Traveling

Now that school is out, I'm going to be traveling for the next couple of weeks. I leave in half an hour today to go to Tai'an, Shandong Province with one of my students, Blanche. She is going to show me her hometown. We will also go to Qufu and Jinan since both cities are very close to Tai'an. Qufu is the birthplace of Confusious and Jinan is the capital city of Shandong Province. I will get back on July 10 and then head to Qingdao. I will then go to Korea for a week. Yeah!! I'm really excited! One of the friends I have made here is from Korea and I will be going home with her. It'll be like having my own personal guide for the country. I'll add more to my blog when I get back and hopefully before I come home. Until next time folks.

Yummy food!

Have I ever mentioned how much I love the food in China? I do. Especially this food called "Wa Shao" or something to that effect. I love it! Below is a picture of the restaurant making them. They were nice enough to look this way...actually they were laughing from the first picture I took of them. haha.
Four of my students came over to teach me how to make dumplings. It was quite the process...especially when I didn't have a table or any counter space...we made do with the coffee table and a small cutting board. Ummm...in case you were wondering...I'm not really a chef and it will take me awhile to become a pro at making dumplings.

From left to right: Lemoni, me, Nancy, and Apple. Apple was the pro at rolling out the dough and Lemoni was the pro at shaping them.

Primary children & Baptism

Aren't they adorable? The primary children in our branch. They are from 3 different Korean families. They were practicing a Father's Day song before church began.

The Qingdao branch had it's first baptism on June 21, 2008. The branch is barely a year old and the members were really excited to have a baptism. It was a daughter of one of the Korean families. She turned eight years old earlier this year. We had a portable swimming pool set up in one of the members apartments. As you can see, there was quite the audience checking out the pool. We had to fill it (and empty it) using buckets of water. What a process.
The Yoon family.
Emptying the pool or "baptismal font". I think that was the funnest part of the whole day.

Random pics around Weifang

Here's some pictures around Weifang. Check out the ladder below. It's made from bamboo. It's pretty impressive!

Eating melon-on-a-stick. They like to sell things on a stick here. It cost me 1 yuan (thats about 15 cents in US money for those of you wondering). Yummy!!
A man pulling a cart full of garbage. Common sight around here. I'm starting to get used to seeing things like that here.
Three of my sophomore students: Blanche, May, & Vera. I am going to Tai'an with Blanche June 5-10. She is going to show me around her hometown and to meet her parents...and neighbors...and friends...and anybody else who gathers to see a foriegner (she's forewarned me). :) I'm really excited!!

People buying watermelon. This is how I buy my watermelon; actually most of my fruit and vegetables. Notice the scale in front of the girl with the purple umbrella. My last watermelon this size cost me about 3 yuan (less then 50 cents). I love buying food here in China...even if just for the experience of it all!

My birthday

Anybody want to guess what this meat is?.....Any guesses? I tried it on my birthday last month.

It's mule. Yep, I tried it. It's now been added to my list of firsts. Talking of firsts, just last night I had chrysalis or pupa. For those of you who don't know, its that stage between a caterpillar and a butterfly. It was rather interesting.
This is my chocolate cake I had for my birthday last month. It wasn't bad, but I miss the chocolate cake back home.


This is everyone at my birthday dinner. Back row, left to right: James, my boss; Rock, Buiness English teacher; Wendy, English basics teacher; Bob, the other American teacher; Ms. Yoon, Korean teacher; a Chinese-Korean teacher (I don't know her english name). Front row: Lee Ha Na, Korean teacher; me; Jennifer, an American friend teaching an hour away at a middle school; and a Chinese-Japanese teacher (I also don't know her english name). It must have been good 'cause I haven't lost any weight...in fact I think I have gained weight. haha. (sigh) It's a shame they don't make clothes big enough for me here. Unless I buy 2 of the same thing and sew them together. Then it works. haha.

119 or 911?

In case of an emergency dial....119? Yep...you read it right. I had to take this picture because I thought it was pretty funny. Whether in China or the United States, for an emergency just remember the numbers '1' and '9'.

More of Beijing

Temple of Heaven: Built in 1420 AD and used by the Ming and Qing dynasties as they prayed to Heaven for a good harvest. It was renovated and expanded in the 1700's and restored in the early 1900's.





Here are some pictures of the Olympic Venues: The Water Cube, Birds Nest, and Olympic Torch (sorry its sideways. I couldn't get it to rotate.). I couldn't get any closer because they are locked down for security right now...and the area is still under construction.

The Sacred Way. Huge stone statues. They have 4 of each animal, 2 on each side. The first set is standing and the next set is kneeling. It was really cool to see. I'm thinking of bringing one home for a pet.

This is one of the Ming Tombs. There are about 15 of them. Tombs built for the Emperors during the Ming Dynasty. I forgot which emperor this was. He was buried with an Emperess on each side of him and then 26 boxes full of gifts or items they would need in the next life. We walked down about 4 flights of stairs to get to the tombs. The coffins and boxes would be in one room and just outside the room would have a throne for the emperor and each emperess.

Beijing, China

Okay, I'm finally posting photos of my trip to Beijing on June 5-9, 2008.

The next pictures are the Great Wall of China! There is a saying in China that you are not a great man until you have walked on the great wall. I am a Great Man!! The day was really foggy (or polluted, we weren't quite sure which one it was) so my pictures did not turn out really well. But at least I got to see the Great Wall! I told the rest of my group all I wanted to do was walk on the Great Wall. I did!! I can now cross that Wonder of the World off my list of places to see! )hmmm....I wonder if I can make it to the Taj Mahal or the Great Barrier Reef before coming back home...)

My friend Gayle. I would often stay with her when I went to Qingdao.

The unrestored portion of the Great Wall.

When I showed this photo to my students, they all gasped! They thought I was crazy for sitting on the wall. "You could have fallen!" they all said. Haha. I love to get reactions from them. Sometimes I take random pictures to show them, just to see their reaction. haha. It's great!

Tiananmen Square - Everybody has to have a picture in front of Mao. The next few pictures are of the Forbidden City. It has a total of 9,999 rooms...many of which I did not go in....even though I walked around there all day long. That place is HUGE!!

Rain

When it rains it pours! At least yesterday it did. It seemed like a monsoon hit or something. Good thing I'm not living in the south of China where they actually do have them. Anyways, I was craving some non-Chinese food, so I decided to head to McDonalds (you know, I've never had a hamburger here in China). The rain had stopped but there were huge puddles everywhere...mud puddles included since most of China is under construction. I thought about walking ('cause I could use the exercise and I like to walk) but then remembered that there is an underpass you have to go thru and it floods when it rains...so I caught the bus. It looked like everyone else had the same idea. The bus was crowded. The bus drove to the underpass and stopped. The driver said something in Chinese, and everybody started getting off. Ummm....I wasn't sure what to do. I must have had a confused look on my face because a lady looked at me and smiled and then said something in Chinese (like that's going to help me. lol). What could I do? So I did what everybody else did...got off the bus and walked through the underpass to the other side.

Now don't go thinking that I waded through the water...I didn't. I walked on a path under the railroad tracks to the other side. haha. It was pretty funny. Did I mention that the underpass has been underconstruction since I got here? Well it has. So the path I walked on was about 8-10 feet high and you have to walk around and over construction materials. haha. It was so funny...and everybody was doing it. lol. So I followed the rest of the people to the other side of the underpass. On the way I decided I might as well just walk, but when I got to the other side, the bus, #26, was at the bus stop. So I got back on the bus (nobody was paying, so I didn't either) and recognized my fellow bus mates. Come to find out, the first bus driver dropped us off and we were to walk to the other side of the underpass and get on another bus, because the road was closed off. haha. I laughed the rest of the night about it. That's China for you. haha.

In case you were wondering, I did make it to McDonald's and I finally had a hamburger. A cucumber hamburger sandwich to be exact. And.....I had a rainbow!!! (If you've ever been to Pace's Dairy Ann in Bountiful, you'll know what I am talking about). McDonald's is now selling rainbows...well sort of. It is made with sprite, not the fruit flavored drink....but it was close enough! Boy was it good!! I can now say I've had a hamburger in China. :)

Making dumplings!

Did I ever mention that I really love dumplings here? Well, I do! They were some of the first things I liked when I came here....that and the tomato and egg dish. I finally learned how to make them this past weekend. Yep, mom, you'd be proud of me! I can cook something! haha. Four of my freshmen students came over Saturday evening and they taught me how to make dumplings. Well, I should say that 2 of the girls knew how to make dumplings the other 2 girls learned with me as well. It was a lot of fun. Making dumplings wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Side note: Dumplings are usually eaten during the Spring Festival (celebrates the Chinese New Year) and not so much the rest of the year. I'll have to try making them when I get back to the States.

Here's something funny: I would often tell them one of my favorite dishes is the tomato and egg dish (mainly because it was the first dish I could recognize when I got here...and it tasted really good). The 4 girls who came over Saturday asked me if I knew how to make the tomato and egg dish and I said "Of course!" (not really telling them that I only know because I happened to be channel surfing the Chinese channels one day and watched some Chinese chef making the dish...haha...he was talking in Chinese, but I could see him making it and figured it looked easy enough to do. haha...enough said). Let's just say I learned a few lessons today. Lesson #1: I learned that you should never make a Chinese dish for a Chinese person...I should have made some American meal for them, but I didn't have all the ingrediants for one. Lesson #2: Never cook a chinese dish for a Chinese person, you WILL get nervous when you realize what you are doing. Lesson #3: Always taste test your food before serving it. I won't elaborate on that one. Lesson #4: Never cook a native dish for the natives. Lesson #5: Don't forget lessons 1-4. haha. I eventually did learn how to make a good tomato and egg dish.

Last day of teaching

Wow! I can't believe how fast the semester has gone!! I taught my last class a few days ago. It has made me sooo sad! For my last class, I thought I'd be nice and let my students watch a movie (they love watching movies!...I think it's because I don't make them talk in English. Even though I make them watch it in English. haha...I love being the teacher!) The last time I took a movie to watch, they either had already seen it, or the people talked too fast for them to understand. This time I took a selection of movies and let them choose. We watched "High School Musical"....they chose it mainly because I told them it was filmed in my hometown and features "my mountains" as I call them. :) For those of you who haven't seen it, it is a great movie! (I think so now after having watched it with them). I didn't realize how much it showed American culture. It shows what a typical high school in America looks like, what a basketball gym looks like....in one scene it even shows what a gallon of milk looks like! Yep, these are things they don't see here in China. I must say that I would often interrupt the movie to point out a particular scene or what something looks like in America. If they weren't such polite students, I'm sure they would have told me to shut up! haha. We didn't get to finish the film, so I had to schedule another time the next day for them to come back and finish the movie. (I didn't realize a whole class would groan so loud when class was ended. Most of them time they cheer and run out of class.) The next class didn't care if they missed dinner, they stayed the extra 30 minutes or so to finish the movie. If I had known it was going to be such a big hit, I would have shown it ages ago and then showed the second movie as well. I could have even spent the whole next class explaining things to them! (sigh....things I wish I would have known earlier). haha. You gotta love things that talk about true American culture.

My time in China has gone by soooo fast! If I didn't already have a cruise planned for November, I would stay and teach another semester! I love it here!!! I'm really going to miss my students! They were so much fun! And I'm sure they will remember me always saying "English, Please!" It got to be a joke towards the end in my freshmen class because I would say it to them so often! lol. Next time I come back, I'm going to be able to speak or at least understand Chinese so I know what they are saying! (Probably something random like, "should I have rice or noodles for supper today?" haha....because that's what I would have been thinking about!)

So I have a lot of updates to put on my blog. My dad got after me today because I haven't been writing down all my experiences. Sorry, guys. I've never really been one for writing (or typing for that matter). But I'll get working on it. I'll try and ground myself to the computer until I get it all updated. :)

Ice cream

The Chinese people love ice cream bars! The ice cream is not quite the same as you would find back home, but I've found some that are really good. There is one called the Magnum bar...yummy! It is really good. Most of the ice cream bars cost 1 yuan, but the Magnum's are deluxe and cost 4 yuan (that's probably why they taste like American ice cream). Anyway, they also have bean flavored ice cream...that's me trying it for the first time a couple weeks ago. Just think of Gerber baby food...frozen...that's what it taste like. I wasn't a big fan of it...but many people love it here. Then again, many people are really skinny here...maybe I should start eating that instead of the chocolate kind....there's an idea....hhmmm...no. I like the chocolate, fattening kind. :) They also have corn flavor, coffee flavor, some kind of red berry kind, strawberry (a personal favorite), chocolate, etc. Lots of different ice creams! And I love them! Yum. yum.

Squid is NOTHING compared to this!

Scorpians, anyone??? They're fresh...see they are still moving. Yum. Yum.

Yes, they actually eat the scorpians. I have yet to eat them. I saw them at the outdoor morning market and had to do a double take! I asked one of my students if they were selling them as pets. She started laughing and said people eat them for dinner. haha. Let's just say my eyes got really, really big. Are you kidding? So I asked James if they really do eat them and he showed me a photo of the dish and said yes. Oh my!! mmm...not sure if I'm going to try them...

For the next two pictures, I went out for BBQ (chinese BBQ that is) and one of the girls ordered octopus (just the legs, not the whole body). And in the words of the Chinese people, "Try it. Just try it." (that is one of the idioms they say to me all the time. haha). So I did. I ate the whole leg (I took a picture 'cause I knew some of you won't believe me)! I decided I'm not a big fan of it. But then again, Graeme (English speaking friend in Qingdao) told me it wasn't fresh. haha. Like that's going to make a difference to me. lol. It's not squid-on-a-stick, but I figure it's close enough.

Okay, so last night I was invited to a special dinner because the school had some Koreans visiting that day. I'm not Korean (in case you were wondering) but I am a foreigner and an American, so I was invited. Hey, who am I to turn down free food? :) The host sits at the head of the table (he happened to be the Chairman of the Communist Party for the school. I've discovered that anyone connected to the Communist Party is very important...so I had to use my best manners). The honored guest sits to the right of the host and the next honored guest sits on the left and so it goes around the table. No...I know what you are thinking and I was not the honored guest....I was only second best...I sat on the left. Talk about being nervous...especially when using chopsticks 'cause everyone is watching you....aahhh...but no worries, my chopstick skills are improving.

The honored guest almost always starts eating first (whew!). We started with some recognizable types of chinese food and then some really good seafood - which I hadn't had yet. It was really pretty good. There was some type of shrimp/crawfish/sea animal that I hadn't had before and was told by my host "try it. just try it". So I did. It wasn't bad. Kind of like shrimp. Then they brought out a dish that had red peppers, green onions, and some kind of black thing on it. I couldn't figure out what kind of meat the black stuff was...(it had to be a meat, 'cause it didn't look like any vegetable I'd seen). It was my turn to eat from the dish, so I just grabbed it and popped it in my mouth. It was a little crunchy (I thought I must have eaten a shell), not much flavor, overall not too bad. Then, as the plate moved around the table, I saw legs sticking out of the black things! Oh wow! It was a grasshopper! Or locust they called them. Yep! I just ate a grasshopper! That was a first for me! Everyone else around the table was loving it...so I ate another one. That was it. No more. But I took a picture to show you. One of me eating it and a closeup of the locust......Squid doesn't seem so bad anymore. lol

Waiting for the bus...

Waiting for the bus! Is it coming??

Public transportation is the best here!! They really know how to utilize their resources. It is so easy and convenient to ride the bus (it costs 1 rmb) or catch a taxi (it's really cheap) to get where I'm going. It's also cheaper to ride the train between cities rather than fly...and it is an experience as well...I've met a lot of interesting people as I ride around. It's been fun. I'm going to miss riding the bus/train/taxi when I go back home...I won't get to met interesting people....or at least have them staring at me all the time. lol. Yep, it still happens. In fact, just this past weekend as I was riding the train back to Weifang, I happened to look up and saw a man about 15 ft away taking a picture of me. I know because I would move my head to hide behind another person's head and his camara lens would follow me. haha. so what do I do? I smile and pose! :o) lol. Life in China is great....