One of them jumps!-



And then he grabs the rope!-



But he doesn't just grab it. Zoom in. Look carefully... He's catching the rope with his LEGS!



Ouch, I think...

And here's a taste of the rest of that show:






And yes. That last one? The giant ball? That is... indeed, one-two-three-four motorcyclists in that ball, going at full speed.

And finally - after all that - sleep.