Sometimes

Sometimes you fight
Sometimes you laugh
Sometimes you need
Sometimes you argue
Sometimes you do it
Sometimes you don't
Sometimes you travel
Sometimes you are bored
Sometimes you breathe.
Sometimes.

Classes

Having a lot of fun with my classes. Just started taking Spanish at CHICLE. Last week I tried the group class but my spanish is so messed up that I thought it would be better for me to take private classes. I think it's going to work out really well. My teacher's name is Alejandro, he says my spanish writing is really good (meaning spelling). He kept asking me to stop him if I don't understand throughout the whole class but I think I may have stopped him once (or maybe twice) so finally after him telling me to stop him for the 4th time if I didn't understand I told him that part of my problem was that I practically understood everything he was saying, just couldn't speak at the same pace he was. He seems really awesome, we talked the whole time about my living abroad as it's something he says he's wanted to do forever but never really gotten past Europe so he was fascinated to hear my view of things (even though it took me a little bit to get it out sometimes). I'm really excited to be finally back to Spanish and hope it can get back to where it was. My homework for next time is to try and sell him on Dali. He's going to pretend to give me funds for a Dali museum and I have to convince him that it's worth giving the funds to. I love Dali so I think I'm going to enjoy this, actually currently reading his book Diccionario Privado (Private Dictionary) which is a compilation of his definitions of different words. It's super interesting (although in Spanish).

Unlike Spanish where the whole class is basically a conversation deal (and therefore a bit more relaxed), Chinese is a bit more formal as I'm trying to learn to read. It's going better than it was now but I'm definitely looking forward to taking class with the new teacher (they're going to put me on one hour with the old teacher and one hour with the new one that I don't know yet).

Sign Language is doing great, I've got a silent dinner to go to tomorrow and I'm a bit nervous about it cause I don't know that I'm ready to sit and have conversations with the hearing impaired in sign language only. It seems a bit intimidating honestly so I'm going to study again tonight.

An awesome day ... in some respects

I had a really great day today. This week has been a bit of a struggle, I had a nightmare half way through the week about a man wearing one of those black cloaks (sp?) from Harry Potter (the ones where he can put it on and no one else can see him). Only the man was a stranger in my house and was about to do something bad to me. I woke up sweating at that point and had to turn the light on. I also noticed (not surprisingly) that my neck hurt a bit.

Yesterday we got a duvet (finally). I'm really happy about it cause that's what we're both used to now, Cam's not good with sheets most of the time (as in he doesn't use them) and we both move around so much it's practically useless not to have a duvet. For those of you who may not know a duvet is where you have your comforter in a sheet so you can clean it very easily. It's really nice. We also got a router for the Internet but it's Net Gear (apparently not a well known brand and definitely not recommended). I tried it many a time on the computer and it wouldn't install once. So now I'm going to trade it in for Linksys.

Today Richard, Sara, Margo and I went to Margo's synagogue for a lecture by David Gilbert on his book Stumbling on Happiness. It was an awesome lecture about how different things make people happy or not. It was interesting because he did most of it from a scientific point of view as to what makes you happy. For example, he said that if you go to a no-hitter baseball game and your team wins at the bottom of the 9th with a home run you have scientifically wasted your time as you spent 90% of the game completely bored to tears. However, the person who went to see that game may think to themselves that it was the best game they'd ever seen as they only remember that last part of the game going away from it. It's a bit hard for me to explain but I really enjoyed the lecture, he had a lot of really funny references and examples and definitely knew his audience really well. I would suggest you read the book as that's what I want to do myself. I started it before going to the lecture but didn't have time to finish it.

After the lecture we picked Cam up and went to Breadmen's for lunch before going to the Carrboro Music Festival. The festival was really awesome, I think it was quite fun for Cam (and the rest of us) to be able to walk around and see everyone else outside, selling books, having a bake sale, selling homemade lemonade and just chilling all over town as they listened to different music groups. We walked around and heard groups at 5 or 6 different venues. At one of the venues there were two people there with hula-hoops and they were passing them around for the crowd to use so we got to see people from kids all the way up to older adults. It was a very festive place and definitely more people than I've seen in Carrboro in a while. They had Weaver Street closed off as a walking street which was pretty nice.

Fighting

For some reason it really is true, "sometimes you fight because you love too much." I've never gotten into as many fights with anyone else besides Cam. He's warning me sometimes not to be like employees that we see sometimes who have a big temper but I'm never really in a bad mood when I work. Sometimes bosses can piss me off but I never blow up at them (as we can't of course). And I've never gotten angry at a student in my life even though they can be extremely annoying sometimes and I've had to ignore them or discipline them at times. The only people I've ever fought with are the ones I love. When I was younger (and even to this day sometimes) I fought with my mother mostly. Then in college I fought with a really good friend of mine. Now I fight with Cam. He makes me so angry sometimes I want to scream (and sometimes do) and I know I do the same to him at times too. It's kind of a strange way to deal with love, not really sure how it started but it's true. I am looking at some other blogs tonight about this and one comment I saw was:

There's a saying in Spain that translates to, "lovers who fight, are lovers who love..."

NYC & ASL

Just got back from NYC today, had a pretty awesome trip where we got to do some shopping, see two plays, go to 2 museums, see 2 old friends and my cousin and see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We went to see Avenue Q which Cam didn't really understand too much as it had a lot of cultural things in it and a lot of English that one would have to understand. It was a very liberal play with a lot of very cute jokes in it done about 3 "real people" and 5 or 6 puppets (people dressed in black walking around holding and talking for the puppets) who lived on a street in NYC. There were no scene changes so it was a fairly boring action play, you really just had to follow what they were singing about to enjoy. The second play we went to was much more enjoyable for Cam. I also enjoyed it a lot, it's called Blue Man's Group and it was very involved with very little English (in fact the couple of times that there was English to be understood it was almost completely unintelligible - which was the funny part). Cam and I were only a little bummed about the museums cause unfortunately we left the Met till the last day (Monday) and it's closed on Mondays. We went to the Guggenheim instead but aside from it's pretty awesome architecture there was not too much art to be seen inside (that was of any good anyways).

Today was my first day of ASL (American Sign Language). It was pretty cool, we learned the alphabet (which I already knew) and how to say "my name is" and little nuances like the fact that in ASL there is no articles or verb "to be". It reminds me a lot of Chinese, they said some of the "words" are very easy to see what they mean and others aren't, plus there's no future or past tense, and no articles or verb "to be" (all the same as Chinese). Plus we learned some differences in politeness, like how one shouldn't point at people in the "hearing world" but how it's not only okay but to be expected in the ASL world as it means "you". She also taught us how they sometimes do things like stomp on the floor (depending on the room it can sometimes make vibrations in the floor that the students notice) or flicker the lights to get student's attention. Which are again things that one wouldn't usually do in the hearing world. I found it really interesting and am looking forward to going to the next class!

Improvement

Sometimes it is shocking the rate of improvement you can see in other people. Dad's back to speaking at his normal rate and he's actually getting it! He's almost at a rate where dad can get everything he's saying. He's still a little slow but dad says things repetitively as a habit so he catches on when dad repeats things. I'm really proud of him! And it's amazing the rate at which I can actually see him getting better!

Few Poems

They
Rich, high in their own world
Blonde hair with small silver crowns in their hair
A 50 kuai beer
(30 kuai more than any bar and at least 40 kuai more than from a store)
to them is cheap
Would never imagine someone speaking anything other than English
never take something other than a car with chaeuffer
never imagine buying clothes other than Emporio Armani
never have a care for the world around them
never think of entering ...

I
Poor, low in a chair that looms over me
Brown raggedly curled hair, no crown
A 50 kuai meal
(cheaper than any bought here)
to me is expensive
Hates when locals speak any other than their own
Hates anything but local transit
Could care less the brand
Never thinks of anything but the world around
Likes to sometimes pretend about ...





That was a poem that I wrote while I was in a bar in Shanghai waiting for Cam to come back from his trip to southern Guangdong. The following I don't remember when I wrote. Probably while thinking too much as usual. Hope these are poems you haven't seen before as I wrote them quite a while ago but am just now recovering them from an old notebook.



As for I?
I have simply
created a world
which you can't see
from your side
of the grass.

Few Poems

Corruption and Intelligence

China is showing a bit of it's corruption in style. Apparently during the Opening of the Olympics there was a little girl "singing", only she wasn't singing. She was lipsinking to the real singer who was forced to hide behind the curtain due to her "ugliness". Also a couple of the Chinese gymnasts are underage, due to the fact that their "passports" have ages that are over the age limit they are allowed to perform. What people may not realize is that a Chinese passport rarely has their actual birthdate. First of all many Chinese people do not know their actual birthdates, as the birthdate they celebrate is from the lunar calendar not the solar one. Also it is very easy to get someone to put the "wrong date" on your passport, whether by mistake or on purpose. Finally there are a large number of seats at the Olympics that aren't full. Many sold out before the competitions even began but a lot of the people who originally bought the seats for much lowered prices aren't showing up for the events, therefore there are a lot of people standing in line outside the events that could sit in the seats but are being told that all the seats are sold out. This is typical China for ya!

As for intelligence, my dad read me a line in the paper today from a woman who was looking for an intelligent person and was told to lower her standards and try to date people who haven't finished their education. Unfortunately this didn't help her. I think this is very true, unfortuantely in the US the majority of people who don't finish their education really aren't educated, or very intelligent. However in many other countries (like China and India) there are way too many people who aren't educated who are extremely bright. This is due to the fact that school is paid for by the government through the end of high school in the US whereas in China one has to pay for every single year of education, from elementary school on. They have no free public schools, or schools paid for by taxes. Thus I have managed to find, on my trips and in my husband, a large number of extremely intelligent people who haven't finished middle school, forget high school.

Got a little stuck today

I got a little stuck today in some ways.

First of all biculturally, as usual. At work. First of all he can't figure out how to feed himself for lunch. At the salon his mother brings food to them every lunchtime and they all sit and eat the hot food together. As opposed to here in the US where most people take their own lunch to work and we have break rooms (thank god for those, I was missing them in China where my schools never had them). Second he's on QQ at work. For those of you wo don't know QQ is like AIM (American Instant Messaging) but in China instead of in America. This is a very common occurrance in China, in fact Cam talks to his mother and people from his Salon through QQ while they are at work almost every day. However, in the US chatting on-line is something that we try to avoid and that's almost banned in most places. So I just had a talk with him and told him he couldn't do it at work. Third the tendency for Chinese people at work is not really to think about what they're doing, just to do it. So they get super bored while they're working. I don't know how it is for a lot of Americans but for me I spend most of the tedious time during work thinking, either about how to do the work better or differently or about something else that I need to be doing. This leads to me bringing up ideas to my superiors (or whoever gave me the work for the day) which is a huge no-no in China. In fact in China one is not allowed to think up any new or different ways to do things and if they are allowed to think of them they sure aren't allowed to tell them to anyone else. Finally I came home with a Chinese book today and the first thing that he asked me was how much it cost. I took this as a bit offensive as it meant to me that he didn't care about where I got the book, or what I was going to do with it, or whether it was a good book, just how much it cost. However, he was just thinking as a typical businessman about how much profit one could make bringing a Chinese book over here and selling it. Bicultural relationships sure are interesting.

I was looking for a notebook today so I decided to go to Harris Teeter (our local grocery store) and look for one. However, once I got there the only thing I could think of while looking at which notebook to choose was the fact that none of them were made of 100% recyclable paper. This got me to thinking whether there were any places where I could buy 100% recyclable goods. I know you can get 100% recycled paper towels, kleenex, and toilet paper at a lot of grocery stores, but where could I buy a 100% recycled notebook? I know about The Green Office online but were there any stores like this in real life where you walked in and everything was made of 100% recycled materials? If so Carrboro would be an awesome place to open one. I was thinking about this so much that I managed to make it home without the peaches that my husband had requested. See where thinking gets you sometimes?

Scariest day of my life?

I suppose today is supposed to be one of those "scariest days of my life" kind of thing but so far it really isn't. I think it's more scary for my family. Today I'm having my wedding ceremony, and supposed to say my vows to Cam. I will probably be nervous as shnell actually doing it but right now the only thing that's bothering me is that my ring is off. I haven't taken it off since we had our Chinese ceremony (back in February) so I feel a little naked right now. My aunt said that this is pretty big for the family because it's a first for them, even though it's really a second for me and no where near as scary as not knowing what's going to happen for 2 days straight when you're supposed to do nothing but smile.

In the meantime we just got to watch the Opening of the Olympics on Cam's computer. He can only get a few channels on his computer but one is the Hunan TV station so we got to watch CCTV1 on that. Cam said that all of the other TV stations have taken a vacation for the Olympics as Chinese people have nothing more important than the Olympics to be watching right now. It's kind of like the earthquake, during that time when I was in China it didn't matter what channel you turned to it was all about the Earthquake. Gets a little boring watching TV but it's ok. Olympics is a pretty big deal. I wasn't up early enough to watch the very beginning but my parents said it was really awesome. If you get a chance record it tonight, I'm sure it will be well worth the footage. All I can say is I'm damned glad I'm not in Beijing. I bet it is absolutely insane there now.

Finally back

So I guess Cam seems to be doing pretty well with being in the US. I know things here are pretty hard on him, especially the English. But so far he seems to be doing really well. When we first got to Chicago he was talking to me about all the changes and how he didn't feel comfortable with some things (based on where we were staying), but now that we're back in my home in Chapel Hill he hasn't really said much in relation to the changes. Kinda typical Cam, pretty quiet. I think it means he's slowly dealing with things. Hopefully being here in Chapel Hill for a while will allow him some time to relax. We still have a lot of things to teach him, I taught him how to use a garbage disposal, dryer (for clothes) and a dishwasher yesterday. Today we have to show him some of the bureaucracy of the US as we have to go get my driver's license, possibly get him an ID card and also try to get him a Social Security Number. He's working really hard to try and cut back on the smoking and I'm really proud of him for that, I think he's doing it more for my parents than for me though but no matter the reason it's still a good thing. My dad is also working really hard to include him, trying to teach him some English and taking him out to Eastern styled restaurants.

Today I've been trying to get my appointments and dates scheduled. I'm also really interested in trying to see some NC Architecture and take some pictures on my new camera. It's a nice little camera but it's totally great, same one a friend of mine had that I really loved.

Prince

And they all lived happily ever after....

Unfortunately they don't ever live happily ever after. In this story the prince and princess went off to live in the castle. But the princess wasn't happy in the castle, she didn't know where she was going in it's walls and kept getting lost when she wanted to go somewhere. She didn't know anyone aside from the prince in the castle. All of her friends were still in the forest outside the castle and while she could see them from time to time it wasn't nearly as if she were still living in the forest. She got bored with the prince's daily activities and no matter how much she asked the servants for more entertainment it just wasn't enough, she just kept getting bored. She didn't recognize the food in the castle for it was too foreign to her woodly tastes. Her boredom sent her into rages with the prince every now and then and while he knew she wasn't happy it was her choice to come live in the castle and they still loved each other. The prince knew not what to do, nor the princess. The prince hoped every day that the next day would be better, not knowing if it really would.

Chinatown and Macy's

Aside from a pretty good scare tonight, at least in Cam's definition, we had a pretty good day today. Tonight the scare came from Johnny's brother who decided to go crazy and come pounding on our door right when we came in. Fortunately Cam had remembered to lock the door and we have the only key so all it ended up being was a stupid boy yelling through the door asking who we were and saying he owned the place and lived here. I called Mandy and they figured out it was Johnny's brother, Johnny's mom came up to see if we were ok and then had a talk with Johnny's brother. That was it but the whole thing scared Cam.

Today we went around taking pictures of different churches, Cam wanted to take some pictures of the inside of one but it's Sunday and they were having mass so I didn't let him. He didn't really understand why I wouldn't ask them if we could take pictures but I think he just went with it. He asked if we have a lot of churches around here and I guess we have quite a bit, especially compared to China. Afterwards we went to Chinatown to look around a bit and have lunch. I tried to speak Mandarin to the waiter at lunch and he didn't understand me at all. Cam spoke to him for one second and figured he spoke Cantonese so they spoke Cantonese the rest of the time. Afterwards Cam told me that he thought Chinatown was more Chinese than China. I didn't really understand what that meant until he explained that China had been modernized and Chinatown hadn't as it was still run and owned by Cantonese since before the doors of China were opened. There were a lot of signs there written in old Chinese, from right to left and Cam said the grocery store we went to only sold things from Canton so it made sense that the people didn't know Mandarin but knew Cantonese.

We tried to go downtown to the Art Institute but we figured out it's free on Thursdays from 5-8pm so we decided to just go then. Cam had an interesting time sitting outside it as there was a small protest with a couple people with signs outside walking up and down the streets saying things like "Honk to Impeach (Bush)" so there were a lot of people honking, which I thought was kind of cool, although it did make the place loud. We decided to go and do some shopping instead so we went to Nordstrom Rack, an Art store (which he really liked), and his favorite Macy's (which unfortunately closed almost as soon as we got there but not before Cam bought some pants). I've gotta find him a better one than Macy's...

Shedd

Mandy, Cam and I went to the Shedd Aquarium today after getting up a little late and only having some cereal for breakfast. It was definitely a cool little exploration, Cam had fun taking pictures of almost all the animals (except the dolphin show and blue whale show we got to see). By the end of it we were absolutely starving and it was around 6pm. After all of us getting a little pissed off we finally got on a bus towards the Navy Pier but got off when I saw a Thai restaurant on the side of the road. Cam was extremely excited about it as it was the first thing closest to Chinese food that he'd had in a while. It was pretty decent food. After dinner we went to Navy Pier and walked around for a while before finally getting to see the fireworks show. Cam said it was a better show than at the baseball game.

Baseball

We had a pretty kick ass day today. Cam was complaining last night about the fatness and ugliness of people here, as well as their lack of fashion but I explained to him that all we'd done was hang out in Bolingbrook and Johnny's neighborhood, Pulaski, neither of which are where the wealthy are. Today we got to show him the more wealthy side. We went to brunch at a Mexican place, he had the fajitas, althoug he said the quesadilla looked better. Then we went downtown and got some tickets for Wicked for next Friday and got to check out a lot of cool buildings with Johnny.

Cam had a blast taking pictures. We walked through Millenium Park and saw Buckingham Fountain after going through a sea of people at the Taste. There were some pretty awesome sights. Cam said there were people from so many countries around he didn't even know what countries they were from. We said that's America. Last night I was telling him the reason it's so hard to answer people's questions about the US, because a lot of the times I don't know the answer. For example, what's an American wedding like?

After walking around we took a train to the baseball field where I got to teach Cam baseball, we both think it's slightly dul and the other team won but we still had fun. Afterwards we got to watch the fireworks which I enjoyed even though Cam said they weren't as good as Chinese. Yesterday we walked around, taught Cam a bit of how to swing, what a mailbox is, how we deliver newspapers here and about an American mall, his favorite so far is Macy's.

We did it!

We finally did it! We are currently on a flight headed towards Chicago. Part of me never imagined this day would actually come I remember the day he got his visa, June 18th. He was so nervous he didn't sleep the night before. I was so nervous waiting for him in the coffee shop near the embassy. I couldn't read or eat. Then he simply sent me a text message, "I got it!" I was so excited, I texted a lot of people including my sister before finally calling my parents. I was so excited I couldn't help but cry when they picked up. Now it's been 2 weeks, 2 of the fastest weeks in my life looking back on them now. I'm so nervous I can't sleep and keep thinking of things with Cam. He needs to learn to say thank you. I'm talking for him most of the time but he knows the word, just needs to use it more often. I've got to remember what he likes so ordering can be easier, vinegar sauce not ranch-like so far and he's not a huge straight sausage fan, more an uncooked salmon type. This is definitely going to help me get to know him more.

Got a bit of jet lag this morning (so I'm up pretty early), didn't really do anything last night but set up my phone and call friends back in China to make sure they know we made it.

Gullible

So Chinese people have now been dubbed gullible. Yesterday almost everyone received a text message saying there would be an earthquake at 3am this morning. Now first of all let's think about it, earthquakes can be predicted in terms of area and relative time but by relative we don't mean an exact hour of the day on a particular day. Anyways, after receiving this text message a lot of Chinese people decided it wasn't safe for their cars to be in the place they usually put them so instead they decided to put them all in a very large open area, like a park or square. If anyone got pictures of this I'd love to see some of them, I only saw some of the cars parked in the middle of nowhere this morning as I walked (in the rain) to the coffee shop I am now typing at. My friends told me some of the large squares and parks around town were filled with cars parked there. Come on people, let's use our brains! Anyways, of course, nothing happened.

Simplifying

Sometimes I think Chinese are good at simplifying things too much. All Chinese people strongly believe (and have been told by doctors) that they shouldn't have pets when they're pregnant. Just now I was talking about giving away my cats to some of the students here and one of the students said she couldn't have them because she wanted to get pregnant. I told her that the book that I'm reading on Child Psychology and Development doesn't say anything about a problem with pets. She asked me to show her so I looked on-line for some information and all it said was that the litter box should be cleaned once a day, a pregnant woman should stay away from an outdoor cat (which don't exist here in Dalian cause it's impossible to let them out and back in living in an apartment), the pets should go to the veterinarian regularly and get their vaccinations, and they should help the pet get used to the idea of having a baby. So I think that Chinese people are just simplifying too much, it's too much of a hassle to teach so many people about how to have a baby properly with a pet so instead they are just told that they shouldn't do it period.

http://www.kidsdirect.net/BD/infants/pets.htm

Language

I'm outside simply staring
I can see the wood in the door
Stare into it's splintery face
Even hear voices from inside
Laughter and screams pour out
But I simply can't reach them

For I have no key
no screwdriver, no bulldozer
No large man to pound through
a small woman
while strong in my own
The other 4 doors all had keys
of some kind at least

The plastic door had a baby key
Small enough for me to crawl through
The next door took some time
For it's locks were many
But each one unlocked allowed for ease
In the opening of the last two doors

But this one is different
This door has a mind of it's own
That is stronger and fiercer than my keys
So I must settle down for a long ride
In finding the secrets of the lock.

Hot Springs

"So, does your dad know about the earthquake in Sichuan?"
I just sit staring at him for a couple seconds before it occurs to me that I should answer. "Um, he doesn't live under a rock."
"I know, just answer me and I'll ask you another question."
"Um, yes. He reads the newspaper every day. Of course he knows about it."
"What was his response to it?"
"He and many other people sent me a message asking me if I was okay and if you and your family was okay. They think it's an awful natural disaster."
"Cause I think China's government is dealing really well with it but I don't know what people think from the outside."
"I also think China's government is dealing with it well. This isn't a political thing, it's a natural disaster so I think the whole world's pretty much looking at it from the same view."
"Malaysia also had the earthquake and they didn't deal with it well at all, they didn't let the UN in or America help them."
"Yes, but that's what they were doing before the earthquake too. They didn't have a good relationship with the UN or America to begin with."
"Yes, but this is different. A lot of people were affected by this."
"This is true. I think that as far as what people think of the earthquake we are happy with the way the Chinese government dealt with it but I think some are scared about how the government is dealing with the three gorges dam in relation to the after shocks."
"Cause there were a lot of after shocks that went through it. There's nothing to worry about. It's only affecting the smaller branches of the Three Gorges, not the big part and the smaller branches have already been evacuated."
"Are you sure? I know they sent for a lot of dam experts from Europe."
"They want to make certain that it's okay."

That was our conversation at dinner today as Cam and I escaped from the rest of the Salon to stuff ourselves at a restaurant (so we could get some more food than them, we were both starving). Today we woke up at 9am and the four of us (my mother-in-law, aunt-in-law, Cam and I) got ready to go to PuLan Dian's Hot Springs. Last night, after a small lecture about how I should react differently around the Salon boys, I finally decided to go with them. I think I'm really glad that I decided to go with them. Overall it was a really awesome experience. There's only one thing that I don't understand at all.

We spent the first two hours on the bus trying to get individuals to sing songs to the whole bus. This is something that was a bit strange to me only because it's very different from my experience on an American bus ride. On an American bus ride I think we'd spend most of the time talking and sometimes a group of people on the bus will start singing a song and a bunch of others will chime in. But I've never seen a host on the bus whose job is to entertain the rest and tries to convince others on the bus to sing into the microphone to the whole bus. It was fun to listen to them but I can't sing so I couldn't really participate in it as much as I'd be able to if a group of people were singing. So after this half karaoke half singing entertainment we finally arrived at a restaurant in PuLan Dian (a neighborhood in the suburbs of Dalian about an hour from here). After lunch we went to the Hot Springs where we separated with the boys and us girls went upstairs to change. The whole time I was thinking to myself that I was glad I was a foreign woman otherwise I wouldn't have been able to participate in anything. Chinese people wouldn't know a tampon if I gave it to them. They've never seen them and wouldn't have any idea how to use them. So fortunately I did know what a tampon was and could therefore participate in the swimming events. We changed and took a shower (in the nude, an experience that used to make me uncomfortable but which I've gotten used to). Then we changed into our bathing suits and after walking around for a while with "see, that's white" and other such comments about the whiteness of my skin (which is a compliment here in China) the Salon finally got used to it and relaxed a bit. The girls all went outside to sit in the springs (my first time, it was a bit oily feeling but it was kind of nice and much cleaner than some of the swimming pools I've seen here). Actually this was my first official time in a hot springs and my first official time swimming in China. What I learned was that Chinese people can't swim. Now I guess you have to take into consideration the fact that I was on a swimming team when I was younger (maybe 10? not sure how old exactly). However you also have to understand that I was a pretty awful swimmer on the team. After swimming a couple of laps in the pool I went over to sit with Cam and he offered to race me across the pool (width wise not length wise as there were no lap lanes). I beat him no problem and the boys started lining people up to race me. I beat every one of them until I started getting tired. Later they claimed that I was the best swimmer of the 30 of them (which is something that would never happen with any group of 30 in the States). I was the only woman in the group who knew how to swim at all. The other 7 girls had absolutely no idea how to swim and some of them had never been in a pool before. There were 2 other boys who didn't know how to swim at all either. This simply made me want to learn how to teach people to swim. I know how to swim but teaching someone else is a bit different. I tried a little bit but it didn't exactly work. I think swimming is a really important thing to be able to do, there are too many situations in which it would be a good idea (or even life saving) to know. The other thing that I still to this moment don't understand is that when we were swimming in the swimming pool they made sure that we all wore swimming caps. First of all the caps were not our western caps (of course) they were cloth caps which were barely stuck to your head at all and most people didn't even wear all of their hair in the cap. The caps were so flimsy that almost every time I dove into the pool or did anything with any sort of speed the cap would come off. They said the reason for the caps was because the chlorine water is bad for your hair. Actually I think they're probably right to some extent. However, I've never in my life worn a cap into a swimming pool unless it was for a swimming race (when we used to keep our hair in caps for speed) and I've definitely never been forced to wear a cap into the pool. So my comment to Cam was "so THAT's why our hair is like this and your hair is so much different!"

Mourning

Everyone's in mourning over the earthquake today. In three of my classes we spent the majority of the time talking about it; teaching vocab on it, trying to discuss it. One of the students I talked to had obviously been spending a lot of time watching TV about it because she was able to tell me all of these stories. She told me about 3 people who were saved or escaped. One was a 12 year old girl. During the earthquake her parents died in the fall of their home and part of the building fell on her leg trapping her inside the home. But instead of giving up she decided that she wanted to get out and go on with her life so she found a piece of glass and cut her leg off before escaping out of the home. My student also told me that the rescuers spend around 30 hours to rescue one person. So they are working very slowly, sometimes too slowly but they have no other choice. If they work faster or if there are too many people the buildings could just fall and crush the remainding people. My student told me about a 61 year old who escaped in good health and about a 57 year old man who lived for the 6 days (before being rescued) drinking his own pee and eating paper that he could get to (for there was nothing else around to get to). He also escaped with hardly a problem, only a slight skin problem which was easily resolved. Today at 2:28 there was 3 minutes of silence where all of the work stopped in town, all of the vehicles stopped to honk their horns and all of the sirens in the city went off. I was at work in class and hardly knew what was going on at first as an announcement came on (which never happens at work) in Chinese, I was only teaching one student and when she got up and crossed herself I knew there was nothing I could do but at least respect her and stand up in silence myself. I knew it must have something to do with the earthquake after all it's the only thing that's been on the news for the past couple of days. Throughout China those three minutes were absolutely the same and they were played over and over again throughout the day and into the night as throughout the country people cried in mourning for the earthquake victims. Tonight my friends called to invite me to a donation party at one of the bars. We tried to go but it was absolutely packed to the brim so we didn't get to go in. My friend told me that she had invited a friend of hers who works for the radio station but her friend had refused to go saying that her boss had given them three days off (as the government is taking control of the radio stations to broadcast news on Sichuan). And while giving these three days off her boss had told them they weren't allowed to go out and have fun as they were to go home and reflect on the awful disaster. Every company and city in China is competing to contribute the most money to the rescuers and every day different numbers of victims and of money donated are broadcast. The TV channel that we have here at home has done nothing at all but continuously broadcast about the event, I think that almost everything said about the issue and every person saved has been broadcast to China. It seems that the country isn't to go on with their work but is to sit in mourning. In the meantime my friend told me that the 3 Gorges Dam is under huge threat of overflowing (which would mean the destruction of at least one huge city of Chongqing - about 34 million people). She told me that the city isn't being evacuated but that there are experts being flown in to examine the dam and make sure that the after shocks from the earthquake won't make the dam overflow or break. I can't even imagine how this country would react if that were to happen.

On a different note I've seen a boom over the past couple weeks, of cars. There are more cars here every day I stay. I've never seen such a boom, every day the mall has more and more "parking spaces" on the sidewalks and streetsides around it, aside from the full parking lot and parking spaces. Every day I see more traffic and it takes me longer to get home. It seems like a strange thing to experience but there truly is a car boom going on these days in China.

Uneasing Peace

Just this morning we had two little beings running around practically tearing the place up. Now? No longer. The two tyrants from this morning are in complete hiding. Who are they? My cats, Niao Niao and Dan Dan. I finally took them to be fixed and they are anything but happy right now. One is hiding in a corner of the room almost completely covered by the curtain and the other (while walking around a bit more) is hiding in my room, happiest when we leave him be. Why did you have to fix both of them? Wouldn't it be fine to just fix one? After all with one fixed they can't get pregnant. Yes, but then if the female got out she could get impregnated by another cat. So just fix the female. Yes, but then if the male got out he could impregnate thousands of cats. Ah, so that's how it is. The people here don't understand. Having more cats in a country like this should be a sin. We can barely take care of any of them as it is with the way people react to cats here. Chinese people (for whatever reason) seem to mostly all hate cats. I asked a room full of about 50 people who had a cat the other day and besides myself there was only one girl who raised her hand.

So now their mother's sick (I've got a cold) and they're completely ignoring me.

Besides that today I packed up a bunch more things in my room into boxes and tried to take Cam's bicycle to be fixed. Unfortunately I was told it can't be fixed and can't be ridden cause it's missing a part. So I decided to give it to the bike shop. I got told off by my mother-in-law who insisted I should have taken it to the parts shop to be sold for parts. We'll see if I can again tomorrow, I have to take my bike to the shop to get air. Then I can sell my bike to a friend of mine tomorrow.

As you can see lately it's been a bit busy, although we're getting things done it still seems to be going slowly. One at a time. While I was here doing these things Cam was in Hunan getting his new passport, sending off a present to my parents and getting a notarized form saying that he's single (which he needs for the new visa).

I hope my cats will get along soon cause that'll probably help with the recovery.

Donations

Donations. I think in some situations donations are a really good idea but in some situations they totally aren't. In the US there are systems set up to handle donations and get them into the right hands. Of course there are other systems of donations that don't get things into the right hands but you can always find a good organization or system to work things right. But here in China I really don't believe that donations are all that great an idea. First of all who are you going to give things to? The countryside people who are the poorest? Sounds like a great idea until you realize that the countryside people are all farmers. They grow all of their own food so they don't need food donations. The food they don't eat themselves gets sold for things they need (which really aren't that many things) - clothes, electricity (which there are ways of stealing if you don't have enough money for), and health supplies (like toothpaste, toothbrush and other things - which they can make themselves to some extent). The things the farmers need are good schooling systems, good education of birth control, good education of better farming or health techniques or other crops to sell. These aren't things we can donate. Who else are you going to give to? The poor. How to give to the poor in a country where there is no organization for the poor. There are no places that give food to the poor. Plus there is always the problem of cycles. Like giving money to the poor. If you give money to the poor in many places it does absolutely nothing cause they simply have to give it to those higher than them in the chain of work. Or it teaches them that begging can make them rich and wealthy people and so it thus encourages the system. The more people who beg the more money we get, ok, so lets go out and have a zillion children and make them all beggars too. There are tons of people who have that idea and it often works because people give them money. The same would happen with food and clothes, if they realize they can get food and clothes without even having to work for it it will simply make them even lazier if there are no systems of organization to bound them by. There are many in need but how to get things to them is a really difficult thing to do. My mother-in-law just taught me recently how to recycle things here. She collects all the bottles, boxes, tins and cans and takes them over to just outside our apartment complex where there is always someone sitting waiting for us to give them things so they can sell to others or sell to the recycling plants. As for clothes? Even my mother-in-law just tells me to throw them away. I do my best to give them to my aunt or mother-in-law who can wear them as second hand but beyond that who knows what to do with them here. There are no PTA Thrift Shops or any places like that where we can just give them away to be sold again. I think that there are tons of things needed here but the things needed the most are education, health and schooling related, not donation related. I met a doctor from a Chinese orphanage a while ago who told me that the best way he knew for me to help was to learn Chinese perfectly and go to help translate at the orphanages, they don't have anyone who can translate there and it makes things really difficult. This is an idea that I still believe to be a really good one and one that I hope to do in the future (when my Chinese is good enough).

Peace Corps. This is yet another organization that is highly debated in my mind and one that I could never convince myself to join. The Peace Corps is run by the government. So you are helping the government's ideas of how the world should become better. Often time these ideas are completely worthless. For example, teaching farming techniques to a group of people who have been farming for hundreds and hundreds of years without any acknowledgement of their own systems already available. It's like a child going up to an old man and trying to teach him new tricks. The old man simply thinks to himself "it's an idea but one I can't learn and one of no use to me, after all I've been living like this for years and nothing will change." Trying to teach my mother-in-law new ideas is about the same, she always tells me she's too old and dumb to learn new things. First of all my parents are older than her and learn every day how to do new things or about new ideas. Second of all it's a mind set, she thinks she's too old to learn new things so she is. Just like many areas. I remember in India people would try to teach the native Indians about the Ganga without any acknowledgement of their own beliefs and customs with relation to the sacred river. It's absolutely useless to try. I'm sure this doesn't hold true for all places but even if we think we're helping why is our way always the best? I'll give you an example. Before our companies brought bottles, boxes and bags into a country like India they never had these products. I remember going on a picnic with some native Indians and everything we brought - the bowls, the cooking supplies, the pots to hold the food was later thrown into the river, after all it was all made of clay or leaves (which we used as plates). And how could these things possibly hurt the river? But now that the west is dragging in new products with new containers, the Indians have no idea how to treat these new containers and it just makes a dirty messy place. After all they have no ideas for systems of dealing with trash and landfills. They have had no use for these things in the past and why would you need these systems for clay pots, bowls and leaf dishes? So a lot of the time an idea like trying to teach other societies how to do things without learning about their society first isn't the way to go, only a few times is it actually a good way to deal with things.

Wow, I didn't know how many strong opinions I have about things until now! I guess I've actually formed some opinions over the years of traveling.

Hunan travels

We had a really awesome night last night. We tried to go to a zillion of the bars that we usually go to all of them were dead because of the rain. Finally Cam went to a new bar owned by one of his friends called the 66 bar. It was a crazy place. It looked almost like a tavern inside and it was completely packed! The music was ok, not too great (as is per norm here in China). But we still managed to have fun and my friend Mandy got to dance up on a tiny stage. In the bar they have cameras and they would sweep them over the crowd and occasionally rest them on a group of people. So when my friend got up they kept the camera on her, she was in the spotlight for the couple of minutes that she could continue dancing (before getting too exhausted to keep going).

If there's anything I hate it's dubbing. Chinese dubbing is especially awful. When Chinese actors dubb a movie they seem to do a great job of taking absolutely all of the emotion out of the whole thing. You can be watching a person scream at another (in their body language) but what you're hearing is "How could you do that? What is wrong with you? How did you manage to kill my cat!?" in the most monotone voice possible. It's awful. Even if I don't understand the language of a movie I would MUCH rather watch it with subtitles than dubbed.

My husband's off today on another adventure thus leaving me all alone to study (which I'm starting to get into) and possibly watch some movies at home. He left for Hunan, his hometown, so he can get a notarized letter saying that he's single and so he can get a new passport (as his will expire just after the required 8 months that the Embassy gives for having a fiance visa). We figured it'd be better to get a new one now rather than have to come back to China at a certain time.

I've been reading this awesome textbook. It's called "A Child's World" and it's a really awesome textbook about child psychology and child development. I'm really attached to it, it's almost like reading a really awesome novel (that you don't want to put down until you get to the end). I've been spending a lot of time reading it.

Besides all of this I've been SUPER busy, having to pack everything up and figure out where things go, still having to fill out visa forms and do things for the visa, thinking about having a wedding ceremony. Sheesh!

Always Continue Learning

Sometimes I think Chinese people don't want to continue learning. At my school there are Chinese tutors and English teachers. I think before and after almost every class I learn at least one thing from the other foreign teachers. Today my new word was "sachet" meaning a packet. Apparently it's a British word but as an American I had never heard of it before. Aside from these thousands of new words that I learn from the British and Australians working here I also learn more about business as I have to teach business classes about things like "blue chips" and other such things that as a student in the US I never had to deal with. Plus the people in the foreign office are constantly looking at the news and spreading it around the office from one newspaper or another. But the Chinese staff is completely different. I've sat in on multiple of their classes and never once have I been asked to check their pronunciation or their definition of a word if they're slightly puzzled about it. Even if I do call them over to tell them one thing or another it's not then broadcast to the class (as one might think it would be). They keep the thought to themselves. I was just sitting in on a class and the teacher told one student that author could be used for anything, plays, operas, paintings, anything. Understanding Chinese I knew that what she was saying was not right, as we don't use the word "author" for everything. So after a couple minutes I called her over to tell her but she never told the student. In fact there is only one Chinese tutor who ever asks us about how to say things or the meaning of things. Why is this? In class I most readily admit that if a student is asking me a question that is too technical about grammar they should be asking their Chinese teacher, not me. Cause all of the Chinese teachers have to learn everything about grammar that a native English speaker doesn't learn. Why do the Chinese teachers keep to themselves while the foreign teachers are constantly learning? One hypothesis of my own is that it's cause of the way they learn in school, they are FORCED to learn things in school. So who in their right mind would want to continue learning after school. Thousands of Chinese people don't like to read anything more than a newspaper, forget a book. (Fortunately my husband is a bit different only because he didn't graduate from high school, so he still enjoys reading and teaching himself. Seems a bit backwards to me.) The other thing is they have so much "face". I hate this idea, if they were to ask us about their work then they would "lose face". Which is total bull. Basically face is like embarrasment a little, when they lose face they get embarrassed and others may think differently or worse of them. But I think the idea of face gets way too much weight, embarrassment is a very little version of this huge idea.

Chinese people and pets

As usual I'm pretty awful at naming my blogs so if anyone has any suggestions for any of them please let me know.

Lately I've been having a bit of trouble with my name. You see I hardly ever use my first name here in China, in fact they call me "Dar Hua", a combination of my middle name and my Chinese name 罗美花. Let me know if you can see that, I don't know if some of you can. The pinyin (English phonetics) for that would be Luo MeiHua. For those of you keeping any tabs my Chinese name has changed. My old name was 李美花 (Li MeiHua) but when I got married my husband decided that even though Chinese people don't usually change their names when they get married I should change mine. So now I'm part of his family, the 罗 (Luo) family. So recently the trouble I've been having is remembering to sign my first name, after all the people that call me by that name are in the USA and most of them I haven't seen in a long time now.

So I have two rants for today. One is my mother-in-law and the other is Chinese people and pets. First of all my mother-in-law. I really love being with the woman, she's a great person but I find it extremely hard to be around her sometimes. Especially when she wants to talk to me. I don't mean that in a rude way it's just that there's barely anything for me to talk to her about and what she does complain about are things that I, by FAR don't need to be worrying about. First of all she complains about what I eat, as I've said before, she's constantly telling me how I should make my snacks. "This popcorn has too much salt, you should put sugar in it." "These grits would be much better with sugar." She also must feed me, at every meal. If she doesn't feed me she gets a bit cranky. Every morning she asks me "Do you want me to make you something to eat?" "I don't have time to eat." "Oh" she says dejectedly. And also every evening when I come home at 9pm she insists that I should eat a meal, which I don't want to do cause I'm not that hungry. The second thing she always complains about is money. Now I'm the type of person who has money and doesn't spend it at all from some kind of hidden fear. I don't need someone who is even more money-thrifty than I am telling me not to spend money. I need someone like my husband to help me loosen up on my spending a little bit but just enough to stay normal. This week I've stayed home every day, took buses (for 1 kuai) everywhere, and had a total of 20 kuai in my pocket every day and when I came home today she was complaining about my rent. Talk about a bit stressful for me!

Chinese people and pets are absolutely insane. Put it this way, I have two cats. The number of Chinese people I've seen do stupid things with my cats is a bit nutty. First of all they'll lock the cats outside of their kitty litter box and then get upset with them when they go to the bathroom on something. Obviously if you were locked out of your bathroom for a long time you'd have to go to the bathroom on something! Second they love to play with things and see the cats follow whatever they're playing with with their eyes. For example they'll play with a piece of string just to watch the cat's reaction. But then when the cat pounces on the string (a normal reaction for a cat) they'll complain that the cat pounced on them! My friend just bought a Golden Python Snake, everyone's been begging him not to. It's his first ever snake. When they take it out of the cage my friend squirms, he freaked out the first time they had to feed it and absolutely refuses to touch it half the time. The snake is currently 1.5 meters and it's a baby. It's supposed to grow to be 6 meters long. But don't worry folks, this snake doesn't bite. Oh, no, it constricts. So if it's pissed off all it has to do is wrap it's body around your neck and ... bye bye! Smart snake for a first, right? I was told in Australia if you have a snake that's that big you're supposed to sign up for classes on how to take care of the pet and it's definitely not supposed to be your first snake. The biggest thing that my friend didn't understand was why we were trying to talk him out of it when he first brought up the snake. "Are you scared of it?" he asked us. Um, no, I've spent enough time around snakes not to be scared of them. "But I have the money for it." That's completely besides the point but that's the most common answer with Chinese people. What in the world does money have to do with knowing how to bring up a snake properly besides having enough money to feed and house it? Also, unlike many snake owners in the US who may even have their own room dedicated to snakes, this guy has an apartment the size of my living room and 2 dogs (a German Shephard and a Saint Bernard)!

Welcome to the New Site!

Welcome to my new site! I have officially named this one in a similar way as the last one so first, a translation. "El Chino" as most of you may have guessed is "Chinese" in Spanish and "WaiGuo Ren" means "Foreigner" in Chinese. Again, the reason for my doing this is these are the languages that I have dedicated a lot of my life to and wish to continue pursuing. You may note that this time I have left out the Hindi as while that is a strong part of my life and definitely changed me forever, it is a language that I have not embraced as fully as the other three. I was originally trying to get an Expat Blogsite but it seems that there aren't many formal ones that are of any good here in China so I quickly gave up on that idea.

As a short introduction of myself the reason why I was trying to find an Expat Blogsite is because my life from now on will be devoted completely to Expats, whether it may be myself (as an Expat here in China) or my husband (as an Expat in the US) or both of us while we are traveling.