We're not in China anymore...

America is a little different from China.

Today I...

Eavesdropped on airport conversations (on accident) because they were in English and I could understand them.

Hugged my parents.

Rode in a car that wasn't a taxi.

Stood outside and listened to cicadas and the two cars that drove by.

Slept on a bed that felt like fluffy clouds.

Ate a bagel. With cheese.  Said cheese was neither incredibly fake nor cheddar.

Did laundry in a washer (with liquid laundry soap) AND a dryer.

Walked barefoot outside on the grass.

Talked to people in America on a cellphone.

Talked to people in America in person.

Had to remind myself that toilet paper goes in the toilet.

Didn't have to mop my bathroom after I took a shower.

Cooked on a stove.

This is so surreal.

China Nights

Cathy, Lora, and I went to a night market tonight.  I've been wanting to go for a while, and since we only have two weeks left in Harbin, time is running out! I wish I could explain everything in a way to help you understand what an Asian night market is like.  It's unlike anything I have ever experienced in America.  All of the people, the noises, the smells are too great in number to count.  It's so busy, but not a hurried busy.  You can't hurry through a Chinese market.  There's too many people moseying along. 

So, I'll try to help you understand through pictures and videos of the whole experience. 

The first thing we did was buy a bunch of different street foods for our dinner.  I had a slice of watermelon on a stick, delicious spicy doufu (tofu), and a deep fried huge potato curl on a stick.

The doufu lady frying the yummy doufu!

Enjoying the doufu

Fried potato on a stick.  So delicious it has a heavenly glow.

After sating our hunger, we perused the hundreds of stalls selling things like ginormous stuffed animals, housewares, clothing (including undergarments), awesome lighters, and bejeweled headbands. 

I bought a Chinglish T-shirt.  I've been wanting one for a long time, and it was pretty inexpensive.  It also makes absolutely no sense.

Along the top, it says: "Moussy glmaucw with an nupaarlelled negry that enmacred the world"

I also got an adorable dress for super cheap.  It was funny looking through the piles of clothes at the shop I purchased the dress from because the owner of the stall would toss things he thought we would like our way all while shouting at the people walking by to come to his stall.  Basically he was telling them "Look, the foreigners are shopping here.  You should buy my things too." 

Foreigners = Free Advertisement

After almost three hours of walking around, we were exhausted.  So we trudged our way back through the crowds of people and then ran to catch the 104 bus so we could get back to school.

My attempt at a picture of the crowd of people behind us

I had more bus video, but the internet is not happy, so it will not upload.  I'll try again later!

May Flowers

Spring basically happened overnight.  One day everything was dry and barren, still recovering from the April snows, and the next grass was popping out of the ground and buds were starting to appear on trees and bushes.

Cathy and I decided to walk around campus to capture some of the beauty.

First, the lovely Cathy on one of the tree-lined paths that leads away from our apartment building.

Opening blossoms

A shot of Teaching Building 1 (where our office is located and where I teach 3 classes)

Stopping to smell the flowers.

Our willow-lined road

Okay, not necessarily pretty, but it's nice to see our apartment building not covered in snow!

Culture

First off, I apologize for not blogging for the entire month of April.  It was absolutely insane, and I have no idea where that month went.  Maybe it was the teaching on 2 separate weekends thing and planning and administering midterm exams.  At any rate, I'm back and reflecting on culture.  I return to America in less than 2 months, and that has gotten me thinking about all of the things that are different between these two countries.

As you probably know, life in China is a little different than life in America. I'm pretty accustomed to Chinese cultural rules at this point. I have embraced many of these rules as my own. This means I'm probably a little fuzzy on the American ones. So here's a heads up to my friends back in the U.S.A. Feel free to (gently) reprimand me if you notice me doing these things in a couple months.

1. Standing too close
   Personal bubbles don't exist in China. There's a whole heck of a lot of people here. Sometimes you're on a bus literally crammed full of people and you have to have your body shoved up against a complete stranger with your arm reaching around some man's waist to be able to hold onto a bar to keep from being flung into other people by the jerking of the bus. This is totally okay.
2. Pushing
   This is linked into the “standing too close” thing. Again, China has a lot of people. If you want to get on or off a bus, order food, or enter or exit a building, you have to be pushy. Literally. If you don't push people or jostle for your position, you're not going to get what you need. Sorry in advance.
3. Being unable to stand in line
   And this goes with the “pushing” thing. People don't really stand in lines here. You kind of form small mobs and then push to the front. People will cut in front of you if you're not assertive enough so you've just got to keep pushing forward. This also connects with “standing too close”. In the cases where there is something resembling a line, it is perfectly acceptable to be immediately behind the person in front of you. I understand that this is probably not the case in America unless things have completely changed in the last 10 months.
4. Linking arms or holding hands
   I often link arms or hold hands with my friends (girls, not boys) here. To be fair, I did this before, but after living in a culture where it is the norm, I'll probably be even more likely to forget that it's mostly not okay in America. So if you're not comfortable with me standing really close and holding your hand while I talk to you, just let me know.
5. Table Manners
   This mostly applies to eating out. I'm much more inclined to slurp. I've also become pretty adept at shoveling large amounts of food into my body in short periods of time as our lunch period is limited. So sometimes I might be more focused on the food than the conversation.
   Also, if you eat something with bones here, it is completely expected that you remove said bones from your mouth and pile them up on the table, not on a plate. The same is done with any tissues you use during the meal.
   Finally, at Chinese restaurants, you order a bunch of dishes and everyone shares. I like this a lot. I'm probably going to complain that we don't do this often in America. Please forgive me.
6. Being bad at speaking English
   Okay, this one's not a cultural thing. It's just something that will probably annoy you. I teach English and I try my hardest to maintain my grasp on correct grammar and a wide, intelligent vocabulary. However, I fail at that a lot of the time. A lot of my days are spent communicating with students whose first language does not have any verb tenses and therefore struggle with English and its gazillion verb tenses. I've gotten really good at communicating my ideas in English almost entirely in the present tense, simple future, and simple past since using other tenses often causes my students with a low English level to look at me with glazed-over eyes. Though I do still try out present continuous, present perfect, past perfect, and past continuous first, sometimes I just get myself grammatically confused. Please help me.
   I also apologize if I say things like “have a try”, “have a rest”, “just so-so”, and countless other Chinglish phrases that I probably don't even realize I use.

I hope you find this helpful and informative for the future. I will make cultural mistakes. Let's just laugh at them together and move on.

Mondays

I type this as I savor the last bites of my tiny little “french bread cake”, a gift from a student.

It's 8pm and I've just finished my night class.

I must admit, when I got my schedule for the semester I panicked at the words “night class”. Who honestly wants to teach a group of 41 Sophomore Finance students oral English at 6pm every week? Not me.

I've now taught this class for 3 weeks, and it has its challenges, but it's also been one of my best classes.

Monday nights have become special to me.

They've allowed me to be there when a friend needed English help.

They've given me sweet moments to chat with the awesome boys who always stay after class to work.

They've given me time to walk and talk with the boyfriend and girlfriend who sit in the front row and work really hard to improve their English.

They've given me the opportunity to run into 6 girls from my TCFL class from last semester (as well as their two Korean students).

Mondays are a gift.

I am blessed beyond measure.

Telephone

Speaking Chinese is a little nerve wracking face to face.  On the phone, it's terrifying.  If I can't see someone and fill in the multiple gaps in my Chinese with gestures, I am at a loss and freeze up.

The other night I was just hanging out in my apartment when I got a phone call.   I saw it was from the Chinese man Bethany and I played cards with in the Kunming airport.  I answered the phone with fear in my heart.  (He speaks absolutely zero English).  I was able to hold my own for a little bit.  We established that I am back in Harbin.  Then I heard him say "(chinese chinese) nu peng you (girlfriend)" and panicked for a moment until a girl started talking to me, and I realized it was his girlfriend.  We talked for a little until I had asked her to repeat something about 4 times and still had no idea what she was saying.  I eventually had to say "ting bu dong", and she hung up. 
I redeemed myself a little by sending him a text in Chinese. "对不起。 我在电话中说中文不好。 我很紧张。"  (I'm sorry.  I'm bad at speaking Chinese on the phone.  I feel very nervous.)
I was also worried that he would reply to my text message and I would have no way to know what it said, but he just sent me "说的很好" (You spoke very well), which I can read!  Yay for being a tiny bit literate!  I didn't respond to his message, because I felt that his statement was completely untrue.  I did very badly at speaking.

Then today I got a phone call from a number I didn't recognize:
Me: Hello?
Other person: Hello.  shi (chinese chinese) lao shi (chinese chinese chinese) tai guo (chinese chinese). (translation: is........teacher.........Thailand..........)
Me: uh....?????
Other person: ming tian you shi ma? (are you busy tomorrow)
Me: mei you shi (no)
Other person: ni xihuan hua xue ma? (do you like (????))
Me: shen me yi si? (huh?)
Other person: ski.  ni xihuan ma? (do you like?)
Me: no! bu xihuan ski.
Other person: ni xihuan (chinese chinese) ma?
Me: huh?
Other person: climb mountain
Me: xihuan.  zhe shi shei??? (who is this???)
Other person: (repeat name I don't understand)
Me: deng yi hui'er. (wait a moment).

I ran down the hall to Cathy's apartment and passed her my phone.  (Hug your Chinese speaking friends, by the way.  They're the best!) She found out that this is one of the teachers I met in Thailand who is from Harbin.  She wanted to invite me to ski tomorrow, but I don't like to ski, so instead, next saturday we will climb mountains together.  I hope it's the hiking kind and not the rock climbing kind.

I may never pick up my phone again.

Change

Today I woke up with this plan:

-Finish the worksheet for TCFL

-Go print lesson plans and worksheets

-Make copies

-Finish job application for next year

-Relax

Then, I got a phone call.

Adrienne had just had her meeting with the school and informed me that I wouldn't be teaching my junior international trade and sophomore tcfl classes like we had thought this semester, but that I would be teaching sophomore international trade and finance majors this semester (in addition to my junior english majors from last semester).

Classes begin TOMORROW.

Change of plans.

I took a few minutes to pity myself for the shattering of my plans for the day, as well as the hours and hours I had spent crafting lesson plans for the two courses I will no longer actually be teaching.

And then I sat down at my computer and planned an intro lesson plan for the classes I will start to teach tomorrow, made new worksheets, and printed and copied things. And now I get to write a blog post about it.

The truth is, things change in China. A lot. And often, very suddenly. And I hate change. I tend to fight change with every fiber of my being. It's pretty exhausting. But you know what happens? I fight, struggle, and cry, but in the end, the change comes, and I adapt.

For example:

I had to move apartments a week before Thanksgiving last semester (nasty mold problem). I cried about it. I felt depressed. I thought it was going to be the straw that broke the camel's back. But it wasn't. I moved in to 206, and then got to hang out with my teammates on the 2^nd floor more often. I actually like my new apartment better than my old. The change was good for me.

So today, rather than focusing on all of the negative things I saw in the way the change of plans would affect me today and this semester, I am dwelling on all the good.

1. I get to try to not make the same mistakes with my new classes this semester that I did with my classes last semester.
2. I get to have the opportunity to know 200 new students that I wouldn't otherwise have known.
3. I get to sing “You are my sunshine” with my classes again.
4. I sent a text message to my TCFL students to tell them about how I wouldn't be their teacher this semester, and how I was sad, but still wanted to hang out, eat together, and have them over to my apartment. I was overwhelmed with responses like “don't be sad ~ we are friend! It never change forever”, “thank you my dear teacher! I am also very sad you cannot teach my class, because I like you so much! I wish you health and happy all the time!”, “I am happy to join your apartment. If you have free time, I want to hang out with you”, and many, many more.
5. This could give me more of an opportunity to pour into my TCFL students' lives now that I can just be their friend instead of the person responsible for their grade.
6. The heat is back on in our apartments!!
   
   

   

   Hobo Erin: before the heat was turned back on

   
   
7. The nai cha (milk tea) people came back! I love them!
   
   

   

   Desperate times call for....nai cha