A Taste of Home

I know, Christmas is a long way off, but I'm already excited to be in the U.S. this year.  I've already begun to envision all the yummy things and delightful moments I will be able to experience.  Lately I've been thinking about tea quite a bit.  Kim threw me a wonderful tea and cupcake birthday party because I've been going on and on about it for so long.  There's something wonderful about sipping tea with friends and family, and somehow sipping it out of cute little china cups makes it even more pleasant.

What is is about tea time that is worth looking forward to?  Here's what I look forward to about it in Columbia:
Each morning at home, almost no matter what time I wake up, a pot of tea awaits me. Recently my parents have begun making tea in a coffee pot (obviously one that has been purged of all coffee smell and taste).  There's always a pot on along with a can of the stuff that makes it twice as enjoyable as when I make it myself: evaporated milk.  Add some sugar and the best part is still to come.

After the tea is prepared, I go and sit down on our kitchen table bench and cross my legs. There's inevitably somebody there, whether it's my parents having their morning talk or whoever else is staying at the house at the time.  This Christmas I'll miss having Sam around to ask me to play guitar with him and Lucas and Jamie looking bleary eyed from a not so rest-filled night.  If Jamie was there, I could admire her ever artful breakfast. But no matter who is there, there's always somebody there, and we drink tea together... on a bench in the kitchen, tea with evaporated milk and sugar, made in a coffee pot, begun before anyone gets up in the morning.

And that's just one thing I look forward to about going home at Christmas.  I can't wait.

Summer Travels

I finally have internet here at home, so I'm inspired to write about my travels this summer.
Kim and I originally set out to have a cheap but enjoyable vacation traveling in China and exploring the beauty it has.

The Hump hostel in Kunming (I know, strange name)

We first set out for Kunming.  This is a major city in Yunnan province and Kim and I were immediately impressed.  The sky was blue and it somehow seemed less dirty and hustle/bustle than Wuhan. We stayed in a hostel with an awesome patio and view.

But Kunming was just a stopover point.  From there we took an 8 hour train to LiJiang and met an  Indian boxer who was happy to speak English with us.

Our train buddy

We spent 3 days in LiJiang.  Our activities included exploring, shopping, and hiking the Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Garden Inn Hostel in LiJiang

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Women in LiJiang

From LiJiang we took the 8 hour train back to Kunming and spent a night in the same hostel.  Then we had a flight to Guilin.  We only took the flight because they ran out of bed train tickets, and we aren't crazy enough to get a seat for 16 hours.  We took a 2 hour bus from Guilin to Yangshuo.

In Yangshuo, we enjoyed the "karst peaks" and unique mountains by kayaking, bike riding, and wandering around the town.

Kayaking in Yangshuo

Trippers Carpe Diem Hostel just outside Yangshuo

After Yangshuo we took the bus back into Guilin where we enjoyed 3 nights in a 5 star luxury hotel. What a way to end our trip!

We thoroughly enjoyed the pool at the Shangri-La

And then we were back in Wuhan.  We love our new apartment and feel so at home.  Photos to come, but below is one taste of the joy of our new place.

View from our last apartment (no, the guy was not always hanging there)

The view from our new living room (lest you be too amazed, this kind of sky comes only a few days a year in Wuhan)

Where are we?

For my 3 weeks in Beijing, I'm living with several friends in a neighborhood in the suburbs.  I've found a couple aspects of our housing complex quite interesting.

1) Gas, water, and electricity all are charged on separate cards.  This means that, when any of these start to run low (or run out), in the house, the resident must go to a place in the center of the neighborhood with the specific card (whether gas, water, or electricity) and "charge" the card by paying money to have credit put on it.  It's like gas, water, and electricity credit.

2)  At least once a month the electricity and water for the entire neighborhood is cut off.  This is because one person did not pay their bill.  Neighbors go and yell at each other until the bill is paid and the water and electricity is restored. We were here to experience one of these days.

Oh man, it's just so NOT America.

On the bright side, "our" house has pretty grape vines and an apricot tree.

The Power of the Suburb

Maybe this post will be somewhat controversial. I had friends at Moody would scoffed at living in the suburbs like it was for the weak at heart.  Let me admit now, then: I am the weak of heart.

For these 3 weeks, as I study in Beijing, some of my Wuhan friends and I are staying at a lovely house in the suburbs.  The center where I'm taking classes is also in the suburbs.  I never knew how much the city wore down on me until I stepped away.  To wake up to the sound of birds or even weird cat howls is a great improvement to honking horns, poorly functioning ancient vehicles, construction, and people hocking loud spitballs out their windows.  On one of our rides to another part of the city, I contemplated why this is.

I think there's something one has to close off or become hard to while living in the city. If one lets it all in, it will grate and annoy.  It takes a lot of energy to close all that off.  Outside the city, especially in the country, there's a release.  You can open up because what's there is beauty and peace.

So I guess I discovered why I don't like cities.  

Changes

Some people really like change.  Honestly, I don't know if I know myself enough to know whether I like change or not.  I think I like it except for right before it happens.  Now, I haven't been all around the world, but I think China may be one place that change happens faster than anywhere else.  After three years in Wuhan, I want to document some changes in life since my first year here.

1) Suburb--city: I live in the least developed of 3 parts of Wuhan.  Up until this year, the area I live in and the school have been almost in a suburb-like area.  There hasn't been much traffic and I used to be able to look out my window at an open field where people would grow veggies.  I don't have a before and after photo, but I do have this photo of what is used to be like across from my apartment. In fact, my first year I went there to dig up soil to try to grow veggies on my deck (which was an ultimate FAIL, but the way). For the now photo, just imagine huge buildings, probably 20 floors high, in the construction phase, with waving dark green nets on them that make them look like death.
Speaking of death, as traffic increases, it gets more and more difficult to maneuver my way to school on my bike. Sometimes it feels like a video game.

2) Prices:  I know prices have changed all around the world, but for some reason the change seems more dramatic here.  Our favorite milk tea place's price has risen 50% (ok, that just means 2RMB to 3RMB, but nonetheless). Milk has risen probably 20% since my first year.  Crazy!

3) Availability: I now live no more than 20 minutes from a Subway (the restaurant).  In the next year, we will also have a Starbucks. The grocery store now has liquid detergent.

All this to say, I'm starting to feel like I actually live in a big city... Change.  Some of it I like, but some I don't.

Tie Your Laces

In the midst of all the craziness of the end of the school year, there is one thing that helps me remember why I am still in Wuhan.  I truly believe that our students are better than anywhere else.  Here are a couple reasons why:

1) Lock-ish in: Our middle school had a lock-ish in a few weeks ago. It's a lock-ish in because it only goes from 3-10 pm, not all night (which of course I love).  The middle school STUCO, which I facilitate, plans the whole night.  What I most loved about this night was that almost everybody came and everybody participated in everything.  We had a nasty drink game and Wii Dance, but even the most "cool" and the most shy did it all.  I was amazed to see all our guys get up and dance away, no matter how silly they looked.  Even the students who don't say a word in class "shook their tail feathers." :) I wish I could post a video, but I probably shouldn't.  One student, when asked what their favorite part of the lock-in was, answered "definitely the drinking game and dancing."  What are we teaching our students?

2) Community: We recently had an assembly looking back on the year.  Our theme has been "Better Community, Better WYIS" which is based off of the Shanghai Expo theme.  In this assembly, students drew pictures of ways our school has shown this motto.
Here are some of the pictures people drew.  They're quite entertaining.

It's hard to tell, but this is a picture of people playing the drink game in which they had to roll a dice to decide which drinks would be mixed together for them to drink (soy sauce and vinegar, yogurt, and ketchup were all options)

This is a picture of the Wii dancing from the lock-in. It's especially meaningful since it was drawn by one of our quietest Asian students. 

The "fit in together" part so perfectly illustrates how our students have come together despite ethnic and religious differences.

I love this because of the "x alot" part.  We do get a lot of new students throughout any given year and our students do well at welcoming them in.

Ah, the practicalities of living in community.  

My favorite, just because it looks so cool.

Ting Bu Dong

Leo (fake name used to protect identity), my newest Japanese student, is the sweetest kid, super hard working, and very smart, but he sure makes me feel inadequate. Here's a glimpse into a situation that happens at least once a period.

Students are working on their English quizzes.  Leo finished his quickly because it is modified for his language ability (and shorter).  When he is done, he doesn't know what to do.  Now, instead of the usual middle school child, who would, at this point, pull out some random object and transform the desk into a battlefield or something of that sort, Leo wants to make sure he knows what he is supposed to be doing, or at least that's what I think he wants to know.  He comes up to me with his Japanese/English dictionary.  What will the first word in our attempt at communication be? 

"What".  Okay, that gets me started.  He wants to know something. He slowly types in another word, then changes it to English.  "Send."  Now I'm totally thrown off.  Send? I'm quite confused at this point, so I wait for the next word, "something."  And that's it.  What, send, and something, and he points to himself.  From this, I must guess at what he is asking.   Maybe I need to send something to him.  Maybe he wants to know what to send?  I throw the words out to the class, because sometimes the other ESL students have some insight, but today the closest anyone could guess was that Leo wanted to ask if he should send the quiz to the ESL teacher. That didn't really make sense to me.  So, I just gave him something to work on and he seemed fine.  What send something?  Who knows?

 
At least today I learned one thing about Leo through my periodic attempts at communication. He is writing using sentence patterns like "I like" " I don't like", etc.  One sentence I just could not figure out, though. "Horizontal bar is bad for me."  So I asked him to draw it.  What do ya' know? It's a gymnastic bar, that is, of course, horizontal.  And apparently Leo thinks it is bad for him, though I'm pretty sure he thinks "bad for me" means "I dislike it." Oh, the adventures of ESL...keeps me on my toes.

By the way, in case you didn't know, "ting bu dong" means "I hear, but I don't understand" in Chinese. I don't know it in Japanese. Maybe I should learn.