A Year in the Life of a Waiguoren

I just returned from a wonderful dinner with my boss (Mr. Dong) and his family! Every week at our staff meeting we have been bugging him about wanting to meet his wife and kids and see his new apartment. His wife is a history teacher at our school and his son is a junior 3 (Freshman) at the school as well. His new apartment is not quite finished yet but they have moved some furniture in and it looks very nice! I especially like their lighting choices The new apartment is much closer to the school so that is why they are moving. He hopes to move in permanently by May and his wife said she would cook for us there when that day comes! His wife does not speak English but both Mr. Dong and his daughter Daisy speak English very well so they were our translators. We practiced our Chinese a bit for them too. Half way through dinner his son arrived because he had class until 7 PM so he had to come late. He did not have an English name yet so we chose three (Henry, Jack, and Jake) that sounded similar to his Chinese name and he made the final decision...Henry! He was very shy but pleasant to speak with. Over all it was a fun evening and I ate way too much food. It was neat to finally meet his family that he talks about. He is just as goofy around them as he is around us so that was fun as well.

Last weekend, Laura, Sam, and I went on our first (and probably only) ski trip in China! The mother of the girl who Laura tutors for invited us to attend their equivalent of a rewards trip for the company she works for. It was very entertaining. We traveled with about 25 other Chinese people. We were the youngest and the only foreigners. There was clan of older women who looked out for us and wanted to make sure we had adjusted to the food and were being careful etc. We left early Saturday morning and drove about an hour out of town to the Tao Huang mountains. We were expecting snow covered mountains but that is not what we found as you can see in the picture below! There were no chairlifts in operation. Only those pulley types that you put between your legs and they pull you up! It was very beautiful and we had a blast but it was like a little ski oasis in the middle of mountains that looked like the Grand Canyon! The ski gear was straight from the 90s (hence my title) and it brought me back to childhood skiing. I spent the day teaching Laura how to ski and enjoying the entertainment of watching the other skiers. The favorite thing to do was speed down the hill as fast as you could and when the need to spot came just take a massive wipe out! One Chinese man just decided to use me as his emergency brakes instead. Luckily I did not get hurt though.

The Ski hill

After skiing we decided to tryout the snow tubing which was a hoot! They keep that run nice and slick and we flew down that hill! Then it was off to the hot springs which is was another hour drive. This was by far the best part of the weekend. It was named Bai Lu Wen Quan (White Deer Hot Springs) and it was beautiful! We ate a huge dinner first with delicious red wine and then headed to the springs. There were multiple pools outdoors and you could walk through the paths from one to the next in amongst a lot of large rocks. There was also a large pool indoors as well as a pool with 100s of little fish in it that would come up and give you lots of little kisses as soon as you got in! We decided not to try it since it cost money...plus upon reflection the concept was slightly gross. After turning ourselves into prunes we headed up to the relaxing room with our matching pajama looking clothes provided in the locker room. We sat in the most comfortable chairs and had a few snacks and some hot drinks. Then it was off to bed in the most comfortable beds I have slept in here yet! It was a high class extravaganza in a five star hotel and we were back home by 11 AM Sunday morning! We were very fortunate to have this experience and thanked Julie profusely.

Snow tubing

I only have two more days of classes left and then it is off to Southeast Asia for our four weeks of vacation for Spring Festival! We are beyond excited for this and cannot wait to be in warm weather and pollution free skies. Our plan is to be in Thailand for two weeks and then go to Laos and Cambodia for a week each. It should be a very relaxing and intriguing experience!
I will be sure to tell you all about it when we get back. The best way to keep in contact while I am traveling is through email. So feel free to send a hello to ehenak@gmail.com!

Xin nian kuai le! (Happy New Year!). February 14th is the Chinese New Year and it is the year of the tiger. So if you were born in the year of the tiger you should wear red this year because it is your year and it will bring you good luck!

Everything is bigger in Harbin, the people, the animals, the drinks you get at KFC, and even blog posts. This one gets a little long but stay with me. It's good stuff!

On Jessica's last weekend here we decided to make the trek up to Harbin. Harbin is the biggest and most important city in the Dongbei (Northeast) region of China. It started with the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway by Russia, an extension of the Trans-Siberian Railway. So there is a large Russian influence in the architecture and some food. There are also many Russian tourists wondering the streets with their fashionable fur wear. This city is known for its snow and ice festival that it puts on every year. Let me tell you, it is quite amazing.

Cool huh?

To save on travel time we flew directly from Shijiazhuang to Harbin. It was my first domestic Chinese flight on China Southern and it was quite nice! It only took an hour and forty five minutes to get there. I had a difficult time going back to a nine hour overnight train on our way home.

Excited we found the tigers!

First things first, the morning after our arrival we had to navigate our way to the train station so we could buy train tickets to get back to Beijing by Sunday. This was a success and I even was able to communicate that we wanted to be on the top bunks of a sleeper car! We ended up getting lucky and scoring tickets on a brand new train that just started operating on Dec. 30th. It was beautiful. We spent the rest of our day wondering around the city. We found the famous Russian street, Chongyuan Da Jie, and looked at the buildings and did a little window shopping. We also saw St. Sophia's church which has now been turned into a museum on the inside. The building is gorgeous but most of the artwork that was once painted on the inside walls and ceilings have since warn off. The museum was very interesting though, because it contained many old photos from when the city was in its prime during the building of the railroad. After dinner we also found Stalion park by the river where they had sleigh rides, dog sled rides, ice skating, huge slides of ice, and other crazy ice activities. It was very festive and alive!

The Church of St. Sophia in Harbin

Ginormous snow sculpture-notice the tree in the bottom right corner?

Friday morning we woke up determined to see the Siberian tigers. Our taxi attempt was unsuccessful ( you would think being that it was a tourist attraction they would recognize even the most butchered pronunciation) but alas she did not so we hopped out and decided to head to the river to get a better look at things. We did know that the tigers were on the other side of the river. Our tour book had told us about a cable car that took you across the river so we thought, why not!? Once we got there though it looked very empty and we saw no passengers in the cars. When you are in a country of over a billion people and in a tourist city, if there is no one there that is usually a good indicator of not such a great idea. So we proceeded to simply walk across the river. Don't worry, it was very very frozen. What we found on the other side was Sun Island. There were many cute Russian summer homes and the snow sculpture park. These sculptures were absolutely amazing and ginormous. I can't describe to you how huge they were but we are talking some the size of...oh I can't even think of what to compare them to. After freezing our toes off at Sun Island Park, we manged to find our way to the tigers with two different sets of directions. The tigers were beautiful. It is a tiger breeding center and they have a lot of tigers here in many different locations. It was kind of like a safari. We hopped into a van that had cages on its windows and rode around the tiger park with a bunch of Chinese men. The craziest part was that you could pay 40 yuan to see a live chicken be fed to the tigers or 15,000 yuan to see a cow!! We did not see the cow phenomenon but we did see at least six chickens be fed to the hungry tigers. That was a different experience.

More tigers

The Empire State building made out of ice

Saturday was our last day in Harbin and by far the coolest. We got to go see Zhaolin Park. This is were the ice carvings are. The ice used is harvested from the Songhua River (yes the one we walked across) and then sculpted into animals, people and replicas of buildings. This years theme was an international theme which we decided was due to the World Expo in Shanghai in February. We saw the Empire State building, the Colosseum, a life size chess board, a Sphinx, and even a pagoda all constructed out of ice. We went at 1:30 so we could see everything in the daylight and then also all lit up at night (also because it was far cheaper to go at that time). All of the ice buildings are constructed with colorful neon lights inside of them so come 4 o'clock when the sun sets it turns into a magical ice world. The pictures manage to capture some of the awesomeness but Jessica and I were simply in awe. Be sure to check out my others picture in my photo gallery. There are more there than just the ones in this post.

The ice city during the day

Saturday night we slept on the train all night and arrived in Beijing by 8AM Sunday morning! I took Jessica to Olympic Park and we got to see The Water Cube and The Bird's Nest. I can't imagine being there when the Olympics were actually happening. Today you can go skiing inside The Bird's Nest. Crazy but quite an innovative idea I thought!

And huge snow sculptures

The last stop for the weekend was the airport. It was wonderful having Jessica here for three weeks. We stayed very busy and got to do some amazing traveling. We enjoyed lunch and coffee at the airport and then said our goodbyes. It was then my turn to take the subway back into Beijing and my train back home to Shijiazhuang. I had a moment of realization on my hour and 45 minute trek back to the train station. Jessica was headed back to America and I was not. I was really living in China and managing. I could be a tour guide to Harbin, maneuver the subway system in Beijing, China, buy train tickets to get back to Shijiazhuang, and even communicate with a taxi driver to get me to my apartment, all by myself! As sad as it was to say goodbye to Jessica and knowing that she would get to go back home and see my friends and sister, I also felt very proud upon realizing all that I am capable of and knowing that right now I am living out one of my dreams. I am living and teaching fun crazy students in a foreign country. What a fantastic life I have! Thank you to all of you being such a great support system back in Meiguo (America). I couldn't do this with out you! I miss you all!

On New Years Eve Jessica G., Jessica T., and I all rolled out of Shijiazhuang on a train together headed for Qingdao. Qingdao is a coastal city that is known for being very German (because it was occupied by the Germans for man years) and also for being the home of Tsingtao beer! The exciting part was that all three of us were going to be together and traveling to a very cool city over New Years. The not so exciting part was that we had a 9 hour train ride, overnight, with two hard seats and one standing room only ticket. We rotated from standing to sitting every two hours and by 4:30AM a large number of people had cleared out at different stops so we were all able to sit down and try to sleep a bit. Amazingly I fell asleep while standing up at one point, that was a first!

Off to Qingdao on New Years Eve

We got into Qingdao around 9 AM and immediately bought our return tickets home so we did not get stranded in Qingdao. We decided to take a taxi to our hostel even though it was only a few minutes away because then we would for sure find it. Typical traveling in China style though, our pronunciation of the tone for the street was slightly off. We ended up getting a 45 minute tour of the city of Qingdao before we realized we had made a major mistake. We spent plenty of time apologizing to the driver and correcting our mistake. Thankfully he felt bad too and only charged us 10 yuan for what should have been a 55 yuan taxi fair. He was a very friendly guy and great tour guide!

More pretty buildings and Jessica on the side

Our hostel was very nice and had a relaxing bar and restaurant downstairs that we enjoyed every night we were there. The architecture in Qingdao was beautiful. Many of the buildings looked very European because of the German occupation. It was a wonderful change in scenery. And it was very clean and barely any bikes on the roads! It really did not feel like China at all when we were in that city. Until we stumbled upon a night market and sat in traffic

Tsingtao brewery

Over the weekend we hit most of the tourist attractions. We saw the German governor's mansion that Chairman Mao also stayed in at one point in time, the Lutheran and Catholic churches, many beautiful buildings, the famous pier pictured on Tsingtao beer, the Tsingtao brewery, and many hours of beach walking. We attempted to make it all the way to the 3rd beach where the sailing events for the 2008 Olympics were held, but we got cold and ran out of time and walking path. It was cold and definitely the off season for this city but nice seeing everything with out a crowd!

Jessica and I at the beach

For food we tried Qingdao's famous kabobs and dumplings which were both delicious. We also found a good Italian restaurant for lunch one day and another one for some VERY delicious gelato the next day. Being that we were in Qingdao we also had to try their famous beer in a bag. Apparently the people here thought this would be a good way to make beer portable! It was literally just beer poured into a small plastic bag that you might get a few small groceries in. They also gave you a straw which made it much easier but it was still surprisingly difficult! The straw was not quite long enough to reach the bottom of the bag so lets just say it took some creativity to get out. And the Chinese people found it quite amusing to see three foreigners trying to do this out on the sidewalk in the middle of the winter.

Me and Jessica G.

All in all Qingdao was a wonderful and beautiful place to visit. I am very glad I went there and would definitely recommend the visit if you are ever in China. Maybe see it in the spring or summertime though when the city comes alive.

Here is a relatively abridged and belated version of our Christmas week but it was fun and I am finally getting time to write so here it is!

During Christmas and New years the foreign teachers from No. 42 Middle School had 4 different performances. The first was at a holiday party put on by the city government for all foreigners working in Shijiazhuang. I never knew there were so many foreigners in this city! It was a lovely evening with a buffet dinner and many different performances including Beijing opera, kung fu, singing, dancing, and poetry! Jordan, Sam, Laura, Amanda, and I sang an a capella version of the 12 Days of Christmas complete with picture props we had drawn! The evening was a blast just spending time with my fellow foreign teachers and Chinese co-workers from the foreign affairs office.

The 42 Crew

Later that week our boss Mr. Dong wanted us to perform at another event on Christmas Eve. This was for a broadcasting company that was launching a brand new website. Our school is apparently friends with this company. So we agreed since we were promised dinner and the chance to win prizes! This time we were the only foreigners at the party. There ended up not being an dinner for us but they did have good snacks and wine. This was also the event where we were on television. Kinda cool! After the performance we left quickly because we were all starving. But by this time it was 10 o'clock and most restaurants were closed so we ended up eating KFC on Christmas Eve mmm! It was still fun though

All dressed up for the Christmas party!

A little culture lesson. On Christmas Eve in China you give your friends and teachers apples! This symbolizes safety and peace. It is a very neat tradition and fun to see all of the apples in pretty wrapping paper around town. Don't try buying apples on Christmas Eve though. The price increase is insane!

Christmas day we went to a nice brunch downtown with many friends and then spent the afternoon playing games and watching movies. We also had a mini gift exchange which was fun and made it feel a little more like Christmas. I went and visited some of my classes who were having Christmas parties and before we knew it Christmas day had come to an end! It was definitely different being here in China but still very memorable and neat to experience it in a different country.

During the week of New Years we had two more performances. The senior 1 and senior 2 grades put on a "Family Party" which is basically a show where a bunch of students perform to celebrate the new year. Laura who teaches senior 1's and I were asked by our students to perform at the show so we figured what the heck! and I dragged Jessica along to perform with us We sang a wonderful rendition of "I Just Can't Wait To Be King" from the Lion King and the we had the whole auditorium sing Jingle Bells with us since everyone here seems to know that song. It was very fun and so neat to see my students perform. I have some very talented musicians and dancers in my classes!

On New Years Eve day every class got to have a party after lunch and before going home for the holiday. Unfortunately in the hour and a half time span I could not make it to all 16 of my classes but I did make it to some and it was so much fun watching my students perform for each other and play games. I walked into class 2 just as they were playing musical chairs and of course I got pulled into the game. It ended up being me vs. their head teacher at the end of the round and I pulled through for a win! Later I ended up sing Country Road with him. An American country song I had never heard until coming here! I also sang Mama Mia and High School Musical with some students in other classes. They don't care how well or poorly you sing, they just love to have everyone get up and perform!

Our final performance came on New Years Eve. The school had a staff party that afternoon before everyone went home for the New Years Holiday. The Chinese love their performances because this "party" was once again everyone performing in some way for everyone else. This time Mr. Dong wanted us to do a dance so we agreed to do an easy one, the Cha Cha Slide. We figured that would be painless since we could listen to the words and snaz it up a bit as we go. Unfortunately, when it came our turn, our song did not play clearly and we could not understand the words so we looked completely unprepared and crazy, oops! Oh well, it is done and over with now!

The holiday festivities were complete in Shijiazhuang and Jessica and I were headed off to Qingdao with another friend of ours also named Jessica and who also teaches English in Hangzhou, China!

I don't have a lot of time to write but I just wanted to give you a quick update on my wonderful adventure called China. Recently I have been thoroughly enjoying my time here and realizing just how quickly it is going. Christmas has already come and gone and very soon it will be 2010! Crazy. Even though I am only half way through I know I will miss it dearly when it is time to leave.

Just a few of the things I love about China:

• The smiles and eager "hellos" from adorable children playing in the streets.

• The fact that you can order food and sit outside and eat it in the middle of winter...and it isn't strange in the least.

• How caring my students are when they make sure to ask me how my holidays were since my family was not around.

• How much the Chinese live in the present. No matter how much I try to plan ahead they just won't let me. My planning never works out. Maybe one of these days I will give it up and try to live more like them. It sure would be easier since I am living in China after all.

• How caring my Chinese friends are. They are always looking out for me and trying to make China as close to home as it can be. Even when I don't need them to help me they are right there and ready.

• Alllll of the bicycles. The immense number of them and the craziness of riding them never ceases to amaze me but I love it! My mood is always better after a good biking adventure.

• Listening to the Chinese speak English. It just makes me giggle sometimes. Especially when my students attempt to use words and phrases I teach them and it doesn't quite work out or they copy my own speech. Very funny.

• Christmas in China. All of their Santa Clauses and decorations are quite lovely. And I must say I have never heard "Jingle Bells" so many times and in so many different versions in my life. Also their tradition of giving apples as a gift on Christmas Eve for "safety".

• Clothing with crazy English words or phrases on it...misspelled of course! These always make for good entertainment when window shopping

• And lastly, the language. I know I can always get a good laugh if I go out and attempt to speak it. And I can always get an ooo and aaa followed by plenty of help and encouragement if I just try. Learning the language is very intriguing because it is so different and complex. I thought English was hard. Try having thousands of characters, pinyin (the romanization system for Standard Mandarin ), ancient Chinese, standard Chinese and tones to learn when you start school!

These are just a few of the things I love. I'm sure there will be more to come when I am feeling thoughtful. Christmas was fun and different and New Years is looking promising because Jessica and I are going to Qingdao for the weekend along with another one of our friends who is also teaching in China right now. Hopefully the next weekend we will get to Harbin for the Ice Festival before Jessica has to return to the States.

Don't worry I will fill you in on the holidays, my China television debut, and the many adventures that Jessica and I experienced. I will also post all of my new pictures but not until I have a little more time to write I have to take advantage of the time I have with her here!

I hope Christmas was wonderful for all of you and the New Year brings you a zany good time!

Yuan dan kuai le! (Happy New Year!)