Adventure is out there!

Some days I go to do something and I just know that it's going to turn into a blog post later.  Today was one of those days.

Lora and I ventured out into the -20 F weather this morning with the plan of going to 中央大街(Central Street), buying some yummy bread, and seeing the Songhua River (since we've lived in Harbin for 5 months now and have yet to visit it).

We hopped on the 114 bus and made our way to the back where we were able to get a seat (hooray!) for our impending 1 hour bus ride.  We were soon joined by a group of Chinese high school students who also happened to be going to Central Street.  We discovered they're staying at our college to take the art gaokao exam.  We chatted with them throughout the bus ride, and parted ways after we arrived at Central Street, but only after they bought us ice cream.

Because ice cream is the first thing I want to eat when surrounded by ice sculptures....

Hanging out with the violin sculpture

Lora and I bought our bread and walked in the direction of the river.  Here's the entrance to walk down to it.

Towers of ice

A plethora of people

 We slipped out on to the river, and soon realized that we had no idea what we had actually planned to do on the river when we decided to come.  So we walked around for a while, turning away many people asking us to pay to ride in their 马拉车 (horse-drawn carriage), and not really knowing what we were supposed to be doing.  We finally decided to just go onto the river and start walking.  Lora and I trekked across about 2/3 of a mile of frozen river and made it to what we eventually realized was Sun Island.  As soon as we climbed the stairs off the river, I felt like we had stepped into another world.  It was incredibly quiet and empty, which is eerie if you live in China, because here you are always surrounded by noise and people.  We wandered around for a bit, enjoying the peacefulness, and the Russian architecture, then we decided we were getting cold, so we left.

I would be the one to find the music related statue

Lora and I booked it back across the river to combat the cold, had a lovely dinner at Pizza Hut (that place is fancy in China!), and went on a 20 minute expedition to find the bus stop where our desired bus was located.  We asked multiple people where our bus stop was, and literally chased after a bus for a while before we found it.  After our exhausting day of walking in the cold, I practically fell asleep as soon as we got on the bus, even though I was standing, and then actually fell asleep after about a half hour when I was able to acquire a seat.  Now it's not even 7 pm and I'm looking forward to 9 so I can justifiably go to bed! :)

If you care to see the Songhua River expedition in 'action', please enjoy these videos! 

How Sweet It Is

So, it's the Christmas season.  Most people would say that the Christmas season is over since Christmas day has already come and gone.  I, however, had classes, and finals to grade, and grades to input leading up to and following Christmas day, so that left no time for something I actually wanted to do: celebrate with students in my apartment.  So I'm going to go with the 12 days of Christmas idea.

I invited a small group of students from my TCFL class over tonight and here's what we did, in pictures.

Gifts of beautifully wrapped apples

First, some of my students gave me gifts upon arriving, and I made sure everyone had something to drink.

Then....

My wonderful Mama sent me a package that had sugar cookie mix in it!

 That's right!  We baked sugar cookies!

Stirring.

One of my favorite things about baking with Chinese students is how they will all take turns so well.  Every person got to "have a try" at stirring the cookies.

Cutting out cookies

I wish I had a video of them fighting to be the first one to put their cookie cutter into a freshly rolled-out piece of dough.  It was hilarious.

Decorating the cookies with colored sugar also sent from Mama!

Enjoying the cookies!

While the cookies were baking in batches, we sang songs and played games.

Singing a Chinese song together

One of the games we played was where you stand in a circle and count, one at a time.  (e.g. Sarah: "1", Erin: "2", Andrew: "3", and so on).  Sounds easy, right?  Well, every time the number is a multiple of 7, or has the number 7 as a part of it, you clap and don't say the number.  If you screw up, you have a "punishment" where you have to sing a song, or dance.  Here's one:

After a couple of hours, my students informed me, "it is late".  So then began the customary picture taking.

Then we had a hug circle, which was a China first for me.  Chinese people rarely hug.

And then it was time to say goodbye.

There is only one cookie left.  We ate a lot of cookies...

To eat, or not to eat...I didn't

A friend in my heart

So, somehow it's been a month since I last posted.  Wah!!! A month!!??!!!

I don't really have an excuse, other than grading mountains of midterms, teaching class, then turning around and preparing classes for finals, meeting with students, and trying to not be exhausted.  (I also didn't have internet for a while in there....but I think I've fixed the problem, and I'm back! yay!) Break will soon be here, and I'm trying not to look for it with too much anticipation.

You're probably wondering at the title of my post.  One thing that I've been doing is building friendships.

In one of my classes (okay, in my favorite class...) I taught my students a bunch of words to use to describe people's appearance.  It was hilarious, because I brought in my own clothing, and showed them the different hairstyles on myself.  The whole class is now skilled at using the words "v-neck", "blonde", and many others.

I gave the class a homework assignment to describe their best friend's appearance.
Here was one student's answer.

Everyone has friends in their life, but which is the most unforgettable one?  If you ask me, I will tell you who is the person in my heart.
She is a good-looking girl.  She is the one with long, blond hair.  She has blonde [I think she means brown] and green eyes.  She is the most active person in our class.  Her eye full of love and always shining.  She often wearing jeans, v-neck sweater, and boots.  She don't always wearing jewelry, but she always wearing a scarf because of the cold weather.  Do you know who is the girl?  She is my best teacher from other country.  Her name is in my heart.

Can I just say, it made my heart melt.  I love Chinese students.  That's all.

Gifts

If your love language is gifts, you would feel very loved here. (Or if it's words of affirmation, but that's a topic for another day).

My love language, however, is not gifts.  So, though I feel loved when I receive gifts from people to an extent, mostly I feel awkward and confused.  (This is, of course, excepting birthdays and other holidays where gifts are expected).

I can't even tell you the number of times that I have just been walking around campus and a student I even vaguely know sees me, runs over, and shoves a small gift in my hand.  Usually, it's food.  One time I got off a bus with another teacher, and my student saw us and shoved bottles of juice into our hands, smiled, and said goodbye.  Another time I was in the cafeteria.  I saw a student, waved hello, and then sat down at my table.  Next thing I know, she comes up from behind, hands me a bottle of milk tea, smiles, and walks away.

Chinese people also bring gifts when they come to your house.  I'm usually better at handling this one since I expect it.  Fruit is a very common gift.  Here's what I received from some students who came over last night:

A bag of tangerines, and a box of milk

I am also frequently given gifts in class.  When I walk around at the beginning of class to talk to students, often someone will say, "Here, Teacher!  Take this!" and a piece of candy, or bread, or tofu strip seasoned with zi ran will be shoved into my hand.  I always try my best to refuse the gift, but inevitably it gets put into my hand, or my mouth.  Today in class I was given two pieces of candy, and was made to take a bite of a roasted sweet potato (which was delicious, by the way).

Culturally, I am almost always confused when these things happen.  In America, students don't just randomly give you things like this.  What student after class goes up to their teacher and says "Here, have this chocolate" and then walks away without even waiting for a "thank you"?  No student, that's who. 

My initial response, as an American, is to thank the other person profusely for the gift (as we like to say "thank you" a lot).  Chinese people do not say thank you nearly as much as we do.  So I say thank you and get the Chinese version of "you're welcome" which is "no thanks", or "it doesn't matter".  Culturally, from my perspective, they're not looking for thanks when they give a gift.  That's really difficult for me.  I never know how much I'm supposed to say thank you, if at all.  I often am oblivious as to what to do or say, so I just hope that I don't offend anyone by any action or inaction I do when receiving a gift, and can play the "dumb foreigner" card if I do.

I dare you to randomly give someone (like a teacher or coworker) a small gift this week.  Don't plan the gift too much.  Think in the moment.  Let me know how that goes.  I'm betting they'll be pretty surprised.

Noodles

Last night we watched Kung Fu Panda.  I have to say, that movie has whole new levels of meaning for me after living in China for 3 months.  One of the things that resonated with me most was the line from Po's father, "We are noodle folk.  Broth runs through our veins."

Since coming to China I have eaten an overwhelmingly large amount of noodles.  I love noodles.  I eat them cold, stir-fried, and, my favorite, in a soupy broth with vegetables (of which there are about a bazillion different varieties).  There are cut noodles, pulled noodles, rice noodles, potato noodles, and any other kind of noodle you could imagine.  I gladly and willingly eat them all.

Eating noodles is not for the fainthearted.  Have you ever tried to eat a super thick, 2-foot long noodle with chopsticks?  It's a challenge, and it can be really time consuming.  I still am trying to figure out how Chinese people do it without getting splatters of broth all over the table.  Perhaps I shall never know.

All that to say, I really like to eat noodles.  In fact, they are now pretty much the only thing I eat in the cafeteria.  I usually only get rice when I go out to restaurants.  However, the portions of noodles that are served here are, in my opinion, huge.  I have never been able to consume an entire bowl of noodles in the 40 minutes I have for lunch every day, and most of the time I'm eating as fast as I possibly can, and am usually pretty full by the end of the meal, and yet there are still enough noodles for a whole meal.  (I'm currently eating a bowl of leftover noodles as I type).

This all changed last weekend.  Cathy and I walked hungrily to the dining hall for lunch.  We traipsed on up to the 3rd floor where I knew they had a dish I wanted. "he ye fen".  It's kind of like ma la tang, if you've ever had it, but more peanutty, and without the "it is very bad for you" warnings from students. 

The delicious dish is served to you in the huge black pot it's cooked in.  The yummy broth is absolutely filled with about 5 different kinds of noodles, cabbage, seaweed, tofu strips, black fungus, and other leafy vegetables.  My favorite part is that you can have a little bowl on the side for sauce to dip the boiling hot noodles in to cool off and flavor.  I use the peanut sauce.  It's delicious.

So, this day, I was very hungry, and kept eating and eating away.  I hope I talked to Cathy, but I honestly don't remember because I was so absorbed in the noodle-y goodness.  Before I knew it, I dipped my chopsticks into the broth to grab a noodle and to my absolute shock, I couldn't find one!  I gleefully ordered Cathy, "put your chopsticks in my bowl!", which she agreed to with a look of confusion on her face.  After her, "wow, you've eaten a lot" congratulations, I practically shouted, "no, you don't understand, there are no noodles left!" Cathy graciously rejoiced in my achievement with me.  I then found one last little noodle.

The Last Noodle

 And then I ate the last noodle.

The face of a full and happy person.  Don't be deceived by the amount of broth.  The pot was overflowing with noodles when I started. 

All in all, it was a good day.

Sound of Music

Can you perform on Wednesday, October 24th?
Okay.  What should we perform?
Something like singing, and dancing.
Okay.  Who will we perform for?
The freshman English majors.

The above is essentially all of the information we had to go on for our "performance".

We had to decide on a song.  When you sing, you should always begin with do re mi, right?  We certainly did.

We put together our song and dance for Do Re Mi from The Sound of Music a couple weeks before, practiced a couple times, wore our coordinating outfits, and walked over to the main building on Wednesday.  We walked in to see students dressed in suits directing us to our seats.  We were in jeans.  Shoot.  The auditorium was absolutely filled with glow-stick-waving students.  These were all of the students in the foreign language department.  There were flashing lights.  The emcees came out on stage in suits and evening gowns.  We squirmed anxiously in our seats as the performances began.

As groups came out on stage to perform, we began to realize that this was something of a talent show.  There was a band who sang Green Day, some traditional Chinese singing, choreographed dancing, skits, and more.  We became less anxious as the time wore on.  In spite of the fact that we could understand almost nothing, it was really entertaining, and occasionally completely hilarious.

Then the student who was assisting us brought us backstage.  As we were waiting in the dressing room, someone on our team decided we needed to have a cool way to come out.  This, of course, required me to do two things in front of about a thousand people that I don't really feel comfortable doing.  1. Last minute changes, and 2. "Beat boxing."

Adrienne told me, "Erin, there will be some times as your leader when I tell you to do something, and you just have to do it.  This is one of those times."

Awesome.

So on stage we went.  This is what happened.  Enjoy!
Watch Here!

Um...what?

So, in China, there are, believe it or not, things written in English all over the place.  Seeing things in English makes it almost seem like you're in America, until you actually look at them and realize that it makes no sense, or it is not what you expected to see.  Some of the English is Chinglish (English in its directly-translated-from-Chinese form).  Some of it is an attempt to look cool because there's English on your product.  And some of it is just hilarious. 
Here are a a few examples taken from my own belongings.

Instructions on how to use a tea pot.

 If it's too small for you, it says "Place the suitable amounts of tea leaves.  Add the suitable amounts of boiling water.  Cover the kettle lid, then you can drink it.  The teapot's lid can isolate the used tea leaves in designs.  Easily cleaning & washing it."

A little flashcard book

This is actually pretty grammatically correct.  I just don't understand why it's on here.

My pencil case.

 It says: "Junior Dream
When I was a lonely teenager who accompanied me?
 Kite?  a dog.  or book bag?"

I think it's incredibly thought-provoking.

Slippers

You're probably thinking, "Oh, Nike!  Why is this on here?" 

Please look more closely at the picture.

Oh China...