T-Minus Six Hours

So, school is done.

The children have left.

I'll be leaving for my next adventure in a few hours.

Gah.

This is all incredibly bittersweet.

I'll be heading out to catch an 18 hour sleeper train that will take us to Xi'an, where the infamous Terra Cotta warriors are. After that we're catching another billion hour train ride to Lanzhou, the home place of pulled noodles where there is the most incredibly precise and specific technique to making them. It's insane. And delicious.

After a day or two there, we'll be hitting up the province of Xinjiang. The most western province of China, it borders 8 other countries, most of which are middle eastern, there is a major influence of said countries and in many places one can expect to forget they're even in China: the language is different, the food is different, the writing style is different, the religion is predominantly Muslim, it should be awesome! We'll be touring the Silk Road and the Gobi desert before eventually flying back to Shanghai.

At that point I will be leaving the rest of my fellow travellers and making my way up to Beijing for about a week before I fly home to CANADA on July 22nd.

I plan on taking approximately 38, 000, 002 pictures and then posting them along with my adventures (of which I'm sure there will be many) when I get back to Canada and to the land of non-dial-up and crappy connections.

Until then...

Apples vs Watermelon

Let me explain to you the Chinese education system as it was explained to me:

You go to the supermarket where there are apples and watermelons. Apples are university and watermelons are high school. Apples are 9RMB and watermelons are 8RMB. You can afford apples, and you can afford watermelons. You may want both, but your mother told you to get apples. What happens if you only have 7RMB? Too bad, you can't have either, go back to work and make more money.

For all you non-metaphorically inclined people: if you have good enough grades you can go straight into university after middle school if that's the direction your intended career path is heading.

Apples = university.
Watermelons = high school.
Money = grades.
Mother = career path.

This may seem crazy until you consider how different the age and grades are:

Kindergarten - age 5/6
Primary School, grades 1 to 6 - age 7-12
Middle School, grades 7 to 9 - age 13-16
High School, grades 10 to 12 - age 17-20

So there ya go, bit of random edumacational trivia for you.

Right Now!

I'm on TV right now!

WJTV - I speak (mumble) a bit of Chinese, I welcome the viewer to the school (in English, with lots of enthusiasm), I teach one of my lessons, I play games with my students and I talk (pretend to - there's a massive language barrier) with the other teachers.

Such fun!

It'll be on again in a couple hours, so if you're skilled at time travel, are in the area and have a television nearby you can check it out!

Canadian

You know you're Canadian when...

You make a slide show for your grade 7 students about different food in Canada and how it's usually quite international, and then devote two entire slides just to Tim Horton's.

Beast

Last night at around 9:00, one of the teachers came knocking on my door. She came to deliver some of these funky fruits for me to try.



It's some kind of a berry with a pit in the middle.

I don't know what it is about the teachers here, but they'll never fully enter my room, but nor will they stay outside. Instead they stand just inside the doorframe so I can never actually close the door.

9:00 in the evening is a bad time of day to keep the front door open. Check out the absolute beast she let in. Scared the crap out of me when I went to turn out my light and the creature flew into my peripheral vision.



Speaking of bugs and creepy crawly things, I found this huge dragonfly in the stairwell today.

Smelly

I wish this blog could post smells.

There are a lot of things in China I wish you could smell.

Like the sweet-flavoured popcorn I just made to absolute perfection (for once).

Or the deoderant I bought yesterday (yay!).

Or the smell of bus exhaust mixed with cigarette smoke mixed with chow mien mixed with raw meat.

Ok, maybe not the last one. Unless I was in a particularly bad mood and felt that misery deserved company...

Oh Happy Day!

I FOUND DEODERANT!

Seriously, there were several days and several moments where I felt like posting about my lack of deoderant and subsequent fear of BO, but there's a reason it's called "personal hygiene".

I felt that this was a cause for celebration though, and since a celebration is always merrier with more people, I figured, "meh, presumably my readers are all human, of course they'd understand, so why shouldn't I share this fantabulous news?!"

I FOUND DEODERANT!

I found three sticks in the supermarket, snuggled between the condoms and the hair removal products.

China doesn't really have deoderant, I'm not sure what they use - if anything - to make themselves smell pretty, but honestly, I've never noticed an intense BO smell, so I never really thought anything of it.

Until I ran out of my own personal stash of deoderant.

I had read before I moved out here that deoderant hardly existed, so I stocked up on what I doubted would be enough but figured I could easily have some sent over. The thing about this logic, is that it's best to ask for some more before you run out.

Or it's best not to rely on the Chinese post when you choose to ask for more.

The post is extraordinarily late in sending me my deoderant. I don't even wanna tell you how late, because it's not a pretty number. Of course, now that I've found some here, I can guarantee it'll show up tomorrow or the day after.

You know how you don't realize how much you love something until it's gone? Deoderant is a perfect example.

I got really paranoid about how I smelled: I showered two or three times a day, focusing especially on my armpits, which just gave me a rash; I changed my clothes constantly; I minimized my movements as best as I could, standing at the front of the class, stiff as a board, with my arms at my side. I was like one of those meerkats with their nose always in the air, sniffing away, and the second I smelled something funky I'd freak out that it might be me. In the meantime, in the back of my head, there was always that bit of trivia that you can never really smell yourself, and that made me freak out even more, because if that smell I smell is actually me, good lord, I feel sorry for everyone else.

It was a vicious circle because I'm pretty sure all this paranoia and worry about how I smelled just made matters worse.

But it's all good now, because...

I FOUND DEODERANT!

Storm

We had the most awesome storm last week. It was so incredibly intense that there's honestly nothing I can compare it to in Canada - well Southern Ontario, anyway.

Naturally I left my window open, because it really couldn't work out any other way, could it? All my clean clothes that were hanging to dry were soaked and muddied because the screen was so dirty, there's water damage on the walls and around the windows, and the front door leaked enough water to flood a quarter of my room. The field was basically just a giant puddle by the time it was all finally finished.

I had a couple classes during the storm, which was actually a great educational experience for the kids: at the beginning of the semester I taught them about weather and "storm" was one of the words, but because we never had storms at the right time of day they only knew the English words through the photos I showed. So now they can say "it is stormy." Isn't that exciting?

It was so adorable though, because they were so terrified of the thunder and lightning, they'd jump in their chairs and their eyes would go super wide, and they'd run up and hug me for protection from the storm - I felt like Maria from The Sound of Music. Again. Except I didn't "sing" this time.

It's my birfday

Hello folks!

21 year old Natalya comin' at ya!

Today is my birthday in Canada, and yesterday was my birthday in China and for another couple hours it's my birthday still in Hawaii. I figure since I'm all the way out here in China I might as well celebrate in an international manner and therefore I am selflessly stretching my birthday out for a full 36 hours.

Yesterday the school gave me a gorgeous bouquet of flowers and a large, lavish cake with lots of sugary, sweet icing. I found that the cake was more air than it was substance, but it was pretty good nonetheless.

Anyway, happy birthday to me!

Earthquake

Hey folks,

Just sending out a note to all you concerned and wonderful people:

I am alive and well. Only very minor tremors were felt in my area, even though we are a huge distance away. I personally did not feel it, but people downtown in the city just a few minutes away did and were obviously startled. A piece of my school's roof fell off - but I don't know if that was because of the earthquake or just ridiculously coincidental timing.

It was, however, definitely felt in Shanghai and in Beijing - cities over 1500km away from the quake as well as in a few of the surrounding countries. This is said to be the worst earthquake to hit China in over 3 decades - registering at a 7.9 on the Richter scale - and the death toll has now reached an estimated 1200 people. In the meantime there are thousands of survivors buried under fallen buildings, just waiting to be rescued.

Unfortunately, it's events like these that remind me how fragile a life is and how insanely grateful I ought to be that I'm even alive.

It also reminds me that I have many awesome, kind, caring, and concerned people in my life. So I'd like to thank you all for your emails, messages and phone calls - I am indeed alive and physically far away from the tragedy.

Watermelon

It's pretty self-explanatory if you just watch it.

Lobsters

As you know, my school gives me gifts. Strange gifts. Well, I think they're strange anyway. That's not to say I don't like them. I most certainly do. I like strawberries, and pears, and apples, and oranges.

Tomorrow is May Day. China gets the day off basically to thank its workers and labourers for all they do. So I guess in celebration of May Day and the long weekend, my school gave me lobsters.

A great big, steaming bowl of lobsters.

I swear the bowl had to weigh about 10lbs. I am honestly not exaggerating.

What They Said

I was reading old entries from my journal from before I left Canada for China and I thought I'd share this one with you over a couple of posts.

"You know, their food is so fresh you have to catch it yourself, eh? "Here chicken, c'mere chicken, cluck cluck." And when you want milk, you'll have to catch the cow..."

The Country

This weekend I hung out with a couple of my students – cousins that live about 45 minutes out into the country.

I was super excited as I’ve wanted to see what the country life of China is like. Not that I know a whole lot about country life in Canada. But still.

Before going to their house we went to Dalin Temple to do some praying. I was given a bundle of incense sticks labelled with “happiness” in Chinese. After lighting the entire bundle I held it in both hands, raised it to my head and lowered it down to about my waist, and repeated that movement twice, followed by three short jerky shakes before sticking the whole bundle into a pile of previously lit sticks that had disintegrated to ashes.

After roaming around and checking out some more of the temple, we climbed a mountain.

It’s not really a mountain but a big hill that’s been given the name of a mountain. At the top of the mountain was a pagoda about 5 stories tall. We climbed this too and were rewarded with a magnificent view. And this time, my camera worked.

On the way back down I found a cemetery. The others weren’t as interested in it as I was so we didn’t get to explore, unfortunately.

We stopped at their place for some lunch. In parts of Canada, living in the country means driving up to twenty minutes (or more) to visit your next door neighbours. It’s not as drastic in China, but given the population that’s really not surprising. There were a lot of fields surrounding the area with various plants, veggies and fruits growing.

And they had dogs! I was too busy petting them and playing with them to take pictures. Apparently I was well-liked with these dogs. The family seemed genuinely surprised that the dogs took to me as quickly as they did. Made me miss my pups back home though.

After eating a delicious meal – in which they seriously over-fed me with everything they could think of because they didn’t know what I liked - we headed down the block to a farm park

The park had playgrounds with climbing equipment; a pond where we played our own version of bumper boat; an obstacle course in water (which I was reluctant to join but glad when I did); and a small museum chronicling the use and growth of farm equipment.

On the way back to the school, we stopped at a fruit market where I was completely spoiled with various kinds of fruit and I can now officially say the infamous jar of fruit in my fridge now has company.

*Will add pictures when my internet stops being an ass. You can expect a sudden, dramatic overload of posts (most likely without pictures) as I get frustrated with the accumulation of unpublished but completed ones gathering in the edit posts folder.*

I'm On The Radio-oh-oh

Today, just before heading for our lunch break, one of the Chinese English teachers approached me and asked if I was busy after lunch, and if not, would I go to the local radio station and record an advertisement for our school? Um, heck yes.

So directly after lunch we trooped on over to the local station where I was asked to simply say (in English) the full name of our school.

I’m embarrassed to say that it took several tries and that at one point they were considering just having the Chinese English teacher say it instead. But they realized that my accent would almost definitely work at bringing in curious people. Apparently my first several tries weren’t enthusiastic enough, were too quiet, I didn’t sound happy, or they wanted me to sound younger (what? Really? You want a twenty year-old teacher to sound younger?). So finally I refused the chair and did it standing up in only one take.

Afterwards, though, they asked if I’d be willing to do an interview for the local news (or it maybe a commercial, I’m not entirely sure), I’d most likely just have to talk about some aspects of my Canadian life and talk a bit about teaching in China. Naturally, I said yes.

Anything for my fans.

Fire!

So I was in my room this afternoon, getting ready for my last class when I heard the usual chatter and screaming of my students outside. When I looked out the window in passing, I saw what appeared to be all of my students heading out to the field.

Curious as to what was going on and whether or not I’d still be teaching my usual class, I grabbed my camera and ran out to join them.

In Canada, a fire drill consists of notices being sent out to teachers ahead of time with the approximate time of the upcoming drill and any further instructions needed. A piercing, annoying, and ridiculously loud alarm goes off; the students freak out in excitement, are yelled at (in vain) to line up single-file and then traipse out to the outskirts of the school property – all the while chatting to their friends over the scream of the alarm.

In China, a fire drill consists of everyone in the entire school traipsing outside to the track field, bunching up in their classes behind boundaries drawn out in chalk in the grass; directly in front of them are about 100 dust-covered fire extinguishers. The local fire chief (dressed in a suit) talks into a mic for a while, demonstrating how to use said fire extinguishers (the first try will be on a faulty one that refuses to work). The students then take turns using the extinguishers to put out one of three fires steadily roaring in a big bowl, after which point they’re re-lit by one of the off-duty security guards. The whole process is repeated about 380 times.

That’s China vs Canada for ya.

Check It Out

The day after I post a blog about random, unknown fruit I get an entire box of that exact fruit. I kid you not, there are approximately 54 of these things in that box.

And the school gave me a box of strawberries to go along with them. Yay!

PS: this is my 100th blog post. I'd like to dedicate this particular post to the wonderful, kind, far too modest person who made this all happen: me. You saw that coming, didn't ya? Oh well, it's my blog and I'll do what I want.

Cheers to enough inspiration and adventure for another 100 posts!

What's for Breakfast?

Good gracious, not another post about food!

Yep.

I was just wondering if anyone wants to play a game called "What's Natalya Eating for Breakfast!?" If you say it in a really loud, excited, game-show-host voice, it actually sounds like a pretty cool game. Just sayin'.

I often walk into the office to find random food sitting on my desk, and more often than not, I honestly don't know what it is, who it's from, or - embarrassingly enough - how to eat it. So it wasn't such a new occasion to find random fruit sitting on my desk, and I hardly noticed that requisite feeling of embarrassment and stupidity when I realized that I'd have to either ask someone how to eat it, or attempt to figure it out on my own.



Well actually, I can't really ask anyone here. I mean, I can, but I won't because it's been too long since I got them. And I already brought them up to my room, so I can't bring them back down to the school after three or four days and say "by the way, what is this? and how do I eat it?" That's just awkward. And while awkward moments define my life, I like to avoid them whenever possible.

So, what do you think they are?



At first I thought they were pears, but they aren't the right texture to be pears, and they don't smell like pears, and are pears supposed to be that bumpy? If so, these pears are bumpy pears. But I'm fairly certain they aren't pears. Is it even pear season? (I wonder how many times I can fit the word "pears" into this "pear"agraph...)

I'm really not sure how I should eat this fruit (I am about 98% certain they are, in fact, fruit), should I just bite into it? I suppose I don't have much of a choice, I don't have any utensils. Except for chopsticks - and there actually is a limit to what one can eat with chopsticks.

Can I eat the skin? It could be like a banana, maybe I'm supposed to find some way to peel the skin off.

Maybe this is some weird, funky fruit where you're only supposed to eat the very middle, like just the seeds or something.

Or maybe you're not actually supposed to swallow it. It could be like eating raw bamboo, where you just chew out the juice and the flavour and then spit it all back out.

Seriously, do you see what I have to go through!?

Canada is Uptight.

Canada has far too many rules.

Don't get me wrong, I love Canada. I have an unhealthy loyalty to Canada and everything to do with Canada. I never shut up about Canada. I dream about Canada every night. I say "aboot" and I say "eh" all the time. I use "eh" so often that I'll type it in msn conversations without actually noticing I've used it. I'm pretty sure that if I wanted to, I couldn't actually count how often I use "eh" in one day because I wouldn't even notice that I've said it. Really, it's almost an illness, this extreme love I have for Canada.

But Canada just has too many rules.

It's currently a fairly big deal in Toronto that hot dog stands are considering diversifying a bit. They're thinking of adding salads and fruit to go with their street meat. This plan has been in talks for quite some time now.

Meanwhile, on random streets all over China, you can get yourself barbequed and seasoned chicken, beef, pork, lamb, duck, squid, fish (depending on how close to the water you are) to go along with your grilled or barbequed veggies.

And the veggies? Oh good lord, don't even get me started on the veggies you can get! Too late, I started on the veggies when I started this post. You can get beans, cucumber, carrots, bamboo, eggplant, potato, cauliflower, broccoli, tomato, peppers (hot or sweet), onions, corn, mushrooms and those are just the ones I can actually name!

Oh, not feeling the grilled veggies today? Not in the mood? That's ok, just walk down the street and watch them make you some chow mein (stir-fried noodles), or some fried rice, with whatever you want in it. Or maybe have some roasted chestnuts or peanuts. Or a candy kebab. Or a fruit kebab drizzled in rich, sugary syrup.

And don't even try to claim a lack of money, because none of this is ever gonna cost you more than one measly Canadian dollar.

K, now I'm hungry.

Field Trip!

On Friday all the first graders and the teachers went on a field trip to the local zoo.

It was fun but a bit disconcerting to be just as much an attraction as the lions and snakes in their cages and the trained dolphins doing their fancy tricks. I was approached several times by kids wanting to get their picture taken with me. It got rather annoying when the students from other schools would turn around and stop watching the monkey in its cage to watch me, the foreigner with white skin, light hair and big eyes.

Oy, the irony.

PutuoShan Island

Last weekend was a long weekend for us folk out here in China. They have what's called by some, "deathday". It's simply a day in which family and friends gather and pray and remember those that have passed.

So on Wednesday I bought my ticket to Ningbo where I would meet a fellow Canadian, and the Australian and American from the Harbin trip.

We stayed in Ningbo for one night, then first thing in the morning headed out to PutuoShan Island. We took the bumpiest bus ride of my life out to the ferry - which was incredibly fast and rather bumpy on the choppy waves. But I was cool with that, I slept for most of the trip, the windows were placed too high to comfortably look out of, anyway.

PutuoShan Island is considered a very holy piece of land. It has a population of about 3000 permanent residences and a lot of those are the monks that live in the island's many temples, nunneries, and monasteries.

After spending far too long looking for a hotel that wouldn't rip us off we wandered around the island, visiting the beaches and the temples, posing with the statues, and just generally taking it easy.

That is, until we climbed the mountain.

Ok, I am all for climbing mountains. I love mountains. I think mountains are swell and superb. I've always wanted to climb a mountain. Who doesn't wanna climb 297m of Mother Nature? I would just prefer it if I didn't have the beginning symptoms of "hacking-up-a-lung-itis". I'd also prefer it if not everyone else was at least half a foot taller than me - or if that extra height was in their torso and not their mile-long legs. I would have preferred it I hadn't forgot my belt back home and didn't have to constantly readjust my jeans. And finally, mountain climbing is that much more satisfactory if the battery in your camera does not die out when you finally get to the peak. I'm just sayin'.

The view really was simply stunning.

Y'know when someone mentions something like "a buddhist retreat in the mountains" and people usually picture this mountainous landscape with a temple stuck here and there among the trees and monks are wandering around doing the things that monks do and there's this peaceful fog or mist settling around the peaks? It looked exactly like that. Unbelievable. I'll be getting pictures from the others this weekend.

Mountain climbing is exhausting. So we went to bed at about 9:30.

The next day we relaxed in the hotel room for most of the morning until we found another footpath that led to another monastery that was so much fun it deserves its own post. So keep tuned for that in the next few days.

Too Drugged

I'll be making this one short and sweet as the medication is making me feel too drunk and tired to concentrate.

So here's a brief teaser of the soon-to-come tales of mountain climbing and seafaring.

See, now you're curious and confused: what do a kettle, dead frog and peanut have to do with mountain climbing and seafaring? Hmm... you'll have to find out after the break!

Disgustin' I Tells Ya

So I decided to share the love and videotape myself taking the "unbelievably horrid and putrid and nasty and repulsive and gag-worthy and grotesque and disgusting aaand just really really gross" medication. Because I'm cool like that.

I'm not exaggerating. It is seriously so gross.

EDIT: I believe I fixed the sound on the video.

Back Again

Hello, my lovelies. I'm back.

I haven't got much of a legitimate excuse for my absence from my blog. Writer's block, I suppose. Or maybe I was climbing mountains. Or maybe I was attempting to stand on sea legs on stormy oceans. Or maybe I was lying in bed with a nasty chest infection lovingly presented to me in part by the polluted airs of China. Or maybe, just maybe it was actually all of the above.

I've spent the past two and a half days in bed, not moving. The school started to get worried, I guess, and when they saw that I had completely lost my voice, I had a terrible cough and that I'd been unable to eat much, they immediately sent me to the hospital.

Apparently we woke the doctor up from her nap, she didn't seem terribly pleased to see us. I didn't care, I wasn't terribly pleased to see her, either.

This, apparently, is what's going to cure me:


I have no idea what any of it is, but I do know how much I have to take and how often. They all come with instructions, which are entirely in Chinese, but it's comforting to know that at least they know what's going on.


At the end of the day I will have consumed a total of 14 pills and 30ml of prescription drugs.


The little brown pills look - and probably taste - like rat poop (not that I've ever tasted rat poop. So really, this is a bad comparison.) and I realized after I swallowed them that maybe I was actually supposed to chew them? Check the instructions, stat!

The liquid stuff tastes so unbelievably horrid and putrid and nasty and repulsive and gag-worthy and grotesque and disgusting aaaaand just really really gross, it made me shudder so hard that I nearly fell out of my chair. No joke. A shot of gasoline might make it taste better.


Afterwards, I went out and bought my own medication: chocolate ice cream. Which I'll have to eat with chopsticks since I still don't have any spoons.

Anyway, my apologies for the MIA blogging and I look forward to updating you on my adventures of mountain climbing and sailing the stormy oceans.