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.