Sweeto, Burrito.
I'm sooooo excited to FINALLY see this great city.
Monday 24 September 2012
Saturday 22 September 2012
Did you know?
- That at every intersection (at least in my city) in China, there is a timer that is the colour red for how long you must be stopped for and then green for how long you can go for?
- That the word north in Chinese is "Bei" which comes from Beijing and south is "Nan" which comes from Nanjing. Beijing is the capital of the north and Nanjing is the capital of the south.
- My mind was blown
Thursday 20 September 2012
Some More Pictures (finally!!)
Alrighty I know everyone's been asking me to post more pictures. It's been tough getting them since I actually lost my iPhone here toward the beginning of this whole adventure. Suffice to say, I've been relying on friends to send me pictures in the meantime while I get myself another device. On the positive side of it all, an iTouch here costs under $1,500 RMB which is roughly $220 Canadian, a pretty great price by Canadian standards. So tomorrow I'm going to the bank to get the funds and I'll have my own camera and ipod again. Can't wait. In the next week or so I'll post some more photos that will give you more of an idea of what the campus and this beautiful city looks like!
But here's some groovy pics to keep you entertained for the moment!
Here is a picture of Catherine and I practicing calligraphy during our first class in the library. It was a chilly and rainy evening but the library was warm and inviting, filled with students and books and learning. The instructor showed us how to draw the first stroke and we had to practice doing it for hours! Catherine and my roommate and I flew to China together on the first day. We have become good friends.
Here I am wearing my fancy work clothes on the first day! I look excited don't I? It turns out we don't need to dress like this every day but I am glad I came prepared anyhow.
One day Catherine and I were walking through the campus after lunch and we noticed this path that led through a forest-and eventually through these interesting rainbow frames! We decided to pose!
A colleague and I play ping pong in one of the buildings. Our Chinese supervisors are far better at this game than we are!
This is a restaurant in a strip located across the street from the campus. It gets busy around here at lunch time! This is a great place for Chinese style stew. You pick out the ingredients you want (meats, veggies, tofu, fish, etc) from a table of dishes and they fry it up and put a sauce over it. Unfortunately we did not realize they would put a very spicy and numbing chili on it unless you specify against it.
This is a glimpse of the area of town known as "Tai Hua" which is the downtown area of the city. From what I have heard, this city has been undergoing extremely fast development within the last few years or so. These tall buildings are going up so quickly, and all over the city too. Everywhere you look, you can see apartments and other tall buildings shooting up. Tai Hua showcases the best of Chinese consumerism-including a very large mall (at least by my Vancouverite standards) where you can find an H and M, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Subway, Scofield, several bars and clubs and restaurants, several kinds of markets (electronic market, an "everything market", etc), an extensive grocery store, (in China, you can find ANYTHING at the grocery store. Anything.)
and more. The area is very pretty since it surrounds the river and it features a sort of waterfront area. Of course, that's me in the tank top running down the stairs with my cohorts. I think we were in a rush to get some food because we were hungry. This place is breathtaking at night because all of the buildings and bridges and floating docks (some of them are RIDES!) are all lit up at night. And not the monochromatic, boring, still kind of lit up. No, no, we're talking Las Vegas style, where everything moves, HUGE Chinese Characters float around the buildings, and all the lights change colours and are just about every kind of shade of colour on the spectrum.
But here's some groovy pics to keep you entertained for the moment!
and more. The area is very pretty since it surrounds the river and it features a sort of waterfront area. Of course, that's me in the tank top running down the stairs with my cohorts. I think we were in a rush to get some food because we were hungry. This place is breathtaking at night because all of the buildings and bridges and floating docks (some of them are RIDES!) are all lit up at night. And not the monochromatic, boring, still kind of lit up. No, no, we're talking Las Vegas style, where everything moves, HUGE Chinese Characters float around the buildings, and all the lights change colours and are just about every kind of shade of colour on the spectrum.
Monday 17 September 2012
Things I Bought Today
- A loofah and some body wash. I want my soap to last longer and it doesn't do a great job of really massaging my sweaty, gross skin after each day that I go oot and aboot.
- Some ink, a brush, some calligraphy paper, and I took a stray cardboard box (with their permission) from this store on campus so that I could practice calligraphy at home. I just need to buy a book that shows you some poems you can write (and preferably get someone to translate them for me!) The cardboard box was to put underneath my paper to catch any stray ink. All of this cost just ten quai (just over a dollar Canadian).
- A really amazing mango ice cream treat. It was too good. It probably had a ton of gelatin in it. Meh.
- I BOUGHT SUBWAY omg it was so delicious I really missed some western style ingredients for my lunch. I got a footlong club sandwich and ate it up in a bite. Literally. (almost)
- A towel. Winter is coming. I only have one and apparently it will take forever for it to dry when it is cold out.
- Food and other amazing things at this awesome grocery store some other people showed me near the downtown part of Weifang. There was cereal there :O
- Real, fresh milk and yogurt without any preservatives/other stuff added from a little store right near our apartments, which they also showed us today. Apparently a ginormous tub of fresh yogurt costs just 5 quai there O_O I am actually freaking out I need to go buy this to go with my future cereal. And fruit. I tried this weird fruit that looked like a huge version of an apple. But it tasted like a pear. And it had a different, weird kind of texture. Hard to explain it. But it was super good. And cheap.
- Maaaybbeeee a pair of shoes (?) winter is coming (as stated about a thousand times already). I'm scared. All the other foreign workers were telling me about how cold it gets here. Sigh. The weather was so perfect today why couldn't it just stay like that forever.
- Join my friends' (they coined the following term) "mermaid club/gang" at the local swimming pool. Apparently if you go at night it costs like $30 quai and they all describe the swimming facilities as "huge and sweet". Whatever that means. But I'm sure if by western standards it is "sweet" then it must be so. I saw the outside of the building once and it did look "huge" so I'm confident that the mermaid gang is going to be a pretty big deal.
- Have a calligraphy party. We are all planning on meeting at one of our apartments for a few hours and just do calligraphy together. With tea. And zen music. Sounds pretty awesome right? I know. I'm excited.
- Other future plans include a trip to some kind of market. Where things are super cheap. Oh yeah that reminds me we went to the electronic market recently and guess how much the cheapest laptop costs there???? FOUR HUNDRED YUEN!!!!!! I still can't believe it. That's like $67 Canadian.
Confidence Booster of a Lifetime
The first year university kids (and anyone at that age) have been going through military training and they all got back from their training program and into the university about a week or two ago. Since then, the campus has been a site of military training activities, with hundreds (maybe even thousands in total?) of kids sitting in neatly organized rows, awaiting their leader's decisions on the streets, some of them chanting songs (usually repeating after a leader) or marching in perfect unison or performing other duties in their uniforms. To me, this activity doesn't look like much more than summer camp (at least as I remember it haha!), early morning runs, discipline, songs, and camaraderie. Ah, the visions of my youth flash by as I sit here typing this little scene out for you to read. The lieutenants barely look much older than I am and they aren't strict, in fact, they seem to feel a sense of belonging with the new trainees and vice versa. When I walk past, sometimes a few of them tip their hats and say "hello!" with big smiles or "ni hao!" with a wave. I always give a big smile and greet them back. Never have I walked by without at least some of the kids straining their necks and their jaws dropping to see me.
One morning, a few days ago, I was walking home from the office with my bags and I was feeling pretty tired. The sun, however, was absolutely glorious and I couldn't help but feel my spirits soaring as I walked through the beautiful campus, passing by the lake and all the greenery around me. And then, I turned a corner and stumbled upon a dramatic scene of probably around 500 young soldiers starring at me in their blue and green camouflage uniforms on and as I walked by, a small number of them started to say "hello!" to me and so I smiled, waved, and said "hello!" right back. Before I knew it, all of the soldiers waved and erupted in big cheers of HELLO!!! HELLOOO!!!! to me with big big smiles. I felt so humbled and flattered that all of these people were paying so much attention to me. I just burst into a big smile and waved as I rushed out of their area to allow them to continue on with their activities. Chances are, some of them will be in at least one of my college classes. I start teaching three different first year college classes next week. It feels good to know that at least some of them will already be interested in interacting with me at the start of the term.
One morning, a few days ago, I was walking home from the office with my bags and I was feeling pretty tired. The sun, however, was absolutely glorious and I couldn't help but feel my spirits soaring as I walked through the beautiful campus, passing by the lake and all the greenery around me. And then, I turned a corner and stumbled upon a dramatic scene of probably around 500 young soldiers starring at me in their blue and green camouflage uniforms on and as I walked by, a small number of them started to say "hello!" to me and so I smiled, waved, and said "hello!" right back. Before I knew it, all of the soldiers waved and erupted in big cheers of HELLO!!! HELLOOO!!!! to me with big big smiles. I felt so humbled and flattered that all of these people were paying so much attention to me. I just burst into a big smile and waved as I rushed out of their area to allow them to continue on with their activities. Chances are, some of them will be in at least one of my college classes. I start teaching three different first year college classes next week. It feels good to know that at least some of them will already be interested in interacting with me at the start of the term.
Crossing the Street
At least in my part of China, is quite different from the likes of what one expects in Canada (as my big sister warned me about in a highly panicked manner incessantly before my departure). I was, in fact, thankful for warnings of this change in social norms around street corners and intersections because it really is quite a change to wrap your head around. I feel qualified to say that I have (finally) mastered the skill of crossing the street in China.
The first thing that I noticed about Chinese roads was that they are extremely wide compared to what I am used to in Vancouver. Bearing that in mind, many people who are new to Vancouver often complain about how narrow the lanes feel sometimes. Although the lanes here look extremely wide, drivers only use them as guidelines. There are also usually at least 4 or 5 lanes on each side of the road. In the center of the road there is rarely just a yellow line like we see in the west, no there is actually a physical barrier of some kind, usually a metal fence of some kind. Drivers routinely make u-turns around this fence in order to go back and forth throughout the city. Crosswalks are everywhere and they are extremely well marked with red and white lines that look like they were freshly painted a week ago. Where the center median of the road would usually be where the crosswalk goes is replaced by small little metal poles sticking up out of the ground that are tightly spaced apart. On one end there is a bigger space for people on bikes or motorcycles to cross. You have to cross the street one lane at a time. The lane closest to the sidewalk is reserved for motorcycles and bikes and buses. Once you cross that lane, you have about 3-4 lanes of cars or trucks to deal with. They will never slow down for you (sometimes they speed up!) but you can just wait in the space between the lanes each time until you get to the median. The cars will always make room for pedestrians waiting in the middle of the road though since there isn't much space to wait there.
You have to get used to their way of maneuvering through motorcyclists because they actually expect you to keep walking so they will simply turn around you as you walk forward so one should not stop like you would in Canada. I actually prefer this way of dealing with traffic because there is never any uncertainty. You just go when you can. Period.
Another thing I noticed about commuter differences between China and the west is the use of the horn in cars and trucks. Drivers use it more to indicate to others that they are trying to pass them and it is far more polite here than in the west. If a driver honks at you it basically means "hello, I am in your blind spot and I'm just letting you know I'm coming up behind you to pass so don't suddenly change lanes". Drivers will do whatever they need to negotiate with the traffic and get ahead. I have noticed that most cars on the road are rather new and expensive. Not much of a change in that regard to the likes of Vancouver.
The first thing that I noticed about Chinese roads was that they are extremely wide compared to what I am used to in Vancouver. Bearing that in mind, many people who are new to Vancouver often complain about how narrow the lanes feel sometimes. Although the lanes here look extremely wide, drivers only use them as guidelines. There are also usually at least 4 or 5 lanes on each side of the road. In the center of the road there is rarely just a yellow line like we see in the west, no there is actually a physical barrier of some kind, usually a metal fence of some kind. Drivers routinely make u-turns around this fence in order to go back and forth throughout the city. Crosswalks are everywhere and they are extremely well marked with red and white lines that look like they were freshly painted a week ago. Where the center median of the road would usually be where the crosswalk goes is replaced by small little metal poles sticking up out of the ground that are tightly spaced apart. On one end there is a bigger space for people on bikes or motorcycles to cross. You have to cross the street one lane at a time. The lane closest to the sidewalk is reserved for motorcycles and bikes and buses. Once you cross that lane, you have about 3-4 lanes of cars or trucks to deal with. They will never slow down for you (sometimes they speed up!) but you can just wait in the space between the lanes each time until you get to the median. The cars will always make room for pedestrians waiting in the middle of the road though since there isn't much space to wait there.
You have to get used to their way of maneuvering through motorcyclists because they actually expect you to keep walking so they will simply turn around you as you walk forward so one should not stop like you would in Canada. I actually prefer this way of dealing with traffic because there is never any uncertainty. You just go when you can. Period.
Another thing I noticed about commuter differences between China and the west is the use of the horn in cars and trucks. Drivers use it more to indicate to others that they are trying to pass them and it is far more polite here than in the west. If a driver honks at you it basically means "hello, I am in your blind spot and I'm just letting you know I'm coming up behind you to pass so don't suddenly change lanes". Drivers will do whatever they need to negotiate with the traffic and get ahead. I have noticed that most cars on the road are rather new and expensive. Not much of a change in that regard to the likes of Vancouver.
Saturday 15 September 2012
Lunch
After a long morning of teaching, I set out from the north gate of the university campus in search of some food but I did not want to eat what I had been getting for every meal for the last two days. Not that I didn't like it. On the contrary, I loved it. It was one of those places where you went up to a big buffet of different raw items such as many types of lettuce leaves, cabbages, tofu, noodles, mushrooms, fungi, seaweed, and fish. Next, you would pick out what you wanted with tongs and put it into a tray where they would weigh it and then you tell them if you wanted it spicy (there are actually three options for spiciness here, the kind of spicy we know and love in Canada, another kind of spicy that we rarely see in Canada which doesn't do anything except numb the mouth and tastebuds, leaving a sharply reduced sense of taste in the eater's mouth, and finally, no spicy/"clear broth". Ever since accidentally trying the numbing kind, I have always been very clear with the cooks to tell them I want a clear broth.)
Then, they steam all the veggies and items you bought and they put it into a big bowl of broth that tastes kind of like a combination of peanut sauce and miso (maybe others would disagree). There are some sauces you can spoon onto your veggies/noodles at each table, one of which is absolutely amazing (kinda tastes like soy sauce). This stuff is going to be amazing in the winter when I won't to stray far for some heartwarming soup/veggies in the cold (one of my Chinese coworkers says it can get to minus 15 or even 20 here in January at the coldest part of winter). It's healthy and relatively cheap (I tend to pay around 13 or 14 quai for what I weigh on my tray, which is about $2 Canadian.)
But it is still warm now and I don't need to be eating it every day now anymore. I wanted to try something new. I thought about going for some of those donkey meat sandwiches that my supervisors led us to about a week ago but I realized that even if I could find the place I wouldn't have any idea how to order the food I wanted in Chinese. Furthermore, as delicious as those sandwiches were, I gobbled three of them up at the time and it wasn't quite as satisfying as I had hoped they would be.
A while ago we were all on the prowl for some lunch and we were wandering around that same area where all the food places are (you should see how crowded this area is at noon/lunchtime with students!!) and I peeked into a gate at the beginning and saw a rather large space filled with merchants selling produce, grilling things, and cooking all kinds of treats for hungry students looking for some grubs.
I asked my cohorts if they thought we should give this place a try, but they said "nah, it's probably all street meat and we wouldn't fit in there anyhow with our fancy clothes". The second point was true, we were ridiculously overdressed and people were staring at us. I didn't quite want to start exploring there in the heat and I was too hungry anyways.
The first point, however, was far from the truth, it turns out. "Street meat", a term I had learned on literally the second day I arrived in Weifang, is used to refer to meat that Chinese merchants have raised literally on the street. Walking along downtown part of Dongfeng Street, you can see chickens, birds, and other animals just chilling in cages, waiting to be gobbled up. BBQs are in full operation right on the street, with outdoor tables filled with drunk and happy people enjoying their meals. We did, in fact, eat at one of these places, and I ate street meat without realizing exactly what I was eating. No, I did not get sick or anything but I'm not sure I'd want to go back there and eat street meat for a while.
Anyway, today I decided to wander into the market by myself with my more conspicuous clothes (the dress code here actually isn't very strict. I am wearing my bright blue Zara jeans today and a plain black v-neck) and started looking around at the dishes the merchants were cooking up. Everything looked delicious. Most merchants were selling some variety of stir-fry or another and I wanted something a bit more authentic. I realized I didn't have much money on me anyway, so I was counting on something a little less fancy.
Finally, something caught my eye. A few people were waiting at a station behind me for their food where a man was cooking on a big flat grill. What really got my attention was a fried egg with some kind of sauce on it. The man put the egg on a kind of bread (more resembling Indian na'an bread to me) that was resting on the grill and it looked nice and warm and crispy. He proceeded to put lettuce, some beef, thinly sliced potatoes that were fried up, and some other cooked veggies on top of the bread and egg and painted some sauces and some herbs (tastes like Zatar to me). It looked mouthwatering to me. I pointed to the egg on the grill and then I pointed to the meat resting on the side and then to the veggies and said "Daochao?" to him which means "how much?" He said something back to me but I wasn't quite sure of my numbers yet but I knew it was cheap. Turns out it was four quai! So inexpensive! And it filled me right up. I bought an apple for another quai and a boiled corn on the cob that was huge for 2 more quai. I am feeling very good now. 7 quai for a great lunch. I'm happy :)
Then, they steam all the veggies and items you bought and they put it into a big bowl of broth that tastes kind of like a combination of peanut sauce and miso (maybe others would disagree). There are some sauces you can spoon onto your veggies/noodles at each table, one of which is absolutely amazing (kinda tastes like soy sauce). This stuff is going to be amazing in the winter when I won't to stray far for some heartwarming soup/veggies in the cold (one of my Chinese coworkers says it can get to minus 15 or even 20 here in January at the coldest part of winter). It's healthy and relatively cheap (I tend to pay around 13 or 14 quai for what I weigh on my tray, which is about $2 Canadian.)
But it is still warm now and I don't need to be eating it every day now anymore. I wanted to try something new. I thought about going for some of those donkey meat sandwiches that my supervisors led us to about a week ago but I realized that even if I could find the place I wouldn't have any idea how to order the food I wanted in Chinese. Furthermore, as delicious as those sandwiches were, I gobbled three of them up at the time and it wasn't quite as satisfying as I had hoped they would be.
A while ago we were all on the prowl for some lunch and we were wandering around that same area where all the food places are (you should see how crowded this area is at noon/lunchtime with students!!) and I peeked into a gate at the beginning and saw a rather large space filled with merchants selling produce, grilling things, and cooking all kinds of treats for hungry students looking for some grubs.
I asked my cohorts if they thought we should give this place a try, but they said "nah, it's probably all street meat and we wouldn't fit in there anyhow with our fancy clothes". The second point was true, we were ridiculously overdressed and people were staring at us. I didn't quite want to start exploring there in the heat and I was too hungry anyways.
The first point, however, was far from the truth, it turns out. "Street meat", a term I had learned on literally the second day I arrived in Weifang, is used to refer to meat that Chinese merchants have raised literally on the street. Walking along downtown part of Dongfeng Street, you can see chickens, birds, and other animals just chilling in cages, waiting to be gobbled up. BBQs are in full operation right on the street, with outdoor tables filled with drunk and happy people enjoying their meals. We did, in fact, eat at one of these places, and I ate street meat without realizing exactly what I was eating. No, I did not get sick or anything but I'm not sure I'd want to go back there and eat street meat for a while.
Anyway, today I decided to wander into the market by myself with my more conspicuous clothes (the dress code here actually isn't very strict. I am wearing my bright blue Zara jeans today and a plain black v-neck) and started looking around at the dishes the merchants were cooking up. Everything looked delicious. Most merchants were selling some variety of stir-fry or another and I wanted something a bit more authentic. I realized I didn't have much money on me anyway, so I was counting on something a little less fancy.
Finally, something caught my eye. A few people were waiting at a station behind me for their food where a man was cooking on a big flat grill. What really got my attention was a fried egg with some kind of sauce on it. The man put the egg on a kind of bread (more resembling Indian na'an bread to me) that was resting on the grill and it looked nice and warm and crispy. He proceeded to put lettuce, some beef, thinly sliced potatoes that were fried up, and some other cooked veggies on top of the bread and egg and painted some sauces and some herbs (tastes like Zatar to me). It looked mouthwatering to me. I pointed to the egg on the grill and then I pointed to the meat resting on the side and then to the veggies and said "Daochao?" to him which means "how much?" He said something back to me but I wasn't quite sure of my numbers yet but I knew it was cheap. Turns out it was four quai! So inexpensive! And it filled me right up. I bought an apple for another quai and a boiled corn on the cob that was huge for 2 more quai. I am feeling very good now. 7 quai for a great lunch. I'm happy :)
Wednesday 12 September 2012
The Chinese Language
After Tai Chi, we went to formal Chinese language lessons between 8 in the morning and about noon. It was my first time attending such lessons and they were so helpful for getting a sense of how the structure of the language actually works. I actually find the language to be incredibly beautiful to listen to, though I am not able to understand anything unless the speaker is talking slowly. The Chinese express themselves, ideas, thoughts, and concepts in very different ways than we do in English. For example, if you wanted to ask someone if they wanted some water, you would actually state the name of the activity (verb) associated with the object you are talking about and then say "you". So in this case you say "you drink?", as in "do you drink (water)?" to ask them if they would like some water.
Today we learned what radicals were, which are the building blocks of Chinese characters. Some radicals can actually be characters all by themselves but most cannot. We even learned the names of a few of them and how to say things like "Are you American/French/Russian...?" or "Are you studying English/French/Russian (language)...?"
I bought three books today, two of which are grammar books and the other is for reading. Hopefully, with enough time to study them and practice, I will be able to speak many more basic phrases and even write a little bit. Hopefully. Today is a pretty exciting day for me.
After grabbing some lunch, we will go to the electronic market, a place where you can apparently buy many basic gadgets. We are hunting for an internet router for our apartment because our current internet setup is far too slow for our needs. We've been using the neighbours' wifi since we got here with their permission but I'd like to be able to get our internet up to snuff today. One of our coworkers bought a router for about 105 quai (around 16 ish Canadian dollars) which sounds great to me. It'll just take some Chinese expertise to get it actually hooked up to our laptops.
After, we will head to the JaiLeJa (shopping mall) where my roommate wants to buy a peacoat he spotted yesterday. We tried it on but it is far too short for me but it looks great on him. Then we'll get cracking on some ESL lesson planning and cook some dinner. BREAK!
Tai Chi
This morning we got up at a quarter after five, groggily pulled ourselves out of the apartment and met up with another colleague and walked to the lake on campus to meet our Tai Chi instructor. The sun was just peeking on the horizon as we convened on a patch of grass in the midst of some trees. All around us, elderly people were practicing their own exercises, some groups doing Tai Chi and others doing yoga. The first year students who recently got back from their military training were up in the morning doing drills on the campus in their uniforms, most of which included running or marching. There is a real sense of respect for order and discipline here. In this country, people would never start rioting over something as silly as a hockey game.
We watched the instructor as he showed us the 24th form of the art of Tai Chi. I was terribly incompetent compared to one of the other students but our other colleague kept getting corrected for his waist which seemed to be too crooked. It felt pretty incredible to be waving my arms and moving my legs and body in this new way. Even though I was really tired, we managed to cover a lot of ground and learn some of the movements in only 45 minutes.
Tai Chi lessons are offered every morning for the next two weeks, where we will learn the entire 24th routine. Even though it's early, I'm looking forward to it.
We watched the instructor as he showed us the 24th form of the art of Tai Chi. I was terribly incompetent compared to one of the other students but our other colleague kept getting corrected for his waist which seemed to be too crooked. It felt pretty incredible to be waving my arms and moving my legs and body in this new way. Even though I was really tired, we managed to cover a lot of ground and learn some of the movements in only 45 minutes.
Tai Chi lessons are offered every morning for the next two weeks, where we will learn the entire 24th routine. Even though it's early, I'm looking forward to it.
Tuesday 11 September 2012
A Great Idea
I totally forgot (until now) about a great idea for teaching English to my advanced students. Getting them to to analyze the story in this music video could produce a lot of discussion and debate.
Tonight...
...was a memorable night. After work my housemate and I walked home and changed because it had started to rain lightly and I was only wearing a tank top, some shorts and flip flops. Even though it's pretty warm here (at least by my standards), I had to go home and change into something more appropriate. I threw on the navy shell I brought from home and my hiking boots. Strangely enough, the rain gave me an intensely sentimental feeling since I practically breathe, eat, and sleep the rain back home in Vancouver. It was comforting, it almost felt like a sense of order was washing over me with the grey skies and puddles on the roads. I found the city incredibly beautiful as I looked over the roads which reflected the swimming lights of the buildings all around me.
On a less pleasant note, I was late for a meeting with my coworkers and bosses because I was trying to get from the Starbucks in the middle of the city back to the university campus and the cab driver did not seem to understand me when I told her in Chinese where I wanted to go. This was quite discomforting since it had worked for me on other occasions. Anyhow, I ended up catching the bus as it conveniently pulled up just as I was getting out of the confused cab driver's car. I was fifteen minutes late though since the buses go slower (woops). The meeting was called because one of my bosses seemed enthusiastic to hear I had applied to several different Canadian universities and had gained acceptance to all of them. He told me he wants information for interested Chinese students on different undergraduate and graduate programs in Canada. So for the rest of the afternoon I pulled together as much information as I could.
I was excited to hear from several people earlier that tonight they were thinking of going to see Maeva, a girl around my age who lives in the same building, play at a local bar called MBox. Maeva teaches French at the university and is from France, though she has excellent fluency in English and speaks Mandarin as well. As nerdy as what I'm about to say may sound, I was even more excited to try my hand at some Chinese traditional calligraphy classes from 7-9 PM with a few other colleagues. We met at the main library on campus, a place shrouded in mystery since only those in possession of student or teacher's cards could supposedly gain access to the building. Turns out we were white- so they let us just walk on through. Interesting. I shouldn't have been so surprised since I always see people just starring at me in awe and disbelief over the colour of my skin, hair, and eyes everywhere. I've grown used to it though.
The building is absolutely beautiful. I'll have to post some photos of it and the campus soon.
The calligraphy classes were a real treat for me for the following reasons:
- A truly meditative experience- we were instructed to practice drawing lines in the correct way for about an hour and a half- a dull prospect for some (I assume) but I found a certain kind of relaxation and calmness wash over me as I sat there, improving my skill with each stroke.
- Simply beautiful- the black ink, the brushes (some made of sheep's hair and others from wolf hair) and the formal paper (we practiced on plain cheap paper though) are magical and very pleasing to the eye. I can't wait to take home a beautiful traditional Chinese paper, with the characters of some kind of ancient poem written on them. By me. How cool is that?
- The best instructor I could ask for- apparently he's been teaching calligraphy for about 11 years. He's incredibly patient and skilled. He is supposed to be very well known around China for his skill. He also teaches Tai Chi by the lake on campus in the mornings, something we are going to try out too.
After the lesson ended, we went to see Maeva sing. She has an amazing voice. She sang some acoustic covers of Lady Gaga, John Lennon, Dolly Parton, and other famous songs I can't think of now with her guitar. We all had some Qingdaos and enjoyed the music. I liked how they give you free popcorn at this place, and the atmosphere was pretty relaxed. A few people bought us drinks or raised their glasses with us (hence the whole white thing), a fairly regular thing when we go out.
Anyway, I'm pretty tired, I think I'll turn in for now.
Keep posted for more photos.
Friday 7 September 2012
Things I Did Today
- Hitchhiked in China. T'was a surprisingly enjoyable experience
- Tried sea cucumber. Most expensive food item I have ever seen. Ever. Tasted like... nothing really.
- Tried jellyfish. Tasted like the garlic soy sauce it was cooked in.
- Tried Conch. I didn't like it but I still tried it.
Tuesday 4 September 2012
The Elite Club and Other Miscellaneous Experiences
Yesterday was a pretty eventful day. We started off our morning with a delicious taste of dragon fruit, something I had never tried before.
After that (and some other food, don't worry mom, I eat a wholesome breakfast every day) we went to the office, as usual for 8am where we worked on some lesson preparations for the rest of the morning. At lunch, our supervisors invited us to go with them to a local restaurant for some sandwiches. They were delicious, and very cheap (about 12 Yuen for 3 of them and some soup as well). Each sandwich consisted of some kind of pastry wrapped around a filling of cooked vegetables and meat. The meat was especially tasty and I asked them what it was. They told us, (a little ambivalently because they know we are westerners) we were eating donkey meat. I had no qualms about this, I enjoyed it immensely! (Sorry I have no photos of it). My colleague asked them about trying dog meat, and they smiled and explained that it was a popular culinary treat in Weifang. I'm not quite as outgoing when it comes to new food items though. They explained that it is seasoned with a spice that numbs the mouth, however, coupled with dog it is supposed to be quite nice. I got a sense for the numbness of certain foods today. Here's a photo of my lunch.
It's pretty straight forward, you just go up to the counter and choose some vegetables and meats you would like cooked. They weigh it and you pay per 100 grams. Between the two of us, this meal cost only about 30 Yuen. When the manager of the restaurant asked us some questions in Mandarin, we could not understand him. Turns out he was asking us if we wanted "spicy" or "numb" seasoning. He ended up giving us the numb (look carefully at the photo and you will see red chilies). This caused my mouth to feel extremely tingly and I lost most of the ability to taste anything. It was like I had just taken a trip to the dentist.
After lunch, we were taken to a place called "The Elite Club" with a series of students in the Hospitality Management field of the university where we were given a tour of the building and its facilities. We even tried our hand at our golf swing following the tour!
After lunch, we were taken to a place called "The Elite Club" with a series of students in the Hospitality Management field of the university where we were given a tour of the building and its facilities. We even tried our hand at our golf swing following the tour!
The Elite Club was an absolutely stunning site to see. We learned that a meal in one of their rooms costs 5,000 Yuen to start. The views from the rooms were stunning, usually overlooking the golf course or the river.
Today we learned how to use the resources in our classrooms.
I will be teaching two listening classes and one oral English class. I'll be teaching business students how to use formal and informal language in the business world. The classroom technology here is far superior to what I've seen in Canada. They use an integrated system with (I would estimate) around 50 computers for students in a classroom and two master computers at the front for the teacher. I can tell the students to press a button and they will see anything I control on one of my computer screens on theirs. I can talk to them individually or as a group through headsets, and I have a master microphone as well. I also have a projector for power points at the front or I can just instruct through their individual screens. I can see what the students are up to easily and if they are not engaged I can tailor my lesson or get them to pay attention. Basically, teaching here is going to be a lot of fun.
You can see from this photo that I have two screens, the main one is the one in the center of the picture. That's where I control sound, media, etc. You can see a series of symbols on the yellow-ish screen which actually indicate all the computers in the classroom. Each one becomes colourful when a student has plugged themselves into the system (meaning that they should see on their screen what I want them to see and hear what I want them to hear). If I see someone is not plugged in, I can walk up to their desk to make sure they are connected. The screen on the right can be connected to the system with a switch of a button and I just drag a window on the main screen with my mouse to the right and like magic it switches over to the other screen.
Some photos of the campus. There's a man-made lake and a bridge and beautiful trees and shrines for a calming atmosphere. We assume that the lake will freeze in winter.
A three wheeled car! Surprisingly common here. We often joke about how precarious this mode of transportation looks.
One last view of the campus :)
Saturday 1 September 2012
Well Well Well, Three Holes in the Ground
Today is my second day in China! And what an adventure it is! I am having trouble finding words to describe it here, except for that I love it! China is, in many ways, a very refreshing change from Canada. Particularly, the cost of living here. For example, taking a cab here is normal because it is pretty affordable. From my apartment across town to the downtown area costs about 13 quai. Taking the Chinese price and dividing it by seven gives you the Canadian equivalent, so that's less than $2 Canadian. A cab to the local Walmart in Weifang costs about $1 Canadian. Groceries here (we bought everything from towels to sponges to Tide, dish washing detergent, hangers, coffee, sugar, soy sauce, fruit and vegetables, chicken and more) was about 130 quai, which was about $20 Canadian!
The flight here wasn't bad at all. My roommate and I met at the airport and flew together, along with our other colleague who flew in from Calgary that morning. The three of us traveled to Beijing international airport and then waited for a few hours for a connecting flight to Qingdao (about an hour long flight) where representatives from the university we are working at picked us up and took us on a two hour drive to Weifang. The drive was kind of scary for me since the road was extremely foggy and the Chinese have (shall we put it nicely) different driving norms than we do in Canada. Luckily I was tired enough to sleep most of the way there.
When we got to our apartment, we climbed six flights of stairs to the top floor where we are living. There is no elevator. Suffice to say, I'm not worried about my exercise regiment while in China, elevators are not normal here and everything from my office to my apartment to most shopping experiences feature climbing at least five flights of stairs.
The apartment is lovely. A two-bedroom spacious suite, it has really lovely views of our little neighbourhood, with the architecturally unique Chinese buildings in view all around us, lots of greenery, trees and more. Walking around our area is really nice, there are lots of families and it seems like there's a real sense of community here. You can buy freshly baked "buns" (hard to describe, but delicious morsels of dough stuffed with an array of vegetables or meats) for breakfast in the morning. There's a bank at virtually every street corner. You can always find places to buy water or Ramen noodles if you are desperate. (The heat here can be unbearable at times. It is around 33 every day with very high humidity. This explains why Chinese food is quite high in salt- you are sweating a lot, all the time in summer).
The walk from my apartment to the university is probably about ten minutes and it's absolutely beautiful. The entrance to the campus is framed by a symmetrical stunning group of gated structures, a well manicured garden and high trees. Behind this is a giant boulder with the words "Weifang University" plated in gold writing. As you walk further, yous see a huge red artsy kind of structure rising high above you and then a huge building behind that (I think that's the library). Turn left, and you see a road that's surrounded by maple trees. Follow that for about two minutes and on your right you see a big area filled with tennis courts and basketball courts. A little further and then you turn right and you see a gigantic courtyard surrounded on all sounds by a big building (I know that's kind of general but you kind of feel you're at the bottom of that hole in the new batman movie...)
The staff office is in there and I'll be teaching university classes in there too. Apparently the elementary school is in a different part of town and I'll be teaching some kids as well.
I'll post pictures of all this soon.
Pizza Hut, KFC, and other western food is common here. There's an H&M somewhere around the Starbucks I'm sitting in too. The standard of living here is just as high as it is back home in Canada.
I'm trying to learn the language, but it's hard to memorize the combination of tones and sounds required for all the different things I want to learn to say. Slowly but surely. If you get the word right but the tone wrong, you could be saying something completely different (hence the title of this post for us English speakers who want to get a feel for what I mean). Also, the dialect in Weifang is different than in other parts of China. Apparently you need to switch all the "r" sounds for "n's". Maybe it's the other way around. Too much to remember. So far, the most useful thing to know is how to say thank you (Xie Xie). I sit silently as my roommate, a linguistics major at UBC who is learning Mandarin at an exponentially faster rate than I am, tells cab drivers where we want to go. When he's done, I get him to teach me everything he just said and I try to retain it, but it's hard. I find myself repeating the phrase a hundred times only to forget it a few minutes later. When we get out of our cab, I say thank you in Mandarin and the cab driver perks up and says "you're welcome" in Mandarin and shakes my hand. They all must be thinking that I know Mandarin because I pull off the accent really well. But I've learned other phrases too, like "I want this" (ordering food) or "Weifang University, South Gate" for telling cab drivers where I want to go, or the word for "mall" (which won't get you anywhere because they don't know which mall to take you to so you need to learn the individual name for each mall location you want to go to).
Yesterday, George (one of my employers) took the three of us and the other foreign workers to a restaurant for lunch. Pretty sure I tried some kind of a piranha fish (they were kind of small and had what looked like very sharp teeth). The food here is really quite delicious, although I can taste the high amount of pig fat they use to cook it with (not ideal). Later, we met up with more foreigners and about 12 of us sat in a groovy restaurant in the downtown area outside enjoying eggplant skewers, chicken skewers, and pretty much everything-skewers. We also had fried bread. You guessed it, they were also skewered. Everything was tasty. I love taro root and my favourite thing is some kind of spicy, chili flavoured string bean (very different kind of beans than we have in Canada, closer to edamame here).
After dinner, they took us to a really hip bar somewhere else where I don't know because it's impossible to find unless you know where it is. I think it was called "The Backyard" (maybe since you had to go through what looked like a dark creepy alleyway to get to). The front of the bar had a sign in English that said "Only ass parkers permitted" and inside the bar was a Canadian flag, several white guys, several black guys, a lot of Belgium beer, some giggly young looking Chinese girls, a very long table filled with our cohorts from dinner, all beckoning us to sit down and relax, and very friendly English speaking Chinese staff who looked like they had listened to the Beatles many, many times in their lives. I ordered some Belgium light beer which was quite tasty and enjoyed the music and the conversation (Chromeo, Michael Jackson, and everything from teaching to stories about attaining free beers at other bars in the city for being the token white people there. The latter music selection was at my request, thankfully).
There is no internet in our apartment yet, but there will be soon (hopefully) as George has just sent me an email about setting it up tonight (praise the internet lords!) Thankfully, my UBC VPN network works great and I can get all the usual sites I want without dealing with the whole censorship thing.
We've heard about lots of cool places to go on the weekends/days off, most notably a mountain whose name I can't remember now where you climb an estimated 10,000 steep stairs to get to the top. You can stay at a cheap accommodation at the top and apparently there's lots to see there (temples, shrines, etc). I think it's in Qingdao.
I want to go Hunan, Xi'en (Terracotta warriors), Beijing, the Great Wall, and Shanghai while I'm here. Apparently our colleague's father has an apartment in the heart of Shanghai and she's invited us to go with her there, something I'm very excited to do. Hong Kong doesn't look like an option for us since you need another visa to exit the mainland.
It is very easy to get around here. I've heard it's about a 4 hour train to Beijing, a 1 hour train to Qingdao, and the cost of the latter is only about 60 quai (about 9 bucks Canadian!)
I'm still a little jet-lagged but we've had lots of opportunity to rest up and I'm already feeling accustomed to the time change. Lots of quirky things I like about China. Most notably the signs (for example, we all laughed at the announcement in the train in the Beijing airport that told us to "please, collect your belongings and get off the train" once we got to our stop. We would never hear something so blunt in friendly Canada.)
Anyway, I'm running out of things to talk about and I think that means it's about time for me to wrap up this post.
I'll post lots of photos soon :)
-Avi
The flight here wasn't bad at all. My roommate and I met at the airport and flew together, along with our other colleague who flew in from Calgary that morning. The three of us traveled to Beijing international airport and then waited for a few hours for a connecting flight to Qingdao (about an hour long flight) where representatives from the university we are working at picked us up and took us on a two hour drive to Weifang. The drive was kind of scary for me since the road was extremely foggy and the Chinese have (shall we put it nicely) different driving norms than we do in Canada. Luckily I was tired enough to sleep most of the way there.
When we got to our apartment, we climbed six flights of stairs to the top floor where we are living. There is no elevator. Suffice to say, I'm not worried about my exercise regiment while in China, elevators are not normal here and everything from my office to my apartment to most shopping experiences feature climbing at least five flights of stairs.
The apartment is lovely. A two-bedroom spacious suite, it has really lovely views of our little neighbourhood, with the architecturally unique Chinese buildings in view all around us, lots of greenery, trees and more. Walking around our area is really nice, there are lots of families and it seems like there's a real sense of community here. You can buy freshly baked "buns" (hard to describe, but delicious morsels of dough stuffed with an array of vegetables or meats) for breakfast in the morning. There's a bank at virtually every street corner. You can always find places to buy water or Ramen noodles if you are desperate. (The heat here can be unbearable at times. It is around 33 every day with very high humidity. This explains why Chinese food is quite high in salt- you are sweating a lot, all the time in summer).
The walk from my apartment to the university is probably about ten minutes and it's absolutely beautiful. The entrance to the campus is framed by a symmetrical stunning group of gated structures, a well manicured garden and high trees. Behind this is a giant boulder with the words "Weifang University" plated in gold writing. As you walk further, yous see a huge red artsy kind of structure rising high above you and then a huge building behind that (I think that's the library). Turn left, and you see a road that's surrounded by maple trees. Follow that for about two minutes and on your right you see a big area filled with tennis courts and basketball courts. A little further and then you turn right and you see a gigantic courtyard surrounded on all sounds by a big building (I know that's kind of general but you kind of feel you're at the bottom of that hole in the new batman movie...)
The staff office is in there and I'll be teaching university classes in there too. Apparently the elementary school is in a different part of town and I'll be teaching some kids as well.
I'll post pictures of all this soon.
Pizza Hut, KFC, and other western food is common here. There's an H&M somewhere around the Starbucks I'm sitting in too. The standard of living here is just as high as it is back home in Canada.
I'm trying to learn the language, but it's hard to memorize the combination of tones and sounds required for all the different things I want to learn to say. Slowly but surely. If you get the word right but the tone wrong, you could be saying something completely different (hence the title of this post for us English speakers who want to get a feel for what I mean). Also, the dialect in Weifang is different than in other parts of China. Apparently you need to switch all the "r" sounds for "n's". Maybe it's the other way around. Too much to remember. So far, the most useful thing to know is how to say thank you (Xie Xie). I sit silently as my roommate, a linguistics major at UBC who is learning Mandarin at an exponentially faster rate than I am, tells cab drivers where we want to go. When he's done, I get him to teach me everything he just said and I try to retain it, but it's hard. I find myself repeating the phrase a hundred times only to forget it a few minutes later. When we get out of our cab, I say thank you in Mandarin and the cab driver perks up and says "you're welcome" in Mandarin and shakes my hand. They all must be thinking that I know Mandarin because I pull off the accent really well. But I've learned other phrases too, like "I want this" (ordering food) or "Weifang University, South Gate" for telling cab drivers where I want to go, or the word for "mall" (which won't get you anywhere because they don't know which mall to take you to so you need to learn the individual name for each mall location you want to go to).
Yesterday, George (one of my employers) took the three of us and the other foreign workers to a restaurant for lunch. Pretty sure I tried some kind of a piranha fish (they were kind of small and had what looked like very sharp teeth). The food here is really quite delicious, although I can taste the high amount of pig fat they use to cook it with (not ideal). Later, we met up with more foreigners and about 12 of us sat in a groovy restaurant in the downtown area outside enjoying eggplant skewers, chicken skewers, and pretty much everything-skewers. We also had fried bread. You guessed it, they were also skewered. Everything was tasty. I love taro root and my favourite thing is some kind of spicy, chili flavoured string bean (very different kind of beans than we have in Canada, closer to edamame here).
After dinner, they took us to a really hip bar somewhere else where I don't know because it's impossible to find unless you know where it is. I think it was called "The Backyard" (maybe since you had to go through what looked like a dark creepy alleyway to get to). The front of the bar had a sign in English that said "Only ass parkers permitted" and inside the bar was a Canadian flag, several white guys, several black guys, a lot of Belgium beer, some giggly young looking Chinese girls, a very long table filled with our cohorts from dinner, all beckoning us to sit down and relax, and very friendly English speaking Chinese staff who looked like they had listened to the Beatles many, many times in their lives. I ordered some Belgium light beer which was quite tasty and enjoyed the music and the conversation (Chromeo, Michael Jackson, and everything from teaching to stories about attaining free beers at other bars in the city for being the token white people there. The latter music selection was at my request, thankfully).
There is no internet in our apartment yet, but there will be soon (hopefully) as George has just sent me an email about setting it up tonight (praise the internet lords!) Thankfully, my UBC VPN network works great and I can get all the usual sites I want without dealing with the whole censorship thing.
We've heard about lots of cool places to go on the weekends/days off, most notably a mountain whose name I can't remember now where you climb an estimated 10,000 steep stairs to get to the top. You can stay at a cheap accommodation at the top and apparently there's lots to see there (temples, shrines, etc). I think it's in Qingdao.
I want to go Hunan, Xi'en (Terracotta warriors), Beijing, the Great Wall, and Shanghai while I'm here. Apparently our colleague's father has an apartment in the heart of Shanghai and she's invited us to go with her there, something I'm very excited to do. Hong Kong doesn't look like an option for us since you need another visa to exit the mainland.
It is very easy to get around here. I've heard it's about a 4 hour train to Beijing, a 1 hour train to Qingdao, and the cost of the latter is only about 60 quai (about 9 bucks Canadian!)
I'm still a little jet-lagged but we've had lots of opportunity to rest up and I'm already feeling accustomed to the time change. Lots of quirky things I like about China. Most notably the signs (for example, we all laughed at the announcement in the train in the Beijing airport that told us to "please, collect your belongings and get off the train" once we got to our stop. We would never hear something so blunt in friendly Canada.)
Anyway, I'm running out of things to talk about and I think that means it's about time for me to wrap up this post.
I'll post lots of photos soon :)
-Avi
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