Birthday happiness and travels

 I am finally back home in Changchun, Jilin, China after a month of traveling. My last stop was Fukuoka and Sasebo in Japan where I visiteda friend from college. I missed out on the beach in Thailand, but gotto see it in Japan, although there it was too cold to go swimming, butI did collect some seashells and take a boat tour. I enjoyed theJapanese food - they actually eat cheese, which we don't find much ofin China. They also have vanilla ice cream, while in China the whitestuff is usually milk flavor.
Probably my favorite night in Japan was Valentines Day. In Japan, it'straditional for women to buy men gifts, and not vice versa. So we tookmy friends parents out for dinner that night at an Italian restaurant.Then we went to sing karaoke with my friend and her sister, and theyhad quite a few English songs.
We tried Chinese food in Japan one night, to see if they were anycloser than Americans. The only thing close to Chinese food I've eatenin America that I've eaten in China is sweet and sour pork. But inJapan we got cheese eggrolls, which were good but definitely notauthentic, and we also had a lettuce salad, which I've never had in aChinese restaurant in China.
Well yesterday was my birthday, although in America it's still mybirthday. One of my friends decorated my door with birthday signs andmade me cinnamon rolls, and another friend made me a cake which shelater deemed "Michelle's rock hard cake" - it was her first time tomake a cake from scratch using a toaster oven, but the cake tastedfine. We also went out for hot pot. I had been spoiled in my travelsabroad by meeting lots of English speakers in Thailand, or in Japan Ihad a personal translator. Now I'm back in the world of trying tounderstand Chinese. A lot of things are still closed here in China forthe New Year celebration, which was officially February 18 but I'mstill hearing some fireworks. Since my schools a ways outside the citythere's not a lot down here and it was hard for us to get a taxi lastnight. However eventually an unmarked van pulled up, which are illegal'taxis' in China which we all knew, but we decided to go ahead and pilein. It was 7 of us to 2 people. Maybe it's not the best idea to get ina van with strangers when you can hardly speak their language - I'dnever do it in America. But we made it to the restaurant all right, andeven managed to order everything we needed. Taxi drivers are prettyhelpful in China. One night recently we were looking for somewhere toeat and everything was closed, so we told our driver we wanted to eat,or actually just said eat meal in Chinese, and he found us a nice placethat was open.
Well it's back to lesson planning for me. I start teaching again next week. Only 4 months left here for me in China. Time flies.

Here's me, Alethea and Aya in a boat on the ocean!

Here's us in the Fukuoka Tower!

Travels in Thailand

I haven't been the best at updating this blog, but I do have a good excuse this time. There was an earthquake in Taiwan about a month ago, and we haven't had much access to the Internet in Jilin since then. You can get on some sites, but I haven't been able to get on Xanga or check my email. But now I am in Thailand, and the Internet is working great. I arrived in Chiang Mai last Monday. We went on a three day trek the next day. It actually wasn't very strenuous though. We only hiked a few hours a day. We stayed in local villages at night in bamboo huts. The weathers warm in the day time, but at night it can get pretty cold. We also rode on an elephant and bamboo rafted. The water was pretty low, and several  of us got off the raft a few times to get it unstuck from the bottom of the river. Our raft also hit some rocks which broke some of the bamboo off the end...but it was a fun trip. After we got back from the trek we took a Thai cooking class. We cooked 6 dishes in 6 hours, and ate everything we cooked. It actually turned out pretty good. I love Thai, so hopefully now I'll be able to make it in China and America.

The past few days we've just been hanging out. We've seen a lot of people we know here since a lot of people are here from my company for the conference. It's fun just to shop at the night markets and run into people we know. We've also been eating Western food. There's a lot of it here because we're staying in a pretty touristy city. It's weird to see so many foreigners. We trekked with people from Britain, Australia, Austria and France, and we cooked with a guy from South Africa.

I've started taking pictures with my film camera so I don't have any I can put online right now. But one of these days I'll try to get some more pictures up. Some of my friends I'm with now at this Internet cafe are telling me I need to put some more color on this xanga site so maybe I'll do that sometime too.

 Here's Alethea and I riding the elephant on our trek.

Here's a picture of one of the villages we stayed in on our trek

Christmas in China

It's definitely been cold enough here to feel like it's the Christmasseason for a long time. It's actually surprising how many decorationsyou do see around. I went Christmas shopping last weekend downtown andsaw Santa Claus pictures all over. I even ate at McDonalds for thefirst time in China (which it does taste the same as in America) andthe employees were wearing Santa hats. They put up Christmas lights onthe trees at my school last week which was exciting. That'ssomething  I've really missed - seeing all the Christmas lights. Alot of the foreign teachers (like myself) have lights in their windowsor on their small plastic trees. It's been a lot of fun getting toshare a little bit about Christmas traditions and customs with mystudents. There are even Chinese Christmas customs. It's traditionalfor many students to give each other apples on Christmas eve. This isbecause the Chinese word for Christmas eve sounds similiar to theirword for apple. So they buy apples wrapped in pretty paper and givethem as presents to each other. On Thursday my friends and I wentChristmas caroling in our student's classrooms. One of my classes I hadtold we would be caroling there for a few minutes. They ended up givingus a ton of apples after we had caroled, so we lugged those around withus to the next 10 classes we visited. But we really appreciated theapples. Americans would deem that an appropriate gift for teachers atany time.
This weekend I ate a lot as is my family tradition. I ate hot pot twice- on Sunday my colleagues came over and helped me make hot pot right inmy apartment. Then I went to one of my classrooms where the class washaving a dumpling making party. Later in the evening they were going toperform. In America, parties always involve food, but in China partiesoften just involve dancing and singing. But I helped make a fewdumplings and sampled them - very good - and then I went home to makemashed potatoes for the American dinner I'd share with my friends. Thenwe had our own Christmas eve service - complete with lots of candlesand singing Christmas songs. Christmas morning we had a 10:00 pot luckbrunch, and then we opened our gifts from each other. Then, some of usventured out on the ice to play broomball. That's definitely notsomething I've ever done on Christmas day, or at all in Kansas actuallysince the lakes aren't usually frozen solid. But it was a lot of fun.All of us cracked our brooms though and I don't think they'll be muchuse for cleaning house anymore but we can use them to play broomballagain. I scored four times!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Xin Nian Hao!

Here are the ice hockey players

Thanksgiving, jiao zi, and culture shock

This weekend has been great. I taught my regular two classes onThanksgiving day, and many of my students remembered to wish me a HappyThanksgiving. I had taught them about this holiday earlier in the week.Thursday night I went out for hot pot, a traditional big meal in China,with my teammates. And then our team leader made us peach cobbler andsmoothie, and we had a time of sharing some things we are thankful for.Friday we got the day off. Some of us decided to go bowling, howevernone of us that went had ever been to the place before. Luckily, one ofthe girls has studied more Chinese than most of us, and we were able totake the bus to the right place, and even find the right building andbowling alley (after a few mistakes). I bowled the best game I think Iever have. I got 5 stikes in one game - only 2 in a row. My final scorewas 135. The second game I wasn't doing as well, and we left in themiddle of it because we thought we had been told we were out oftime...but later decided that wasn't the case and the workers were veryconfused as to why we left in the middle of another game but oh well.Then we found some good food, and some of us went to a game night/movie night at another University where there were other foreignteachers from our company. Saturday we had a big traditionalThanksgiving dinner....minus the turkey. We had duck and chickeninstead...and even lasagna. I didn't know it was possible to makelasagna in China. But it was great. My family at home and one of mygood friend's also had lasagna for their Thanksgiving dinner.
Although this week went pretty well, and especially the weekend, I havebeen dealing with some culture shock this month, which I was told itusually hits people around this month. Mostly I've just had some crazyemotional dips, and felt inadequate as a teacher. I'm realizing I havea lot to learn about teaching. But for the most part I still enjoy it.The semester is already past the midway point, which is crazy. I willbe giving a final at the end of December, and then I will get a longbreak.
I had my colleagues over last week and they made jiao zi (dumplings)for me. Except that it turns out none of them had ever made itthemselves - only helped their mom do it. But it turned out reallywell. It took a while - about four hours to make but we made a lot.

Here's the jiaozi and my colleagues

The boiling pot

Harbin & Halloween